There has been a gap of nearly three weeks since I wrote an article. I have now firmed up the
frequency of this article- first and third Friday every month.
I begin where I had ended in the last article. Human motivation (will) is the key for any business
to emerge winner in this current or for that matter any future crisis. History is testimony to this
age-old phenomenon. Employees are definitely one of the vertices of the triangle of human
beings which organisations need to motivate and keep motivated- customers and business
associates in the business ecosystem of the organization are the other two vertices who need to
remain motivated.
Amongst employees I have noticed that the team members in frontline sale are the most under
scrutiny by everyone in the organization. I remember as a Business Head in my last corporate
assignment review meetings were inevitably led by the people from accounts who would have
100 solutions to better sales performance. I had once offered the finance head of that
organization to replace me as the business head to implement those 100 ideas and achieve the
sales targets! Needless to mention that was the last meeting when the finance head ever
suggested ideas to achieve targets.
Even sales team supervisors are no different. They order their team members to achieve targets
at ‘any cost’ without much discussion or guidance or demonstration of how to achieve the same.
Please do not get me wrong. There are exceptions who are respected as leaders. Currently, we
are marketing partners for an AI based tool which becomes the personal coach of the ‘lonely’
salesperson in the field and guides the person to do what will help the person to achieve superior
sales results. Data proves increase in salesforce productivity more than 15%. This tool picks up
data from field force automation software and analyses the same in context to the sales KPI
stipulated by the organisation and uses AI along with machine learning to push personalised
‘nudges’ to the field salesperson. We have witnessed this tool deliver results across industries-
BFSI, FMCG, Pharmaceuticals, Automobiles, and several others. This tool corroborates my
hypothesis about human motivation being the prime driver for performance.
Discussions on sales are incomplete without discussing customers. My experience suggests that
majority of brands connect with customers more when they want to sell. CRM has been a part of
marketing strategy for few brands. However, the use of CRM is basic and rather ‘impersonal’. I
have not come across any brand doing anything significant during the pandemic. If I were the
marketing person of any bank, for example, I would have called the high-net worth customers
and sent them a safety kit for the period of pandemic. I believe the customer would have been
motivated to talk about it. May be also post in social media.
Social media brings me to Facebook. Number of current users of Facebook are estimated to be
larger than the population of India. How did Facebook create this user base? By simply
motivating the users in variety of ways. Self-propaganda and appreciation by users create
content and more users. I often wonder what would have been the plight of Facebook if there
was a ‘dislike’ button option.
In the current scenario, I think customers are looking for proactive behaviour and fair treatment
from brands. Let me illustrate this through two real life examples and incidents. Once I was
travelling with the Chairman of one of the client organisations and both of us were booked on a
flight departing at 6 PM to return to our base location. Since we were booked on the same PNR
and he was the lead passenger, he received an SMS alert at 1:30 PM stating that our flight was
delayed by 90 minutes and will depart at 7:30 PM. Promptly, he shared the message with me and
said “DP we can work for another 90 minutes. Good that the airline has intimated us well in
time.” Is this customer motivation? On a separate occasion when I was travelling alone, I
received a similar SMS from another airline stating that my flight was delayed by two hours at 5
PM when my flight was scheduled to depart at 6:30 PM. I was already entering the airport when
the message was delivered. This is the classic gap between intention and execution. The entire
purpose is defeated, and the brand is ridiculed.
Let me narrate the other incident which is about treating customers in a fair manner. I walked
into the exclusive store of the mobile service provider whose services I use. There were too many
people inside the store already. The security person at the entrance asked me what my purpose
of visit was and punched in a few details into a queuing machine and handed a chit with a token
number to me. He looked at the display on the counter and advised me to come back within 30
minutes if I had any other work. I felt that I have been treated in a fair manner. Several hospital
OPD functioning need to learn from this example. Many hospitals during OPD hours present a
chaotic picture and whoever can bully his/her way forward to the registration desk emerges
victorious.
As life returns towards normal, the biggest expectation from customers will be reduced human
touch while transacting business with any brand. Organizations must strategize on this aspect
and the shift in customer expectation to plan and execute the digital transformation of their
customers’ path to purchase. This will have long term impact on the business and profitability of
the brand.
Have you read this book written by Adam Grant titled- Give and take: why helping others drives
our success? The client-vendor relationship must follow this guideline to reinvent their
motivation. We are all aware about the Just in Time (JIT) inventory concept which was
popularized by the Toyota Motor Company in late 60s/early 70s. What is the core philosophy of
JIT? The manufacturer will reduce cost of holding and storing inventory and the supplier will
assure quality of supply so that it can be taken on the production line as soon as it reaches the
manufacturing facility of the manufacturer. Would this have worked if the manufacturer would
not commit to a prompt payment cycle? Both need to give to get.
I am aware of a unique case study where a highly reputed blue-chip company in India had a
specialised business unit which used to manufacture machines for the tyre industry. These
machines were assembled by this machine manufacturer from supplies received from different
vendors. The timely delivery of the new machine to the tyre manufacturer was dependent on the
timely supplies by their vendor partners. Often, these vendors would delay in supply and the
machine manufacturer would falter in delivering on time and the late delivery penalty clause
would be enforced by the tyre manufacturers. The problem was solved when the manufacturer
created a transparent system of how the invoice of the vendor was getting processed in lieu of
the vendors sticking to their committed delivery schedules. JIT also works on transparent access
to the manufacturers data which is relevant to the supplier. Essentially, trust leads to
collaboration which leads to motivation. In the present scenario organisations need to think on
these lines to motivate their business associates and emerge winners.
In the last article I had mentioned about a new framework for business strategy which I wanted
to discuss in this week. However, to restrict the length of this article, I am postponing the same
to my next article which I will write on the third Friday of this month which is 19th. Till then,
remain motivated and motivate those who matter whether at work or home or society. There is
no substitute to human motivation to get things done.