Harish Bijoor

I HAVE always asked the oblique question. If there is selling at one end, is there something called non-selling at the other end of the spectrum? If there isn't something of this kind out there in our commercial lives as yet, is there a point of time when non-selling is going to emerge as a science? A science that is quite capable of redefining everything that selling as a science has defined over all these hundreds of years that it has been so dominantly around?

Let's look at it this way. Selling has been around for donkey's years now. It is indeed the oldest profession of them all, far preceding the one profession that we generally call the oldest. Selling is the one process that every business requires. The one process that all enterprise strategy adopts with glee. The one overt process that has the potential of delivering top line volume and value to organisation!

Today, even as we sit and read this piece, there is selling all about our cluttered lives. The early morning fishmonger shouting out his wares in the street competes with all the selling that happens through all the means advertising uses as a vehicle to sell. Add to this the clutter of subliminal selling. The kind of selling that each human being embarks upon in a bid to position himself as the right candidate for the right option, be it a job or a marriage!

Selling is just all over us, all over in our lives! All pervasive. There is just no escape from it. Just no relief! As the very process of selling overtakes our lives, there will be a niche movement which will demand non-selling. A movement that will want to move the gauntlet further. Move it on to the boundary of an exciting possibility.

Let's explore this! Even for the sake of a theoretical debate! Visualise this see-saw. Well-developed `selling' is sitting comfortably at one end of the see-saw, the one that is on the ground. At the other end is this fly of an entity - non-selling. Selling can't imagine the existence of this fly even, but we must! It holds exciting possibilities. Take the case of the consumer in the markets of the West and East alike. Peek into the advanced selling markets of the US, the UK, Germany and Japan. Cluster them into one group. Take another dollop of the markets of Africa, West Asia and parts of South East Asia. Include India in this goggle-eyed culture where selling still reigns as the ruling deity of the world of business and marketing at large. Compare the trends. Spot the differences.

In the developed selling market cluster we have at hand ...

1. Open your mouth, sound glib, and put people off. They know you are a salesman. Even tech salespersons have stopped using PowerPoint and the tool of organised and systematic presentation making! PowerPoint is dead. The line is simple.

Folks out here are very quickly adopting more real processes. The power of under-selling is being re-discovered. The salesperson is not talking so much. The new trend is to allow the flow of conversation to meander and touch upon everything but the task of selling at hand. If selling comes up, so be it. If it doesn't, bad luck. Move on!

2. Dress down. The salesman can be recognised from a mile in the market. Spot a guy with a case in hand, tie on neck, a jacket on the hottest of days, and you know he has something to sell. The buyer is looking for more real people, though. Visual appearances of salespersons on the horizon are putting people off. Doors are not being opened. Dressing up for the sale is a career-limiting move now.

3. The promises are drying up! The salesman at large used to be the guy with the Pandora's box of promises. Can this pressure cooker do this? Yes, Ma'am it can! Can it bake a healthy cake? Yes, Ma'am, it can! Can it make a baby? It well nigh can! If you try hard enough!

And those were the old days. Today, focus is in. A product is meant to do something specific, and that it will. To the best of its ability. And that's all! More real!

4. And Nirvana is far way. The salesman peddled solutions. Today, the salesman offers alternative options as solutions. These solutions are clearly not long-term solutions to the problem at all. Just a stop-gap palliative. And the salesman is telling the customer this. And the customer is happier.

5. The traditional model of buyer and seller itself is being challenged. The buyer-seller dyad of yore, where the relationship was one of pushing at one end and being pushed at another is being defied. In more instances than one, the salesperson is being the one pushed. The pressure of price-points and the ever-adjusting ability of price is causing this.

Price is sacrosanct no more. The buyer is deciding what to pay even! And I guess it all started with the seller trusting the buyer to be fair. The buyer will never get predatory enough to kill the seller. Remember, if the seller does not exist, the buyer will have withdrawal symptoms.

Not long ago, when a UK retailer faced problems with his computer systems, he opened up his store to a self-billing mode for consumers. The consumer would walk up to the till, and self-bill his merchandise by a physical and even visual totalling process. The supermarket did not largely lose! This is completely anecdotal stuff, though. Can happen once, but can it become a trend in society that is not as advanced?

I went to a self-billing store in Tokyo many years ago. The store remains open 24 hours. Just walk in. The bell chimes your entry. There is a lone guard sitting at the corner. You pick what you want, take it to the scanner at the door, scan your price, and drop money into a bin. No change returned, though. Excess money deposited by you goes to a local charity! Non-selling is doing a reverse gear on all the overt and gushy selling several preceding generations practised. In a small way! Does the consumer have it in him to do it for his own benefit? And indeed for the mutual benefit of the community of seller and buyer alike? Only this theory on a sheet of newsprint and the future can tell! Cheers on that note!

(The author is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.)

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