Friday, December 30, 2011

Oh my dear salesman

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It was a dull boring afternoon and I was thinking of studying for my approaching MBA exam but my eyes were closing, just then I heard the doorbell ring. My mom who was at home with me rushed to open the door when my smart senses got active and I advised her look through the window first and then open. As expected it was a salesman, I suggested my mom not to open the door, but my mom who is very plain at heart wanted to at least tell him that no matter what he had bought we were not interested rather than keep him at the door step. He had come to sell nonstick pans, it was some exchange offer but we were not interested. He said thank you and moved on to his next customer, who was the aunty in my next door, but at that instant there was a power cut. He realized that the door bell had not rung and so he started to call her , “Excujee me Madam”, no that’s not a typo. His command on English was not very good. After a couple of calls aunty did not open the door, but to my surprise he kept calling her, and it was after the twenty first attempt that she opened the door and shooed him away. Sounds too rude right?
But it is the most common thing that you and me would have done. We view salesmen as thieves, messengers and everything but not a salesman. Of course we are not at fault to do so we are just being safe and cautious, since now and then we come across so many news items of housewife murdered, burglary by salesman and so on. But that particular day I really felt bad and touched by the dedication he showed towards his job. We work in air conditioned offices with everything at our reach, and we still crib and complain about the work we do and that how we are still slaves of people from onsite but think about these salesmen who know that hardly is anyone interested in buying the product but yet they fawn, beg at times of dire need so that you at least just look at their product since they have targets to meet lest which they would lose their jobs. Due to that they roam around in hot scorching sun, in rains across all apartments, sometimes shooed by people in appartments and most of the times by the watchmens. Their agony does not end here, they need to face the wrath of their bosses, the problems at home but still they don lose hope, they don miss a chance to market their product so that you atleast have a look at it. And the biggest irony is today most of us want to get a MBA degree from a reputed B school, and many of us even want to take “Marketing” as a subject, and we are proud of it because the companies that hire us are going to be global and hence we will market our products to the rich part of the world and the other big companies are our prospective customers and we will earn a lot.
I say a true test would be to become a salesman for a day and sell at least ten pieces of an item to different types of customers and get a very meager amount as our wage, that will test our true marketing skill, when we are able to convince at least a group of people that how good a product a is when they are 200 variants of the same product made by different companies. If it sounds so tough imagine the plight of the salesmen and salesgirls for whom it’s the bread and butter.
I know we should not trust strangers and be friendly with them without any reason but yes we don lose anything by politely telling that person, that you don wish to buy the item and don want to waste either of his or your time. Its for the sake of humanity after all we all are salesmen somewhere and we all sell our services in some way or the other.