PO Bhej Do, Sir: Sales in the time of Corona

First published on May 26, 2020 on LinkedIn

If I were to ask you- What do you think I spend most of my time doing? You might say Planning, Strategizing or maybe even analyzing. You would be wrong. I spend most of my day Waiting. I fill the ennui by doing the activities mentioned earlier. Waiting for the Client to respond, waiting for the article to be listed, waiting for the execution to happen. Waiting: The end-all and be-all of a KAM’s life.

Each spell of waiting is followed by a frantic manic burst of activity where numerous calls are made, high importance emails are sent and follow-ups done. All the cogs in the sales machine are oiled and trialed to go from 0 to Delivery in 0.1 second. All that remains is the elusive Purchase Order (PO). A PO is the official document containing the articles required by the client with the invoicing value. If you are listing a new product, the first PO is exhilarating. The validation that all the hair you pulled, the nails you chewed weren’t martyred in vain.

Working in the beverage industry, Summer is THE season but as luck would have it 2020 would have no summer per se, and no luck either. With all the planning gone down the drain, jugaadh and a mutual will to survive have been the flavours of the season. Locking-down on a heady concoction of win-win elements for the brand and the retail partner has defined the last two months. The deals mean nothing though if the dotted line is not signed- If the PO is not released.

The road to the heavenly document is paved with good intentions but listing or modifying a product in a retailer’s system involves considerable number of stakeholders. And, as the popular adage goes, Anything that can go wrong will go wrong- I will let you put two and two together. Once the stores are identified, the pricing clarified, the quantity finalized and logistics notified does the mail trail begin till the PO gets realized. Thus, bringing me back to the premise of this piece and lending me the time to write this article.

John Keats wrote “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Ask a Salesman and he’d wonder if Keats was talking about a PO. As I conclude this article, an unread mail icon has appeared on my Outlook. My heart skips a beat- It is a new PO. I yell with joy. Ohh wait…the pricing is wrong.