Yesterday I met one person surprisingly, he usually comes to our office and
meet my boss for the routine problems relating to decline or rise in Sales. Oh
let me just tell you where I am working and what my JD is. I am working in
Adamjee Insurance Co. as an Assistant Manager Sales Communication &
support, and my job is to assist my boss, GM Sales in various activities like
presentations, budget projections, analysis and forecasts. As in insurance when
you talk about Sales it’s just a single document which is our product, and the
Sales persons sell that document and bring premium (Sales) to our Co. Let’s
just cut it and come to the point, otherwise it will take several hours to
explain about insurance.
I have little interaction with that person previously, as we did not
talk before for such a long duration, only hello, hi, but that day it lasted
for two hours. I really have nothing to do for the entire day as my boss was
out of station for meetings, and was wondering how to kill my time. Luckily
that person came towards me and inquired about my academics, I said I did
Masers from Karachi University in Mass Communication 5 years back and nowadays
pursuing MBA from IOBM. Instantly he said, so you must be well aware of Kotler
who writes management books. Now that's something he poked me to spill out my
frustration and I thought in my mind for a moment, got the victim!
He started by stating that, what a person he is, how informational he
sounds. I said yes you are right, he really knows and writes books that really
help people in organizational management, no doubt about that. But do you
really think that his books are meant for our market and do you really think
they help in countering our problems at work. He said in a doubtful manner, umm
yes of course. I said, No! These books are orthodox, they just give you a mere
reflection about the organization in which you are working and they are not
situational. The reason I am saying not situational is because they just tell
you the standards and situations vary from place to place and type of work.
Talking about West countries, they are rich in resources and they don't spend
their precious time in thinking about the petty domestic issues, that's
why it is said and most of you must have experienced, list is very fast there.
Our people are different, our economy is different, we have a lot of resources
but unfortunately we have so many other issues to deal with, like Baluchistan
and the transitional government, that is another debate but the point is we
have to create our own SOP's under the SOPs of our company to make the things
go smoother, like what are the standards of a company and how I am going to
create my own standards to coincide with the company's standards
.
He started taking interest and got curious to know more about, what I have
to say. I then gave him an example of a course conducted by a very famous
professional teacher some days back in IBA, not going to take his name as
previously I believed that he knows all, he teaches marketing courses and this
time the course title was somewhat like Marketing Dynamics in Pharmaceuticals.
What went wrong? There is no doubt about the command he has over his
subject, but this time he chosen the wrong audience.
The people attended his course were all pharmacists, having vast
experience of 12 to 15 years in Sales and Marketing and most of them were
MBA's. Pharmaceutical marketing is quite different as their client or consumer
is a doctor not the patient directly. You can’t advertise directly and go for
the ATL services as they are restrictions from the government side and
advertising only goes for some OTC products.
I added by saying the above mentioned anonymous teacher started by giving
them examples from FMCG markets, like detergents, soaps and daily domestic
items. He is a person who has taught several students and even the
experienced professionals and mid career professionals, he has a very good
repute in all prior mentioned levels as the things he told them were directly
related to their market and also he had a vast experience of FMCG companies as
he worked there.
I personally know the teacher, talked to him three to four times but haven't
met, I consider him my mentor. But the point I want to focus on, he used the
standard knowledge to apply to different market. Again this particular
situation is very debatable but the person, to whom I have now interacted for
nearly two hours, agreed and said yes you are right and justifications are
appropriate.
Mostly management books tells you the set standards, they are never 100%
applicable to your markets. Books should be taken like the knowing about the
basics, they should not be the end of the beliefs. How you people take books
like? (Please note that there are so many books and the objective of writers is
different, so take this specifically under the title given above)