Time for a new Indian Sales culture – from Bangalore?

Sales is the oldest (or second oldest?) profession known to humans. Sales process & the ecosystem of sales – sales culture – the way of doing sales – had been locally developed in the past. And now we borrow a lot from the centre of the business world – the United States of America.
It need not be so. We need to develop an uniquely Indian sales culture that defines us – plays with our strengths & acknowledges our weaknesses!

We need to define a new Indian sales culture now!

In India if you go back in time – we have had a traditional ‘haat’ – a marketplace selling culture – typically local markets selling locally. In the 1800s we had ‘British’ Calcutta ‘boxwallah’ culture defined by the tobacco company executives travelling all over in a country getting united by railways & mail. Distribution became all important.

In the 1950s it became New Delhi PSU culture – need to work through the license-permit raj & sales often being a function of getting a license for manufacturing.
Sales happened – but there was not much of a struggle. The waiting period for a car or a scooter used to run into years.
In the post 90s post license raj – companies got unshacked to grow. True competition emerged – product quality; distribution prowess & salesmanship – all started mattering for now. This era stands out FMCG Bombay sales culture – with the rise of Hindustan Levers, Asian Paints & their ilk. Also the rise of MNC technology firms selling to & now selling from India provided further impetus to a sales culture creation.

They created large sales teams – trained them well – and started practising scientific Western sales philosophies. Advertising in the era of mass market media become important.

Outbound cold calling started; companies created call centres & started using technology – though still not by a huge margin..
Each culture has been defined by a way of doing sales – and it ended up being identified with a particular city which was the headquarters city for a large number of companies in that era. Today with increased mobility companies are relocating to be nearer to locations where they have their customers or talent or funding sources.

We live in a technology first world with business models of all companies under threat from the Amazons, Facebooks, Ubers & Airbnbs. All companies are worried that a startup or a new competition is going to eat up their business using the power of scale, marketplace making, & dis-intermediation. Most of the large companies emerging in the last decade have new business models based on tech or are tech enabled heavily.
Geographically the centre of gravity has definitely shifted Southwards. With most of the large companies that have emerged – coming from the tech space – it but natural that the region that has the maximum concentration of tech companies gain in this.

The number of top homegrown companies grown out of nowhere from Bangalore is too many to count in one’s fingers – Infy, Wipro, Flipkart, Ola, Inmobi, Quikr, Mu Sigma, Mindtree, … Bangalore gets a large chunk of the tech and management talent – trying to make it big, creating jobs & dreams for everyone.
Now in our information, technology, & AI enabled era, we need to evolve a new sales culture – that takes a syncretic Indian sales culture but puts the local advantages at top. Here’s what we believe it should include:

1. A tech + innovation core that is always innovating & integrating – creating new solutions that fit customer needs and take the best of current & future technologies on offer. It is defined by understanding of basic sciences, its application & applying curiosity, tinkering & making new things.

2. Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India. You have to hand it off to the Kannada, South Indian culture – where we have created large companies at scale with integrity, simplicity, hard-work & humility + terrific quantitative skills – that has been the bedrock of this growth. The distinguishing feature of Bangalore based companies to my mind is – integrity – companies from here have scaled & become billion dollar babies – but without the whiff of skulduggery or gvt. license permit benefits or scandal – that has been the leitmotif of ( a few not all) large companies from other cities.

3. You need to take the process orientation & work ethics of Mumbai which still has the largest number of ET 500 companies and have the large companies humming with clockwork efficiency. Scaling is all about efficiency after you have been effective and Mumbai teaches valuable lessons in this regard.

4. We also need the extroversion, hustle, & josh of a Delhite. Not too much – but a certain amount of Dilli wali ‘rugged individualism’ – a ‘not taking no for an answer’ – within limits – is a must-have secret sauce for sales led growth.

5. We will also need the creativity & design skills from the East. Plus the ability to make 1 out of 0 – with very limited resources – coming from the traditional Marwari, Gujarat, & other biz. communities. And the sincerity & big dreams from everyone coming from small town India to put your pant to the seat and chase your dreams!