It was in the year 1995 while I was working with a sales company which was hard core sales driven and which believed that only white tiger should survive in the company. I had little experience in sales and was learning the art of selling from our seniors.
Earlier we were focusing on industrial sales and were enjoying a good market share as there were hardly competitors in the market place. We use to receive a lot of enquires from industry and it helped us sailing through. With changing time aspiration of the company was growing but productivity per person was stagnant.Managers used to work like big boss only giving instructions. They never focusedon their personal contribution but pushed their sales executives to get their numbers.
With the changing time, pressure on the sales executives was growing. Sales executives who were earlier performing when the team size was small, were now struggling to perform with new members joining the company. Senior sales executives with their relationship in the administrative office used to take advantage of the situation and used to directly collect enquires from the office boy who used to bring in the post from the post box which was on the ground floor of the building. I remember that one of the sales executives was still getting sales but I always used to doubt on his transparency. He was getting sales without enquires or without moving in the field. We observed that every morning immediately after coming to the office he used to move out of the office. We used to wonder as to where this gentleman is going every morning. He used to come in about half an hour’s time. Ours being a sales office nobody bothered about people moving in an out. There were neither mobiles nor emails during that time. One day one of our senior administrative officers had to go to the post office for some work. He was meeting the head of the branch and was discussing about the delivery of some of the machines to the remote locations. While discussing he learned from the post office that one of the team members regularly visits post office during morning hours. The Post Officer also shared that
The person who comes from the office has shared that he has been instructed by the office. He also shared that there is some urgent post expected and hence he is asked to personally visit the post office.
Our administrative officer could immediately connect the invisible dots and could visualize the person who used to move out of the office everyday and used to come back within half an hour. Next day while the sales executive moved out of the office for going to the post office our administrative officer followed him and caught him red handed in the post office. The sales executive had no clue as to how our administrative officer would have known the fact. Our company had very clear policies for breaching the transparent process and this sales executive was terminated from the job for stealing sales enquires directly from the post office
and working on them. He lost his job but we all learned a lot in the process. His loss was a big learning for most of us and we continue to be as transparent in our approach in all walk of life.
After this instance things were going fine and we were all selling weighing scales and enjoying our job. Two weeks later we heard that a new vice president has joined the company. He was coming from a company which was only into hard core sales of home care products. We were young and never thought that there could be very serious impact on our job role. I was fortunate and am happy that vice president used to sit in our office. Our company did not have a big office and was searching for a new place; meanwhile we had the opportunity of interacting with the Vice president. He brought in a big change in the organization structure
and the entire design was re-engineered to get more productivity per person.
New president used to sit in office and use to call us to understand our approach to selling. He was also trying to gain product knowledge in the process. He also emphasized on use of time for calls. He always shared that sales people have no role in the office. He emphasized that sales person’s should be with the customers. For me all these terms were fresh and I was learning my management lessons from sales guru.
We were all excited and were hoping that our company will now grow fast under the leadership of the new Vice president. About two months letter there was news in the company and that was really shocking. It was learned that our entire salary component was restructured and the fixed component of the salary was reduced to one third in my case. Incentive component was increased and it was purely based on sales figures. The earning opportunity had increased but during that time we did not have the mindset to accept that our salary could be reduced drastically. There were a lot of representations by our senior sales people but our
contribute to the organization and only then people should be rewarded based on the performance. People with fixed cost and no variable component take jobs little easy as there is neither incentive to earn more nor insecurity of losing. New generation may not get such fixed salary jobs and they need to train their brains to work and contribute from day one.
Dr. Nitin Joshi
Director,
DR V N BRIMS, Thane
Also read : THE RISING TREND OF MUTUAL FUNDS IN INDIA AND BASICS OF INVESTING
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