Muralidharan Subramanian has sold instant coffee and milk powder in the hamlets of Bodhi
and Theni in Tamil Nadu, Maggi Noodles on the streets of Hyderabad.
He sold franchises in the US, chocolates and tomato paste in Africa.
And now he is global sales head for Smart parking solutions for a US based company.
Murali is the embodiment of the fluent, fast talking salesperson who sells with passion
and belief.
He loves criss-crossing cultures and learning new languages.
And he told me he has worked in over 60-70 countries.
This is episode 11 of My First Job, the podcast that covers engaging career journeys and every
single one is full of twists, turns and insights.
My name is Venu Gopal Nair.
I am the host of this podcast and CEO of Ideascape Communications, an advertising agency into
branding, creative and design.
So settle in, sit back and enjoy the conversation.
Hi Murali and I think I'll need to do hardly any talking on this episode.
Hi.
At the very outset, let me just tell you, all I'm doing here is to share my kind of
experiences which might be different from others.
Okay.
You are the global sales head of Smart City Parking.
See what we do is we provide parking solutions wherever they are needed.
And since it is human being who drives all these vehicles and then haphazardly park,
it becomes our expertise into play where we make things much more easier for either the
passage of the vehicles or the parking of the vehicle.
And my role is to make sure that I get the client support.
We are specialized in customizing solutions.
We come to you, we assess your needs, we sit across the table and we suggest these are
all the things.
Would you be interested in going for these kinds of solutions?
I guess that's a lifetime of experience speaking.
Why don't we go back to the early days?
Everybody's a salesman.
I firmly believe in this.
You see, when I have to convince you to my point of view, the act of salesmanship is
already bigger and it culminates only when I'm able to persuade you to take an action.
And this I learned very early in my career.
First year was just an extension of my life.
When I started my first job, it was the company's called Nestle today, but those days it was
food specialties.
You see, I'm not from a big school.
The criteria for getting into Nestle, I started off with the Oberoi School, the group of hotels.
Okay.
So it was a very, very brief stint.
That is where F.J. Ryan, the erstwhile managing director was staying in one of the hotels
and he saw me as one of the front office receptionists.
That's how I got out from Oberoi to the Nestle and Nestle had to pay 2.6 lakh rupees in 1987
to get me out of Oberoi.
My job was to promote coffee powder, Maggie noodles.
I used to go to schools and institutions to sample noodles and then we used to go to corporate
houses, prepare coffee and serve it to the employees there.
I was very proud of doing the most menial thing in life.
It has to be ingrained.
And I learned from my parents.
My mom teaches music and I knew how hard she worked herself so that she could deliver better
as a teacher.
My father was a soldier.
I knew how he used to be polishing his shoes.
And these are all the things that I carried forward, which helped me groom myself and
grow better as a human being.
Coming back to the promotion story.
So I used to be going to these pawn shops where I used to see these guys selling shampoos
and I used to ask these pawns, why do you have a shampoo packet in your shop?
Then I said, if you're having shampoo, if you're having cough syrup, you might as well
have Maggie noodles.
So it was a shock to him.
But then I said, okay, why don't you just try?
There's no harm in trying.
And you know, I started off in Hyderabad.
Maggie's color is very eye catching.
In no time, the entire street was painted like Maggie.
No merchandising team.
I'm talking about pre, you know, infancy stages in terms of advertising and marketing
in India.
I'm talking about 1980s.
So I just painted this entire stretch yellow and red.
And it so happened that my managing director, F.J.
Ryan was visiting this place and he saw both sides and he was like, my goodness, how are
they sending Maggie in those small little outfits?
He asked his manager to find out who the representative was who was handling this area.
I won't name this representative, but then he thought there was something amiss.
So immediately said that I'm not the one who's doing it.
It's a new promoter who's been handling this area.
So I think it is better you ask him.
So they immediately asked me to come over to the hotel.
You know, those days, if you're asked to come to the hotel, it was not a good sign.
I had nothing to do.
I went there and this guy said, are you the guy who plays those things?
I said, yes, sir.
He is okay.
Come into the management.
Finished.
So you called into the management and then began your stint of working abroad for Nestle.
From there, I was, I was again offered a bigger responsibility with the Cadbury chocolate.
So I was handling the Middle East and the African continent.
With Nestle, I was confined to India.
Those days I was confined to the Malabar stretch to begin with.
