With authority comes responsibility! When I joined as Branch Head, a pressing issue was to increase the sales and reputation of our Small Domestic Appliances division, a new product division launched 2 years back. I had a broader understanding of the issue but to dive deeper, I had a few in depth conversational sessions with the Product Manager and his team in the Branch, Product team at Head Office and our Channel Partners.
Small Domestic Appliances division has five product lines viz. Garment Care, Cooking, Brewing, Food Preparation and Climate Control. This division has a different marketing mix dynamics than Havells traditional electrical products and the level of complexity is high as the mix is different even for the five product lines. …show more content…
After around four months we started unconventional channel partners and started with a few exclusive Havells Small Domestic Appliances Mini Stores and Mobile Stores. We also started covering channel partners on the flank, that is those that catered to similar customers but with different products. We gave these channel partners individual product lines, maximum two to each so that their negotiation power remains low. We also started to enter the Modern Trade, which till now was not explored by the company and started with an exclusive distributor for smaller modern trade stores. This distributor later also helped in selling of Compact Fluorescent Lamps in huge volumes. These efforts also attracted 5 Havells Galaxies in the region, all products exclusive Havells …show more content…
This approach was not only successful for just the Appliances division but was also very important in many other aspects. For the first time we came closer to our end customers, touched their lives and understood them better. It also gave boost to the overall company brand image, it helped other products leverage the situation, and it also helped in increase of our reach and opening of Galaxies.
Apart from these obvious benefits, the process made the team much more active and action oriented. They tried their wackiest ideas, some went long ways and some failed, but the team started to be vocal about their ideas and became bold to try them. There were times when we had separate ideas and had small head-butts and this process continually pushed us towards being better and better; we learned that all consensus solutions are more than often sub-optimal. We all learned from the experiences and I personally learned to take responsibility for my and my team’s actions, have trust in the endeavors and efforts of all and above all take bold
Small Domestic Appliances division has five product lines viz. Garment Care, Cooking, Brewing, Food Preparation and Climate Control. This division has a different marketing mix dynamics than Havells traditional electrical products and the level of complexity is high as the mix is different even for the five product lines. …show more content…
After around four months we started unconventional channel partners and started with a few exclusive Havells Small Domestic Appliances Mini Stores and Mobile Stores. We also started covering channel partners on the flank, that is those that catered to similar customers but with different products. We gave these channel partners individual product lines, maximum two to each so that their negotiation power remains low. We also started to enter the Modern Trade, which till now was not explored by the company and started with an exclusive distributor for smaller modern trade stores. This distributor later also helped in selling of Compact Fluorescent Lamps in huge volumes. These efforts also attracted 5 Havells Galaxies in the region, all products exclusive Havells …show more content…
This approach was not only successful for just the Appliances division but was also very important in many other aspects. For the first time we came closer to our end customers, touched their lives and understood them better. It also gave boost to the overall company brand image, it helped other products leverage the situation, and it also helped in increase of our reach and opening of Galaxies.
Apart from these obvious benefits, the process made the team much more active and action oriented. They tried their wackiest ideas, some went long ways and some failed, but the team started to be vocal about their ideas and became bold to try them. There were times when we had separate ideas and had small head-butts and this process continually pushed us towards being better and better; we learned that all consensus solutions are more than often sub-optimal. We all learned from the experiences and I personally learned to take responsibility for my and my team’s actions, have trust in the endeavors and efforts of all and above all take bold