The end is near

Recently I came across a very interesting and rather an accurate definition of the biggest foul four lettered word ever formed - “BOSS”. It read “Boss is a person who thinks that nine women together can produce a child in one month”. I don’t know if this is true about all Bosses but it definitely holds its ground as far as all the Sales-superiors are concerned.

When you join any big organization, you are all excited, brimming with confidence, determined to make a difference to the organization, blah blah blah. After being six months in the organization, only the “blah blah blah” remains. The induction programme where they teach you all the Visions, Missions, Goals, Values, Compliance, Policies and so on are all replaced by a single word “TARGETS”. The selection of the word ‘targets’ is a very strategic one in the field of sales. It has a dual meaning; target is something you need to achieve if you do not wish to become the target of your boss’ fury.

There are a few fundamental relationships that exist any sales job:

ü The percentage of target to be achieved is inversely proportional to the time left for achieving the same.

ü The amount of pressure applied by the BOSS is exponentially directly proportional to the targets left to be achieved.

ü The number of customers not available on account of ill health, foreign visits, family deaths etc increases with every decreasing day of sales.

Amidst all these adversities and problems, life of a salesperson is truly one to admire. Every BOM (beginning of month - for all you non-sales people) brings new hopes, new aspirations and the same gets shattered with every month-end. There is a reset button in life of every sales person which gets pushed on 1^st of every month. Whether last month was brilliant or pathetic holds no relevance, especially when it was brilliant, in a sales job.

I am not a veteran of the field called ‘sales’ till date, but from whatever experience I have had in the field, I have discovered some very important facts. First discovery is that the fantasy character of Werewolf has been inspired by a character which we all deal with in our daily lives – BOSS. The full moon day is nothing but the Month-end, when the beast within the boss gets unleashed to torment our lives and take away our sleep. Another discovery is that however good a performer you are, your boss will always find scope of improvement in your performance. Now, I myself am a believer of the fact that Nobody is perfect, but what surprises me is that whoever your boss is, whatever his qualifications are, whichever kind his nature is, he is always capable enough of finding that one scope of improvement in you every time. If you have done brilliant sales, he will know that you are not in touch with all your customers. If you are in touch with the customers, he will know that you are not well verse with company processes. If you take care of that too, he will know that you come to office fifteen minutes late. By the time you try to improve on all these factors, your precious sales time is lost and you are back to square one. I don’t know if this is a talent which gets developed in the training or it is an inbuilt quality that you acquire as soon as you lead a team.

Being in the banking sector, I have made one observation regarding my organization. The higher you are in the hierarchy in any sales organization, the lesser you know about the markets, the worse your sales skills are and the maximum of targets you expect to be achieved in the running month. I am not making these comments in air. I have concrete examples to prove my case. When financial industry was going under a severe recession, when the revenue stream to be earned via entry load in mutual fund was abolished, when the ULIP plans reduces commission because IRDA mandated them to do so, THAT WAS exactly when the top management increased sales team targets as they thought there is lot of opportunity to poach customers from other financial organizations (they think their brand is immune to these news and others are just shutting down post the news).

I am not complaining about my job, I know that everyone would like to add a suffix of “blow” in front of their job to describe it aptly. However, I just want to ask my BOSS and maybe his BOSS or maybe all the BOSSES in the world. What is up with this month-end? It is not as if the world is ending. It is not as if you may not live to sell another day, so might as well make the most of today. I have never understood the concept of this month-end. Even if I have over-achieved my targets, my boss will say ‘month-end hai bhai, kitna karega’. Why can’t they have month-mids or month-starts? One of the sidey shahrukh khan movies has a dialogue which interprets in English as “ Life is like a film, it always has a happy ending and if there is no happy ending it means that the film is not done yet.” After analyzing the phenomenon of month-ending, I did not find this statement apt, after all, what was so happy about this month-ending. But then I realized that the statement was truly apt, the end is nowhere in sight. The month-end takes reincarnation every month J.

