All interviewees viewed that the knowledge grafting is perhaps everything on knowledge creation, even though they did not know theoretical explanation.
Interviewees provided their information in various dimension, which was entirely related with knowledge grafting process. In addition to that the amount of experience and job responsibilities also determines on amount of knowledge creation capabilities from one person to another.
Moreover, teamwork between employees and owners could also be another factor on creating new ideas for best practices in the organization. Specially, salesperson need to know how to work and implement their knowledge best way
42 to solve the problems, they should possess capabilities to enhance their job effectively. However, that lies on the strength of their strategy making competence of sales professionals. Based on the informants the impact of knowledge grafting process on knowledge creation as these comments show:
My strategy is that you always have to know your tools for your work, what is capable and not. Never judge understanding, you have to have tools to solve any problems. (R3) In the above quote, interviewee is giving an absolute meaning on importance of synergistic outcome. In reality, we do not know how and when we need strategies, but we needed to be ready with possible circumstances in the business. The pre-preparation could give a hunch, how professional should act at time of action. Strategically, it seems important, however it is a flowless act of the professionals to continue their job. Furthermore, same interviewee added that implementation of strategy is like “firing moving targets from moving platform”. That means, the synergistic outcome of knowledge from the knowledge grafting improves to act. that could give instant ideas in order to solve the problems. His following quotes referred that knowledge creation might be helpful when it comes to get success at work.
More you push more you lose. Get the edge and then you have to scale. The most difficult thing is that you have to fire moving target from moving platform. Always think from that platform, if you do something then what does your competitor do? Environment is changing, and you have to anticipate how to move from this point to that point. (R3) At some cases, strategy lies on technical knowledge. It is about how professionals use their technical resources in the sales process. The small and smart strategy of the professionals could impact on sales outcome. Strategically literate alone is not enough, one should also be conscientious. The interviewee trying to put ideas in a way that “the smarter we are, the better we could reform our knowledge and strategy”.
43 I created strategy because people in Instagram freely show some funny pictures if there is leap here or some that’s why I use direct messaging tools instead of traditional mails, and it’s really working. (R4)
Same interviewee further added that strategy is the correlation of current needs of the prospective customer and becoming the bridge between customer and customer’s customer. Due to the cultural influences, different part of the world practices their business differently, and cultural knowledge is important at that aspect. The smart communication with potential customer depends on the intelligence of the salesperson, that is how new strategy emerges in a practice and later same successful strategy becomes organizational strategy. Same interviewee highlighted that customer-based communication ability indicate sale success. That information is related with literature presented by Easterby-Smith and Prieto (2008) as “the knowledge to use effective communication and supplying information practices are related with strategical success, however it depends on knowledge capabilities and strategy literacy of the sales professionals”.
My current strategy is to direct calling because in Russia emails like hardly they reply, it’s even better if you talk with the clients. You get all the information promptly. I guess, talking to them online or write in the social media, hardly expect but I use social media they don’t expect. Two beautiful lines helps you to convey your message, they hardly read all the product information. You should not write a lot because people don’t like to write and read a lot. Just one sentence what you are selling and how it can help you.
For instance, “If you want to clean your sewage, our excavator can help you”. (R4) The finding also indicates that salesperson, who has continuous learning and working prospect provides them to build up strong and confidential knowledge to perform their task. The following quotes indicate that professionals create smart ways to fulfill their responsibilities. They do develop their ideas for the development of organization, which makes them to synchronize their knowledge, when they need. Yet, the interviewee felt that sales and marketing professionals should work together and synchronize their knowledge, which could have
44 positive effect on sales process. The finding demonstrated that if they share their knowledge and ideas together leads to the better success in the sales strategy creation and implementation successfully.
Now, I understood how marketing works, Business Expo costs hundreds of thousands of euros, and huge expenses for company, but if you can talk with the people and make meeting schedule, even single meeting increase your sales and your own performance effectively. On the other hand, increase the profit for the organization. And I guess marketing should be taught together with sales and marketing guys, because sales may not know what marketing is promoting currently. They could share information from the both side prospective and get better result. Now I know how to make that. (R4) Same interviewee has strongly highlighted that, after long and continuous work experience in the marketing and sales department, she built up various knowledges in order to act precisely in the right place at right time. Such strong and confidential knowledge again transforms into strategy. The interviewee felt that sales strategy does not come promptly, however it is continuous process to learn and develop appropriately.
I am learning slowly to get me towards improving my capabilities, this course is helping me a lot in that case. Because, specially while go back to part time work, couple of times in a month, I can take this knowledge learned from school to my work and I can see that I apply that I think differently when I face customer I try to look bigger picture, not just about that customer experience but like how I represent the company. What effects that has if it is like an angry customer, case me I cannot get anger I have to be like clam and try to make customer happy again,, I know one bad customer experience, put in online everywhere and damage company experience. (R5)
However, one interviewee reported that her current education has helped her to improve knowledge integration. It showed that educational knowledge also provides them insight, how to deal with the situation. Same interviewee felt that her tacit knowledge helped her to understand the situation so that she could create her instant strategy for resolving the issues while dealing with the
45 customers. Which indicates that tacit knowledge incorporates with explicit knowledge and helps in dealing with difficult situation. So, both forms of knowledge are valuable in the strategy formulation and implementation.
I want to be a business developer that specially developing these Kuopio’s area businesses. Because, I think there are lots of potential and they have such a great products and services, and it’s a shame that they don’t see the opportunity that like the World has to offer. So, I want to gain experience from this school because I already have the ability to communicate in English and I think I have a quite good understanding of different cultures and how to like, change my behavior with other people from different cultures and enable to be communicate more effectively. I think that is something, that would be good thing, when I once, at some point get to work for this small company in Kuopio area and that I want to go to international market and That is my strategy. (R5) The findings also indicated that strategy does not only mean to solve problem in sales, however professionals also see a concrete vision, how they want to be professional. The finding demonstrated that sales professional not only understand the importance of opportunity, but also the opportunity like what has to offer for the potential customer.
On the basis of findings, it is concluded that level of experience and knowledges of sales professional affects the strategy formulation and implementation. There are other factors in strategy such as implementation of experience, capability of understanding, social status information, sales competence also effects sales professional’s performance. The way in which they understand and implement their knowledge to be professional, seems to be better way to build up their best strategy. Therefore, the finding reveals that “Individual knowledge capabilities expand into new organizational strategy”.
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