Sales walla - a short story

My attempt at a short story:

Sales walla

The Day hadn’t started well but then Mondays rarely did. Not that he had got much of a weekend anyways. In fact the whole of 2011 seemed to have gone by in such a rush! Sitting there in that noisy room full of people he couldn’t help but feel how much more he could have done! And how less he got paid! In fact his basic salary seemed like a joke. But as the ‘accounting’ guy had explained- incentivized pay was the way ahead and the variable package had seemed attractive!  He should never have caved in during the final negotiations five years back. Should have never agreed to the ‘rainmaker’ expectations that had been put forth in front of him! After all he had been doing well in his earlier role so why get into this?

Had life really gotten better working for Wizdom Corp? It seemed that he just kept moving from one meeting to another! Always trying to justify things to everyone and trying to keep one step ahead.

And his clients weren’t any better- if only they could understand the value-add that his products brought to them. Sometimes he thought this was just the struggle phase of his life! Facing tough customers, convincing the higher-ups, fighting the politics and still trying to find some time for the family despite the endless travel and meetings. Was it as bad for the managers and the VPs? The administrative guys? The accountants?  They always seemed to be putting up photos of holidays with the family- maybe he should have just become an auditor like his mother had told him to. But he had been seduced by the glamour of sales! That’s why he had joined this new institute that had opened near his college and got a sales certification. His buddies had laughed at him. Most of them were going off to do their masters in the ‘States’.  He remembered seeing them all off at the airport when they left wondering whether he should have done the same.

He still remembered his first ‘battle’ almost immediately after he had joined here. The entire sales team had given up and they seemed to be quite happy to put this hot potato in his lap. A large and regular customer was refusing to pay up as he was alleging major delays and mix-ups in deliveries and although the contract did not mention any discounts the customer was not ready to pay anything over fifty percent! The consignments had initially been delayed and then delivered to his office- that too during their investors meeting- instead of his factories and no one was ready to take responsibility for the goof-up. The GM-Sales did not know what to do and he seemed to have come in at just the ‘right’ time. He met the client seven times over the next month and in the last meeting in the client’s vintage Bentley, they had shaken hands! Not only was he able to get almost 90% of the invoice value but he also got a new order from the client which would take care of a healthy percentage of their next year’s target! That’s when Mr. Agarwal had really taken notice! Agarwal, the COO had been his biggest aggravation by far. He seemed to take a personal interest in ensuring that he got sleepless nights and making him feel responsible for any account or customer that did not work out.

Agarwal was still called ‘boss’ throughout most of the company- he had been around for most of the company’s existence- right from the time when the founder Mr. Dutt had recruited him as a sales executive! But for a couple of bad decisions a few years ago he was slated to be the next CEO but instead the board had decided to go look for ‘fresh talent’.  The exponential growth of the company did necessitate a more professional management and after Mr. Dutt’s demise they did seem to have lost a little direction.

Around the office he had once overheard someone say that the board wanted to bring another power centre into the company as they felt the COO had become too dominant. He tried not to get too engrossed with these stories- he liked to think that the COO and the rest of the top management were there by dint of hard work & intelligence and that everyone in the company had a shot at the top chair- that was why he had joined. So he always worked extra hard to please the COO (couldn’t hurt right), and his sales & marketing head Bose kept trying to help him out. Bose & he went back a long way- the two of them. It was hard to believe that Bose used to be this shy gangly teenager when they had met up in the sales certification course. Their ways had parted after that till one day they happened to meet up in a hotel lobby where as usual he had been waiting to meet a long-overdue client. Bose had mentioned about Wizdom and things had got rolling from there. He sure owed B big time for recommending him and he told him so even after 5 years but Bose kept saying that he wasn’t the one had eventually made the selection.

After that initial success with the goofed-up order, his workload had just seemed to grow exponentially! Tasks that he didn’t know existed had piled up on his desk! When his parents had come to visit him, they were alarmed at the amount of work that he was putting in and his father had even called up their family physician and arranged a check-up. He could understand that they could not quite get what he was after! His mom kept telling him that it was not the right way to live when he had to suffer so much just for sake of work! But even after so many years, he used to always tell his wife, he could never think of himself as anything other than a ‘sales walla!’ She probably understood though sometimes the incessant phone calls & crazy demands from his company drove her to the edge too.

He remembered a course he had done at Rishikesh few years back. The guruji had asked, what they wanted to feel when they were on their death-bed? The room had gone completely silent- that question still bothered him. Maybe this was not the right road not even the right journey.

He almost missed it when they called out his name though he had been informed by the event management team. His wife was suddenly hugging him- when had she got back from the minister’s wife’s party? He got up, gave his trademark salute and hurried up to the podium amidst applause to collect the “Rising CEO” award while reminding himself to thank all of his team in his acceptance speech.

testing

Can I write blogs on my bb and post them? Testing- this is how we non IT ppl test stuff

