Any role, strictly speaking can be broadly divided into a handful of key activities. The following is my rather vain attempt to define what I do for a living.
Market Visits : The body creaks under the accumulative strain of hundreds and hundreds of kilometers traveled. The road is the unflinching constant as you pass one unpronounceable town after the other, as the unapologetic sun beats down in the day and the understated moon looks down upon the stillness of the night. The unappetising concoctions of multiple cups of tea/coffee/almond milk/ buttermilk/coconut water/all sorts of fruit juices/all sorts of fruit juices mixed and matched et al offered by business partners and consumed over the course of the day, motivated by a combination of factors including, but not limited to thirst, obligation, fatigue, respect leaves one feeling a teeny bit more than a weeny bit uncomfortable. And it is all about conversations. Conversations full of communication, appreciation and negotiation, with a range of emotions/expressions from laughter to frowning thrown in for good measure. And at the end of the day, the shoes are dusty, the clothes are creased and the mind is tired as you lay down on bed cajoling yourself that it is all worth it in the grand scheme of things.
Office Time and Personal Life :
No casual Fridays. There is nothing casual about any day of the week. Sales is more than a job. It is a mindset. It is an inclination and a state of being. And it is never just about the good, bad, ugly of sales. It is also about distribution, marketing, operations, people management, customer centricity, administration not to mention trip planning, motivational speaking and inter-functional liasoning.
No gossiping over lunch. If in the office, you don't have any option other than meals from Venkateshwara Mess. If on a market visit, God knows. The things that are discussed over lunch with the team members (apart from silly humour) are generally along the lines of the current reported temperatures in Miriyalguda or the turnout at the recently conducted influencer meet in Jammalamadugu.
No partying over the weekends. You work yourself to the ground throughout the week including Saturday and try to recharge on the Sunday for the grueling week ahead, assuming you are not traveling for a meeting or attending some function of a business partner. And an interesting question is, who would you party with even assuming you were inclined so?
No socialising over social media. No posting of funny pieces eliciting likes from enthusiastic friends or sharing adorable pictures prompting a flood of responses. Only good old mails, phone calls, SMSs conveying information, sharing tactics, inquiring market intelligence and inspiring action at all times of day and night.
Meetings and Business Trips : The meetings are many in the many headquarter locations, where the higher powers that be preside. The melange of the spreadsheets showing the confessions of the tortured data and presentations presenting the insights gleaned from all sorts of sources create a surreal environment, especially with the guy controlling the temperature plotting to freeze you to death. There are vociferous contentions and suggestions as you crusade for the rights of your stakeholders, powered by the excessive consumption of the delicious cookies. The travel and accommodation served up by the airlines and hotels of the highest star accreditation, scheme to keep upgrading you to higher tiers of the self-serving loyalty webs, whilst convincing you that you are the most unique, privileged gift to mankind, amongst a bunch of the most unique, privileged gifts to mankind. And then there are the trips to exotic locales within and outside the country for the purpose of higher-order work and controlled play, complete with configured experience and staged drama.
Peaks* and Month-Ends : The numbers are chased. With an addicted obsession and an indefatigable persistence. My good friend, Praneeth and I always joke that life is measured in peaks* and month-ends as a sort of a rebutted mockery of the 100 Pipers Ad which asks "Is life measured in trophies...In frequent flier miles, miles per hour...In con calls...Time line crunches, in business brunches...Is life measured in Oxford shoes and Prince drapes in corner offices..." It is safe to assume that the canny copywriter of the above ad campaign probably never spent long nights desperately willing the sales numbers to move that little bit closer to the intended target line. The month-end is the time when you feel like the captain of the ship fighting the strongest of tides; the leader of the expedition with an impossible peak to scale, but which must be conquered nonetheless. It is the classical Us vs Them, the romantic Good vs Evil as you put the finishing touches to the month-long campaign to outwit and outmuscle the competition and outperform your peers in other locations in the region/division/country. And assuming a strong finish, the aftermath sees you basking in the imagined glory of victory, which tastes that much sweeter considering that every ounce of intellect, energy, spirit and soul has been expended in a battle that was fought like there was no tomorrow. Only there is a tomorrow and you have to come back tomorrow for more.
*For the uninitiated, peaks are intermittent points in a month, when there is a push for higher sales to the immediate downstream buyer group in the marketing channel on account of the closure of a certain benefit, thereby resulting in a spike in the graph plotted for sales vs days. Different sales organisations use different terminology for the same.
But then, there are few jobs where you are overcome by the happiness experienced by a team member who got promoted and is profuse in his gratitude for your support. Or where you experience the ultimate high of winning a team contest at the stroke of midnight by a handful of additional units sold. Or where you are sheepishly embarrassed at the elaborate felicitation extended by a shop dealer and even more sheepishly embarrassed when you receive a DVD of the video portraying you as a celebrity, complete with a background score. Or where you are extremely humbled by the night guard soliciting your advice for his son's future education
I conspire to sell paint in obscure parts of Coastal Andhra Pradesh. I sell, therefore I am.
The author dedicates this blog post to all those who worked in sales, and especially to those who have experienced the deadly combination of B2C Sales + Upcountry Location.
