By this time I have begun to
realise that Jugal Hansraj and I have so much in common in so many ways. I
write so infrequently now that every time I come back to it, it’s a comeback, just
like Hansraj gets roles so infrequently that every time he acts, he debuts. And
like my writing, no one misses his acting.
Okay, sorry. Some of you do miss my prose, I admit.
Okay, sorry. Some of you do miss my prose, I admit.
So this post is about the life of an
Area Sales Manager (ASM). Basically an overpaid and underworked salesman and an
underpaid and overworked manager. The purpose of this post is not to advertise or chastise the profession. The
intention is to advertise and
chastise it. I do not intend to critique a specific FMCG company. I intend to
critique them all.
My intentions are noble, or so I
would like to believe. And hence, the post is meant to be taken with a pinch of
salt, unless you’re an ASM with Tata Chemicals, in which case you can take a
carton of salt and sell it in wholesale at an undercut price.
To an outsider, it’s tough to
explain that we ASMs are employed and yet don’t have an office. A lot of
aunties go up to my mother and ask the typical ‘apka-beta-kahan-kaam-karta-hai’
and ‘office-kahan-hai’ types. Mothers usually have these very simplistic
explanations to everything. So I, apparently, go door to door, selling stuff
and taking payments. But she still can’t get over the fact that I don’t have an
office. ‘Kahin-kuchh-toh-hoga-na’, she enquires almost every time she calls.
And at last, I cede and give her the address of my Carry Forward Agent (CFA).
ASMs, I believe, are the only breed
for whom ‘work’ (and not ‘home’) is the driving word when they ‘work from home’.
Almost 60% of the productive work gets done from home while the remaining gets
done at the distributor office (usually his home, so technically still ‘work
from home’). And yet, whenever the bosses call and enquire about our
whereabouts, we are always in the
market (even at midnight). Don’t get me wrong, but not having an office also
has its merits. We, for instance, do not suffer from Monday morning blues. For
us, every day is a Sunday and every day is a Monday. A better metric for us is
the day of the month. So while the first three weeks of the month have 21
weekends, the last week has all days working. It has as many productive
man-hours as the first three weeks combined, out of which the last day alone is
50%. So our typical month is like a typical Dhoni knock. Nudging, pushing and
prodding for the first three-fourths, taking quickly run twos and threes for
the next few and finishing it off with a last ball six.
Just that MSD meets his numbers
more often.
I doubt there’s another profession
that has its evaluation parameters so tangible and measurable. And I also doubt
there’s another profession that has its evaluation parameters so confusing and
ambiguous. What’s absolutely clear is that growth is an absolute must. What’s
absolutely not clear is which growth we’re talking about. So when we ring up
our bosses after the month closing, gleefully narrating our double digit volume growth over the same month last
year, they gently remind us how the growth over the previous quarter has been
stagnant. And when we call them next month, about how the territory has shown
great volume growth over last year as
well as the previous quarter, they quickly remind us that the growth in value terms has been sluggish. And when
we show both volume and value growth over last year as well as the
last quarter, there’s always a smaller territory in the region that has
registered twice the growth during the same period.
And yet, the band for success is
fixed. There are no Bs, Cs and Ds in sales. It’s either A or nothing. In
percentage terms, anything between 0 to 100 percent is a failure. It basically
means you can neither plan nor execute (and neither do you go to the market).
Anything between 100%-105% is an A and means that you can plan and execute well
(doesn’t matter if you go to the market). Anything over 105% is again a failure
because you can plan and execute but can’t control (because you don’t go to the
market).
But hey, we still love our jobs!
For it allows us to travel (to non-descript upcountry locations), meet new people
(bluffing salesmen and stingy distributors), stay among the locals (in shady
hotels with bedbugs and ceiling fans inside bathrooms) and enjoy different
cuisine (by chance and not by choice).
But more than anything else, I love
my job for the sheer learning potential it offers. One learns to lie with a straight
face (boss I will definitely do my
numbers), be overly optimistic (boss I will
definitely do my numbers with or
without the stock), be overenthusiastic (boss I will definitely do my
numbers with or without the stock with one week to go), be prophetic (boss I think I will do my numbers with
or without the stock with one week to go ), make excuses (boss I would have
definitely done my numbers with or without the stock with one week to go had
there been no earthquake in Nepal) and make promises (boss next month I will definitely do my numbers).
And I also love it because it has a
jargon of its own. No, no, we do not invent our own words. We give a different connotation
to the existing ones. For instance, ‘align’ means dissemination of information,
‘stock’ denotes shortage, ‘target’ means impossible, ‘phasing’ is a myth, ‘delivery’
mean late, ‘commitment’ means anything but commitment and ‘closing’ means fear.
There are also a few phrases that we hold up our sleeves that come out as and
when required (and are never ever true). To the retailer: ‘Sir bika toh apka,
nahi bika toh humara’. To the subordinates: ‘Tu kaam kar, incentive mujh par
chhod’. To the distributor: ‘Sir abhi aap pay kar do, baad mein adjust kar
lenge’. And to your boss: ‘Sir market mein hoon’.
Phew! Long rant. Still love my job,
for there are only a few professions that one can bitch about so much and yet
keep one’s job. Possibly because our bosses don’t have the time to read what we
write. Or maybe the upcountry town they’re touring right now has our
distribution, but doesn’t have internet.
Or electricity.