Talk with a Sales Man

I always like to interact with people and travel gives me an opportunity to interact with some interesting people. This weekend when I was traveling from Bombay to Pune, I meet a guy who was sitting next to me. He was working as a sales manager in some chemical industry in Pune. So I thought to know what is there in a salesman’s job. So I started the conversation and it turned out to be quite an interesting one. So whatever I write below is from that conversation.

Basics of Sales can be summarized in 3 C's. Convince your customer, Confuse your customer or Corrupt your customer to make a purchase. There is nothing like sales done by convincing your customer that gives a satisfaction. If the customer is not convinced then confuse him, high chance that customer will purchase the product. Customer will assume that product might be good, as he was not able to make any heads or tail of it. And last is to corrupt the people who are making decisions and it is quite common these days.

Gone or the days when you can sell your product just on quality. Though definitely with quality he meant the quality of product. These days there were lot of other parameters which are taken into account to cut a deal. Like timely delivery, after sales support.

Some differences in the way people do their business in North India and South India also came out. People in South want to interact with a non local company through dealers. They think if a local person is involved, he will be able to address their concern in a better way. They can get hold of these local dealers more easily and they do not mind paying a little more for the product. While in North companies do not want dealers, as they think that they will have to pay for the dealer’s commissions also. So these companies want to deal directly. This shows the attitudinal difference of people in South and North. In South people value convenience and in North they value money.

Then I heard the amazing Guju style of doing business. One of the incidents I will mention here. In chemical industry there are strict pollution norms, they can’t let out chemical infected water in drains or river. They need to purify it and all. Now obviously that costs money. So some innovative Guju bhai's came up with an idea to pump the water down in the earth. After few months, the underground water of the whole area became polluted. But then who cares it's all about making money.