This is the end

All things be they good, bad or tiresome come to an end (and thank god for that!). So did my journey of being an ASM of the hinterlands. And what better way to end the saga than be asked by your MD to coauthor a blog post with him about women in unconventional fields like sales.

http://www.monday-8am.com/thriving-as-a-woman-in-sales-co-authored-by-apurva-joshi/


And on this note this Sabunwali takes the giant leap from the hinterlands to the HO :)

Baptism of Fire- Management Training

1 suitcase, packed so as to not exceed the 15 KG airline baggage limit, a handbag stuffed to the brim with nick-nacks,  albeit expertly to not weigh more than 7kg (thanks to the oppressive airline restrictions again) and I set off on a journey called Management Training. Little did I know that in the subsequent 10 months I would have lived out of that suitcase in 8 cities, traveled to some 12 more, slept in 20 hotels, across 2 continents, met hundreds of people I will probably never encounter again, made friends in the strangest corners of the world, be it Africa or suburban Karnataka, shunned the cocoon of a comfortable and protected upbringing, become a human calculator and gained some real street smarts as a direct consequence of parading the mean market streets from morning to evening.
Management Training is akin to a boot camp which will hurl you into a world of unknown people, strange places and unforeseeable circumstances which will char you, scar you, empower you and deflower you of your innocence, if you actually managed to retain any till after the MBA!

Like a rolling Stone…

"How does it feel, how does it feel?

To be on your own
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone"…

For freshers like I once was, the initial few days of this period can be rather unnerving. You are constantly in a state of flux, the moment you start settling down in one place and getting a sense of your whereabouts, you are bundled off to the next location for the next stint to start over, again! Being constantly uprooted, completely out of your comfort zone and left to your own devices makes you adapt, in ways you never knew you were capable of. Suddenly you find yourself becoming responsible. You look for accommodation, alone. Scavenge for food and  supplies, alone. Look at plausible means of entertainment that can be enjoyed alone- you go to restaurants, movies and shopping, all alone. You strive to establish s social system of sorts when you are miles away from family and friends and know nobody in the places you would have the misfortune of residing in during MT period. I found the realization that if some misfortune befell me there would be no one to come to my aid extremely unsettling initially.This lead me to establish genuine friendships with the many people- the ones I cohabited with, hotel staff, autowallas who ferried me to and fro in small towns, cab drivers and my fellow team members. I realized during this time that humans really are social animals, being able to connect with another person at a genuine emotional level lends stability and security to our existence, all alone you cannot tread the winding roads of the world. I made friends with people across 3 countries, people I am still in touch with despite management training days being long over.

Adventure is out there…

The day I accepted my PPO I had a foreboding that I was stepping into a world very different from the one I had inhabited for the first quarter of my life, Little did I know that I was immersing myself into a sea of crazy adventures, testosterone, aggression, crazy happenings and idiosyncratic characters who never failed to amuse.

If you harbor a spirit of adventure and curiosity and don’t get rattled too easily then a structured FMCG management training program is the best platform to propel you into the big bad world. Which other profession will take you across the length and width of the country, across mountains and oceans, into deep jungles,impoverished hinterlands and Naxal areas without being shackled by the fetters of responsibility? (while all MTs feel that they are making a real difference to the territory they have been temporarily assigned to we all know who actually controls the reigns, no offence MTs, I lived with the same illusion once :P).

This is a period that will give you enough tales to tell about being stranded in some village in the hinterlands of south India due to the local public bus braking down, to almost being hit by a stray bullet in interior Madhya Pradesh, being in accidents, braking your limbs to staying in shady hotels which either doubled up as love nests or mafia hideouts. Your repository of ‘been there done that’ tales will swell if you come out of Management Training alive, don't worry meek one, we all do. You will certainly not come out of MT period unscathed but these scars will  give you an illusion of being an invincible bad-ass for the rest of your life! You get to witness reality; interact with, observe and live like the locals in towns and small villages, travel to places you wouldn't have otherwise ventured into,  learn how socio-economic factors affect business and the lives of people. This experience is as real as it gets. Live it, absorb it. As Charles Dickens would have advised Explore, Dream, Discover, for management training is the best time to do so.

