Multi-level marketing or Multi-pain marketing?

There was a talk by the Amway MD on direct selling. Only one word could describe it- fabulous. It’s amazing how the industry interaction committee manages to bring in such speakers time after time. Hats off to you, folks!

The same couldn’t be said about the company. True, the direct-selling company has thrived for the past 46 years- no mean achievement. I believe it has done so because it has played on one unchanged aspect of humans- if there ever was one- greed.

I didn’t have an opportunity to see the Amway presentations that used to happen regularly in Chennai, but from whatever I heard; these people make such tall claims about compensation that you could drive only Merc and nothing else.

Is it that bad for a company to advertise itself to attract IBO- independent business agents? Not at all, and that’s not the aspect that I want to highlight anyway.

What else, then? Have you heard these hardcore investors talk? They somehow come to stock market the third minute of any conversation which will make you crawl for cover. Amway agents are worse. They start their propaganda first up, and won’t let you till they get an answer. They are the most hated people on earth; insurance agents come a distant second.

And how true are their claims? If you are aggressive, you may taste some success, but even if you do, what’s the point of making money on someone’s expense? And no profession unnerves such a lot of people to make a few bucks.

Amway products? My dad tried only one product- Amway car wash (a small bottle costs Rs.400). Dad was happy with the quality. But then Amway takes premium products to an extreme. My dad’s friend bought brand new Amway underwear with some special qualities which costs Rs.250. Without dwelling too much into the qualities, let me just add that his friend thought it was too costly to wear.

The concept is good- train some entrepreneurs who will be not just salespeople, but business partners who will get compensation based on not just their sales, but how many entrepreneurs they bring in. Unfortunately, it’s a perfect recipe for greed, generating multi-pain marketers.

What do you do in your free time?

Incredible, isn’t it? A fortnight ago, I would’ve never thought that I would get some free time. Thanks to mela for index, I’ve two days off. I’m not part of any team there, so there isn’t any task to do. I thought I’ll doze a couple of days off.

Ah, easier said than done. Why not write a short paper? There’s no point trying my hand at fin or mark one. I chose a strategy paper- its easier to fool around- I did. Strategies for the Indian pharma firms in the post-product patent regime. There’s no dearth of information- there’s FICCI, CII and Mckinsey reports. It took longer than I thought, 10 hours in all. It’s tough to do it single. I ended up with a headache and finger-burn.

The theme is simple. Indian firms can’t copy drugs anymore- euphemistically called applied research! They have to invest like hell in R&D in basic research- some of them already doing that. Cost arbitrage is a short term measure- there are opportunities. Pfizer and Merck are outsourcing manufacturing, part research and clinical trials to India. In future, when countries like China start developing their human capital, these opportunities will cease to exist.

The constraints for the Indian firms are the financial muscle of the big majors. Therefore the strategies like generics exports and others are but a means to achieve the end- put a new drug on the market, which no Indian firm has done till date. It is important not to lose sight of this long term goal.

I’ll be lucky to go to the next round- only five entries get through. But then, philosophically speaking, the effort can be as satisfying as the end.

Just another hit, or is it?

A manager of a distinguished petroleum company, the Indian oil corporation, blacklists a petrol pump for selling adulterated oil. The pump starts selling petrol on the sly, after a few days. When he tries to stop it, he gets five bullets on his chest. What if he happens to be my alumnus of 2003 batch? I’ve never heard of him, and, aren’t we used to murders?

The 27 year old Manjunathan happened to be one of the few bright spots of our country who dared fight our rotten system. A system controlled by corrupt officials-politicians-mafia nexus, a system which lacks transparency and accountability, a system which takes eons to punish offenders, a system people are so used to, that it fails to tickle them anymore than when Satyendra Dubey, an IIT engineer was killed by mafia when he whistle-blew the corruption in the national highway project an year ago. A system where there is no place for men of integrity, much less courage.

So what’s the purpose of more petitions or even a peace march which we are planning? Customary? Just to show that we are alive and kicking? I guess not.

There is only one alternative to this rotten system. We students, who will refuse to get brow-beaten by such acts, refuse to escape this by the time-immemorial-bushland offers, and strengthen our resolve to fight them. It’s no time for dejection, but action. Rest in peace, whoever you are.

