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)
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)
I agree with Waqas it is actually the application of the concepts not the concept per se. Actually Kotler book has been publish in collaboration with LUMS faculty which is pertinent to Pakistan and has examples from our own market.
ReplyDeleteAside from that general management books specially ones that introduce concepts cannot be designed to the specification of a country, tehy are meant to be general concepts...it is not a PhD in a specific field... which does not mean they are worthless. We need to focus on the concepts and apply them to our environment. Like another debate can be why we study history..everyone in it is dead... concept is that we need to look at their mistakes and apply them to our environment...then we will see their application.
True Waqas. You have come up with some appropriate justifications for Kotler books and I do believe that the concepts or the basics should be taught by such books to students which can be further applied depending on the environment, economy and situation of a specific country as the environment, economy and resources differ for every country depending on its stability and companies standards.
ReplyDeletewaqqas, i totally agree with you on this specially the SOP part that we always have to modify the regional or worldwide SOP just because we live in a very dynamic and unpredictable region...i was talking to my operations manager a couple of days back who told us that in his PR (process reliability) target, they never mention the impact of load shedding (Startup/shutdown loss). no where in the world this is reflected in PR of any process, whether its making or packing!...same is the case with sales...we always end up bribing people and at some places we have paid employees already present from our competitors so at the end of the day, sales depends on bribery Vs product quality!...similarly a policeman stops a person who drives a bike Vs land cruiser because he is not here to manage traffic, but to rip people off!...people dont buy brands, but they buy cheap products that meets their needs...like made in china!! ...point is kotler has made one book some time back but he forgot how demographics changes the overall scenario, how things needs to be customized to customer's need and how things needs to be UPDATE with changing scenarios!! ...(pls note i havent started on technological advancement like youtube,facebook etc.. as yet otherwise this will take ages)...why do we find random books of writers more interesting? reason is they write books regularly and they capture the latest happenings...Vs people like kotler etc...who doesnt even know the insights of big organizations...you would only know once u have a taste of it...so my points is, we should write a book on marketing as in people from industry who have got some experience along with basic terminologies/understanding!...i think teachers overall need to understand that books needs to get refreshed at least yearly if not quarterly along with customized approach according to the regions with inputs of people incharge of the business or at strategic positions!
ReplyDeleteThank you Saima, Marium and Shaif for seconding my content. I must appreciate you healthy views regarding customizing our ownselves rather than negating the fact that change is constant. We should believe that change philosophy even works in Pakistan!
ReplyDeleteShaif thank you for providing professionally equipped justifications.