It is only during the management training that you climb the corporate ladder at the speed of light and rise 5-6 levels in a matter of mere 10 months! Never again will any of us see such rapid elevations in ranks in the corporate world so bask in the glory of spectacular overnight promotions while it lasts! My career trajectory in these 10 months looked something like this:

From a mere salesman in North India to becoming the field officer in Chandigarh, to travelling for miles on rickety public buses and venturing into the hinterlands of South India as first a rural salesman and then an area sales executive , to sales development in East India, followed by a brief sojourn which had me venturing into those corners of Africa that no ordinary tourist would ever be privy to, donning the ASM hat and learning the tricks of the trade in West India to finally being shoved out of my cocoon to carry the ASM baton in Upcountry Telangana!

Brothers-in-arms...

During Management Training you will constantly be uprooted and catapulted from place to place. Your non MBA friends and family will certainly have no inkling of the constant phase of upheaval your life would be in as you are forced to withdraw from civilization as you know it and start a life in the rough, rustic world of sales. This will bring you close to your fellow FMCG management trainee compatriots and will bind you together for life. These people will not only be your professional confidants but you would pour your heart out to them and they would become some of your best advisers when it comes to love, life and all else that bothers our heads and hearts (while the quality of advice will be highly questionable but as people in sales they would certainly sound convincing when dishing it out to you!).

Rumor has it...

As a management trainee myself, and as someone who has ample management trainee friends from other companies I can tell you that these novices are the best source for office gossip. If you want to know any inside goof on organizational changes, upcoming projects, gossip on your bosses, location changes, transfers, people's personal and professional lives, office romances or anything else under the sun like which machine makes the best coffee or hot chocolate in HO, then you should befriend a management trainee. The MTs know-it-all. MTs thrive spectacularly on speculation- each would have his or her theories about the next stint locations, the final posting location and each person’s theory would be accompanied by sound arguments, for defending one’s case vehemently is pretty much what we learnt in our two years of MBA.

Unsolicited advice, for it is my birthright to offer some!

My only advice for all MTs and would-be MTs is to make the most of this period, be willing to learn and unlearn, adapt, try and live like the locals in the godforesaken places you will be sent to, push your boundaries but also take a firm stand if things make you uncomfortable (specially for girls), travel and explore the places you are sent to and you will be amazed by the things you uncover, work, prove your mettle, learn to empathize with the different people you will meet, question but most of all enjoy, for this is that one phase of FMCG life which will be over in a jiffy and before you know it you would be blindly chasing targets oblivious to everything else out there.

What they don't teach you at any B-School

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." replace the word experience with 'sales' and the maxim by CS Lewis rings truer than ever before. No other profession would dole out such profound life lessons in such a short time span. 

Let me quote Kim Kardarshian's equally infamous husband to summarize what I am trying to say here;

a few months in sales makes us harder, better, faster, stronger.

Here is a summary of what sales teaches you that they could never teach you at any Business School :

1. Trickle down effect

Pressure has a unique way of percolating down the pecking order. The smallest trigger from the super boss regarding dhandha not happening makes the dominoes topple, triggering a chain of phone calls from the RSM to the ASM which leads to the heart pounding, the head throbbing, the brow sweating and the breath shortening . So basically the National Sales Head screws the Regional Manager's happiness, who in turn lashes out on you leading you to lambaste your FO's who in turn do danda to the salesmen to do more dhandha.

2. Number nahi to kuch bhi nahi

One month of doing 100% of your target and you are put on a pedestal. The euphoria, appreciation and glory is enough to give you a long lasting high and make you feel like a total sales stud.You bask in the warm glow of success that was not entirely your own( for 100% target completion requires a seamless amalgamation of numerous factors, most completely out of an ASM's control!). But the moment the table (or rather the season) turns, the bubble is burst and the dream turns into a nightmare. It is a simple law of sales that when the going is good you will not be asked any questions on other parameters like processes, new product launches or the gazillion other things that fall under an ASM's job description. Come a bad month and in the next review meet you will be shredded to minuscule little pieces and prodded on every conceivable parameter so much so that you would completely start doubting your preferred career stream and leadership capabilities. Once you have spent a few months in sales the whole process would become a little less painful for you will develop resistance to ignominy just like the much touted antibiotic resistance being developed by homo-sapiens.

