Paul Writer launches SAP Think Tank , 
Video interview series with Head of Sales highlighting best practices
Devendra Chawla
President – Food Bazaar
Future Group
On your organization’s approach from ‘selling to customers’ to ‘helping customers buy’…
We are retailers so we don’t have a typical sales team which goes and makes calls on a channel to sell your product. We have consumers who come to our store. Our’s is a very subtle art of selling, and I’m just saying the word selling. Actually, it is like we help the consumers buy what they want to buy so for me it is educating the customer. If a new pasta has come and somebody is eating only noodles or say a housewife is cooking food in sunflower oil, my role is to educate that housewife or the women that why not try olive oil, it is healthier or why not try oats. So for us it is more about educating on new categories and then if rationally and emotionally – emotionally as a store may appeal and rationally by giving them the right price and the right information of the product in very technical categories like anti-aging cream where the ticket size is very high and the customer has a lot of questions and a small pack cannot answer those questions and a 30 second ad also cannot answer everything then we have something called beauty advisors. These people are technically trained by the brands, by us and they are standing there and if you ask them – How does this anti-aging cream work or how much time does it take or how do I use it then they will give you the information. But they will not get after you and say buy because that in a self-service tour that is not the aim. So we have moved from keeping products on the shelf to moving a step closer giving you more and more information, thus making it more comfortable to get over the barriers to be able to buy.
“These people are technically trained by the brands, by us and they are standing there and if you ask them – How does this anti-aging cream work or how much time does it take or how do I use it then they will give you the information.”
