The Hindu Business Line : Stress, suicide and sales

I travel to Japan pretty often. It happens there widely. Hara-kiri! I travel often in the interiors of India. It happens here as well. No exciting name for it. Just plain old suicide! Not a good thing to talk and write about. But then, I have never been politically correct in this column, have I?

The subject at one extreme is suicide. Suicide of the salesperson who has not been able to bear the burden of targets, the burden of a boss who is forever at the throats of his sales force, and many other burdens of every kind. Selling work somehow seems to make for a weak person who cannot really bear any other burden, domestic or otherwise, that may come his way.

At a slightly less extreme end is the issue of stress. Stress that salespeople suffer more than people in other professions. Stress that leads to hypertension and the risk of heart attack!

At the other end of the scale is the key issue of salespeople leading lives that are more high-strung than those of others in the game of making money and careers.

The sales job is, therefore, a different job altogether. The salesperson finds herself sandwiched between two ends of competing pressures that have the potential of taking the final toll on her health and life. At one end is the internal boss and at another is the external customer. Both are demanding souls.

Venkat Thenginakai (name changed for sure) hung himself from the ceiling fan in a sultry lodge at Warangal. He was considered a star salesman by his company. He delivered every quarter. His manager would depend on him all the time, meaning every quarter-end.

Venkat's life was typical. He was on a high for five days at the beginning of the new quarter. He would get all those phone calls from his various bosses praising him to the sky, the prized hand-written memo from the Vice-President at the corporate office, and, of course, the incentive cheque at the end of the month. These were the motivations of a selling career.

Venkat's first month of every quarter was rather peaceful. The second month was when he would start getting worked up with his stockists. Tempers would rise. Stress would build up. The third month was pure frenzy. He would travel every day of the month, totting up the sales target card, pulling in volume from everywhere.

The final week of the quarter was typical as well. The sales manager would land up at Venkat's office with a demand rolled into a plea that wanted a particular volume to be achieved ... all in seven days. And Venkat would deliver. Always.

He delivered till he could deliver. One fine day, a day before quarter end, he decided to call it a day. And hung himself.

There are tales and tales of stress hitting the roof. If the salesman did not kill himself at one shot, it's quite likely that the stress all around him is doing it in a small little way ... every selling day.

Look around. Is yours a killer environment? An environment that is propitiating the culture of achieving the volume and the value at any cost? Even at the cost of human life and good health?

While Venkat's was the case of the salesman calling it a day, unable to bear the pressure from the boss at the top, salespeople face stress every living day not only from their bosses and peers, but also from customers who they are meant to serve.

Talk to Malini Ulcerpani (name changed again) who works at a voice BPO. She takes 120 calls every living normal day. These calls come to her desk from all over the UK. She works hard, assuring every caller that she is doing her best to solve their problems.

Malini puts on a British accent just to tell the guy at the other end of the line that she is not an Indian sitting in Bengaluru (wherever that is) and handling the international call. She assures every customer that she is as efficient at handling the issue as any Brit worth her salt. She keeps assuring them that their problems are in good hands. She does this repeatedly 120 times a day.

Malini works when others have called it a day even. Her sleep pattern has altered. It gets altered even more if she happens to be on a US shift. Malini bears the problems of 120 people on her slender 22-year-old shoulders. She is used to people shouting at her. People use names they must not. People question the parentage of the call handler. She has to listen to it all!

At the end of an evening of work, Malini wants to scream. She does exactly that. Her friendly BPO has a yelling room even. A soundproof room that lets you yell and bawl!

The stress is telling on the lives of the salesperson. On the salesperson who sells in the market physical, as well as the sales and service person who handles all those calls, outbound and inbound, and in virtual space too.

As stress mounts in the profession of selling, I think it is time for a reality check on what this is all about. Time to sit down and discuss whether those targets are realistic at all? Whether it is okay to subject your sales force to the stress at all?

Is there a more benign way of handling the needs of businesses at large? Must there be check-mechanisms within sales organisations that treat their salespeople in a more humane manner?

Is it time to put in those cultural practices that put life and well-being before volume and value?

Think!

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

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