View from the other side: Buyer's Perspective

This is regarding my experience in whirlpool of India Ltd as a Material Engineer in Product Development center, Pune. I was working under Regional Technology Leader Materials for Whirlpool Asia. It was a great learning experience. We used to work on new developments in materials related to refrigerator. Our work was divided into two types of projects: Cost cutting and Innovations.

In both cases we were dependent on mostly our suppliers. Being a Multinational company and buying power, our suppliers used to come prepared with their innovative sales pitch, Many times General Manager and above level people used to come to present their products. CEO and Directors of small company too used to come to meet us.

During our meeting, we actually used to check their presales preparation, though at that time, I was not knowing these terminologies, but we used to check their knowledge about industry, competition etc. In technology related issues also we used to check for their technical knowledge, People who used to say that next time we will bring technical person with us, we don’t know about these details now, used to hardly get chance to represent themselves again soon. Many times sales people used to promise that they will send sample material in 10 days etc and then actually used send after a month or so, we also used to delay our trials and keep them waiting for a long time. Excuses like it’s in shipping or some problem with scheduling etc always used to ridicule upon.

On the other hand people who used to come on time and present themselves well and handled problems and questions well always gets more preference for business. We also used to consult those suppliers regarding different material related problems. We even used to contact these sales people who had came to sell their product but couldn’t closed the sale for our technical helps etc and they also used to help as much as possible as for them we were prospects.

Sometimes sales pitch used to take place in some so called conference in 5 star hotels followed by dinner but we used to look at it as an entertainment only and hardly gave preference to them in work. Though we used to enjoy the party, I don’t think this type of product selling will fetch more customers to company. We also used to visit various expo’s etc and that time one can get real sales pitching as everyone in a same industry are there, representing their products.

Actually it was a great experience out there but I was on the other side: being buyer, now after learning sales in a b school, I think we were not cruel at that time; it’s just the way people behave with sales people. So Happy journey!

Real sales expericence

Hi
What ever sir have taught in the class about sales ... I have applied and now i am going to achive the taregt .
While selling the product (Telecom Product and Service ) into 2 to 3 colleges i got the real life exposure and how to convience the customer about your product
and now i realize that product knowledge and competitior knowledge is how important

Recruitment and selection

Dear Participants,

As we had a lively discussion on the topic related to recruitment and selection. there where few student who could able to crack the web i hope the number will increase in the next class . yep the important part of any recruitnment process is HRSS . we keep listening abut the hiring plan some time even sales guy should have very good understanding of hiring people for the respective sales territory . later on the sequence follows is recrutining them . now a days community based portals are also facilitating right approach for the recruitment .communities like linked is revolutinising the approach of a sales guy as well as also indirtectly affecting the business of physical and web based job portals. right recruitment makes your life easy . at the end of the day people who are reporting to you need to be good becuase your sales target depends on their target and the important appraisal for you is to manage the resources. that's why once you grow in sales the process become more of a management level .

your job profile moves
sales execution --------sales coordination----------sales management . the magic of sales lies once you reach the third level. this is the space where you start loving sales . and ofcourse socialising in sales is very important , quantum of sales depends on people who use to execute the sales because of the network. your contact really matters a lot in sales. I hope you could able to crack the web for tommorows session

c ya


Ankush

sales organisation

dear participants,
sales organisation parameters are
1) line or staff or combination
2) according to the market
3)channel sales versus institutional sales
4) reporting
5) delegation
6)recruitment and selection of sales force
6)attrition
7)authoritative

I still find some people who have worked in the industry have not posted their threads. I Hope we wil continue with that professionalism which we keep discussing in the class and will get the post ASAP from them .

