Wednesday, March 29, 2006
TOP 8 REASONS WHY I WANT A SALES JOB
1. I HATE TO SLEEP
2. I THINK I HAVE ENJOYED MY LIFE ENOUGH
3. I CANT LIVE WITHOUT TENSION
4. I WANT TO PAY FOR MY SINS
5. I BELIEVE IN BHAGWAT GEETA - "KARM KARO, PHAL BHAAD ME JAAYE"
6. I WANNA PROVE THAT NOT EVERYTHING IN LIFE HAS A REASON
7. I WANT TO TAKE REVENGE FROM MY FREINDS AND FAMILY
8. I DESPERATELY NEED A DIVORCE.
Monday, March 27, 2006
A Thing called Branding :
Most of the times while reading any marketing subject or listening to the Corporate Biz-wizs we hear the concept called Branding and its power to trap our target customer. I just witnessed something like this (may not be the way they expect me to) recently in a show room. I was doing some window-shopping when I land up in a branded apparel showroom. I was casually talking to the store manager about the types of branding and other promotional activities they do. I asked him as to why your brand does not have any brand ambassador. He explained me that since this brand is of such a premium class clothing that we can’t associate any local/Indian brand ambassador to it. Only Hollywood actors can fit in which is a very costly exercise. Hmm... quite a big thought. Anyways one day there was a sale going on there. I happened to witness a “Bada Sahab” visiting the showroom with his driver. The Sahab was very busy is surfing the “premium class clothing”. Since there was a lot of discounts offered in the off-season sale so the driver happened to witness some discounted stuff with much of awe. The aspirations of the driver to look like his Sahab grew such immensely that he couldn’t wait for the try room to get emptied and change there but removed his shirt then and there only to try out this new affordable stuff and feel like a king. Now at that moment looking at that "Top Less Salman Khan" I asked that Store Manager about the target segment for his “Premium Class Clothing” and he was just speechless. After getting the purchase done, the driver rushed outside, put that stuff in the car and came back again standing at the same position where his Sahab left him to be.
I tried hard to remember any age-old marketing and branding concepts and tried to put this event but I couldn’t locate any Brand Personality, Brand Image or any other Brand prism to validate this act of the driver but invain. Hope some concepts of our “Human Behavior” subject may help in sorting out the things .
Stage 3 Landing up in the market
As soon we take a sales job, we think we are doing company a favour and in repayment we want metro posting. But the sales experience in a metro is vastly different than in an Up country. As they say, if you have worked in Eastern UP, you can work anywhere in India, so I started his sales training stint in Gorakhpur. But if it would all been easy then why there is so much hype about FMCG and Eastern UP.
I boarded the train from to Gorakhpur. There is no pantry car in the train. Not a single station on the route is good enough to get down - forget having food. The train stops anywhere and everywhere, when people pull the emergency chain to stop the train may be right outside their house!! And in this particular journey the train was delayed by 4 hours (when entire journey was of 5.5 hrs). I didn’t feel very eerie and yucky as I think of that journey, coz it was a regular schedule for few months stay at that place. I was very happy in the company. Touring new places (don’t know how UP locations was different and interesting from Europe/US locations in any IT Company which I left to join FMCG). Since ages this place was more famous for its goons than anything else. There were more shops of guns than the medical shops. But as someone said ‘Insanity does not die sooner’ so traveling across deeper remote areas was becoming the norm. Traveling across dust-ridden roads (basically pot holes covered with mud) across in bus, van, bike and cycle were the perks attached with this.
As soon we take a sales job, we think we are doing company a favour and in repayment we want metro posting. But the sales experience in a metro is vastly different than in an Up country. As they say, if you have worked in Eastern UP, you can work anywhere in India, so I started his sales training stint in Gorakhpur. But if it would all been easy then why there is so much hype about FMCG and Eastern UP.
I boarded the train from to Gorakhpur. There is no pantry car in the train. Not a single station on the route is good enough to get down - forget having food. The train stops anywhere and everywhere, when people pull the emergency chain to stop the train may be right outside their house!! And in this particular journey the train was delayed by 4 hours (when entire journey was of 5.5 hrs). I didn’t feel very eerie and yucky as I think of that journey, coz it was a regular schedule for few months stay at that place. I was very happy in the company. Touring new places (don’t know how UP locations was different and interesting from Europe/US locations in any IT Company which I left to join FMCG). Since ages this place was more famous for its goons than anything else. There were more shops of guns than the medical shops. But as someone said ‘Insanity does not die sooner’ so traveling across deeper remote areas was becoming the norm. Traveling across dust-ridden roads (basically pot holes covered with mud) across in bus, van, bike and cycle were the perks attached with this.