I also want to ask another question, if I am supposed to attend the morning huddle for an hour, the evening huddle for another hour, provide detailed tracker of monthly numbers I have achieved and plan to achieve thrice a day, assist colleagues as we are TEAM PLAYERS, report to the counselor, the regional head, the service head, the product team, the product expert of all product lines, when am I supposed to do SALES? And all these activities increase exponentially with the end nearing (read: month-end).

There is one more aspect that I want to make clear. YOUR INSPIRATIONAL STATEMENTS DON’T INSPIRE. The kind to pep talks that these bosses give is unbelievably humorous and definitely not motivating. I cannot do anything else but quote some of them and leave it on the readers to decide which one is the funniest:

ü Don’t sell the apple, sell the crunch (and I thought I was selling Financial products)

ü I have full faith in this team. Now tell me how the hell will we achieve the numbers? (Some faith that is!)

ü You have a bright future ahead, if only you can survive this pressure month (as if this is the only pressure month of the century)

ü The superiors are tracking your every move. Make sure you don’t let them down. (am I some internationally wanted criminal? Am I on GPRS? Am I atleast on CCTV?? Damn, nobody is tracking me L)

ü You do these numbers for me and I’ll make sure I talk positive about you in the next regional meet. (Otherwise you bitch about me?? And btw, you don’t have any other interesting topic to discuss in the regional meet?)

ü I have high hopes from you, don’t let me down.

ü After a week: I had high hopes from you, you let me down. (How was I involved in you having and then not having high hopes)

ü Next Month: I have high hopes from you,……… (Damn, this guy never learns from his mistakes)

I can go on and on with this stuff, but I guess I have driven home the point. I personally do not have any issues with the month ending nor beginning neither do I wish to change the calendar system so wisely developed over a period of time. The only point I am trying to make is that it’s just another day. MONTH-END is not end of business, not end of career (hopefully), not end of client-relationship, it is just end of a MONTH. Jeeeeeeez, how hard is it to understand this?

I know that you people are worried what will happen to me if my boss reads this, but as Salesman Rocketsingh says “Risk to Spiderman ko bhi lena padta hai, Main to phir bhi Salesman hu!!!”

Anyways, I think I won’t be able to find much time as the end is near now, yes, the month-end. SO, to all of you, HAPPY ENDING!!!

About train, journey and awaited destination

The train was speeding past some blurry stations. I was half asleep due to the last night of “peaceful gathering” that I had with my friends in Mumbai, half awake because of the gentleman sitting behind my seat who had to finish all his important telephonic conversations during the journey. It was a Monday morning and had it not been very, very essential for me to reach my workplace in Surat, it would have been impossible to push me into the A/c Chair-car compartment of the Shatabdi Express. Now, I don’t want to misguide you to think that I am some kind of party maniac who visits Mumbai on weekends to unleash the wild party animal that sleeps within him during the work weekdays. My purpose of visit was to meet up my family who has the privilege of residing in the ever-alive metro and to meet up few of the people I happen to call friends after my 21 years of existence in the metro before moving to Surat for work.

As I made myself comfortable in my window seat of the fastest mode of transport to Surat, I made some marvelous observations as well as some PhD material analysis. Here is the list of my analysis:

ü Most of beautiful specimen of opposite gender is always traveling by either the train before your train or by the one after yours.

ü The remaining few beautiful ladies will have to be placed in the coach either to your left or the one to your right.

However, defying my own research and to my pleasant surprise, I was privileged to have a fairly pretty lady as my companion for the next three hours. Not that I was going to astonish her by my charm or something, but it always feels good to have such company, even though it is just a superficial one. The lady placed herself at the seat beside me and hid herself into the complimentary newspaper which was lying on the seat on passenger’s arrival.

