Customer Scarervice: DTDC style

DTDC, “India’s Largest Domestic Delivery Network Company” that apparently serves more than 10,000 PIN code areas in India, has persuaded me to run away from it and embrace India Post. Let me tell you the story.

On May 23, 2012 I handed them a document to be delivered to a friend in Kannur town, Kerala. Frankly, I didn’t have great expectations. I thought they might deliver it only on May 26 although I had hoped for a May 25 delivery. But I had underestimated DTDC’s ability to hoard consignments without delivering them. 

DTDC’s Kannur office called my friend on May 28, informed her of the arrival of the consignment, and asked her to collect it from the office. As her house is in the heart of town, less than a kilometre from the DTDC office, she insisted on home delivery. The DTDC man said that they were not required to deliver it at her address because it was an ordinary consignment. In that case, she said, they were welcome to return it to the consignor. Finally, it was delivered to her around lunchtime on May 29.

I was thoroughly disappointed both by the inordinate delay and by the way they initially refused home delivery. I spoke to the Ahmedabad manager of DTDC. She didn’t find anything amiss because she said according to the contract, DTDC was not required to deliver it by any deadline. She wouldn’t give me the names or contact numbers of anyone in the corporate headquarters. She gave me an e-mail ID to which I could write what I wanted.

I immediately wrote. It’s three weeks now; they haven’t even acknowledged my e-mail.

In the meanwhile I went through the barely legible small print on the reverse side of the consignment note I got from DTDC. The local manager was absolutely right. The company doesn’t take any responsibility whatsoever for the consignment you hand them. The risk is entirely yours. There is no explicit promise to deliver it. If they admitted that they lost your uninsured consignment, they would give you a maximum of Rs 100 in compensation.

Many companies frame their contracts in such one-sided manner to fight possible litigation from a strong platform. But the implicit promise is quite different. But the DTDC manager retreated quickly into the safety of the lack of any explicit promise.

When India Post delivers unregistered articles in five days, why should I pay DTDC three or four times the postage for this kind of treatment?

It was therefore pretty easy for DTDC to persuade me to jump into India Post’s arms. Incidentally, my friend’s reply, sent by registered post (not speedpost), reached me on the fourth day. 

Photo Credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Don’t Bluff!

In the last post, “Cheap Viagra, summer internship,” I talked about the way many bright students fail miserably to persuade professors to hire them as summer interns. Let me follow it up with the text of an exchange I had with an IIT student. All names except mine have been masked. Apart from this, the text is reproduced without any editorial changes.

(1) Original email from the student

Subject: Application for Internship

Dear Mr. Monippally,
     I am writing to you to explore the possibility of summer internship in your esteemed university during May-July 200x.

     My name is Raghupati Mishra. I am a Second year undergraduate student in the Dual Degree Program (Btech + Mtech) in Mechanical Engineering Department(specialization in Thermal and Fluids engineering) at the Indian Institute of Technology XXX, India.

     Having visited your personal homepage and gone through your research interests, I am really motivated and would consider myself fortunate if I get an opportunity to work under a distinguished scholar like you.

      I am very motivated to involve myself in Management field. I have  sufficient lab exposure--academic as well as optional as summer project--I have comppleted many managerial porjects related to marketing and management. I completed my project of data collection of NTSE students and convencing them to join [a coaching centre] for the preparation of IIT-jee for thier safe future under Mr. XXX. (Director of the coaching centre, Kota). I am also presetly working as a project manager and central co-ordinator for the conduction of zzz (a project under Mr. yyy,Director of Acme, Kota).

     I am also proficient in MS Office(Softwares) and Programming language C++, and can work in both Windows and Linux platforms. I am learning MATLAB to have some additional software knowledge.

     Kindly spare some time to consider my credentials and evaluate my chances of acquiring a summer trainee position under your able guidance. I have written a brief resume below for your appraisal. If any further information is required, I would be glad to furnish the same.