F-1 race
Once I was visiting one of the rural areas I was amazed to see all the people of that village looking towards us in a very surprised and suspicious way. When I asked my salesmen about that he said, “Sir, this is the area of “Dadua Pehalwan” the famous goon turned politician. Any big car/official who comes so deep here gets kidnapped. Its already one hour here, he must have got information about us so we should better push off else we would be filling his coffer through ransom amount”. Instead of wasting the time in abusing the salesman for not revealing this earlier we just pushed off from that place in our Indica that was running more that 120 Kmph, may be beating Ferrari on the way and relaxed only when we reached the city limits.
Another day I heard the news that one of our salesmen got looted while he was returning home. I rushed to the distributor point and much to my amusement, there was no tensions prevailing. Everyone was as cool as ever. When I enquired few of them as to shouldn’t we report to the police, they said “Sahab, yeh to roz ki baat hai, police ka cut to unko pehle hi pahunch gaya hoga, aur agar hum report karnge bhi to 500-1000 Rs ka choona aur lag jeyaga par hoga kuch nahi”.
All said and done, it was the one of the most interesting 6 months of my life. There you can actually learn all the tricks of trade, the significance of state/country border area in normal trading, the magic of counterfeits, the power of your stock being looted and sold it back to you. Still people are doing business amid all these “perks” attached and running it successfully. It is an amazing experience to share with.
I am not comparing the jobs/locations/industry but all I wanted to say is if at all some one says I know all about marketing and the techniques on how to sell, just send him to areas like UP/Bihar and then see the result.
All said and done, it was the one of the most interesting 6 months of my life. There you can actually learn all the tricks of trade, the significance of state/country border area in normal trading, the magic of counterfeits, the power of your stock being looted and sold it back to you. Still people are doing business amid all these “perks” attached and running it successfully. It is an amazing experience to share with.
I am not comparing the jobs/locations/industry but all I wanted to say is if at all some one says I know all about marketing and the techniques on how to sell, just send him to areas like UP/Bihar and then see the result.
Stage 2 – Welcome to regional Office
After the induction period we were pushed off to our respective regions for sales training, the most important aspects of the FMCG MTs. But before leaving for our sales stint, we were informed by a very senior person that it’s high time to get back to ground from this 5 Star stay, Spas & Jacuzzis and lavish drinks because all is not as opulent as this in the real markets.
So here we are taken yet another flight to yet another location. I was the lucky/unlucky one to get UP so I landed at the UP’s regional HQ. We were conveyed that there would be some one to pick up and drop us to the respective place. So the Mercedes Pick up (as stated in my earlier post) was in mind when I saw a person holding my nameplate. Voila, we were standing in front of Indica, our very own Tata’s Merc of India. Anyways I said drive, but here come the cropper when the driver asking me “Sir, where should I drop you to”. Wow, now that’s funny as I am landing here for the first time in my life, don’t know any one except the driver and he himself is clue less. I can’t ring up the regional office as being Sunday. Well, Good start to the sales career. But some how through dropping some calls here and there I managed to locate the relevant person and my place of stay and where to report to office the next day.
Learning -1
Here, things operate in a much different way. I tell you guys, the culture of Sales is very different from any other industry. First of all I had to learn is to un-learn my pre MBA IT work culture. While in the first thing we learn in IT is everyone is equal and you can call even the director of the company by his first name. Here hierarchies are sacrosanct. We have people of all ages and capability, some 23 year olds, some having experience of 23 years in the same company, working at the same level and reporting to the same person. You can’t treat everyone equal. Much to my astonishment, “Some ppl even don’t know how to operate emails when entire company is for the last so many years is using Statistical Packages and advanced mathematical tools for sales reporting, forecasting and stock control.”
Learning-2
The second learning we got is ‘Information is Power and; it can’t be shared with everybody, again a stark contradiction to our IT geeks where open source community is now taking over the world. So don’t think that just because some top people recruited you to work in their company at such an higher level, shared with you their business profits and future strategies at the HO, the people down the line in their regional offices will be eager to share their information and learnings with you. You have to work very hard to get any insights about their experience. Just to state an example, I met a Stereo typed Sales Manager/Mentor, the first one in the office. I enquired as to how the markets operate and how to go about learning the Sales business. So he asks us to go directly to the market, visit 100 shops and collect the rates and margins for all types of biscuits and candies in the market the com1pany margin, the competition margin, the MRPs, the Dealer commission etc. So much to get for asking the insights for the first day in my office.
