By Prof. Vinay Dhumale
18/06/2010
If you look at any common Indian service provider - whether a vegetable vendor or your local grocery store owner - the one thing that strikes you about him is his ability to multitask. On an average, most behind-the-counter salesmen, (take any trade) can handle at least 4 customers - each with around four different agendas – and about three associated queries at any given time. This brings the total number of queries to about 48. Surprisingly, these queries don’t take the salesmen more than two to three minutes to deal with.
Unlike in the West - where there is always a queue system, Indians tend to crowd around their vendors. An American professor – on his visit to India - was taken aback by this phenomenon. He was amazed at the cool maintained by the salesmen who handled the situations without feeling overwhelmed. My professor friend once got down at a random railway station just to get the feel of the place.
He noticed a crowd that had gathered around an information counter. Their queries were varied, but the man behind the counter answered each question with patience. This was the story at every station he stopped at. He asked me to accompany him on his mission to study the force behind Indian counter - the salesmen. And I obliged.
I decided Lamington Road – that IT hub of Mumbai - was the ideal place to study zealous markets and consumer behavior. To research this phenomenon - we chose one particular shop within a packed mall. Despite the crowd, we were able to find our way to the counter.
Anilbhai and Amisha run this shop. My professor friend was busy shooting the entire proceedings of the ongoing deal. I was to keep a tab on how many queries these two handled in a span of three minutes. Both were dealing with about eight customers between them.
When our three minutes began, one of the buyers was looking for external hard drives. Anilbhai began by explaining the various hard drives in terms of their RAM (random access memory) in GB (gigabytes); the customer made his choice – the 100GB hard drive was chosen and paid for. Anilbhai then pitched a laptop bag to the second customer, and sold to the third – a set of headphones and a pack of DVDs. Transactions and accounts were handled simultaneously. He managed all this while maintaining his cool and looking hospitable enough to offer his customers some chai. This was just three minutes on an average day at work for Anilbhai.
On the face of it – the scene was one of chaos and confusion. But Anilbhai tells us he enjoyed his work. According to him – approximately three out of every five customers bought his goods. That made impressive sales figures. I meant to ask him more questions and so we were led into his cubicle – while his partner stayed back to look after the counter. Here are some of the highlights of the conversation:
On numbers: Anilbhai told us he attended to about 300 customers in one day. A purchase is normally tagged with about 3 to 4 enquiries bringing the total to about 1200 questions per day. There is then the follow-up action to be looked into.
The Learning Curve - Anilbhai – like in many Indian, family–run business homes - learnt the trade from his father. “I was to enter the shop at 10.30 am in the morning, say a prayer and jump right in to start the day’s work”. There were also the warnings – “My father warned me it would be soon get boring, repetitive and tiring unless I took it upon myself to make it interesting. The moment you realized the challenge lies in the transaction it starts to be a match of contention between you and the customer”, he says.
Where the challenge lies - I found this very interesting and we asked him to explain further. “To sell products to those who intend to buy – is easy. But the most interesting part is convincing the undecided customer”, he said. So how does one identify the real buyer from someone who is just there to enquire? “Whether it’s a customer who has just walked in to buy or has come to just enquire, we have to be very careful. If he feels he’s being ignored, he’ll never visit your shop again”, added Anilbhai. Here was Anilbhai teaching me what no management textbook had ever taught me before. Classical marketing teaches you to focus on market clusters where sales are guaranteed. But here we were witnessing the complete reversal of such theories. My professor friend looked a bit amused too.
“How do you manage that?” we prodded further. For the first time Anilbhai took some time to respond. He then said, “You need to treat it like a game. If you lose, you will be thrown out of the market in no time. So it becomes a do-or-die situation. I have to achieve a certain turnover in a given space in a limited time”, he said.
Dealing with the undecided customer – the Indian Way - When it comes to a customer who is yet to take a decision, there are two ways of dealing with him: You either provide him with all the answers he needs on the product. Or you allow him to spend enough time with the product and give him space to think. Slowly, he starts sending us all the favorable signs and either on that day or in couple of days, he will surely return to buy from you. That gives us a real high. More than selling it’s the acquisition that matters”, he declared.
Knowing your subject matter: “On an average we need to know about 400 inventory items in our line of business. But this is nothing. It is not even close to any hardware store, where the sales team needs to keep tabs on about 1500 items, know their locations and price margins. Besides the transactions and profits are of much smaller proportions in their line of work”, he added.
Passion: “You only need the passion to sell”, added Anilbhai as he goes out to take on another challenge and another customer.
The size of this shop - sale and storage included - was 20x18 ft. Here at any given point in time - there were a minimum of about 25 customers, eight salespersons, stored products and utter chaos - all the elements of your average Indian market added with that force that bound them all together- zeal and passion.
My professor friend was highly amused. Lessons we both learnt that day: One can increase productivity five-folds without additional funding or space or manpower. This was something that no business textbooks would tell you – and only a street-smart Indian knows. As for my professor friend - this entire interaction was worth two whole credits in his subjects - Marketing and HR.
The author is Hon. Dean & Lead Mentor, MBA program, Manipal Institute of Media & Entertainment.
