Obtain Demographics(Interviewee)

Name: Swardesh Ranjan Industries Worked: Hospitality, Manufacturing

Title: Business Development Head Number of Salespeople on Your Team: 25
Age: 34 Years in Current Role: 2 years
Gender: Male Years in Sales: 7 years
Education: MBA(Sales and Marketing) Overall Years of Job Experience: 8 years
Interviewer-Darshna Jha (Red Batch, IMB 2, SDABAC)

Hospitality is one segment that has been affected the most post-pandemic. So can you elaborate on that? I
mean how your organization has worked on that? And what is the game plan? How you as a sales manager
deal with it on your day-to-day basis?

The thing is that OYO has the vision of providing quality Living Spaces and it has to do everything with the real
estate. So when I say real estate it includes all hotels that can be on-boarded. These hotels are primarily two to three-
star or four star hotels. These hotels are primarily renovated to match the standards at OYO. So talking about the
verticals that we have. We have Supply vertical, Demand Vertical, product vertical, marketing vertical and so on and
so forth. It's mostly about onboarding the partners onboarding the hotel owners. And as far as the pandemic is
concerned there has been a lot of changes.

So this was about you know, the organization in general. Do you mind if we talk about your experiences now?

Yes, absolutely.

Can you give a brief about your background how many years of experience do you have?

Okay, so I'll give a brief about my background I am a mining engineer having worked in coal India limited which is
primarily the mining sector. And yes, as far as the function is concerned. I was into operations thereafter I shifted
my focus into sales and started as Business Development Manager at Deepak fertilizers, which is into the
manufacturing sector. Yeah, so from operations to manufacturing and post that I started up my own startup in the
manufacturing industry, and later on I completed my MBA in Sales and Marketing post that I started working with
Moglix which is basically B2B e-procurement again in sales and Business Development. I was there and post that I
joined Hospitality sector. So in a total of eight years of cumulative experience, I think I have worked with mostly
mining and chemical sector and thereafter shifted my focus to startups because as you grow you feel that you need
to understand the values.

Why did you decide to move to sales? can you be so just briefly talk about that?

Yes. Sure. I realized that I'm a people's person. When I was in Coal India I was handling the ship which had around
more than hundred blue collared employees. And that's what really kept me motivated. Switching to a different
domain that is sales and Business Development was a natural progression for me because even at coal India, I would
love to indulge with people and my job role was also about handling that sort of team and handling that sort of scale
of operations. So since a business development was a natural go to for me and you know, when I got the opportunity
at the Deepak fertilizers I jumped on it because obviously it goes into mining sector. I was basically shifting my
domain from the mining production to mining chemicals. So sort of I was changing the vertical but I was not
changing my sector all together.

Can you tell me the day-to-day activities our singles manager? How many people you are hand the company
sales person. You're actually handling and what your daily activities are in the organization?

Sure, so over here the team size is around 20-25 and that includes direct and indirect sales personnel who report to
me. if I talk about the daily schedule is mostly about reaching out to these particular Hotel owners and mostly for
different reasons.
 So one of them is like onboarding the hotel owner
 Understanding the market that there are different aspects to what hotel owners are expecting what the
competition is doing and how it is affecting your market.
 We have to make sure that whatever relationships that we have built is being taken care of.
 You have to understand what about the targets you have set for yourself for the coming month and where
you stand and what needs to be done for the remaining number of days.
 Meeting session every morning with all the sales persons to discuss the daily sales target
 Coordinating from the head office itself. I'm coordinating from the regional office itself. And as the day
ends we coordinate and we figure out where we stand in terms of the numbers that we have been able to
achieve and the key is to identify the defaulters and performers immediately
 Highest performers are rewarded and defaulters are provided training to improve their performance

So I wanted to know that, you've so many years of experience in different sectors at this point. So how do you
think with the Advent of technology and automation has changed your responsibilities?

So see with the Advent of technology. I think things have changed for good now, let me talk about it in detail. When
I try to onboard that customer I do not need to make ten number of calls to him. If a customer is on board he can
directly shoot the PO to us through SAP itself here all the details will be transferred electronically, so I don't need to
call him multiple.

Let us talk about the financial services also. So before SAP and before the Advent of virtual bank accounts, what we
used to have was the payment was done via checks. However, now we have virtual bank accounts number was
provided to each and every customer and they can make payment anytime they want to do. And as soon as they
make the payment it is reflected in the virtual account numbers and which is sent via text message to each and every
sales manager. So now each and every stage manager knows when the exactly the payment is done.

I'm talking about my current organization where everything is done automatically if a person is approaching a client,
it is captured in the mobile app that he's using and he has to punch that location in that app and thereafter he has to
explain that what sort of meeting was there how long the meeting went. So everything is in this app, you know, I
don't have to go after him and you know, ask him for all the details everything he has to punch in this happen.

Okay, so seems like automation has been a real Boon for you guys. I mean in general but are there any
possible disadvantages you could pinpoint about automation that has really affected your role as a sales
manager and or probably someone some sales person who actually reports to you?

So again see automation. No matter how good it is. Let me just take a very short example and very sweet example,
so nobody wants the process to be interrupted in the Midway, right? It should be seamless, right? So when we talk
about when we talk about a sales process it includes the formation of sales orders, right?

So what happens is if I do not make the payment from my previous transaction. My sales order will not be created.
What happens is if the customer is genuinely facing a problem or maybe suppose he has generally made the payment
and still it is not reflecting in the virtual payment account that he has his sales order might not be created. So that
creates a little bit of issue for us because in the entire automated process.

Secondly, obviously, due to the pandemic lot of people are making video calls online but what I personally feel is
that the conversion rate will definitely improve If we have human interaction the timing would have been relatively
less than compared to the online video calls. So that sort of thing is there, you know, if I'm converting a customer if
I'm converting a prospect in like two days over the video goal. I would have done it better in a single meeting if that
was the chance because that trust Factor should be there in terms of the human interaction that we are talking about.