Now what I am going to narrate is a true story and not even a single word is fabricated. This happened with one of the retailers in Kanpur. A well known FMCG company was in the process of re-establishing one of its chocolate brands. A regional manager along with his subordinates went to the retailer who was not ready to take a single piece of that chocolate.
While the regional manager was sitting inside the car he asked his juniors to convince the retailer. They went to him one by one, trying to convince him to keep at least one carton of the chocolate. They gave him all sorts of offers; they didn’t even ask for payment at that point of time but all their efforts went in vain. Finally the regional manager came out and asked the retailer to accompany him to a nearby pan kiosk. He offered him a cigarette and then he said “meri pagdi aapke paairon mein hai bas do carton le lijiye”; for people who don’t understand hindi he said that “my prestige is at stake, please take at least two cartons”. The retailer was astonished at such behavior and he took two cartons from them. Later the regional manager scolded his juniors very badly and none of them were able to comprehend how he was able to convince the retailer.
The point I am trying to make here is the difference between the strategies we make in board rooms and how eccentric real world is. I do not agree that whatever he did was correct and effective but that’s what really happened. The bottom line is that while devising strategies one must understand the ground realities. The example may be weird but the real world is filled with far more weirder examples. The strategies may be developed by the people sitting at the top of the ladder but they are implemented at the bottom of the ladder and it is very important that the person sitting at the top knows how the bottom is really like.
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