I was myself lost into the changes in the Indian economy and its impact on my client’s portfolio, trying to analyze every statement in the Economic Times. After all, being a Portfolio Manager in one of the reputed multi-national banks, I needed to keep myself updated to impress my clients with the knowledge that I possess and to make sure that my clients make profit from their investments and my bank makes profit from their future investments. Meanwhile, the pantry staff served us with Coffee and snacks.

After doing MBA, you tend to realize how you are surrounded by brands and how these brands try to be around you anywhere and everywhere. Right from the newspapers placed on the seats, to the “Nescafe”, “Everyday” and “Britannia Marie”, every brand was trying to woo the elite customers travelling in the fastest train on the route. After I finished reading the Economic Times which I always carried while travelling and the newspaper lying on my seat, I placed them at the pouch in front of my seat. That was when she turned to me and said – Can I have that newspaper, mine has coffee all over it.

Before you start concluding this as some sort of romantic love-story developing at 200 kmph, let me clarify that this was the only conversation I had with her. Partly because I was too sleepy to start a conversation, partly because I knew it was too much of effort and the results would not justify the efforts (when you are MBA, you tend to use cost-benefit analysis for possibly everything in life).

After knowing every detail about the financial condition of my country, I thought I would rest a while as it was another hour and forty minute for my destination to arrive. As my heavy pupils were about to find company of each other, I suddenly heard a loud roar of “Kyun Paisa Paisa karti hai”, the latest Bollywood music fortunate to be the ringtone of a gentleman who was an Auditor of Railway Services traveling by the train. Not that we had a formal introduction, or that I was eavesdropping on his conversation, it was the sheer level of sound at which he conversed that increased this trivia of entire coach. The gentleman had a problem with the fact that he was offered Cutlets with less green peas in the train and was determined to file this in his audit report. As the gentleman tried to raise his voice to one of the biggest problems which our nation faced currently “depletion of green peas from cutlets”, I struggled to find sleep in my seat as we passed another station in the train. The gentleman had his vigorous discussion on phone for another 15 minutes and then decided that rather than involving someone half asleep in his bed and waiting for action to happen, he should take matters in his own hand to solve this major crisis that he had discovered. Thus, he called up a Pantry guy and asked him to bring the “Complaint Book”. The pantry guy offered to provide assistance to solve the issue at hand by providing another cutlet with extra green peas. The next 10 minutes were devoted to the heroic speech of gentleman mentioning that it was not a matter of him getting the green peas. He was fighting for greater good, not a green pea for him, but green peas for everyone. Before the pantry guy could revive from the first blow that the gentleman had given him, in came another blow. The gentleman queried why he was not given an option for choosing between Upma and Cutlet, why was his democratic right of choice taken away and why the cutlet was forced upon him by the pantry dictators. The discussion went on for another 20 minutes post which they ended up in a truce of providing complimentary juice to the entire coach. Thus, due to our valorous hero, we received what mankind had always been fighting for, Mango Juice.

All these events had consumed half of my journey as the train halted at Vapi, the only stop between Mumbai and Surat. The lady besides me had already consumed her third cup of coffee and was now reading the Bollywood section of her “borrowed” newspaper. I decided against dozing off now, lest I miss out my stop and lose my job due to absence in the meeting with the regional head which started at 11 a.m. on the same day. Moreover, my sleep had dropped its guns against the courage and the zeal that the gentleman in the seat behind me had portrayed.

One unique thing about your body once you start working is that it schedules itself according to your daily schedule. Thus, as we crossed Vapi and also my regular waking up time, my body-clock started sending my alarm for a very important activity. I usually avoid using Publicly available human-waste disposal units for the simple reason that more often than not, I have found that the waste has been disposed in the units but has not been disposed from the units. Thus, I tried to practice self-control to avoid confrontation with something unexpected and unpleasant. While I was trying to manage my own problems, a team of three entered the coach to get “feedback” from us regarding the problems we were facing in the train. It was an external survey agency appointed by Indian Railways to get feedback on service levels in Shatabdi and Rajdhani trains in the country so that they can improve their services. While the gentlemen conducting the survey entered from the backside and explained how our feedback was important and how it would take just few minutes of our time, I was deciding between the temptation to be tension-free and the ordeal of facing specimen of other people’s release of tension.