Thank you for reading.
Regards,

Raghupati Mishra
II year undergraduate,
Mechanical department,
IITX

                  CURRICULUM VITAE

[An impressive CV, copied in the body of the mail and attached as a Word file.]

(2)  My response to 1

Raghupati 

My advice: Don't bluff. 

Best wishes 

RN Saxena

(3) The student’s response to 2

Dear Monippally,

Actually i didn't got you while mentioning it as bluff. I am working since last two years at so much hard level, just to build up mine resume and if somebody calls it as bluff's, it really hurts me a lot.

First of all i will love to mention that i am making mine website(its under construction:- http://www.me.iitx.ac.in/~raghupati    please please please visit it before commenting some other words about me), their i would be uploading all the certificates which i received while working on these projects, i did since last 2 years as a proof.

Actually I am from such a family, that my father don't even had money  for my graduation. My father had taken loan form bank on mine studies, in short i knows what are my dreams and who i am right now. Case was this that before coming to IIT i had'nt touched computer before but then i started to exploring myself, and started devloping such qualities within myself. Now the situation is this that my hostel   council decided that i should start working as a comp. secy. of my hostel. because they thought i was quite much known about computer stuffs.

I am asking for a project in winter(dec.) not for summer(june and july) because i dont want to waste my 1 month like others use to do. My life is full of struggle. I am sorry to say you that if you don't want to give me a project then please dont give me that but please don't say such words that would effect someone feelings.

Last but not the least, i would be greatfull to yours if your will mention me that while reading which line u fealed that mine resume was bluff.

Thanking you,
Raghupati Mishra, Mechanical department, IIT XXX

(4) My Response to 3

Raghupati

When I asked you not to bluff, I wasn't referring to your CV at all. I didn't read it. I didn't want to go on to the CV because when I came to the following claim in your mail, I realized you were bluffing:

"Having visited your personal homepage and gone through your research interests, I am really motivated and would consider myself fortunate if I get an opportunity to work under a distinguished scholar like you."

There was no sign at all in your mail of your having visited my personal homepage to check out my research interests. If at all you clicked on the link, you appear to have done it just to be able to say that you visited the home page.

I could have just deleted your mail. I decided to send you a one-liner in your own interest. There may be professors here who are working on areas that interest you and might offer you an internship. Don't spoil your chances of such a project by this kind of pseudo-customization.

Best wishes

MMM

(5) The student’s response 4

Dear Monippally,

It may be my fault that while mailing i decided to keep the cover letter to be same for everyone. So sorry for that, but i would appreciate that your reason was very logical.
Last but not the least, thanks for your best wishes.

Thanking you,
Raghupati Mishra,
Mechanical Department,
IIT XXX,

Image from http://www.istockphoto.com

The urban mind

I’d heard a lot about Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, but never been to that place although it is just about 100 km from Ahmedabad. My wife and I drove there recently along with a friend of ours from Mumbai, who was spending a weekend with us.  We were interested in seeing the wild asses, which are apparently found only in Little Rann. We also wanted to see salt production.

We reached Kharaghoda, our destination, without any difficulty.

We stopped the car at the first place where we saw huge mounds of salt. Workers were transferring the salt into polythene bags. We approached them and asked them many questions about salt-making. When we learned that the salt fields were about 15 km away, we asked them for directions. One of them, Parimal, who appeared to be their supervisor, said it wasn’t a good idea to venture into the Rann without a guide. Beyond Kharaghoda there are plenty of tracks but no roads nor signposts. We had also read about the need for a guide to navigate the Rann.

We decided to hire a guide and asked Parimal where we could find one. He said he didn’t know of anyone. Seeing the look of disappointment on our faces, he offered to go with us. We welcomed it readily. But I didn’t want to engage his services without settling the price in advance. Suppose he demanded an atrocious amount on our way back? So I asked him how much he would charge. He smiled and said he didn’t expect any payment.