3. Dene wala jab bhi deta deta chappad phaadke even leta chappad phaadke!

When the dhandha happens most other parameters automatically fall in place,all is hunky dory and the stars shine for you and will be all yellow. One bad month and if the ASM does not tighten the reins chaos reigns as agony mounts with each passing day.

4.Kindness not curiosity killed the cat

This is a lesson a lot of fresh baked B-Schooler ASMs learn the hard way. We the trusting lot who believe that every mortal will give his 100% to the work he has been assigned without someone holding a stick to their head will be proven tragically wrong. For in sales repeated pesky follow-ups make the world go round. Leave the team to their own device and your dhandha will nose-dive.

Oh and are you the tender hearted kind leader who believes in live and let live, the types who trust their teams and only see good in people? Well the time has come to discard those rose colored glasses and open your eyes to the stark reality that in sales you need to be a blood sucking vampire and doubt everyone if you need things to be done! An ASM needs to live by Dr. House's maxim of 'Everybody Lies' if he wants to survive. Also remember in sales everyone has an ulterior motive be it your field force, distributors or leaders,including you!

5. The buck must be passed on

If in youth you were taught to take ownership for your actions but have mistakenly landed in sales then it is time to unlearn all the idealistic ideas your teachers and parents fed you during your most impressionable years. In sales you need to learn the art of passing the buck on and blaming factors out of your control for your dismal performance. So next time your boss asks why the number did not happen you must try and give due importance to the role of the following factors for your dismal performance; 

"season nahi tha; maal kat raha hai; salesman chutti pe tha; distributor bekar hai; salesman bimar ho gaya; distributor chutti pe hai; macchar nahi hai; thand hai log naha nahi rahe; credit bahut hai; market mein money rotation nahi ho raha; crop nahi uga; floating population chali gayi; logon ke pass paisa nahi hai; swach bharat abhyan se saare macchar mar gaye! (yes a shopkeeper actually said that!)..."

But at the same time when your performance is good you must take all the credit and ignore that the causes of your maladies have been turned to blessings by the hand of god!

6. Local dialects must be learnt

Do this for self defense and self preservation for if you don't you would never really know what your team members are saying in their mother tongue on your face. For if an ASM does not comprehend the local tongue the field force is spared the trouble of back bitching for they can bitch right on your face while you nod and smile ( when you have no clue about what is being said you resort to smiling and nodding as you do not want to come across as completely ignorant of their local bhasha)

7. Go DEEP!

The men comprising your field force are masters of deceit. They can rattle you with their excuses, reasons and prevarications. The only way to counter these disingenuous creatures is to go deep into the data and ask them questions that shake the very ground beneath their feet or else they will take you for a spin and leave you out cold and none of your maal will be sold.

8.Rules are meant to be broken

So you are a stickler for rules? Welcome to the world of Jugaad where rules are at best meant to be twisted or inferred as per once's whims if not to be flouted outright. A few months in sales and you would learn how to infer rules in a manner to suit your needs.Everyone out there is doing it, only the magnitude of twisting varies and I will deliberately not dwell on this last learning for some open secrets are best left undisclosed :P

Mahine ke wo din!!

This post is a homage to all those hapless souls who have spent/are spending the last day of 2014 holed up in their depots, chasing their monthly targets...

