WE SELL BECAUSE WE BELIEVE IN OUR PRODUCTS

Sounds heavy…and heavy it is!! This is the mantra of the New salesmen – the non-marketing employees of an organization pitching in to boost sales in their own resolute ways. This class of the self-driven workers includes shop-floor supervisors, welders. Office babus, HR managers, accounts officers, everyone is trying to outdo each other in selling. Selling what??? Cars, two-wheelers, ACs, refrigerators, desktops, notebooks and what not!!

COMPANIES PRACTICING THE TREND
The trend is catching-up mainly among companies selling consumer-durables. Hundreds of Maruti employees are using their free time to boost bottomlines. Infact the idea was a brain-child of MD Jagdish Khattar who believes that ‘every worker’s a brand manager and a salesman’.This was in 2000-01, when Maruti faced losses for the first time. This year when sales plummeted and interest-rates shot up, Khattar launched ‘Lalkar’ and with that each employee was encouraged to sell at least one car per month. So far over 5000 cars have been sold. A welder on shop floor, Mohammed Akhtar, has gone a step further to boost sales in his village. He got PAN cards made for rich villagers with the help of a lawyer and thus, he’s managed to help the IT department also.
Spreading the magic are many other white-good companies like Samsung India, Whirlpool and HP. What is common among all such companies is simply the fact that their employees are passionate about their respective organizations! In return these companies truly agree that employees are the best brand ambassadors.

WHAT MOTIVATES THEM?
It’s challenging, it’s fun, it’s passion, it’s their confidence in their company-brand, it’s fulfilling…it gives a sense of achievement, or is it about incentives and promotions?? The truth is that while most of these people are self-motivated, their companies too have recognized their worth and directly/indirectly the management is doing all that they can to maintain the momentum.

HOW THEY DO IT?
There is nothing strategic about the way these employees work. The beauty lies in the fact that they sell in their own innovative ways with a personal touch through networking and word-of-mouth the foundation being trust! So, there’s Mukesh Kumar, a shop-floor supervisor at MUL, selling 800s, Altos, Omnis and WagonRs to his friends, relatives, villagers, et al (mind it he’s just a matriculate with an ITI diploma);there’s Laxmi Narain at MUL who spends his Sundays coaxing his resident welfare association members to buy cars, lets them test-drive his own car and offers them after-sales service too. Among the big-wigs we have, HR manager Sameena Muzzafar, Samsung India, who checks while conducting interviews if the candidate uses their products at home and making a pitch if they don’t; there’s Surendra Kalra, logistics manager at Whirlpool, who socializes and sells through his friends personally helping them in whatever way he can; similarly, Shammi Malik of consumer services logistics at Whirlpool makes sure his firm is the talking point at every social that he attends (I wonder how he manages to steer the conversation towards his company and its basket of products…!!). indeed there are examples galore of employees going beyond their call of duty to push bottomlines. But Ranjani Sridhar of HP’s Consumer-Imaging and Printing Group who was doing it even from her hospital bed when she was hospitalized for a long time. She managed to sell all-in-one printer and six laptops to her doctors. Simply, to keep herself occupied during her illness…it gave her a sense of achievement, it kept her motivated!! Amazing…isn’t it??

All because …they believe in their products!!

Read also: Confessions of the new salesmen, Aug 26’07, TOI .