As we were walking to the car, my wife pulled me aside and said quietly that it wasn’t a good idea to take that guy as a guide. We don’t know anything about him. Suppose he attacked us with or without the help of his men in the desert? Weren’t we walking into a trap? Why don’t we just go as far as the road takes us, and walk about a bit on our own, and return? I reassured her somewhat lamely that we would be safe because there were three of us. I didn’t suspect any foul play. After all, he didn’t offer his services until we asked. And this was not a place like a bus stand or a railway station where cheats target strangers.

As we approached the car and opened the door for Parimal, one of his associates also got in. My wife was even more worried now. I was also somewhat shaken.  But I didn’t stop him. Somehow I said to myself that there were three of us against the two ‘guides.’ Moreover, it was morning.

Once we reached the end of the road and entered the desert, we realised how difficult it would be for someone unfamiliar with the tracks there to get anywhere and more importantly to get back to Kharaghoda.

The two men turned out to be excellent guides and hosts. On our way back they invited us to their Seth’s factory where we observed how salt was being washed, crushed, iodised, and packed. They also offered us several packets of salt with their compliments. We wanted to thank them and return to Ahmedabad but they wouldn’t let us leave without taking tea with them. They sent a boy on a motorbike to a tea shop two kilometres away to bring us tea.

***          ***          ***

As I look back at the morning’s experience, I feel ashamed of myself. What is wrong with my urban mind? Why do I look at every stranger with suspicion? At the same time, I ask myself if we weren’t foolish in accepting a total stranger’s offer. If he had any evil intentions, we would be sitting ducks in the middle of the desert although there were three of us. Were we just lucky? I am confused. 

The Mullaperiyar Persuasion Challenge

The 116-year-old Mullaperiyar Dam in the Idukki district of Kerala is an extraordinary feat of engineering. It is also a symbol of human ingenuity, grit, and passion. It was built in the late nineteenth century after several attempts, dating from the late eighteenth century, were abandoned as unworkable. That nearly 500 workers died of malaria during the construction of the dam (1887-95) shows the hostile environment in which the engineering feat was achieved. It made a big difference to the people of the arid Madurai region of Madras Presidency who had been starving for water. They cannot imagine life without water from Periyar.

This wonderful dam has been problematic right from the beginning. According to the Wikipedia account, it took the British who built the dam and the Maharajah of Travancore who owned the land twenty-four years of negotiations before a 999 year-lease was signed. It is alleged that it was an unfair agreement foisted on the Maharajah. We don’t know the true story.

What we do know is that that this great great human achievement  is at the heart of a complex issue with legal, technical, political, and emotional dimensions. The damn shows signs of ageing. After a few mild earthquakes in the region, people in Kerala believe it cannot withstand a big earthquake. Engineers and experts in Tamil Nadu maintaining the dam are certain that it is good enough to withstand any quake that the region is likely to experience and are willing to strengthen it. Kerala wants to decommission it and build a new quake-proof one using modern technology; Tamil Nadu is worried that this is a ploy to wrest control of water and eventually deny it. Neither side trusts the other. The intermingling of the threat to the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people in Tamil Nadu and a potential disaster awaiting several thousand people downstream in Kerala makes it a complex issue.

Short-sighted politicians on both sides of the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border have made this issue knottier. Every day it is getting knottier. New fires are coming up in both the states, whose economies depend vitally on each other.  When Tamilians get beaten up in Kerala and Malayalee shops in Chennai get vandalised, the chances of an amicable solution virtually evaporate. 

There are no simple solutions to this complex problem. I believe a reframing of the issue is essential to bring both sides to a stage where a fair solution can be worked out.  I will give my views in a future post. In the meanwhile, I’m asking students of my course, Persuasive Communication, to study it as persuasion challenge and come out with a blueprint for a solution.

Readers, would you like to contribute your thoughts? Please don’t take a partisan view. There are plenty of people who have taken it on both sides of the border. What we need is a solution that has a reasonably good chance of being accepted by people of both the states. That can happen only through persuasion.

Photo credit: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullaperiyar_Dam

If I were Urmila...