Ever since I started doing sales the phrase 'Mahine ke wo din' has taken on a totally different connotation. Though the experience of month closing comes pretty close to that of the mahine ke infamous dins, what with the excruciating pain of chasing unattainable targets, mood swings ranging from sudden bursts of love for the team members who don't betray you at this crucial juncture to wanting to hurl a few soap cartons on the entities who simply switch off their phones to escape the ASM's wrath, back pain from sitting on the uncomfortable depot chairs, food cravings from burning all those calories from walking around cartons in the depot admonishing/cajoling team members to stretch a bit more (I have taken the old idea advertisement 'walk and talk' to heart) and mild to massive headaches based on how tense you are and how many times the boss has chided you for not doing your numbers!

Come to think of it performance pressure behind closed doors would hardly intimidate an ASM so used are we to performing and then having that performance ,or the lack thereof, evaluated by our bosses in full public glare and that too rather critically!

The week preceding the D-day sees a flurry of activity. This is the time when the field officers resort to various measures to get maximum money  for primaries from distributors. There tactics can range from grovelling to cajoling to outright threatening with dire consequences  . The team deep dives into data and ties all lose ends which were hiterto left unattended. So you reach out to wholesellers and retailers with renewed fervour, seduce them with tempting 'last month of QPS' offers to tug at the heartstrings of these mercenaries, close the targets of your various stakeholder engagement programs. You call upon those distributors who will throw you the float(read more RTGS for primaries) that will keep you from drowning when the currents are rough. You tempt the salesmen to do more secondaries so they can earn higher incentives, and nag the field force on any parameter that you possibly can ,since you are their boss!

And then when the big day comes you travel to your depot which is almost always located in some remote corner of your city/town/hamlet to complete the last leg of this crazy game of month closing. Amidst rows and rows of neatly stacked cartons of soap and mosquito killers you establish the bastion from where the last leg of the war is waged while your team of warriors and foot soldiers battle it out on the ground.

The depot is a world in itself. In contrast to the torrid outside world of FMCG sales, the depot is a rather placid place where everything happens at its own sweet pace. The only occupants of these huge godowns spanning hundreds of square feet are unending rows of stacks of cartons (aka petis), and numerous men (for in sales testosterone trumps estrogen wherever you go!!); the depot guys, the brawny loaders who insure that every carton gets into it's rightful truck, the gruff truck drivers, and other support staff.

On the closing days the usual CFA din of trucks coming and going, of cartons being loaded and unloaded is drowned out by the ASMs and their unabated volley of incoming phone calls. "Kitna RTGS aya, primary kitna hua, 50 peti, 100 peti, 10 lakh aur chahiye, 5 lakh aur karao....." are the only things to be heard. Every conversation is about numbers. With every call the ASM quickly adds or subtracts numbers from their excel planning sheet and then looks at how best to make up for losses/adjust gains.

As the clock ticks and the morning changes to afternoon the adrenaline rush increases and so does the pace of chasing untraceable RTGS and errant field officers. This is also the time when it becomes pretty clear about how many FOs and distributors will renege on their commitment. So you start looking for other doors to knock on to prevent you from going under while at the same time lambasting the traitors. As the clock ticks further there begin the incessant calls from the boss and the office to take stock of things. In a bad month after every such phone call your blood pressure will rise a notch higher and your team will be at the receiving end till you hit the point where you realize that beyond this nothing can be done and you quietly hang up your boots and ruefully tell yourself 'tomorrow is another month!' and carry on!! But when all is going well you would be idling away time at the depot just waiting for the boss to call so you can tell him how you over-delivered and hope to hear him sing paeans while you bask in the warm glory of your achievement, for in FMCG sales such happy days are a rarity!

Late in the night you wrap up the billing,dead tired from all the shouting, planning, strategizing, ready to make the pilgrimage back home where based on how the day panned out you would either decide to crash, drink away your sorrows, quietly mope about being caught in this profession which makes your heart rate escalate at every phone call or feel like a complete sales stud for having delivered way beyond what you were asked and so would end another eventful closing.

It's raining men- Part 1

Early morning a car ferries me to a different location everyday in different parts of Telangana where I spend my working hours haggling and striking deals with multiple men in order to grow my business. Then there are the hours spent on the phone with a multitude of other men wherein I address their issues. All that one needs to do is give me a ring or fix a time to meet up and I take care of the rest.