c ya tommorow at 8 30

Ankush

Real Challenge

Hi,
The real practical experience of life came when i joined Bhushan Steel limited as a post of GET.As per company norms days start with the one month of interaction program in every department.I got posted in production department and the real tough days when i faced a 20 years of work experience boss with hard rules and regulations in the first day of reporting in the department.With having the knowledge of all the OEM products what we processed in the plant and all the specifications and parameters of grade of hot rolled coiled used by our department we used to process the sheet into the ordered thickness by the customers.
The real experience of pre sales preparation process is realized when i went to attain the customer complain with my boss to Harsha Engineers which manufacture bearing cages.There it requires a lot of knowledge about the clients process and product line.It becomes important to compete with the competitor like Jindal Steel and Balaji steel and many other key players.A single production defects duing process can make a have loss of nearly Rs. 60000 per tonn.Harsha Engineer was a regular customer with an monthly order of nerly 300 tonns.the company gives authouriation to the person who goes for customer complain.When we reached to Harsha Engineers with a member of four person to handle the matrial defects which occur in our products.The defects was minutely the pitting defects which occur at the edge of sheet and light scratch marks.The problem could have solved simply by rewinding the coil in the mill with a force of 100 newton from the top roll as the defects was on the bottom but the Quality head of Harsha Engineer was not ready to accept.Every quality conytrol test was done by our team and we succeed in achieving the quality specification forwared by Harsha Engineers.Every persuation skills was applied by boss and lastly he understand the suitation and really you can guess that negotation(under the table) was the major factors on which we fail to concentrate and later he undersigned the quality check and ok stamp.
The persuasion and neogation skill is must for the person who a attain customer complain and represnt the company.As if he fail and lacks these two skill the material would be returned back to our warehouse which is treated as scrap by the company.It helps in increasing the liability of the company as the product returned is sold in scrap value.These was one of my first experience and i will continue to share more enough real life story that only sales dont matter but the person going for customer complain should should be well prepared to answer back and stay on one feet to satisfy the company objections.

Mukesh singh

Tough to Close

Hi all

This is about the time when I was working with Vodafone essar ltd in Orissa. I had a sales quota of 100 postpaid. As I was a new joinee I had a comparitibly less target to achieve but still then its difficult to achieve this target when you are the 7^th service provider in the state and as a matter of fact the postpaid is also new to the people and they have a huge fear regarding the bills.

One day, I met this gentle man named Mr. Jay, who was the owner of Harekrishna jewelers one of the  very reputed jewellery outlets in the city having two branches i.e. one at BBSR and the other at Balasore. He had come down to the Vodafone Store related to a problem of his Gujarat number. While my interaction I came to know about his business and approached him. My cold call got converted into a warm call when he was ready to give me an appointment. Then as per the time I proceeded for the meeting taking into account what all I can offer him like what plans, initial deposits, documents needed, or one can say all that was needed for me to know about my company and what I got to offer him. I had a thought he might ask for some premium number or a number that will be chargeable. So I took the necessary permissions from the concerned departments about the matter. My boss was kind enough to grant me the permission till the numbers costing me Rs 10,000. He also gave me the contact details of the concerned person regarding the availability of numbers and to have an idea of the premium numbers.

I met him and discussed about the all the plans. He had a lot of queries about the network stability, billing disputes, documentations and others. I had answered him with full honesty and avoided any kind of false commitments. I assured him about the 100% customer satisfaction and waited for his reply. He was planning to take around 30 connections which was again a huge number for me to start that month. He consulted all his employees and asked me come after 2 days and reply to the queries of the employees. I could now feel the hotness of the call. I went again and met all of them and answered every question of theirs. He now agreed to take the connections but as I expected he asked some special numbers for him and his partner Mr. Bijay. I was ready for it but he asked for a number which was more than Rs 10,000. I tried to convince him trying out many permutations and combinations and finally was successful.

I had to revisit their place to collect the documents and the cheque for the activation and also to deliver the sim cards. That was not the end of our relation; I offered him many other things later like blackberry and other higher plans to achieve my targets. I knew whenever I fell short of my target i tried him out and sold him. We are still in contact and my family enjoys the additional discount on shopping at their store.

I never knew what was I doing but now I know the sales process. Don't know how far I was in that process. U all can let me know. Give in Your comments and add to my knowledge.

Pruthiraj Pradhan

Cold calls part 2

I would like to share my opinion about the two opinions on Cold Calls given by Shanky. I think that both are correct, only thing that would differentiate between those two opinions will be work experience (period of time for which the person making calls had worked). In the initial phase, the 2nd opinion that talks about making large no. of cold calls, will be applicable, and later on when the person gets an experience the 1st opinion that talks about making smaller no. of cold calls will fall on the right place.
Guys i would really appreciate if you put forward your comments on this opinion.