That the pandemic has turned the world upside down is a painful reality that we are struggling to cope with. The three standard prescriptions – wearing mask, washing hands with soap and social distancing - was meant to keep the virus at bay and save lives. The rampant and virulent spread of Covid-19 forced the hand of governments across the world and the dramatic response has been lockdowns. The jury is still out whether this has been an excessively strong medicine that has in effect knocked-down the economies of the world. Be that as it may, companies have concluded that if they do not come up with innovative steps to meet the new reality, they are toast, to put it mildly.

The first test is contacting the customer. With lockdown and social distancing becoming the norm, companies are turning to the virtual medium for reaching the customer. And, the awkwardness is evident. Conventional learning is on trial here. Business development executives - whatever be their nomenclature - have been told for years that it is important to make eye contact with the customer, offer a firm shake of the hand, strike a personal rapport, etc. Transferring these skills into the virtual world is not as easy as it seems. There is a new art of selling that has to be learned.

While harnessing technology is the obvious route, the mistake is to believe that this can provide all the answers. Zoom fatigue is the new subject of discussion and seeking another video meeting with a prospect is not going to be easy. Here are three cues that could offer pointers for the intrepid new generation salesman.

1. Sharpen your saw: The principles of selling have not changed - only the methods have. The smart salesman will fine tune his prospecting and take a laser sharp approach. The shotgun will be kept aside, and the sniper will be called into action. This is a good time to take the help of your marketing colleague who can assist you to crunch data, analyze trends and perhaps sift through social media as well to come up with strategies that can pay off. The idea is to find that one sliver that can be used to penetrate through the fog of messages that are bombarding prospects. It is better to take some extra time to do your research before you seek a meeting to ensure that the right hook is used to pique the interest of the prospect.
2. Patience is your new friend: There are no easy accounts any longer. At a time when customers are reeling from the blows of this invisible enemy, you need to understand the prospect's situation. This is when genuine empathy is called for as often business is the last thing on the prospect's mind when ill-health is claiming victims around him. The cycle of sale is now much longer than before and the salesperson has to patiently shepherd the sale. The aggressive sales persona has to fade into the background to be replaced by the supportive, customer-oriented solution provider.
3. Flexibility: An old virtue needs to be re-discovered. The unusual circumstances we find ourselves in calls for abnormal actions. Nothing should be off the table as concessions may be sought by the Buyer and in the interest of sustaining long term relationships, they may have to be given. If a firm stubbornly insists on the routine terms which have served them well in the past, it may cost them dearly. The agile Seller would be quick to recognize that the Buyer is under pressure too from his constituents and this calls for some nimble and adaptive steps to hold on to a valuable relationship. There is no better time than now to revamp staid steps that are entrenched in a firm as 'immutable company policy'. Inability to adapt could well be fatal when things are in a flux.

A new world is emerging and only the first contours are visible still. This is the time to be observant and operate with caution. This is also the time to reflect on your firm's value systems and seek directions from within. Realize that we are in the eye of the storm and hold on till the turbulence blows past. Answers are not evident as the landscape is yet to fully emerge. They will in due time - and you should be ready to set sail again. A new dawn will come.

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C G Ramakrishnan is a management post-graduate, specialized in Finance and has had extensive experience in finance, sales, corporate strategy & affairs and overall business management.

He has handled several key projects and has been associated with TechNova for over 35 years. A keen student and follower of Indian economics, politics & general affairs, he completed his BSc from Mumbai University and his MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai.

Matt Ridley's book, like all his previous books, astounds for its scholarship - buttressing all his arguments with fascinating examples to prove his optimistic, yet often, very provocative ideas around innovation. His view on innovation is often counter-intuitive.

He challenges us to think differently about the process of innovation and to take the long view of a process that many of us confuse for invention but is the reason we all lead more comfortable and enriching lives compared to our predecessors.

Innovation is not the same as invention. It resembles Darwinian evolution, a process of "rearranging the world into forms unlikely to arise by chance - and that is useful...And innovation is potentially infinite because even if it runs out of new things to do, it can always do the same things more quickly or for less energy."

Matt emphasizes that mere invention is not enough for some newly created product or service to reach mass consumption - unless they are "sufficiently practical, affordable, reliable, and ubiquitous to be worth using." This distinction is not intuitively obvious.

Throughout the book, the author delivers fascinating histories of technology that we take for granted. Many minds contributed to the developments of the steam engine, automobile, and computer. Ridley makes a convincing case that obsessive trial and error works better than inspiration and illustrates with insightful accounts of Edison, the Wright brothers, and Marconi.

Ridley argues that inventions often precede a scientific understanding of the relevant physical principles. In 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu witnessed women in Turkey perform what she called "engrafting" the introduction of a small amount of pus drawn from a mild smallpox blister into the bloodstream of a healthy person via a scratch in the arm's skin or leg. They discovered that this crude form of vaccination led to fewer people falling ill from smallpox. Lady Mary boldly engrafted her own children which horrified many people. Till the work of Louis Pasteur, no one really knew what a virus was or why this approach worked.

Innovation is not the prerogative of one person. Many people worked simultaneously and independently on innovations. Thomas Edison was not the only one to have invented the light bulb. Apparently, 21 different people had come up with the design of - or had made crucial improvements to - the incandescent light bulb. By 1880 "six different people invented or discovered the thermometer, five the electric telegraph, four decimal fractions, three the hypodermic needle, two natural selection."

Ridley talks about Amara's hype cycle (named after Roy Amara, American scientist and futurologist), which states that "people overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but underestimate it in the long run." He tracks the intense excitement around the Internet in the 1990s, which faced the disappointing reality of the dotcom bust of 2000, but digitally exploded in the 2010s, vindicating the faith people had placed. Applying Amara's Law to contemporary trends, Ridley thinks that artificial intelligence is in the "underestimated" phase while blockchain is in the "overestimated" phase.

Ridley's thesis is that innovation flourishes where individuals are free to experiment with minimal interference from two large, unimaginative institutions: big business and government who worked together for a generation to suppress cell phones, which were workable after World War II. We would have had cell phones by the early 1970s and wouldn't that have changed the world as we know it! And the 20th century's sole innovative source of large-scale energy, nuclear power is in decline mostly because of government regulations.

Matt has also structured the book innovatively. The subject is vast and innovation is not just a process but a phenomenon, integral to what makes us human and the dominant species on the planet. He describes how innovation has affected important dimensions of our lives we take for granted: energy, public health, transport, food, low-tech innovation, communications and computing. We realize how important innovation has been to produce the breakthroughs in each of these areas. Which is why I can sit comfortably on my La-Z-Boy, watch from an assorted collection of streamed programmes with a touch of a button and then dial for a takeout on Uber Eats.

Having convinced us of the power and importance of innovation, he then spends the next part of the book analyzing the important dimensions of innovation such as the economics of innovations and the essential characteristics of innovation.

This book is enjoyable and full of insights and my favourite is 'innovation is the child of freedom and the parent of prosperity'. This line sums the central message of the book.

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