Opinion Mohan’s art of selling

During another Mumbai trip,at that ephemeral traffic signal,I again saw deft shuffling of books within the short,valuable time the street seller has to sell his wares. Here he works within the discipline of street lights,adjusts with the time car passengers take to read book blurbs,and simultaneously extracts money from them. I bought three books from a vendor called Mohan and had a chat with him at the street corner. When I asked him why he shuffled the books,Mohan laughed saying he changes the book display order for passengers on either side of the same car. Then he explained how to understand diverse kinds of customers. They have to quickly identify the customer type from looking at the car,how the driver is dressed,the mood of the passenger in the back seat. From Mohan’s descriptions,I understood that he possesses the fine art of customer identification. He shuffles his books depending on on-the-spot recognition of customer type. How many frontline sales managers of corporations do you know who can absorb such sales techniques and apply them in their jobs?

Around that time I was conducting an executive training program for a corporate client on the customer handling process at the point of purchase of high value products. After in-depth customer research across the country,we’d designed a program to train professional MBAs on how to proactively read and anticipate customer behaviour and character when they come for a big ticket purchase for personal use. Along with soft skills techniques,they were taught to gauge within three to five minutes of the customer entering the store,what that customer stands for. The intelligent MBAs gave fantastic answers on theoretical questions. In the real life act,they had a hard time winning the game. Barely would the customer speak,when they’d start hard-selling the product’s technicalities like robot salespersons. After the training and customer interacting evaluation,we presented the management two kinds of scores on how participants absorbed the training session. As per the Indian university-centric score,participants got high marks. But in the developed country standard score,they failed miserably. If these employees try taking on the global challenge at the time of deployment,how can they deliver the global standard?

I’ve heard people say why do we need Western standards in India? On the other hand Indian companies talk of going global. How can that happen when people are reluctant to drive as per global standards? This is our country’s real crisis of collective mediocrity. When stuck in a business bind,we hire appropriate manpower with high-flying degrees. The job market is still open for people from reputed Indian institutions,but what they can deliver is not questioned,it’s the degree that matters. On customer centricity,how come Mohan is ahead of the professionals who attended our executive training program?

In the political arena,all parties fight in the name of poor people like Mohan. They try blocking reforms even after the 1991 economic liberalisation brought in massive positive change. Eg. all politicians love to have a foreign car. They profess to be anti American,but to their states they aim to bring IT development centres where USA is the major customer. So how do you understand why they are anti-FDI,when FDI will enhance capability and competence of our people? Their actions make it clear that they’re not interested in guiding the likes of Mohan.

Watching Mohan on the street endorsed my belief on how essential customer experience is in formulating the art of sales. In his small,street-smart way he was making his livelihood. But aren’t the lessons he gives us on instantly addressing customer behaviour and character invaluable? Actually,if you listen to his procurement process you’ll be even more surprised on how he manages his inventory cost.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com