COME TO TAJ - By BV RAO (YEAR 1986)

1986

This was year of the Canon launch when a new batch of SMT’s was created at Hotel Vikram. The week that was, called for staying back in the hotel - in spite of me being a local resident. The story continued the same way as Ravi and here I was May 5th 1986 in Hyderabad. Soon after the arrival of my train at Secunderabad I left my luggage at my aunt’s places and walked into a lane off the SP road in Hyderabad and there sat an Asm called Marcos Williams. It was exciting to get introduced to a bunch of old and new sales guys a bunch of trainers a consumable team of 2 guys and a bunch of engineers. All were a great support since they came in handy after the sale was made.

The last few Hermes machines were up for sale. I think the consumables continued to sell for many more years. The prices of those daisy wheels in the 90's were sold at 3000/- plus rupees in packs of 2/3 at Mumbai which was as good as buying a new ETW.

Canon launch at Taj was quiet an experience and I am sure many have enough of those stories to share. By the time the launch was to take place the ASM had exited. Ed sales R Kannan and Gurgeet had called on Markos at a local hotel away from the office .

Prithvi had moved out of the Hyd office but was still a sounding board for advice and action for this species called Markos. Raj Kumar had gone on a sabbatical to Xlri and had returned to Hyd may be he was to join some days later after the canon launch.

Our team to Agra was lead by RR Pai who I believe had a fall in the bathroom and the bath tub came in his way to send him back to Hyderabad with white protective armour of plaster of paris.

The exciting team I mentioned about was LB, Ravi, Saketh, Yusuf, Kalavati, and Vandana who was on her way out since marriage was on the cards. Venkatesh Prasad, DB, Raju - I miss a few names too.

Agra and its Taj and all that we learnt about the new series with categories of machines called the 400 and the 500 series closed with high adrenalin pumping in our veins. Pcl was not yet a threat but it was looming large as a strong force that had these cute small light weight machines and was spreading wings. We had a Marketing Head in a Wable and his team who created a blue book of all machines in the market place and taught us positioning our machines. This was radar of many features and the first lessons on consultative selling and the great balanced machine selling was learnt.

Wow!!! Those lessons still look valid and can be still used with teams of today in spite of the internet.

My impressions and my start at network