Well, some people do believe in sharing of information for better sales operation, though not with their colleagues but with the competitor’s employee just like we used to enjoy the jokes of “an Indian and Pakistani Soldiers giving tanks to each other for getting holidays in reward of capturing the tanks which in reality was given by his other country’s counterpart”.
Work Hard, Party Harder
Each employee doing sales for so long, kept away from his family for so many years has one place to vent out his frustration, the Local Parties. They were not as lavish as the one held at the company HO but quite big one to compare of. So people getting totally drunk in the parties as if trying to dissolve all the days spent in remote market in the bottle of rum. Now you find some one cribbing his life; some one cribbing his parents for his life; some one abusing the market; some one abuing the distributors for this kind of market. Basically in the end saying “Ganda hai par Dhandha hai yeh”
After the induction period we were pushed off to our respective regions for sales training, the most important aspects of the FMCG MTs. But before leaving for our sales stint, we were informed by a very senior person that it’s high time to get back to ground from this 5 Star stay, Spas & Jacuzzis and lavish drinks because all is not as opulent as this in the real markets.
So here we are taken yet another flight to yet another location. I was the lucky/unlucky one to get UP so I landed at the UP’s regional HQ. We were conveyed that there would be some one to pick up and drop us to the respective place. So the Mercedes Pick up (as stated in my earlier post) was in mind when I saw a person holding my nameplate. Voila, we were standing in front of Indica, our very own Tata’s Merc of India. Anyways I said drive, but here come the cropper when the driver asking me “Sir, where should I drop you to”. Wow, now that’s funny as I am landing here for the first time in my life, don’t know any one except the driver and he himself is clue less. I can’t ring up the regional office as being Sunday. Well, Good start to the sales career. But some how through dropping some calls here and there I managed to locate the relevant person and my place of stay and where to report to office the next day.
Learning -1
Here, things operate in a much different way. I tell you guys, the culture of Sales is very different from any other industry. First of all I had to learn is to un-learn my pre MBA IT work culture. While in the first thing we learn in IT is everyone is equal and you can call even the director of the company by his first name. Here hierarchies are sacrosanct. We have people of all ages and capability, some 23 year olds, some having experience of 23 years in the same company, working at the same level and reporting to the same person. You can’t treat everyone equal. Much to my astonishment, “Some ppl even don’t know how to operate emails when entire company is for the last so many years is using Statistical Packages and advanced mathematical tools for sales reporting, forecasting and stock control.”
Learning-2
The second learning we got is ‘Information is Power and; it can’t be shared with everybody, again a stark contradiction to our IT geeks where open source community is now taking over the world. So don’t think that just because some top people recruited you to work in their company at such an higher level, shared with you their business profits and future strategies at the HO, the people down the line in their regional offices will be eager to share their information and learnings with you. You have to work very hard to get any insights about their experience. Just to state an example, I met a Stereo typed Sales Manager/Mentor, the first one in the office. I enquired as to how the markets operate and how to go about learning the Sales business. So he asks us to go directly to the market, visit 100 shops and collect the rates and margins for all types of biscuits and candies in the market the com1pany margin, the competition margin, the MRPs, the Dealer commission etc. So much to get for asking the insights for the first day in my office.
Well, some people do believe in sharing of information for better sales operation, though not with their colleagues but with the competitor’s employee just like we used to enjoy the jokes of “an Indian and Pakistani Soldiers giving tanks to each other for getting holidays in reward of capturing the tanks which in reality was given by his other country’s counterpart”.
Work Hard, Party Harder
Each employee doing sales for so long, kept away from his family for so many years has one place to vent out his frustration, the Local Parties. They were not as lavish as the one held at the company HO but quite big one to compare of. So people getting totally drunk in the parties as if trying to dissolve all the days spent in remote market in the bottle of rum. Now you find some one cribbing his life; some one cribbing his parents for his life; some one abusing the market; some one abuing the distributors for this kind of market. Basically in the end saying “Ganda hai par Dhandha hai yeh”
Stage -1 :Story of a Sales Trainee:
To get a decent job is the dream of every parent (may not be that of the child but…)
But to figure out the best balance between Choice and Availability rests upon us. So here I am joined a Sales & Marketing job (in contrast to cozy IT job which my Pre –MBA IT work-ex supports) to enrich my learnings or as they say broaden my horizons. Whether there was something good or something stupid in him is still in question?
