Monday, March 27, 2006
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”
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