This post is based on last week’s Sweet vine, bitter berries.

What would I do if I were Urmila? I asked myself this question several times. Every time I came up with the same answer. I would do exactly as she did until the doctor said, “Now you’re in my hands.”

We know nothing about the background of either the doctor or of Urmila other than the bare facts in the story. What is obvious is that she wasn’t looking out for any sexual adventure. If she was, the doctor wouldn’t be drugging her and making her do things she wouldn’t when conscious.

As one of the readers says, this is a story of deception. But deception is the finest form of persuasion. The problem is with the objectives. The techniques are the same. It’s worth identifying them so that we can adopt them for ethically acceptable objectives.

I see two faces of the doctor. He is a great persuader until Urmila takes the juice at his accomplice’s place. From that moment on he is a beastly criminal. He uses coercion including blackmailing, not persuasion or seduction, to make Urmila do his bidding. It is despicable to shoot a deer in a cage. And I hope the law catches up with him in spite of his obvious influence in high places including the judiciary.

What we will examine is why Urmila so readily accepted his offers and suggestions. Why was he so persuasive? The simple answer is that he earned her complete trust. As Aristotle says, of all the persuasion factors, the persuader’s credibility is the most important one. This is because once we trust someone, they can persuade us to do virtually anything. Our conscious mind, which is rational and critical, happily steps back and relaxes once it is reassured by trust.

Life would be terrible if we suspected that everyone around us was out to cheat us or take advantage of us. We want to trust people around us because that is when we feel at home. 

What are the factors that helped the doctor get Urmila’s complete trust? He was a prominent doctor working for the Chief Justice.  He belonged to her cast and village. But more than anything else, he was not in a hurry in a way that would alert her antennae. He met her occasionally, and offered her a ride home occasionally. It is almost as if he was not going out of his way but just being nice to a person from his circle. I assume that he avoided any kind of sexual innuendos when he talked to her.

On its own, none of these factors would create total trust. But when they came together they were deadly. If I were Urmila I wouldn’t sense any danger whatsoever because he built up his credibility bit by bit over a few weeks.

What do we learn from this? We are often not persuasive because we don’t build up our credibility. We don’t do enough to earn the trust of people around us, especially subordinates, through our actions over time. We delude ourselves into thinking that we are credible and rely too heavily on the power of the position we hold.

Photo credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Sweet vine, bitter berries

Today let me retell a true story that Mallika Sarabhai brought to our notice last Sunday (“Where can this woman be safe?” DNA Ahmedabad edition, October 30, 2011, page 4).

Urmila (not her real name), a married woman with a young  son, was working in the HR department a prestigious teaching hospital in Ahmedabad. She was happy with her work. Everything was going well for her.

At work she bumped into a doctor who worked for the Chief Justice of Gujarat. He was not only from her caste but also from her village. The occasional chat with him gave her joy in the otherwise sombre atmosphere of the hospital. Soon the doctor friend would often come around at the end of the work day and offer her a ride home. She had no hesitation in accepting this favour. They could chat on the drive home. Once in a while they would stop on the way for an ice cream. This was beautiful. Urmila was grateful for his warmth and selfless friendship.

One evening the doctor offered a ride as usual, but asked her whether she would mind if he stopped at a friend’s place for a few minutes to drop off something. Of course she didn’t mind. The doctor’s friend, a man, opened the door and invited them in. He gave her a glass of juice and asked her to make herself comfortable in the sitting room while the two men went in to another room for a discussion.

Urmila doesn’t recall anything that happened in that house after that. By the time she was dropped off outside her house a few hours later, she had just woken up from a deep sleep. She found it strange but said nothing about it to anyone.

The following day the doctor friend met her at work as usual and said that he had a surprise for her. She was eager to know what it was. He whipped out his cellphone and showed her a picture. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She looked again. The picture showed her performing oral sex on him. “Now you are in my hands,” gloated the doctor.