Welcome to the world of FMCG sales where it is always raining men! Men of all sorts, all temperaments, on varying levels of the deceit scale, each a challenge in himself.

So please allow me to introduce these men of distinct characters and taste

Who have been around for a long long year

Stole many an ASM's soul to waste.....

1. The Boss (Formidable RSM)

When the ringing phone, not the alarm clock jolts you from your slumber every morning, you know you are in sales. More often than not the cock croaking to wake you up is none other than your boss.For us ASMs answering the bosses's call takes priority over even answering the early morning nature's call. The RSM makes his entire team skittle around month on month for his territory's performance is directly proportional to his pride. He knows his territory like the back of his hand and comes with super sensitive bullshit detectors built into his system. This creature of sales is unshakable such is his grit for insuring his territory does the number be it a good month or bad. He lives by the motto of squeezing out the last drops from his team members during a bad month. A fact of sales: the frequency of an RSMs phone call to the ASM is inversely proportional to the ASM's territory performance! He is the pantomath one goes to for advice/ complaints /last round of fire fighting. Piss this guy off and your life in sales would be one hell of a ride, literally!

2. The cab driver

Indispensable for an upcountry ASM. This man is privy to all that happens in your professional and personal life for you spend more than 12 waking hours travelling from one corner of your territory to another daily in his car. Most ASMs have a fixed driver of their own who doubles up as their personal bouncer, sounding board and their sole travelling companion. He knows all your team members by name, has their numbers stored in his phone, and actually chills with them on the days when you are staying over in an upcountry town. Not just that he often doles out pearls of wisdom on different aspects of a product, the kind of advertising required, the packaging, etc, stuff that marketing managers spend thousands to gauge from countless market visits. He also doubles up as an off-the-roles representative of your company as he has forcefully converted his entire family and peer group into loyal consumers of your company's products!He also solicits regular feedback on products from all his friends and neighbors and dutifully conveys it to you.  He becomes so intertwined in an ASMs life that he sits in meetings with distributors and field force and often accompanies us inside stores to see the ground reality.

3. The Field/Sales Officers

In the sales hierarchy the Sales officer is akin to the zamindars of feudal India. The nature of their job involves overseeing fragments of an ASM's territory and mercilessly extorting maximum sales from distributors and salesmen.They have seen different ASMs come and go. The dynamics of the field officers' universe are quite complex. They detest being passed on for promotions while fresh baked b-school kids take on the ASM mantle, but what irks them even more is their erstwhile colleagues becoming their very bosses!

These con men par excellence are the masters of prevarication.They know all the tricks (the good ones and the ones that must not be named) of sales.Taking a naive/new ASM for a ride is their biggest source of thrill. Dealing with Field officers and distributors, some of the most conniving specimens of humanity, is what makes an ASM wary of the human race in general. They know every conceivable trick that is their in the book of sales.

Without the field officer the ASM is like a rudderless ship floating in the vast ocean of distributors, wholesalers, retailers and salesmen.These sales officers are indispensable yet creatures to be vary of. I am quite sure the lyrics " I can't live...with or without you..." were written with this motley bunch of characters in mind.

To be continued (as there are so many more men leftover who deserve an honorable mention here)....

Prerequisites for being a sales ninja (aka an ASM)

To go from being a mere mortal MBA grad to a sales ninja (aka an ASM) requires certain special powers without which survival would be impossible.

To sum up, following are the weapons that one must possess in his arsenal to become the overlord of a territory:

1. Bodily elasticity + infinite capacity for expansion

Sales as a profession will make you grow, both literally and figuratively. I can't vouch for whether your career horizons will expand after your time in sales but your girth most certainly will, thanks to the sugar-laden tea and soft drinks that all your distributors and wholesalers will make you drink. If you deny, however politely, they would get offended. So after 1.5 years of growing beyond measure I have finally started refusing with the ruse "mujhe sugar ki problem hai!!" only then do they let you off the hook without making you feel guilty for refusing their 2 sip hospitality. Not to forget you will spend half your life in hotels eating oily spicy food which would further add to your bulk.

