Rajesh Patwardhan, Chief Marketing Officer, LIC Mutual Funds talks about the resistance that any kind of change to an existing system faces. He also throws light on the importance of breaking out of one’s comfort zone to excel in life.
BY RAJESH PATWARDHAN
Chief Marketing Officer, LIC Mutual Funds
I have noticed that whenever you try to change an existing system or practice, you are bound to face inertia or resistance. In spite of you overpowering it, you still achieve only selective change.
What is selective change? It means that if a person or group is subjected to change, they will project that they are in for change, but try and create a situation wherein only minimal change is possible. For instance, at the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), suppose a branch in-charge is told that he shouldn’t just get business out of the Regional Managers, but also get business from his own set of clients, the benefits of such an exercise having already been explained to him, he still does not want to come out of his inertia to own the clients. This aspect of owning clients has gained significance from the time the Indian financial markets underwent recession from 2012 to 2014, and this was profoundly noticed in multi-national financial companies, which continuously face the problem of head count approvals.
I believe that even if you climb the corporate ladder, the basic premise of you owning or catering to your set of clients who were instrumental in your success shouldn’t be ignored. Rather, we should always start factoring in those clients and categorize them as A,B,C. But invariably, the moment you start growing or get promoted, you start distancing yourselves from the market by undertaking more of a desk job and ignoring the skill which got you there in the first place.
Over the last decade, we have had a lot of young graduates or management graduates who do not want to opt for a career in sales, but take more desk job functions like IT, Research and Quality Control, etc., The reason is that sales is more hard work, requires more struggle and is a stressful job.
I can vouch for the fact that at the end of the day’s hard work, when you crack some big business, nothing compares with the sense of pride or satisfaction that you get in sales.
I believe that if a sales person follows some basic traits of business, i.e., judiciously doing a minimum of 5-6 sales calls, interacting and sharing knowledge or some market intelligence with your vendors or associates or business partners, offering him value which will enhance his business, etc., it will surely create customer delight and take him to greater heights.
If these basic traits are missing in a sales person, then it is time to cut the flab and get new talent which creates a wave in the system, and leads people to set new achievement targets.
Finally, there are a lot of examples from the animal world which inspire us. One bird which inspires me because of its perseverance and determination is the Kingfisher, which in order to make its nest inside the bark of a tree, keeps hitting the bark with its beak continuously until it makes a big hole to live in. If a salesman emulates this behaviour vis a vis interacting with his associates or direct clients, shedding his inertia, he is sure to win accolades and the trust of clients for his lifetime.
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r.patwardhan@licmf.com
