The Hindu Business Line : The retail salesperson emerges!

The very definition of a salesperson is changing today. Gone are the days when the salesperson was only the young lad who left the campus to take on the role of a salesman peddling a brand of chewing gum. Selling is more today. And gone are the days when the salesperson meant the medical sales representative making his evening calls on a set of doctors, spending more time in the doctor's waiting room than with him for sure! Remember those slick, tie-clad and completely well-looking guys sitting with you as you nursed your fever in your favourite doctor's waiting room?

Selling means more today.

The salesman is and essentially has been of two kinds from times gone by. The first is what we commonly call the route salesperson who goes along with the truck of a Coca-Cola or a Matador of Horlicks! And the second is that salesperson who stands within the premises of a retail outfit, waiting for you the customer to walk into! Shall we call him the Inside order-taker?

The career of a salesperson is today therefore polarised. One is that of the man on the move shop to shop, and the other is that of a man on the stand, within a retail outlet!

If one peeks into the history of buying and selling, both types have lived right through the history of the buying and selling process. In the old days, the salesperson who went shop to shop selling the papad and panty-hose was very much a salesperson as the one standing within the outlet. What has changed today, however, is the fact that there is a lot of focus on the guy standing behind the counter selling the goods as well. Thus far, while the selling-in end of the business has been in focus, the time has now dawned for the selling-out end of the process to come into the limelight. At last, companies, marketing professionals within organisations and their gyan-gurus of every hue are recognising the value and worth of the man behind the counter. The dynamics of the selling process is quietly gaining acceptance with the men and women in the profession of selling bringing respect where it belongs - behind the sales counter as well.

Over the years, as man in modern society lived through the days of scarcity, the focus was on just one arena. Take the product out there into the great wide marketplace and distribute it. The route salesman was God. The route salesperson had width of distribution targets to meet!

As the years of scarcity kept easing, and as supply kept pace with demand, the top management objective changed a wee bit. It was time to tell the great big sales force out there that it was time to sell the product not only with width, but a considerable degree of depth into the retail points out there. The route salesman got depth targets as well!

And then the times kept changing. The days of plenty arrived. There was just too much of product at hand, and too little of demand to boot. What's more, from the days of the sole product in category status, the product in question had to face competition from a whole host of companies that brought to the market similar offerings that operated in pari passu space.

It was time to change focus. Time to shift gears and get the product moving out of the shelves. Time to focus on the retail salesperson out there.

Look keenly at the Indian marketplace. The country boasts of one of the biggest populations of retail outlets peddling products and services of day-to-day use. India is surely a nation of shop-keepers. And in every one of those shops, there is a salesman.

In many of the outlets of what we will gloriously in the West call the "Mom and Pop" stores, the salesperson is the owner of the store herself. And in a whole host of them, there are little boys who have come in from the nearby village to the city in search of employment. These are the boys who will grow into the best salespersons out there in the market for condom and condiment alike.

There are, therefore, essentially two types of salespersons. One who goes out and sells to customers in the marketplace and the other who waits in the marketplace for customers to come seeking him and his outlet out. The latter domain of the retail salespersons is just about in boom mode, just as the retailing industry booms.

Look keenly at the overall retail industry. A $6.3-trillion industry worldwide, retailing is the biggest business enterprise there is. India itself boats of a $2.2-billion transaction in the retail sector. The only key difference, though, is that while large parts of the businesses overseas happen in the organised retail format, in India, only 1.4 per cent of retail transactions happen in that sector. India is still the land of mom and pop stores lying in every nook and cranny of the country. Remember the joke of finding a tea shop on Mount Everest, set up by an enterprising small mom and pop retailer?

The market is opening up. In every Barista or a Café Coffee Day, there is a person behind the counter who not only makes great coffee, but is a salesperson as well! In every Shoppers' Stop and a Nalli's there is a counter salesperson eager to please. Every Pepsi vending machine in your street corner has an operator-salesman out there to please. Even every hospital has a customer service salesperson out there to please you and take care of your needs.

No terrain of our organised retail life will be left without the presence of the deftly trained salesperson that will run a lot of our revenue-inflows in the businesses of the future. Organised retailing will therefore attract the best of a new breed of salespersons in the future. The passive-mode salesperson who will wait for the customer to come to him to please him or her. A new set of competencies needs to be developed in this emerging space. Just supplanting a route salesperson and planting him within the confines of a retail outlet will do no longer.

The next few instalments of SaleSense will therefore focus on these competencies of interest!

Just remember one thing, though. For every one salesperson in organised retail space, there are 99 other jobs out there in the great Indian marketplace in unorganised retailing! And, guess what, the boom sector in Indian retailing will remain the unorganised sector of the corner shop and `Darshini' stand-up restaurants alike! Because India is different! But which self-actualising MBA will want to work within the confines of a mom and pop shop?

(The author is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.)

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