The Perils of a Summer Job - The First Week of Actual Project

As promised here is my narration about the first week of my project.

As a young man looking to make my mark in the corporate world I was all keen to start ASAP and show to the world how good I can be. We all were given a list of IFA's to be pursued for the sale of our software products for the Mutual Funds industry.

As a courtesy (I say courtesy as I knew the skill and knowledge level of my mentor after the training) I asked my mentor Mr. A how exactly to go about marketing of the software. I was pleasantly surprised by his response as I never thought after the foolish things that my mentor had done during the training period it would be possible for him to out do himslef. But leave it upto my mentor when it comes to making a fool of himslef. He said very confidently that we should cold call on our clients to fix up meetings! Well I think that my mnetor said that because he firmly beleives that there is no diffirence between selling software and vegetables. Accroding to him no matter what if you are able to land up outside someones office with a product you will be able to sell it whether it is vegetables or software :-)

The fourth lesson is: Always ask your superiors for advice and then do not follow it under any circumstance!

So I followed the fourth lesson and did not follow my mentors advice. I decided to pursue the clients in a more professional manner with my colleague. We systematically called the clients to brief them about our products and then setup a meeting with them. In the meeting we gave them a small presentation about the firm and the various software solutions that we can offer to them. Next step was to arrange for a technical person to actually give the client a demonstraion of the software. Following this systematic approach we were able to get 2 clients in the first week itself. It was a great acheivement given the fact that the company expected us to convert 2 cleints in the span of the entire internship :-) This basically proves that the fourth lesson holds and that you should never follow the advice of your senoirs!

The best part about the end of training is that I can now directly go to the clients office without having to go to Belapur. Though it has robbed me of the pleasure of the scenic beauty of Belapur I am more than willing to live in the concrete jungles of Nariman Point.

I also had the pleasure of going to the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) during the week when the stock market was swinging up and down like a ride in some amusement park. The scene near and inside BSE was amazing. Never have I seen so many people so close to getting a heart attack! Everyone had only one question on their mind: In which direction will the next swing be?

It was as if the ECG of the peoples hearts was linked to the BSE Sensex! As when when the sensex fluctuated so did the heart beat of millions of people!

The office that I went to was also full of activity. It was as if I was in a game of musical chair! All people were running from one chair to another with the screams of the employees providing the music for the game. The irony of the whole situtation was that I am sure no one was doing anything as they were helpless with the market in a free fall but still everyone was shouting and pretending that they were doing something. With the kind of atmosphere I saw in the office I was pretty sure that the meeting was not going to go as planned, but I had no idea of what was instore for me. As soon as I met the concerned person he took me into the conference room and then started telling me about his emotional journey during the past few days due to the swings in the stock market. Instead of me giving a presentation to him about our software products he was the one who started giving me a presentation about his emotional imbalance. He went on and on until he saw the immense boredom on my face after which he finally asked me "Why have you come here?". And then it happened. The moment I mentioned that I was there to SELL him our software solutions for Mutual Funds, he made a face that I will never be able to forget in my life. It was the face of a man who had been constipated for atleast a 1000 years! For a moment he was in such great pain that words did not come out of his mouth. And then he gave me a lecture on how I should be more considerate of his situtation and told me that how I could even think of selling him something when he was in that state. Infact I think he had started to hate the word SELL and he went on to explain to me how the free fall in the market was due to people SELLING indiscriminately and that how no one should SELL anything, people should only BUY and BUY and BUY and then I knew it was time for me to say BYE BYE and leave ASAP before I went crazy!

So that was the end of the first week on job. Very intresting, very eventful and very educational.

There is a lot more to come so stay tuned........

OM MBAYAH NAMAH

The Perils of a Summer Job - The Training

The training was to go on for a week. And man what a week it was going to be!

On the very first day we got a glimpse of what was to come. The training was taken by people who were supposedly Businees Analysts. But they did not know a thing about what they were speaking. The Powerpoint presentation were also dull and boring. I have made Powerpoint presentations a thousand times better than those in a few hours (that does not mean I am great at making Powerpoint presentations it is just that I never spend more than a few hours on any presentation). In the whole of the presentation there was only one guy (Mr. X) who knew what he was talking. All the others had a great strategy, they just kept on saying that "Mr. X would be the right person to answer your questions". They say that summer jobs help you learn a lot. And in that very moment I learnt my first lesson: That whenever during any presentation (in the class or later on in the corporate world) when you dont have an answer to any question just point to one of your collegaues and say that he/she would be the right person to answer that question (this is a hint to all people who are going to be in my project group next year, please beware as I might just pass the buck on you whenever a difficult question is asked).