Urmila felt sick, violated, frightened. Somehow she got home. She stayed in bed for several days. Her husband and son were puzzled but had no clue.

The doctor friend called Urmila one morning and asked her to get back to the hospital and to ‘service’ a friend of his. She obliged.  She felt she had no choice. This went on for a few months. Then she quit the job.

Finally she picked up enough courage to bring together her family and close friends. She told them what happened. They were horrified but sympathetic. They decided to approach the police and to lodge a formal complaint.

You can read the rest of the story – the denial of justice – in Mallika Sarbahai’s column. I would like to focus on how deftly the doctor used persuasion techniques for his admittedly evil plans.

Readers, would you like to write in your comments and analysis? I’ll give my views in next week’s post.

Photo credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

The Fall of Two Walls

If the arrest on May 14 of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the then IMF chief, from aboard an Air France flight about to take off from New York was dramatic, the crumbling of the case against him even before the trial has started is no less dramatic. Both of them revolve around the issue of credibility.

Every day, hundreds of men are arrested in different parts of the world for sexual assault of different degrees. It is, unfortunately, as common as petty theft. When DSK was arrested, however, a global gasp went up. A large number of people who had no access to any evidence other than what was reported in newspapers and on news channels felt that we should accept DSK’s claim about innocence because a rich and powerful man like him, who can get whatever service he wants, would not force himself on a housekeeper in a hotel. The New York police shouldn’t have arrested a man of his eminence on the basis of the testimony of an immigrant worker.

The assumption underlying these sentiments is that rich and powerful people are credible while poor and undereducated people are not. There is a thick wall of credibility shielding the rich and the powerful from serious scrutiny. This apparently is one of the perks of high office or of ‘noble’ birth.

That wall around DSK crumbled on May 14 because the New York police had enough forensic evidence, gathered from the Sofitel hotel room, to take the housekeeper’s allegation of forced sex seriously. Otherwise they wouldn’t have arrested the high-profile accused.

Was the encounter consensual or forced? No one knows apart from DSK and the housekeeper. I will not rush to judge, as I have mentioned in an earlier post, Guilty?

What is interesting for me is the way the wall around the housekeeper is crumbling now. That was a wall of evidence. It is the strength of evidence that gave her the shield of credibility.

That wall is now crumbling not because of any flaw in the original evidence collected by the New York police but because of revelations about the housekeeper. She had lied to the immigration authorities to get asylum in the US. A man jailed in the US had put $100,000 into her bank account during the last couple of years. She was also caught speaking to that man, still in jail, a couple of days after DSK’s arrest about possible financial gains from the case.

It is no longer the stereotype of a poor immigrant woman having no credibility but an accuser who may not be trusted to tell the truth. Of course that some of her actions are questionable does not entitle anyone to force himself on her. But it will be difficult to prove, with hard evidence, whether the encounter she had with DSK in the Sofitel hotel room was consensual or forced.

While even the thickest wall of credibility will crumble against hard evidence, as Rajat Gupta of McKinsey and Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group discovered recently, in all other contexts it acts as a wonderful platform for staging persuasion acts. This credibility should ideally be something that we build and strengthen over a lifetime rather than something that the position we occupy in an organisation bestows on us.

How to Get the Better of Your Boss

The following post appeared in The Economic Times Corporate Dossier of April 8, 2011 under the title, ‘Get the better of the boss.’ http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/corporate-dossier/get-the-better-of-the-boss/articleshow/7904690.cms?curpg=1

This is a launch that many of us abort even before we start the countdown. We convince ourselves that we don’t have the wherewithal to steer the relationship with the boss to our advantage. Bosses seem to have everything loaded in their favour. They have the might of the organisation in their muscles. However repugnant their behaviour, they always attract a few invertebrates who can bend, curl, and crawl with ease.  Because of their position they also have connections with other powerful people elsewhere. Bosses can block our exit points or smoke us out, whichever they fancy.

