Marketing journeys
Chapter 15: Strategizing to become Numero Uno.....
I spent the next thirty days studying the sales figures city-wise; doing ABC
analyses and what have you.
India is a huge market and each of the southern states had populations
running into millions of people.
Tamil Nadu, for example, had a metro city in Madras. Coimbatore, Madurai and
Trichy could be categorized as ‘B’ class towns and there were another twenty
or thirty ‘C’ class towns.
Looking at the sales statistics I soon realized that in almost all the
states the proportion of sales across the A, B and C class towns was more or
less the same. The A class town invariably accounted for 50% of the sale; B
class towns for 30% and C class towns for 20%. However when we studied the
sales cycle of the sales representatives (SRs) we found that they were
spending a lot more time in the unproductive ‘C’ class towns. The return to
effort ratio was skewed.
A strategy that emerged form this exercise was that we would henceforth
concentrate on the ‘A’ and ‘B’ markets and let the ‘C’ category markets fend
for themselves.
This was a very bold move at that time. It meant cutting off hundreds of our
dealers in ‘C’ class towns. All of us kept our fingers crossed.
There was a lot of grumbling the first few months. Our competitors probably
laughed their heads off. But then a strange thing started happening. The
sales volumes of our ‘A’ and ‘B’ category dealers started going up sharply.
What was happening was that the dealers in the very small ‘C’ class towns
were buying from the dealers in the ‘B’ class towns. The ‘B’ class dealers,
when they started getting large enquiries for our product, started ordering
more. They assumed that the product was getting more popular and hence they
started ordering more. This started rubbing off on the metro cities and ‘B’
category dealers spoke to metro city dealers about the sudden wave of
enquiries coming to them. This prompted the city dealers to order more and
stock more.
We actually monitored the stock of our product with the dealer as well as
that of our competitor and were able to see a clear growth. In six months
time we had a market share of 48% and our only competitor had 52%.
Effectively, we had grown about 5% in terms of market share in the preceding
six months – no mean achievement.
The desire to become # 1 became overpowering. To do this we had to grow a
further 3%. But these three percentage points growth would be very difficult
compared to the earlier growth because the competitor was now extremely wary
of our market success and was reacting aggressively.
After much brainstorming and SWOT analyses (Strenth, Weakness, Opportunities
and Threats) we came to the conclusion that our major strength lay in the
very friendly and close relationships that our Sales force had with the
dealers. We realized that giving dealers extra discounts would be self
defeating- they would either reduce the market price or the competition
would match our discounts and status quo would again prevail with no gain to
us. We decided to make our thrust in the metro cities of Madras, Hyderabad
and Bangalore with special emphasis on Madras, as this was our home market.
The key player, surprisingly, turned out to be Suresh Chand. He alone held
the power to sway the markets in our favour in Madras.
After a lot of further brainstorming it was decided that we would reward the
entire team as a whole in two ways; (a) by offering them a cash reward upon
our increasing our market share and maintaining it for at least three months
and that a sale would be reckoned as a sale only if t payment was received.
(b) by offering the team a holiday anywhere in South India if we were able
to pull this off and (c) offering Suresh Chand a special incentive.
The team decided that should they succeed they would holiday in Kodaikanal
for a week at company expense, all found, liquor included.
Suresh Chand was unable to decide what he wanted. After a lot of thought and
after a lot of liquor at a party one day (to get him to start talking) he
said that:
• He had never flown and wanted to fly
• He had never stayed in a 5 star hotel and wanted to stay in one
The entire team fell silent. Where to send him so as to fulfill his
conditions?
It was Seshu who gave us the solution. “Let’s send the fucker to Andaman
Islands” he said. To get there one had to fly and, in those days – I am
talking of 1986 – the only decent hotel there was an ITC hotel. A five star
one.
And that’s exactly what happened. We reached 51% market share and maintained
it.
The team had a tremendous holiday at Kodaikanal. I still have warm memories
of all of us at Bear Shola Falls, over two hundred feet above the ground.
How we got there is unfathomable as there is no path. At one point, the path
ends and restarts a few feet further. Shiv stood there, staunch as a
colossus, one foot placed at this end and the other foot at the other and
physically lifted my young kids across the chasm. There we were, two hundred
feet above the ground, drinking and partying. When one’s glass was empty one
poured some liquor into it and held the glass very briefly under the
waterfall. It filled to the brim in an instant. The water was icy cold. The
temperature was a very cold 5 degrees Celsius but we were all well clad and
couldn’t care less. The mood was so exuberant that my ten year old daughter
asked for a drink and someone gave her a large gin. (I got to know of this
much later, of course. It as a very well kept secret between her and “the
boys”).
Suresh Chand had his holiday in the Andamans and retuned beaming.
A year later, buoyed by this success, I was promoted to National Sales
Manager. I superseded three others, all MBA’s from premier institutes. I was
34 years old.
To Marketing Journeys
15
Cheers,
Prakash
28th March 2010
Article Index; marketing
Journeys
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Marketing Journeys 1
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Marketing Journeys 2
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Marketing Journeys 3
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Marketing Journeys 4
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Marketing Journeys 5
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Marketing Journeys 6
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Marketing Journeys 7
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Marketing Journeys 8
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Marketing Journeys 9
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Marketing Journeys
10
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Marketing Journeys
11
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Marketing Journeys
12
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Marketing Journeys
13
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Marketing Journeys
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Marketing Journeys
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