HUL market visits

I don't wanna write straight away about how my visits to the market are like before i explain why i make these visits. So, this is how i wanna start.

I did my summers at Kotak Securities - Financial Planning divison. I had to sell portfolios churned out of the research team to HNIs. We usually did this by offering them a proposal such that doing business with Kotak would help you grow your money. I used to boast of the research team that Kotak has and the kind of returns the research team has been giving across various portfolios.I did not have any idea which stocks were picked up and why were they picked up.

I got a PPO, which came to me very late. This was because I already had made it to HUL.

Anyways, after coming to HUL, I realised that I wasn't doing anything different from what I did in summers. In fact, I was not only offering a business proposal to the HNIs (here distributors) but I also convinced them that in no circumstance their RoI would go below a certain threshold limit.

There is no research team involved here. These business partners (as we usually call them) invest their capital in growing our business. We know the science how to deliver the results. And we do this not on our own. It involves the entire sales and marketing team with the entire other support functions in bringing the technology to the distributor's point and hence support the science which in turn helps the field force to deliver the results.

The field force involves in execution of this science and hence bringing those cheerful words of appreciation from the distributors. This relationship is long term in nature. This is the reason we still have distributors which are 50+ years old and are doing exceptionally well. We have field force which have been with HUL for more than 3 decades!!

We bring primary customer delight by doing this.

The customers of our distributors are the shopkeepers. These shopkeepers earn their living by selling our products. For them, HUL is something which nobody questions, which is easily available, which is easily visible and which captures almost 60% of his shop area.

The field force makes regular visits to these shopkeepers to check whether evrything is alright.

We bring secondary customer delight by doing this.

The outlet sells our products to consumers like households, youth, old, everyone. By using our products, these consumers feel young and fresh. They get what they want at their nearby Kirana store at their convenience.

We bring tertiary customer delight by doing this.

My training stint involved in understanding this correlation. This would not have been possible had I not made visits to the biggest of the shopkeepers and the smallest of the Kirana store.

The best thing about HUL market visits is that you always are offered either tea or coffee or cold drinks or if nothing else, then chilled water. For the shopkeeper, HUL has always been "maai-baap". We are treated like emperors.

"Sir, yeh to aap hi ki dukaan hai", "Sir, aap jaisa bolenge, hum waisa hi karenge", "Sir, aap hi kaa maal bikta hai".
These are some of the very common statements I come across when I ask them if every thing is alright.

When I spend sometime (say 15 to 20 min) in some of these outlets, I get to know about HUL more than any of the field force would have told me. They explain to me the competition much more logically than the salesmen do. They report much more satisfyingly the overall impact of a new launch whether it has been well accepted or not.

The gratitude which they show towards HUL is immense. Though there would be some issues they would be facing regarding something or the other, they never mention it in the first few min.

HUL, so far, as been a very smooth journey irrespective of so much of moving around (10 towns in 10 days with almost all nights spent in trains!!).

But, this also brings along with it the platform to meet so many ppl. Business is the same everywhere. But the way one runs it is so diverse. That is why different distributors have differnt margins to boast about.

The next time you go to an outlet to buy anything and you happen to buy anything from the HUL portfolio, then do give a thought how that product would have reached you!!

Tertiary Customer Delight!!