Our despair is well founded. We are like Sania Mirza trying to stand up to Serena Williams. We have the good wishes of kind spectators. Underdogs always do. Unfortunately, that doesn’t alter the outcome.

The simple, painful truth is that we can’t persuade the boss if we have no power.  We may have the support of logic and evidence, but she can dismiss our pleas with a disdainful wave of her hand because she knows that she can do without us. We are as dispensable as paper plates.  

There are three ways in which people generally respond to this unequal power distribution.  They may sell their souls cheap and butter the boss up. Or they may grit their teeth, blame their sins in their previous birth, and work like galley slaves feeding largely on dreams of future glory.  Or they may gang up and stand up to the bully.

The first way is disgusting, demeaning. Certainly when others indulge in it! But there are always successful nobodies specializing in flattery and driving BMWs.

We see examples of the other two approaches playing out in the Arab world. People put up with horrible dictators for years, absolutely convinced that there is no way to dislodge them; then, the same ordinary folks band together and oust their lords and masters.  Trade unions among workers and ‘associations’ among professionals are the corporate counterparts of such coalitions.  You can easily break any number of twigs, but not a bunch of twigs, as the wise old man in the fable demonstrated to his squabbling children.

Coalitions of the weak against their boss are effective, but often lead to violence, even bloodshed. The stronger party prevails. The risk for subordinates in such a standoff is that a fearsome coalition may disintegrate when least expected. The boss may buy off some of the key members and smash the coalition’s legs. After all ‘divide and rule’ is one of the oldest and foolproof recipes of tyrants down centuries. It is as effective in a small company as in a vast empire.

Is there a better way? There is. It is to build up your personal power around the contribution you make to the organization. Your contribution should be such that the boss depends on it and would hesitate to do anything that might jeopardise it.  You don’t need to flaunt it or threaten to withdraw it. That would be gross. It would also be foolish because threats (such as waving a resignation letter) may not work the way you anticipate. If you hold your boss against the wall, he may crack. But don’t be surprised if you provoke him to such a degree that he blurts out, “Okay, get the hell out of this place.” Your departure will hurt him, but it will hurt you too because you lose when you walk out.

Any threat has to be subtle and unstated.  An implied threat is far more powerful than a declared threat. If, for whatever reason, the boss doesn’t take the declared threat seriously, you will have to carry out the threat or lose face and lose any little hold you’ve had over him. That would be like a kidnapper killing the hostage. The moment the hostage is dead, the kidnapper’s power deserts him. His power comes from others’ uncertainty about what he might do.

The two lead actors in the popular American TV drama, ‘New York Undercover’ are said to have demanded that its writer-producer, Dick Wolf, give them a big raise. When he refused, they boycotted the set to pressure him. Apparently they had been inspired by the six stars in the fabulously successful ‘Friends,’ who had stuck together and renegotiated their salaries. The ‘New York Undercover’ leads, however, had vastly overestimated their power. When the boycott stared him in the face, Dick Wolf announced to reporters:  "We're holding auditions for replacements. If the guys don't show up Monday morning, we've got a new script in place. And it starts with a double funeral." The guys did show up sheepishly.  If Wolf offered them a raise later, it was out of pity, not out of respect.

Personal power is soft, unobtrusive. At its finest, it is somewhat like the influence a child has over her parents and grandparents. They dare not do anything that would risk losing her or her affection.

The Importance of Being the Mahatma

Was Mohandas K Gandhi a bisexual? Did he have a homosexual relationship with Hermann Kallenbach, the German-Jewish bodybuilder, who gifted him land to set up an ashram near Johannesburg in the first decade of the twentieth century and lived with him for a couple of years?

I don’t know.

There has been widespread outrage in India and in other countries at the suggestion in Joseph Lelyveld’s just released book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India (Knopf), that Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach were not just close friends but lovers. According to newspaper reports there is also the suggestion that it is for Kallenbach that Gandhi left Kasturba in 1908. The Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily has announced that the Central government was considering banning the book. The government of Gujarat has already banned it because “the writer has portrayed the life of Mahatma Gandhi with a very perverted and despicable mindset, and, as a result of it, the feelings of knowledgeable people have been hurt.”