2. A large cooperative bladder

Not needed if you are a male ASM for the world is your urinal. If you are a girl ASM and that too an upcountry one then be prepared to grin and hold it in for non-shady toilets are a novelty to come by

3. A repertoire of corny Bollywood dialogues

There will be days when to coax the distributor to do your bidding you would actually end up saying things like " Aapki pareshani hamari pareshani hai" ,"hum saath saath hai", "hum hai to kya gam hai?" (I made up the last one but I swear I have actually used the other two!)

4.  The resilience of a cockroach

It is said that a cockroach can survive nuclear radiations 10 times more than what a human can withstand. Going by the resilience of the cockroaches in my kitchen I can certainly tell you that they can survive repeat attacks of very strong pest control sessions. You will need this resilience to go from one bad month to another when the dhandha is not happening. Also get ready for countless rejections as distributors, retailers and field officers will say no to you a thousand times "maedum target nahi hota, too heigh”,"maedum season nahi hai..." you would need a really thick hide to bounce back and ask them to do the same thing again and again and again. Soon you would start feeling like those Hindi film heroes of yore who relentlessly pursued the women they set their heart on and badgered the poor damsel till she gave in to his advances. If only your team would ever succumb in a similar manner!

5. A sympathetic ear

If you could never pull off being an agony aunt, then you are in the wrong boat. For an ASM is that special being with whom all field officers, retailers, distributors and wholesalers would share their sob story in a bid to make you pressurize them less for primaries, secondaries, process parameters and what not. So while you become a patient audience you need to also know how to separate the grain from the chaff and ask these guys to cut the crap and get on with their jobs.

6. A flair for covert undertakings

If you are the kind of person who grew up on a heady dose of The Five Found Outers, Secret Seven, Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys and Agatha Christies then you are in the right job. For when your team will complain of undercutting and maal coming from here and there you would need to don that detective hat and get into Sherlock mode to get to the bottom of the mystery. Hence would begin the process of tracing the vehicles unloading this stock, gathering photographic evidence, deep diving into all the data you have access to and decoding the trends. Not to forget blaming the ASM of the neighboring area, just for the kicks!

7. A chotu nokia phone

Going back eons on technology will come in handy as you would receive so many calls in one day that your smart phone would certainly crack under the pressure. Only a rudimentary Nokai, the one with FM and torchlight, has the mettle to be your constant companion as you climb mountains and wade through rivers to sell all the soap in your depot.

This is primarily what you would need to become a sales ninja. There might be things I am missing out on but with the month closing around the corner by brain is in freeze mode and cannot think of anything more than the number, which is certainly not happening this month. So dear readers why don't you show some kindness by buying soap from Telangana and help me close my number....

Genesis of a Sabunwali

How did I get here?

For the last 1.5 years I have been asking myself how exactly I landed up in sales and where do I go from here? Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that after 2 years of MBA this is what I would be doing to earn a living! And then reflection takes me back to how a heart full of hope and the ignorance of youth catapulted me into this job that I have a torrid love hate relationship with.

My destiny seemed predetermined from the day I set foot in B-School. Finance and accounts were subjects far too advanced for my rudimentary and limited mental capacity. Ops bored me, and it was primarily to escape from IT that I had entered the hallowed portals of a B-School. Plus I was swayed by the 'glamour' of marketing, of bringing a brand to life, of pimping goods to consumers who most often desired but did not need them. A few trimesters into MBA and I was giddy with dreams of being a marketeer.I became the coordinator of the marketing club, editor of the marketing magazine, participated in and won marketing competitions, actually took the trouble to go through entire Kotler, the marketing bible for all B-Schools.

A marketing summer internship and a PPO later I was ready to enter the world of creating brands that work their magic on the psyche of the consumer but little did I know that the road to marketing is paved with years of slogging your ass off in the dirt and grime of sales if you do not come with an IIM A/B/C tag attached to your resume. And so it was that I was sucked into this vortex of FMCG sales and became a Sabunwali.........