Market Visits : The body creaks under the accumulative strain of hundreds and hundreds of kilometers traveled. The road is the unflinching constant as you pass one unpronounceable town after the other, as the unapologetic sun beats down in the day and the understated moon looks down upon the stillness of the night. The unappetising concoctions of multiple cups of tea/coffee/almond milk/ buttermilk/coconut water/all sorts of fruit juices/all sorts of fruit juices mixed and matched et al offered by business partners and consumed over the course of the day, motivated by a combination of factors including, but not limited to thirst, obligation, fatigue, respect leaves one feeling a teeny bit more than a weeny bit uncomfortable. And it is all about conversations. Conversations full of communication, appreciation and negotiation, with a range of emotions/expressions from laughter to frowning thrown in for good measure. And at the end of the day, the shoes are dusty, the clothes are creased and the mind is tired as you lay down on bed cajoling yourself that it is all worth it in the grand scheme of things.
Office Time and Personal Life :
No casual Fridays. There is nothing casual about any day of the week. Sales is more than a job. It is a mindset. It is an inclination and a state of being. And it is never just about the good, bad, ugly of sales. It is also about distribution, marketing, operations, people management, customer centricity, administration not to mention trip planning, motivational speaking and inter-functional liasoning.
No gossiping over lunch. If in the office, you don't have any option other than meals from Venkateshwara Mess. If on a market visit, God knows. The things that are discussed over lunch with the team members (apart from silly humour) are generally along the lines of the current reported temperatures in Miriyalguda or the turnout at the recently conducted influencer meet in Jammalamadugu.
No partying over the weekends. You work yourself to the ground throughout the week including Saturday and try to recharge on the Sunday for the grueling week ahead, assuming you are not traveling for a meeting or attending some function of a business partner. And an interesting question is, who would you party with even assuming you were inclined so?
No socialising over social media. No posting of funny pieces eliciting likes from enthusiastic friends or sharing adorable pictures prompting a flood of responses. Only good old mails, phone calls, SMSs conveying information, sharing tactics, inquiring market intelligence and inspiring action at all times of day and night.
Meetings and Business Trips : The meetings are many in the many headquarter locations, where the higher powers that be preside. The melange of the spreadsheets showing the confessions of the tortured data and presentations presenting the insights gleaned from all sorts of sources create a surreal environment, especially with the guy controlling the temperature plotting to freeze you to death. There are vociferous contentions and suggestions as you crusade for the rights of your stakeholders, powered by the excessive consumption of the delicious cookies. The travel and accommodation served up by the airlines and hotels of the highest star accreditation, scheme to keep upgrading you to higher tiers of the self-serving loyalty webs, whilst convincing you that you are the most unique, privileged gift to mankind, amongst a bunch of the most unique, privileged gifts to mankind. And then there are the trips to exotic locales within and outside the country for the purpose of higher-order work and controlled play, complete with configured experience and staged drama.
Peaks* and Month-Ends : The numbers are chased. With an addicted obsession and an indefatigable persistence. My good friend, Praneeth and I always joke that life is measured in peaks* and month-ends as a sort of a rebutted mockery of the 100 Pipers Ad which asks "Is life measured in trophies...In frequent flier miles, miles per hour...In con calls...Time line crunches, in business brunches...Is life measured in Oxford shoes and Prince drapes in corner offices..." It is safe to assume that the canny copywriter of the above ad campaign probably never spent long nights desperately willing the sales numbers to move that little bit closer to the intended target line. The month-end is the time when you feel like the captain of the ship fighting the strongest of tides; the leader of the expedition with an impossible peak to scale, but which must be conquered nonetheless. It is the classical Us vs Them, the romantic Good vs Evil as you put the finishing touches to the month-long campaign to outwit and outmuscle the competition and outperform your peers in other locations in the region/division/country. And assuming a strong finish, the aftermath sees you basking in the imagined glory of victory, which tastes that much sweeter considering that every ounce of intellect, energy, spirit and soul has been expended in a battle that was fought like there was no tomorrow. Only there is a tomorrow and you have to come back tomorrow for more.
*For the uninitiated, peaks are intermittent points in a month, when there is a push for higher sales to the immediate downstream buyer group in the marketing channel on account of the closure of a certain benefit, thereby resulting in a spike in the graph plotted for sales vs days. Different sales organisations use different terminology for the same.
But then, there are few jobs where you are overcome by the happiness experienced by a team member who got promoted and is profuse in his gratitude for your support. Or where you experience the ultimate high of winning a team contest at the stroke of midnight by a handful of additional units sold. Or where you are sheepishly embarrassed at the elaborate felicitation extended by a shop dealer and even more sheepishly embarrassed when you receive a DVD of the video portraying you as a celebrity, complete with a background score. Or where you are extremely humbled by the night guard soliciting your advice for his son's future education
I conspire to sell paint in obscure parts of Coastal Andhra Pradesh. I sell, therefore I am.
The author dedicates this blog post to all those who worked in sales, and especially to those who have experienced the deadly combination of B2C Sales + Upcountry Location.