The whole NMIMS or rather now NMHIMS group conviniently took up the last row of seats as we were pretty smart as comapred to others and realzied pretty early on about the futility of training. The others were slow to realize that and by the time they realized it we had already stamped our authority on the last row of seats and no one dared to sit there.

Best part of the training was on a day when 3 members of the firm gave a presentatiion at the same time. One (Mr. X) started the presentation and briskly moved through his part. Then Ms. Y came and gave or rather tried to give a presentation, but could not say a single word as she did not know much. So Mr. X had to take over her part and again briskly moved through that part of the presentation. And then came the Amitabh Bacchan of the firm. The man who just knew absolutely how to give a presentation without any one realizing that he was actually giving a presentation. He also did not know anything at all. But he used the classic strategy of what I now call 'Speak to the Laptop screen in a monotonous murmur so that no one understands what you are saying and hence cant ask any questions' strategy! I have never seen a person who has been so obssessed with the laptop screen. It was as if he was enamoured by its presence and was so dumb founded that he could not speak. We asked him to be a little louder but he understood our intentions and still stuck with his strategy of looking at the laptop screen and babling something in Scandanavian! That was my second lesson learnt: No matter how much others try to understand what you are trying to speak if you are not sure of what you are saying that keep speaking in a monotonous, hypnotic tone so that everyone falls asleep!

After such an enlightning and a stimulating one week of training all we could think about was to go out there and start the project! That was the thrid lesson: When you want your sales and marketing people to be on the field instead of motivating them to go out and acheive targets (like Dessler says in his HRM book) the easier way is to just make them hate your organization so much that they would just look forward to be on the field and not come back to office. That way you dont need to motivate them again and again to go out there, they themsleves will be internally motivated to stay out there and work!

So now was the time that we needed to go out and prove ourselves. And thats what we exactly did. The actual project and our first week of cleint meetings in the next section: The Perils of a Summer Job - The First Week of Actual Project

OM MBAYAH NAMAH!

The Perils of a Summer Job - An Introduction

Well I am updating my blog after a long longggggggggg time. So sorry to all the avid readers, but let me assure you that this post is going to be worth the read.

This post is about my summer job and the perils associated with it.

I have got my summer job at a firm in Belapur (for the uninitiated it is supposedly on the outskirts of Mumbai). The moment I had got this job I knew I was in for a life changing drama. Unfortunately I came to realize that the drama would be a traumatic one rather than a pleasing one.

On the first day itself I realized the importance of being on time. There is a single train from Andheri to Belapur at 7:40 a.m. This is the only train by which you can reach office on time. As Indians we are always used to reaching late and beleive me I am a true Indian when it come to reaching late. But the very fact that if I miss the train I will have to change a million trains to reach Belapur was motivation enough for me to reach the station on time.

The train I think is the most hated thing amongst the people standing on the platform. Just the sight of it makes them break into a war cry. The first day when people broke into the war cry I thought there was a huge fight somewhere only to later realize that it was a mere daily ritual that occured at the sight of the train. As soon as the train stopped everyone tried to pounce on it as if it were more beautiful than Aishwarya Rai!

Once inside the train I got to know another dark side of humans. The art of chemical warfare! Beleive me instead of Iraq, UN should be looking inside the Indian railways for chemical weapons as you can smell the most obnoxious odours in the trains. Especially the summer season brings out the true fragrance of human body. The sight of Belapur was truly amazing. I have never seen such greenery and mountains near Mumbai in my life (which confirmed my feelings that Belapur is some distant village in which my office was located). The walk to the office was pleasing with great scenery, looking at so many mountains I started wondering if I would have to climb one in order to reach offcie. Luckily I did not have to.

The office building was pristine. It was the most amazing site I have ever seen. I used to think only the Indian government offices used to be dillapidated, but this building can easily give any government office a run for its money. It was a tribute to the constructor of the building that inspite of such severe damage the building was still standing. As luck would have it the lift also was so well maintained that the 5th floor button (the floor on which the office was located) was not working. But we were a committed and optimistic bunch and so we marched onto the 5th floor. The site on the floor was amazing. All we could see were 4 doors. First one was unnamed, second one was for some water pumps company, third one was some unheard of firm and the last one was an empty room with a few chairs. Luckily for us a lost soul told us that the unnamed door was the office of our firm. God bless him else we would have never found it.

The empty room with chairs turned out to be our training room. And what a training week it was going to be.

Stay tuned more on the training week........