Gandhi’s sexuality has been studied by others also, but this is the first time that anyone has suggested that he was bisexual. What is the evidence?

According to Daniel Bates of Daily Mail (March 28, 2011), Lelyveld has reproduced a few excerpts from Gandhi’s letters to Kallenbach. Here are a couple of them: "How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance."  "Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom. The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed."

We don’t know if these letters have been newly discovered by Lelyveld. If they have been available along with thousands of other pieces that Gandhi wrote, it is surprising that these letters did not catch anyone’s attention so far. Assuming that these are genuine letters, how do we interpret those excerpts? Is homosexuality the only interpretation?

What interests me is the response the book (more precisely the report about it in Daily Mail and MailOnline) has generated. The majority of the 140 international reader responses in MailOnline criticize Lelyveld. Mostl responses in Indian newspapers accuse Lelyveld of cheap sensationalisation to sell the book.

DNA of March 29 reports that Jad Adams, who wrote extensively about Gandhi’s sexual life in his recent book Gandhi - Naked Ambitions, rejects Lelyveld’s interpretation. He says: "If Gandhi committed acts of homosexuality, there would be ample evidence, either justifying them or expressing shame for them."

There is a thick firewall around Gandhi, a wall that consists of his enduring reputation. It is so powerful that a government bans the book even without reading it and finding out if there is any evidence to support the author’s unwelcome inferences. It is as though that wouldn’t be necessary because there couldn’t be any credible evidence in the Mahatma’s case. Would you want to waste your time to check if someone told you that he saw a cow eating a sheep? 

What your words mean depends on who you are. The persuasive power that your promises carry derives from your reputation, that is, the way you are perceived by your targets. It pays to build a good reputation. What you consider evidence may be rubbished by others if isn’t sustained by your reputation.

***     ***     ***

Note: My post, The House that Sandweip Built (2) will appear next week.

The House That Sandweip Built (1)

Here is an account of a persuasion attempt by Sandweip Banerje, who was a senior sales manager with the Indian arm of a multinational pharmaceutical company. For obvious reasons I have changed all the relevant names (except Sandweip’s) and cooked up a name for the drug to mask identities.

A few years ago, we got to know that two Indian companies were about to launch a generic substitute for our major blockbuster antibiotic, Xolzyn, at a fraction of our price. After a lot of brainstorming we chose the strategy of ‘Stock & Block’ to counter them. We would get our major accounts to stock up on Xolzyn in such a way that they would not consider buying our competitors’ cheaper substitute for five or six months even for poor patients. We expected that our rivals would be demoralized and might even withdraw their product when they found themselves unable to penetrate the market in the first few months of the launch.

I was in charge of the campaign. In my city there was a big hospital whose 20 trustees were all leading businessman. I approached the hospital’s chief purchasing officer Mr Gokhale.  I knew him very well and had been dealing with him all along. The challenge now was to persuade him to place a single order that was large enough to stop him from ordering an alternative or supplement in the next five to six months.

Here is how I presented my proposal to him.

Sir, we’re in a bit of a bind. Because of a communication gap on our part, a large consignment (160,000 vials) of our antibiotic Xolzyn has landed in Mumbai from Europe. The monthly consumption of Xolzyn in the whole of India is just 20,000 vials. So we will have to return at least half the consignment. But returning it is not a real option because of the terrible costs and hassles involved. The whole episode has been a huge embarrassment for us because our headquarters has actually been discouraging the export of these vials to India where it is selling at one fourth of the global price.

Considering all the problems, we’ve decided not to return the consignment. Instead, we thought we would give our most valuable clients like you a special one-time offer. Here is our offer:

We supply 12,000 vials of Xolzyn at one go in response to a single order from you. But you’ll pay only for 2000 vials a month, your average monthly consumption. You can give us six post-dated cheques, one for each month. Thus you pay only after the patients have paid for the medicine during the month. In other words, your investment is nil. On top of this, we will give you a discount of Rs 100 per vial on the existing rate.

