Humbled is what you feel when you get to experience so much in just a matter of 60 days. Its definitely not easy going to sleep in one city and waking up in another, travelling through your nights and working through your days, interacting with the sales team and roaming with them around the markets for 8 hours under the blazing temperature of 48 degrees or for that matter educating retailers of products like I-pill and I-know in societies where sex is still a taboo. But hey, who said sales is easy!
Making a fortune in the world of marketing isn't all about the comfort of an air-conditioned cabin, devising strategies with the top management and having to lunch with celebrities. You've got to hit the field to know the ground reality, to meet your customer and understand his nerve and then serve him with a profitable business offering. In short, you got to do sales.
Piramal is one of the leading brands in the healthcare sector and that's where I landed. If you are willing to go the extra mile in whatever you do, if you have a go-getter attitude and stepping outside the comfort zone with a smile on your face and a spark in your eyes, then here is the place to be. I was fortunate to have got the opportunity of doing my summer internship with Piramal.
We reached Mumbai, the city of dreams, to find ourselves residing in an amazing hotel for the first 10 days. The first week went about understanding the varied range of products the company offers, getting an insight into the dynamics of sales, margins and stakeholders in the entire sales ecosystem. The ninth day was when I met my mentor and the first thing he said to me was "Pack your bags, you've got one of the most challenging projects of all." There are times in your life when you don't know whether to be happy or sad, to be excited or scared. This was one of those moments. Further, I was told that I would be leaving for Pune in 2 days. Till then I had to roam around the markets of Mumbai to understand the working of salesmen.
Having reached Pune I understood what are the ideal practices a salesman follows to achieve his targets. You get to understand that sales is NOT just about blabbering the ins and outs of your product to the retailer, but much much more. Sales requires not only planning but also adapting yourself to the market conditions and changing consumer preferences. Every retailer has his biases, preferences and challenges. Similarly every distributor has his own way in the market and aligning all the stakeholders profitably is what a salesman is expected to do. Having spent time with the A-players, it was now time with the new joinees.
The next stop was Nanded. This was the first time I got a chance to travel in a sleeper bus. Initially, I was under the impression that it would be an ordinary Volvo bus with extendible seats, but it is only when I got in did I realize that there were an array of beds and no sign of seats. One is expected to sit and lay down on a low ceiling bed for a ride of 12 hours.
Sleeping in a sleeper is an art. You’ve got to keep your dreams intact while your body rolls from one side of the bed (that has a railing) to the other side (that has a window), with bumps, twists and turns of highway roads. I’ll be honest, I could not ace this art even after 2 months!
The temperature in Nanded was 42 degrees, pretty normal and easy to bear for a Delhite. When you are in a tier-1 or a tier-2 city you have Swiggy, Zomato, Ola and Uber at your service, but when you go down the hierarchy, these services are absent and hence starts the trail of negotiations. My advice: Make use of Google Maps in such places to plan your travel and then accordingly negotiate prices.
With sleep filled in my eyes, I reached the hotel at 9.30 am to find that the market in Nanded starts operating from 10 am. As a I got ready and gulped down a few biscuits as my breakfast, it was time to start the field work. This was how most of the days in sales would span out. I travelled nearly 110 km each day (on bike and foot) on an average.
Working with a newly joined salesman is yet another learning experience. If he has experience in the field then the task isn’t that tough, but if he is a fresher you’ve got to start from the basics. You’ve got to introduce him to the company, its values and the hierarchy. A new salesman needs to be educated about the company’s products (in and out), competitor offering, roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder in the entire sales ecosystem. Basically, he needs to come to the level of the A-players as soon as possible.
There will be times when a new salesman will be afraid of making the pitch, particularly when you have to explain products like I-Pill, I-Know and I-Can. He will lose out on opportunities to close a sales call productively or when despite his hard works he fails to reach his daily/weekly/monthly targets. In order to prevent him from getting demotivated and instill a sense of self-belief, it becomes essential to handhold him at every stage, initially. And this was primarily what I was expected to do.
The locations changed to Aurangabad, Nagpur, Nasik, Dhule, Wardha, Chandrapur, Malegaon, Jalgaon and so on. With every city, rose the temperature and days got more exhausting. But every day had something new to learn. Having faced worst of the worst I grew independent, stronger and wiser.
If you are venturing out of your homes for the first time (like me), the struggle to find a shelter is real. Add to this the fact when you know that you will be changing your city every 3-4 days. Moreso, managing simple food, something close to homemade food at reasonable rates is yet another challenge. There will be times when you will break down. But in the end, you will carry so much back with you that you realize that being wealthy isn’t all about having all the money in the world. It’s a step beyond. In the end it’s all going to be worth it!