Careers Uncovered: Ashraf Chaudhry, Pakistan’s Number 1 Sales Trainer and Author of “The Craft of Selling Yourself”
1. Best career advice I ever got: I was in 7th grade, when I read the translation of Dale Carnegie’s classic “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. I learnt that throughout our whole life, we are in the ‘selling’ profession. The function of ‘selling’ starts with first cry for milk by the baby and it just goes on. When you opt to roll out your professional career, you are in the ‘selling’ business all the way. You sell your ideas to your colleagues; you sell proposals to your boss; you sell budgets to finance; you sell stumbling blocks to yourself as stepping stones. I am incredibly lucky that I got this career advice in my childhood from no less than Dale Carnegie. When you take yourself as a salesperson rather than as an employee, your approach towards career in particular and towards life in general is very different. You take everybody as your prospect. You remain on auto-networking mode all the time. You look for avenues within the organization as well as outside where you are able to sell your ideas. By selling ideas, you create value-addition possibilities. The more valuable you are to the organization, the bigger price tag you will put on your services. That is how you scale the heights of career.
Careers UnCovered: Nassim Ghrayeb- CEO of YouGov
Best career advice I ever got Ambition is not about getting ahead faster, it’s about doing everything now passionately.
Favorite Job task I ever had to do Paying out bonuses is always fun, there is nothing that gives me more pleasure than rewarding deserving people, it’s less about the money and more about acknowledging their contribution to our business.
Most dreaded job task I ever had to do That’s an easy one, letting someone go, it is never a pleasure, particularly after investing time and effort in a person only not to see it have any impact. In the long term it works out to the best, at the time it doesn’t feel great.
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