What day comes after Saturday?

The mid term ends. After every paper I had said to myself ‘I’ll make up in the end term’. After all, I said a similar thing after my quizzes too, ‘I’ll make up in mid terms!’ Life goes on.

I don’t remember when I last had a Sunday. Last week it was placements, last to that was an extra classes, plus the mid terms eve, the only way I know its Sunday is when I get the appropriate newspaper supplement.

The mid term papers weren’t so bad; if it is; it’s bad for everyone, so relatively I’m not that bad off. (Whoa! The last line will qualify for PhD in verbosity! Blame my marketing and organizational design papers for that)

From this year CAT exam is going to get tougher. And number of seats in IIMs is being raised to 1400- which means still less than 1% of the 150000 entrants make it here. Hmmm... Sometimes life moves too fast to look back at your own achievements.

It’s been a while since I read anything worthwhile. Slow down your pace, life! Let me catch up.

Summer internship process

It’s finally over. What you see is a few IIMs getting placed in slot 0 with hefty packages. What you don’t is a majority who has to slog for 3 days flat out not knowing when it will get over, if it does. And a bunch of seniors who ran around satisfying weird needs of the obstinate HRs. Or for that matter, tons and tons of RG docs (resource generating documents) about the company. The last 3 days have taken a toll on everyone.

I screwed up a few interviews- one interviewer asked me what my group discussion topic was. I’d done close to 10 GDs that day, and had no clue what the topic was, and said as much. Another interviewer asked me, are you tired? It was 12 in the night, and I hadn’t slept for 18 hours, what do you think? I managed an artificial smile and asked him, aren’t you? You bet he was. He started telling me about how hard it was to shortlist 80 from 250 applications and do two rounds of interviews. Stop whining and get on. I managed to nod sympathetically.  How many process have you gone through till now?  I said around 8. He asked the name of the companies- I could recall around 4 or 5, but he pressed for all names, so I just took out the checklist I had from my coat pocket and read out. An embarrassed interviewer didn’t ask me, why our company!!!

Though around 70-80 companies came, only a small fraction shortlisted me, and I went through all the rounds of even smaller fraction. For three days I woke up at around 6 and went to bed as late as 1 in the night, only to wake up at 6 again. Damn it, I had no time to wash my socks. I thought, if worse came to worst, I would just take off my shoes in the GD and put everyone in a trance, and it would have been the elusive chemical weapon that Bush couldn’t find in Iraq!

Sounak was no better. The poor guy had calls right from day 0, and still managed to drag on the whole thing to day 4, and was even more tired and sick of the whole thing. He was sleeping before he was dragged to a couple of interview rooms, and I couldn’t imagine what he did there.

A few guys just broke down on the third day, after getting kicked out by one company after other. Some people tried to show that they didn’t care and went on watching Tom and Jerry shows, others porn, oblivious to the crowd there. I believe it’s another form, denial.

I managed to hang on to a company called DCM Shriram, an unglamorous fertilizer company for a rural marketing project. I’m glad it’s over; it may even be more interesting than I imagine, what the hell.

Get your dream company!

Some of us have been shortlisted, some waiting to be one. Here are some suggested answers to some clichéd questions…

Q. Why our company?

     Some of us are desperately waiting for a shortlist, and this one assumes the contrary. Don’t take slight at that. We can say something like ‘your company is 3 blocks away from my home in chennai’ or ‘you shortlisted me’, but that wouldn’t sound too smart, will it? Try something like, ‘I went through the vision and mission statements of a million companies, and tried to match with mine. You proved lucky!’

Q. Where do you like to be seen five years from now?

     Ah, if only I knew where I would be few days from now! You can say something like, ‘Be your boss’, but it wouldn’t get you anywhere. Try ‘I want to be the receptacle of ideas, paradigm of probity, and engine of growth, the piston of change, steering the people along’. It will make you sound smart, and if the company makes cars, who knows?

Q. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

     ‘I am a hopeless workaholic’ is one that’s been tried for years. But I tried this in my XLRI interview ‘I dream that I am the PM of this country and change its fortune’ for both my strength and weakness. Strength, as you dream big, weakness- you are disconnected with reality. Find something like this which will leave the interviewer confused.