Mr. Stephen Hibberd Regional Director - Asia Grass Roots Group

Are You Being Sold’ is an unprecedented study about the performance and behaviour of IT hardware and software as well as consumer durable resellers in seven countries across Asia Pacific namely India, Singapore, China, Australia, Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia. Usually, brands do not have direct interaction with the customer and therefore rely heavily on the distribution channel to sell their products. Yet the sales staff, who often influence the decision-making process around purchase, have less specific interaction with the brand, and therefore are least utilised to drive growth. The ‘Are You Being Sold’ Study was commissioned by performance improvement solutions provider Grass Roots Group so as to understand how effectively a particular product, be it a laptop, printer, television or software, is being sold by various multi-brand retail outlets.

14 multinational brands were researched across the region with the help of 1400 mystery shoppers and the performance of the sales staff was judged on the basis of the complete shopping experience, including a salesperson’s response time, product knowledge and attempts to close a sale. The results of the Study indicate that IT and consumer electronic brands across Asia Pacific are losing millions annually due to inadequate capabilities of the frontline sales people at the reseller stores. Grass Roots estimates that in India the brands might be losing as much as Rs.84 lac per annum per store in terms of missed sales opportunities.

In the survey, Australia and China emerge out as leaders in most of the categories with Thailand not far behind. However, a particular shortcoming that has been observed across the region, particularly in India, Singapore and Thailand, is the inability of the salespersons to close a deal. Merely 43% salespeople in India made an attempt to close the deal and a majority of mystery shoppers were not even asked if they wished to purchase the product.

India also lagged behind business competitor China by a huge margin in most of the categories. Only 19% of Indian sales staff made an attempt at up-selling as against 40% in China. These statistics are sure to have alarming implications for those industries which depend on channel partners such as distributors, resellers, franchisees or third party intermediaries for sales.

Each mystery shopper was asked to assess the channel partners primarily on the following parameters:

• First Impressions
• Greeting
• Establishing the need of the customer
• Meeting the need of the customer
• Closing the deal
• Overall Sales Effectiveness

Overall, India performed weakly when compared to its regional counterparts. Following are a few observations:

First Impressions: Brand prominence and a customer who feels they are in a well-designed, clean and professional store both play a significant role in gaining a favourable first impression. In this category, India scored 9% lower than the regional average and 17% lower than China. Stores were less clean; there was less Assigned Brand signage; fewer models on display; and less instances of Brand clothing being worn. When it came to the availability of the display models for researched brands, one in two cases in India weren't having any.

Greeting: How a customer is “greeted” sets the foundation for the potential buyer-seller relationship. India’s robust retail culture strongly plays out when measured on the ability to greet the customer. Salespeople have scored a higher than average rating in terms of the proportion of customers being served immediately. However, about a third of shoppers had to ask for assistance which is not a good sign for the resellers as unhappy customers would not hesitate to look for better services elsewhere in the highly competitive retail industry.

Establishing Customer Need: Listening to the customer’s needs, without interruption, followed by asking open-ended questions which prompt further discussion, enables the relationship between customer and sales person to build and moves the customer into a “purchasing” frame of mind. Although 95% of Indian salespeople listened carefully to the customer, they negated this by scoring only 41% in establishing customer needs by asking the right questions. Huge opportunity exists for sales people to be better equipped in understanding customers’ requirements based on previous brand experience, budget limitations, intention of use and timing of purchase.

Meeting Customer Needs: Having scored 81%, the product knowledge of Indian salespeople was on par with the rest of the region. However, and surprisingly, given this statistic, they were significantly less likely to recommend a brand. Sales staff was also unable to match the regional average when the assigned brand was introduced and 46% didn’t provide satisfactory information about any other brand than the one they were recommending. This presents the strongest opportunity for the surveyed brands to identify strategies which will provide a more direct relationship with frontline sales staff, particularly in terms of product engagement and motivating performance.

Closing the Deal: Over half of the sales people in India let the shopper walk out of the door without attempting to close the sale. Additionally, in more than 80% cases, the shopper was not offered any additional products such as a mouse or software to go with his/her notebook computer. At 58%, the knowledge of Indian salespeople about after sales product support was among the poorest in the entire region and merely 39% used that knowledge as a selling point. Fortunately, sales staff was able to offer some redemption in their performance, with the strongest regional score in giving customers a reason to return to the store. Although at 39%, opportunity for improvement is strong.

Overall Sales Effectiveness: India’s overall sales effectiveness rated significantly below the regional average. Tremendous opportunity exists for stronger engagement between the Brand and the frontline sales team within the reseller environment. There is no one issue which India’s brand managers and retail managers must fix to ensure overall excellence in sales effectiveness – it is going to take a holistic approach of engagement tools, communication, learning and motivators which will improve overall sales behaviour.

A surprising observation in the Study is the attitude of the customers; 51% rated the salespeople as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ for establishing customer needs. This rating was given by the shoppers even when more than 50% of the sales staff failed to ask the right questions to gauge the customer’s requirements. Also, 40% of the shoppers have rated the overall sales effectiveness at the assigned store as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ despite the poor performance of the sales staff in most of the categories. This clearly shows the low expectation level of the customers in India with regards to the service rendered at the retail outlets. Therefore, a little extra push by the brands along with an additional effort by the retailers and salesmen to improve customer relations and engagement would do wonders for the business as well as for the industry at large.

About Stephen Hibberd

Having owned and managed businesses for more than 15 years in the direct marketing and performance improvement arenas, Stephen brings a wealth of experience to his role as Regional Director of Grass Roots Group – Asia.

After launching Grass Roots operations in Asia out of Singapore in early 2007, in July 2008, Stephen was appointed as one of two Regional Directors reporting to the Group Board responsible for the existing operations and growth of Grass Roots in The America’s and Asia respectively. In his role as Regional Director – Asia, Stephen is responsible for the management and growth of the Group across the region, and already through start up and acquisition, Grass Roots has developed operations in China, Singapore, Australia and India.

Stephen is passionate about growing people and invests time and energy within Grass Roots and externally in the pursuit of helping people balance growing and pursuing their aspirations as well as enjoying themselves along the way. It is this passion and philosophy that is at the core of Grass Roots success over the last 29 years.