Even if the entire stock is not used up in six months as anticipated, there is no problem because the expiry date is four years from now.

And as you are saving us from a major embarrassment, we shall make one more special offer. If you certify on your letterhead that a particular patient is extremely poor and in need of Xolzyn but is unable to afford it, we will supply a few vials free on compassionate grounds.

Mr Gokhale appeared delighted, but because the total bill would come to almost Rs 4 million, he said he would need to get the managing committee’s approval. He presented the proposal to the managing committee. I was called in. As they were all big businessmen and knew finance better than me, I decided to talk about the benefit of the product using liberal doses of medical terminology. I managed to talk on and on using up all the time and leaving little room for any questions.

It worked. I bagged the order - the single largest order for a single drug. I understand that the record stands even today.

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Here is a brilliant piece of persuasion strategy. It appears to be a win-win deal for both Sandweip and the hospital. Sandweip clothed his offer in such a way that no sensible hospital managers would reject it because they had plenty to gain and nothing to lose.

What do you think of this? Is the house that Sandweip built standing rock or on sand? Let me have your views. I’ll give mine in the next post.

Incidentally, you might be interested in reading my recent post, The man who didn’t have to try too hard, in the Random House blog, Random Reads. It is on deceptive persuasion. But if you have come to PersuasiveManager from Random Reads, please ignore it. 

Seller Beware!

Yesterday evening I stepped into my neighbourhood bakery to pick up a loaf of wholemeal bread. As the sales assistant reached for one of the few loaves on the top shelf, I asked him, “Are they from today’s supplies?”  He said “yes” without any hesitation whatsoever and put a loaf on the counter. I squeezed it gently to check if it was soft and peered at the use-by-date label. Watching all this from another part of the small shop, the owner called out to the sales assistant, “Give him one from the lower shelf.” He knew that I always insisted on freshly baked bread.

The loaf that the sales assistant had picked up for me was not from yesterday’s supply. It had been baked the previous day. I felt angry at being lied to. I asked the owner why his assistant told me such a blatant lie.  He said the boy made a mistake because was new. The boy was indeed new (I had never seen him in the shop before), but I guess he did what he did because the owner had asked him to clear the previous day’s stock before starting the day’s stock, not because he didn’t know which stock was fresh and which the previous day’s.

Was my expectation unreasonable? Was I being unrealistic?

I tried hard to look at the event from the baker’s perspective. Just because freshly baked bread has arrived, he cannot afford to throw away the old loaves, which are good for two more days. How can he sell bread at reasonable, competitive rates if every customer insisted on freshly baked bread? It isn’t as though he is trying to palm off stale bread after the sell-by-date. And isn’t this what every food shop does?

All this is right, but it appears to me that what the shop did was foolish. Although the owner tried to hide behind the raw sales assistant, my trust has been broken. I will still go into the bakery, because it is conveniently located, and I get excellent wholemeal bread there. But from now on I will be checking the date label carefully before buying. I will not trust the shopkeeper. I would probably avoid the bakery if I had a reasonably convenient alternative.

Often we lie when we think that it doesn’t cause any one any major problem. We find lies useful to satisfy others who ask inconvenient questions. The ‘others’ often include members of our family and members of our team.

The trouble with lying, however, is that others will stop trusting us when they find out the truth. Once we spoil our record, they will not believe us even when we tell the truth. They will not accept the evidence we present; they may suspect foul play if they can’t point out exactly what is wrong with it.

One of the main reasons why many managers are unable to get the buy-in of their workers and workers’ unions is lack of credibility. The workers just don’t trust the management. The relationship becomes adversarial. They are not expected to trust their enemy. Everyone loses out in the process.

Being trustworthy is being persuasive.

Seller beware!

What would you have done if you were the owner of the bakery in my neighbourhood?