Making Hay after the Rains…

In Response to my post, “ Here comes the Rain.. Oh Yeah!!!!,” my dear friend S Soundararajan’s remark “couldn't have imagined you walk away without closing the deal !! Oh yes, fulfillment is another matter - entirely !!,”  sent me back to memory lane. So how did I actually go about fulfilling my promise after all? In Sales School, we were taught a lot about business applications and how we could write software on proprietary platforms to deliver the “moolah”, but what about non conventional areas? It was certainly not there in our text book.

Soundar has a valid POV indeed!

I vividly remember how thrilled I was, to find the qualified “astrology” lead. I had done the need identification, but wasn’t sure if it was totally crystallized yet. Where would I get hold of the Astrology Software from, which compiler would it be written on, had someone else in India ever done this? Will this turn out to be a figment of my wishful thinking? All these questions wrestled in my mind.  At 21, my mind was on fire, but would the Universe connive?  For the next few days, I tossed and turned each night, in bed.. Swinging between the ecstasy of a potential deal and my in-ability to deliver.

A few days later, I came back from my North Bihar tour to our Regional Office in Kolkata. There were few phones then. I would travel into my territory for two to three weeks at a stretch and then come back to meet with my boss, discuss the progress of the deals, get my pipeline reviewed, seek counsel, give an update on the collections ( the bane of every sales person), submit reports, expense claims and catch up with colleagues. The joyous “addas” from the halcyon and palmy days.

I excitedly discussed the contours of this deal, as soon as I met my Boss. He was a very encouraging sort of a guy. He jumped up from his chair, did a jig and almost let out a war cry, as if I had already won the battle. After the euphoria, I asked him as to how we would deliver on the deal. I shared that I had checked with our Systems Engineering team and had got to know that we had never done this before. We did not have the application software capability to do this. My manager scowled and asked me two show him the advance cheque for the deal ? “Did you not get the Rs.40,000 advance cheque?”, I replied in the negative, much to his dismay. “No”, I said, “I wanted to first know, how we would deliver?” I will never ever forget the perplexed look on his face. He had gone red and it showed through his complexion. Thankfully he did not out spit fire. Maybe he realized that he was dealing with a “rookie”. “You did not do the “jhatka”, you did not close the deal, you did not collect the cheque and only want to discuss how we will deliver”, he yelled in anguish. By now, I started sensing that perhaps something was not right. I retained my calm and said “ Yes Boss, I truly want to know, how I will have a happy customer”.

The next day, we met again, my Boss had gone and spoken to a few more colleagues. He had a smile on his face. The anger had melted. He told me that he had found an answer. But that answer was in Delhi. We had a colleague, who had just started off on his own around then, Pradeep Gupta-PG @PG080355 ( of the CyberMedia  Group Fame), and had worked on an Astrology software package. His office was somewhere in Nehru Place, I was told. I was ready to hop on the next train and go to Delhi to meet with PG, but was told that we had no budgets to travel and since there was no contact number available, there was no way I could speak to him either. Even if I had the number, I  was unsure if I would get an approval to make the expensive long distance call.

Not one to lose hope, I waited for a few more weeks, “Pujas” were round the corner. I asked my Boss for a few days vacation leave and told him that I wanted to come home to Delhi to meet with family. Given that it was a lean business period, I was granted my “wish” and to my utter joy, I was soon on my way to Delhi on my own dime.

Coming back home is always very nostalgic. I went to Nehru Place, which was not very far from where we lived. Our training program was held in Nehru Place, when I had joined, so the place was familiar. I had the names of a few buildings where potentially I could locate PG. To my luck, the first building I walked into, after getting off at the bus stop, happened to be where PG had his office. It was a spartan office, but very busy. I asked for PG and walked straight up to his room and introduced myself. Over the next 30 minutes, we had an animated discussion and towards the end, he whipped out 2 floppy diskettes. “Here is the software” he said, “but it is not fully tested, some more work  still needs to be done by your team, before you commercially launch it”.

I clung to the diskettes with my life. It seemed that a miracle had just happened. I profusely thanked PG. He did not ask  me for any money or a Purchase Order or any commercial document. Maybe, in his heart, he was pleased that the fruit of his labour and  hard work was seeing expression, somewhere.  Maybe he took pity on a desperate sales guy, who was yearning to push his mousetrap. I have never known and I have never asked PG in the last 37 years either!  

A few months later, the deal was done. I went back to Patna, collected the cheque and one of India’s first Computerized Astrology Centres was inaugurated with full fan fare with Politicians in tow, rigth in the heart of Patna. The software had been thoroughly tested and professional astrologers were pleased with the accuracy.

Mr Jain successfully diversified from “Steel to the Stars” and a Salesman made some hay!