To get a decent job is the dream of every parent (may not be that of the child but…)
But to figure out the best balance between Choice and Availability rests upon us. So here I am joined a Sales & Marketing job (in contrast to cozy IT job which my Pre –MBA IT work-ex supports) to enrich my learnings or as they say broaden my horizons. Whether there was something good or something stupid in him is still in question?
Induction Process
Continuing further, we all management trainees boarded a fully paid flight to land up in plush 5-Star hotel for our induction process with the pickup-drops sometimes in a Merc. Wow, what a start. Family must be proud to know his son relaxing his muscles at the Spa and Jacuzzi and eating almost all types of food available on earth. So the formal introduction sessions started with each division head of the company coming and pitching his division’s achievements and future growth. It just reminded me be back to the b-school days where every prof coming forward and telling about his electives. But quite surprisingly some of the us retained their habit of Class Participation and After Class Participation (CP and ACPs ) here also. Finding the centers of power, pitching them as the best trainee of the year and future leaders of the company, influencing these ‘grey coloured’ professionals with their best possible Kotler gyan.
The best piece of ‘networking’ was visible in the night parties where almost every top person comes. So the next task was to impressing them with the “so vast marketing and finance insights” some how gathered in between bunking and attending some of the minimum required classes at the college. Thus finding the short cut way to success was fully visible. The best part was to see that bunch of “Future leaders” wandering from one top person to the other just trying to find out who can be their most powerful God Father in the company.
Away from all this hustle, I was sitting on a remote chair, but it was real fun to watch people moving around here and there. But somewhere I start thinking as to when we are working for the same company and fighting the same competitors so shouldn’t we collaborate than compete? Ok, I agree there is only one CEO chair but still why even some companies promote this culture of competing among employees or even management trainees. Anyways, lost in the lots of power games and networking activities (which even beat the Congressmen for Sonia Gandhi). I tried to find some sanity and started locating people with similar mindset. So how should I go about to find my Target Segment? Well it was not very hard to do as a few of them sharing the remote chairs were also laughing at the same drama happening in the system. So from next day onwards we made a point to sit together at the last row, away from all the CP enthusiast and future CEOs and the days started passing with much less torture with sessions in the morning and swimming/Spa/Party in evenings.
The best piece of ‘networking’ was visible in the night parties where almost every top person comes. So the next task was to impressing them with the “so vast marketing and finance insights” some how gathered in between bunking and attending some of the minimum required classes at the college. Thus finding the short cut way to success was fully visible. The best part was to see that bunch of “Future leaders” wandering from one top person to the other just trying to find out who can be their most powerful God Father in the company.
Away from all this hustle, I was sitting on a remote chair, but it was real fun to watch people moving around here and there. But somewhere I start thinking as to when we are working for the same company and fighting the same competitors so shouldn’t we collaborate than compete? Ok, I agree there is only one CEO chair but still why even some companies promote this culture of competing among employees or even management trainees. Anyways, lost in the lots of power games and networking activities (which even beat the Congressmen for Sonia Gandhi). I tried to find some sanity and started locating people with similar mindset. So how should I go about to find my Target Segment? Well it was not very hard to do as a few of them sharing the remote chairs were also laughing at the same drama happening in the system. So from next day onwards we made a point to sit together at the last row, away from all the CP enthusiast and future CEOs and the days started passing with much less torture with sessions in the morning and swimming/Spa/Party in evenings.
Work less, party harder
Just to mention more about the of the parties, it contained not only the top shots of the company but also every top label in liquor, be it the top scotch or Rs 40k priced Red and White French wines. So, come to the party, see the bunch’s new tricks, savour some new brand and esp the costlier ones and enjoy the tipsy stage.
Then one day we were conveyed that The Lord of the company, The Company CEO is visiting here so he will be spending hour an hour with us. There were strict instructions of limiting our interactions to that time limit only as he is a very busy man. Of course who can be as free as us who were doing just sit and attend the presentations. But as they say ‘old habits die hard’ and especially when the Supreme commander is there, so CPs were on full tone as if they will grab the director’s chair in the company on that CP note. That ½ hour was just casually stretched to One and Half Hour, much to the chagrin of other senior people. So in this way we were inducted to the company that will make our professional career!!!
Sales Location
Now the next part of the training was to push off to our respective sales locations across India. So now comes the most important twist in our lives, where we will be going to for the next 1-year of our training. Since entire India was on platter so some is bound to get bad location. Some one got metro which can be seen from the smile and their faces, some one was cribbing at the system as he got Bihar and yours truly was the lucky/unlucky one to get UP.
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