Hello bloggers

I would like to share my experience as an engineering graduate who aspires to become a budding
enterpreneur. I remember the journey to my factory in Sriperumbadur from KMC in the rickety MTC
bus. I travelled almost everyday in that bus. It made me feel very humble but it was very tiring one as
well. In my intial days, I understood how the products were made in the machines, the process was
interesting. I din't do any marketing or sales work basically.

But one interesting product that we manufactured at the factory is the "Comet bed". We were the first
ones to manufacture a plastic top bed in the whole of india. For this we also did a bit of marketing at
the most popular retail store of the south "Saravana Stores" . Me and my friend Rohit, doing MBA in
IFIM currently, put a small stall outside the store where we promoted my product, made people aware
of such a unique product. We did lot of sales gimmicks, like my friend would somehow get people till
the stall and then dramatically I used to give the “sales pitch”, as my MBA friend calls it..! We would
also at times suddenly bring the bed out of the stall and ask many people to sit on it to demonstrate the
strength and durability of the product. This created lot of buzz and people thronged our stall. My friend,
Rohit would high –five and say we did EXPERENTIAL MARKETING..! I never understood his jargons..but
enjoyed the experience thoroughly. The market response now was overwhelming. People were almost
immediately ready to try out this new product. We made a stunning sales in that one week we had the
stall.

As an engineer I got great understanding about the mentalities of a wide range of personalities ranging
from the upper to the lower class of people, how they reacted, responded, what aspects attracted them,
what did not.

This was something new and completely different for me. I always as an engineer, undermined the
marketing and sales guys, but this experience changed my view.

Abhishek Chhalani

Sales job- A revelation

This was at a time when I was working as a management trainee, for a small SME, who were dealers of Raymond furnishings. I was doing all genres and functions of work there. Formulating inventory mechanisms,trying to professionalise processes and systems,working on functional areas like finance, marketing, sales, operations. Designing promotion tactics for creating market awareness. So it was a very satisfying and holistic experience.

Out of the many revelations while working, there is this one instance that still gives me goosebumps when I think about it. It goes this way.

It was a sultry and hot afternoon, typical of Chennai. I was roaming on my bike with a huge bag of fabric samples near T Nagar in search of star hotels who could be interested in our fabrics. As they are called in sales terms,  getting leads. After various visits to star hotels, I was just successful in getting all of their manager's visiting cards, but not successful in closing the deal ( get an order). But in sales, one has to see the glass always half full, even though there are just drops left! I thought of giving a last try and stepped in to this 2 star hotel. As soon as I got in, the doors opened to the lobby, where I was suprised to see a fat old man in white and white  wearing lungi, continuosly coughing. He looked like a typical autowala. My first impression of the hotel wasn't too great. So i ignored him and sat opposite him in a very nonchalant manner slouching in the comfortable sofa, waiting for the manager to come.

After some time, the manager came and I greeted him. He strongly replied saying first wish our chairman and pointed to that guy sitting opposite me..! who I thought was a autowala..! What a comedy of errors..I wanted to hide my face somewhere but had no option but to confidently give my sales pitch. I was showing the samples, when suddenly that old man told me, speaking almost British english, to freeze 2 designs and asked for the price.

Within 20 minutes I had a cheque in my hand, not too heavy but very valuable to me as it was my first order.
Then I realised that in life, especially in SALES - " Never judge a book, by its cover"..!

Rohit Bengani