A lesson of market

Students, who on completing their MBA are exposed to a job, find themselves at sea as they do not have any knowledge about the working style, which is different in different organisations. They find themselves slogging day and night to get a hang of things. The problem is the ‘throw in the deep end and see them sink or swim’ style of management training which gives the trainees a bottom view of the system without revealing the big picture. In this book, a trainee called Ramesh just sees the targets for the month and the agitated face of his manager if the targets are not met. The pressure and surroundings get to some of the other trainees, forcing the weaker ones to take it for a couple of weeks before calling it quits.

The book explains marketing is the art of producing things that customers would like to buy and convincing the customers to buy them. That is creating demand for things we currently make and creating things for which there would be a demand. In this book, the protagonist Ramesh learns what is the ‘top line and bottom line’ concept — the top line is the sum total of sales revenue achieved and the bottom line is the profit made. The Sales Department is rated on the amount of sales it generates. The marketing man has the responsibility to talk to customers, understand their wants and desires and meet them; he owns both turnover and profitability; a holistic responsibility across the organisation and a long-term focus.

The marketing man has to attend to advertising, marketing research, interacting with the media to communicate his message to the customers, doing public relations involving brief, strategy, plan, execution and tracking; direct marketing involving uses, databases, executions, options, advantages and disadvantages.

Finally before the launch, a mock call is organised in which one salesman tries to sell his product to another salesman.

This book is meant only for marketing trainees and business administrators.

—MG

(Macmillan Publishers India Ltd, 2/10, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110 002.)