The survey gentlemen gave the activist at the rear another opportunity to spill out his plight. As I took the survey sheet, more to divert my mind than to help the government improve, I realized that the survey was focused on the hygiene in the train and in the toilets of the train in specific too. So, after completing the survey in the next two minutes, I set out to help the railways get a feedback on how clean or unclean their toilets were. As I reached the doors of the toilet, I could almost hear harps playing in the background. I pushed the door with the sign “western toilet” to find that the heaven was already occupied by another angel. I waited for my turn, feeling like the “slumdog” actors waiting in queue for their turn while there seemed to be a regular appearance of people in and out of the opposite side door bearing the sign “Indian Toilet”. After waiting for 10 minutes in reality but which felt like eternity at that time, in that position, I was caught in a Catch 22 Situation. Should I wait at this door for the gentleman/ lady to exit or should I go across the coach to avail the facility at the far end? I decided to stand my ground, partly having known the “Queue Principle” (the queue that you are in always moves slower) and partly because it would take lot of energy to move across the coach and I would not want the potential energy within me to turn into kinetic before I reach the intended destination. After another 300 seconds had passed by, I called out the pantry guy and drove his attention to the door which had been lying closed since the creation of mankind. I showed my concern for the person within, after all, we do not know what kind of effect the poisonous gases within that gas chamber might have had on the poor occupant. The pantry guy very casually replied – Sahab, ab hum andar jaakar thodi dekh sakte hai. Koi hoga bina ticket wala, seedha Surat ya Baroda pe hi niklega.

After having lost around 20 minutes of my time and realizing that my wait might prove to be unproductive, I gathered courage to move back into my coach, walk all across it and reach the other end. As I reached my destination which had the same sign as the starting point of my Journey “Western Toilet”, I would have done a Somersault and a split had I not been restrained by my hassled status and lack of flexibility. THE DOOR WAS OPEN and the toilet was CLEAN. As I fastened the latch of the door, the speaker in the toilet blared out – We are shortly arriving at Surat. Disheartened, shattered and discomforted I reached my seat quickly, took my baggage and without even glancing the lady who was still placed at her earlier position, I walked towards the exit. It is very surprising how somethings which attract us at most times in our life lose their importance when you are placed in certain peculiar situations. This is what I term as “LAW of PRIORITIES”.

As my train applied brakes, I realized that my ordeal was not over yet. The train had halted just outside Surat station waiting for a green signal to enter its destination. However, it was very difficult to stop everything via signals, and I was trying to do the same. I wondered if wearing a red underwear would have helped! After another five minutes and lot of meditation and yoga during these minutes, I placed my feet on Surat station platform. Without looking around or waiting for the train to halt completely, I made my way through the rush of passengers towards the Rickshaw stand and got into a rickshaw. Without wasting time over bargaining, I placed myself in a Rickshaw only to find the Rickshawwallah answering – Gas nahi hai, koi dusra rickshaw pakad lo. The word “GAS” seemed to be a bit louder than usual. I got down and got in another rickshaw, which was being operated by a gentleman who seemed to be as ancient as civilization itself and his rickshaw just a bit younger than him. Thus, we set on the roads of Surat at a turtle pace. It took colossal effort to provoke the rickshawwallah to accelerate and my body did not permit me to strain myself to that extent. Thus, I sat quietly watching birds overtake the rickshaw as it “paced” on the flyovers of Surat. Finally, I reached my rented premises in Surat. Without waiting to discuss price, I paid an additional Tenner to the rickshawallah and rushed to open the lock of my house. Finally, I had reached HOME SWEET HOME…