Friendship funnel

Here is an idea, lets think of a funnel, somewhat like the one used for pouring liquids and a little like the one used by sales for qualifying leads but with a few differences.
What flows through this funnel is time and what time which is the medium carries with it is new contacts or relations. Time of course flows at a constant rate but the particles i.e. the contacts it carries dont. Another difference is that this funnel has a number of nooks and corners all along its walls where the particles get lodged. Depending on how well we connect with them each particle behaves differently because this funnel is actually a relation or contact funnel- a 'friendship funnel'- cause it sounds more phonetic.
The time starts flowing through it right from the time we are born and so do the particles. A particle might move in different ways though. One particle might get caught at the very top of the funnel- in one of its crannies and then remain there till time stops flowing through this funnel- i.e. till we die. A second particle might move from a cranny at the top of the funnel to another towards the bottom of the funnel and finally get lodged at the very bottom of the funnel- this is the area that we would call our closest friends. A third particle might initially get lodged in one of the interstices and then over time flow out through the bottom. Some very rare particles might flow in and directly get caught at the very bottom.
Are we getting the idea here? Every funnel is essentially a sum of relationships that we build with our friends and all of our individual funnels are filled up differently. Knowing a person you could probably draw what his funnel looks like. For some it might look top heavy with a very few particles down till the bottom of the funnel whereas some might not have much at the top but might be quite filled in the middle and at the bottom.
At the risk of stretching this concept, we might even think that the size of the particles for each person might change over time or the size might be different to begin with.
I could go on but instead I would like help from those of you who are philosophically inclined or love to ideate to help me out. How does this concept develop?

The path

All of us set off on a path, a road. And at every exit someone took the left or right lane to his destinaton. These were the 'lucky' guys- the people who had 'arrived' or 'established' themselves. And slowly everyone took these exits till only you remained. And you felt the road never ended but finally when you had given up more times than you could remember, you finally reached not an exit but the end of the road.
And then, as you stood there and gazed around, you realized what you thought was a winding road with a lot of lanes and turnoffs was actually a path up a gigantic mountain and what you thought were turnoffs were actually path to small plateaus on the side of this massive rock. But this fact was revealed only to you because standing at the summit, you could now see the whole pictures and now the dots seemed to connect. Everything that happened to you seemed to now make sense....What do YOU think?
I am back guys and I seem to be a new person! Well...

Hate and Courage-the two opposite twins born to Fear

"Courage is not the absence of fear", someone has said. Fear however is the root of all problems. Fear has two reactions- one a short term knee-jerk reaction and another a long term reaction. Like most short term things, the instant reaction is short and non-sustainable. The long term (re)action on the other hand takes a longer time to start and give results. Hate is the short-term reaction and difficult to sustain which is why most terrorists at some point surrender or become mercenaries- no longer driven by hate but by habit and lack of options.

The long term answer is true courage-a positive emotion and one that is not really a reaction but more a state of being. "A courageous person does not need a terrorist to be courageous however a terrorist essentially breeds only in a pool of fear and terror" This reminds me of that incident about Abraham Lincoln. When he went to meet wounded soldiers from the confederate army in the hospital, a lady chided him saying that they were enemies who should be destroyed. To this, Lincoln's reply- an illustration of courage was: "Lady, do I not destroy them when I make them my friends?"

Courage however is difficult. It requires all those virtues that our parents tried to instill in us. It requires patience, perseverance and even a lot of forgiving. To quote Kipling from his poem 'If':

"If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating...."

I think that is what courage is about. Its about thinking things through, analysing the siutation without bias and then deciding on a course of action. Its about not letting others manipulate you into action often hasty and counter productive but working out a course of action which not only solves the problem but makes you stronger as a result!

Thus courage is not terror attacks by Hindus but a strengthening of our faith, beliefs and our ability to grow.

And most importantly it is most definitely NOT business as usual. In fact it is a systematic change not just in business but in lifestyle and principles.

Enough of the Mumbai Spirit!

Yah, enough of it cause Mumbai's indomitable spirit has been used and abused too many times now. Our ability to get back up on our feet and carry on has carrried on enough. Now I would like the politicians of this country (who somehow never figure in terror casualties.. even in the Parliament attack they were ironically spared) to take responsibility. Make every corporator, MLA, MP and minister accountable for the terror attacks that happen in their areas. Let's have a law which says that all the ruling politicians who have even a single terror attack in their constituency, automatically cannot stand for elections next time from anywhere! Impractical? Overreactive? Unfair. I don't care. Life hasn't been fair to Mumbaikars has it? Nor has it been fair to the understaffed, underpaid, under-equipped and overworked policeforce. Let these netas feel the heat for a change. Let's all question, not just the intelligence networks but the leaders we elect. Each and every one of them should be taken to task- made responsible. Lets terrorise the netas so that they do their job to serve and protect us
And let's not, at least this time make it business as usual!

What was HE thinking?

"The greatest irony of nature and the greatest tragedy of earth is that the only being capable of appreciating its beauty to the fullest is the only one with an unbelievable propensity to destroy it!"
That is an original quote and one that is really straight from my heart. Think about it, can any other being apart from man appreciate the beauty of a mighty mountain range nestled in clouds or wonder at the depths of the blue ocean as he sits on its shore? Can any animal spend hours on the banks of a river doing nothing and then come back feeling rejuvenated?
And yet it is this same organism that seeks to destroy this beauty. What could be the cause of this aberration?
Is it God's aberration? I know that a lot of scriptures talk about how the world and its bounty is God's gift to us. But does that mean we finish off the gift by consuming it or treasure it the way we would a flower or a card from a loved one? So this makes me think, was the creation of Man God's endgame or is it our colossal mistake (to think that way)?
I think with the pollution and the global warming increasing by the day, we might just find the answer to this sooner than we want!