Member-only story
LinkedIn is a secret weapon for connections and I struck up a great conversation with Abdul Ghafoor a few weeks ago. Here we are with a memorable story from InspireME as related.
Here’s Abdul Ghafoor
They wanted to sell it at US$ 26. I thought it was too steep a price for a cheap-looking product. It looked more like a toy that was normally hung on a stand next to the cashiers. It was an Electronic Tasbih (Electronic rosary). They were top managers of a Malaysian company on a mission to find a distributor in Dubai.
Despite the fact that I was starting a brand new business of commercial brokerage in a totally foreign land and that this was my very first full day in Dubai, my instinctive reply was “it won’t retail at more than 10 Dirhams”. While my confident answer surprised me, they seem to have taken it in stride. They had similar feedback from their other meetings too.
Earlier in my career, my attitude towards problem-solving has been shaped by my manager at Chase Manhattan Bank. Amjad would never say no to anything. He would always say “let’s see how we can do it.”
In that same spirit, instead of refusing, I proposed and they agreed that there should be a market survey. The results were as expected, the product must not be priced at more than AED 10.
Since I am a solutions guy, with my survey report, I proposed that by positioning the product as a corporate giveaway in a gift pack, we…