After Hyderabad, I went to Malabar stretch and after Malabar, they gave me the entire
northeast of India.
I was handling all the seven states.
I have personally believed that the moment you feel that you're in a comfort zone, your
learning ability starts to cease.
The more adversity you face is when you get to learn more, you add resilience to yourself.
I grew up with a mindset where nobody's a stranger, white, black, yellow, you spoke
whatever language.
I looked at it as another platform for learning more and growing more.
When you go to the world with the mindset of nobody's a stranger, accomplishments becomes
easier.
Can you retrace one of the early markets where you were a complete stranger to the market,
the language?
I'll go back to the very early days and I was handling this in Bodhi and Thani, it's
you know, in Tamil Nadu.
There still is a culture of people waking up early in the morning and going for a cup
of coffee to the coffee shop.
They just go out there about four o'clock is the time the tea shop starts to open and
you have all those devotional songs being played.
This guy starts to heat his milk.
People starts to walk in one, two, three and then he has to wait for the milkman to come
and deliver the milk in the morning.
So sometimes it is like the shop is already open and the milkman comes about five or 10
minutes later.
I was watching this and I had to sell milk powder and I had to sell coffee powder and
now both of these are not doing fresh because they are used to fresh milk and they are used
to freshly ground coffee powder.
People had warned me, they said you're going to bang your head, Bodhi and Thani, forget
it.
I don't think so.
I used to wake up three thirty in the morning dressed like this, you know, and used to carry
my kids.
By the time he opened the store, I was there with him and I used to watch him waiting for
the milk and I used to tell him, listen, why don't you add this milk powder, make coffee
with my powder, give it to them.
I'm not charging you anything.
And if these customers complain, you don't have to persist with my product.
You have nothing to lose by experimenting.
I used to go, I used to mix everything.
I used to make it for him and then he used to go give it to these customers.
And I was dressed like this and I used to go and ask them, how is the coffee?
Do you like it?
Is it different from what you have?
When you pay attention, you already won your customer.
Fact of the matter is, I've shown them the attention that they deserve.
So and that was genuine.
That was not salesmanship.
You have this window for opportunity before the freshman arrives.
I didn't want to lose that.
There were about twenty or five shops and I converted twenty four of them.
I left one as a mark of respect for my manager because he said, Murali, an original filter
coffee.
Wonderful story.
This is within the Indian culture.
Why don't you narrate something that happened on one of your markets abroad?
I will tell you something about Africa.
You see in Africa, most of these retail markets are dominated by Lebanese.
Luckily for me, I pass like a Lebanese.
I spoke Arabic also.
In spite of the fact that they have a lot of fresh tomatoes available, their way of
food culture, predominant use tomato paste.
And they all have plenty of local locally made paste, which have got no consistency.
The African market is very, very unorganized.
And they will not buy.
I was promoting a different brand, which was called Gino, which comes from the House
of Watanmul, which is owned by a Sindhi out of Hong Kong.
So he met me in Los Angeles.
He says, Murali, yeah, so I took it.
And it was a big, big challenge.
Nobody would want to buy because it was definitely slightly more expensive.
But then the quality was beyond compare.
But nobody want to believe you.
What I did was I made a local guy, a friend who used to be making local food.
So we made a makeshift stall making tilapia, banku and tilapia.
It's a dish which people usually go and eat and tilapia with a lot of tomato curry.
And this is their favorite food.
What we did was, and this my company did not spend.
This was my personal initiative.
It was a risk I was willing to take.
These markets are open between five o'clock in the morning till about 11 o'clock in the
morning.
That's all.
After that, everything disperses.
Finished.
It's all waiting in the middle of the road.
I hired these guys, local guys who made banku and tilapia.
And then they serve these main, main shopkeepers for free using this tomato mix.
I made special aprons for these guys to be branding the tomato paste and the stall was
branded.
I engaged in this exercise for three weeks.
I incurred an expense of $3,000.
That's all.
Today we have a factory.
I go visit there after 15 years and they call me Mr. Gino.
After 15 years.
Are you formulating the strategy after seeing what is happening out there?
No, no, no, it's not something to try and see.
Most often than not, I firmly believe in intention and actions which are in synchronicity.
If your intentions and actions match, 99.9% of the research will be favorable.
And that is what I'm here to share as a person who's experienced it firsthand.
You still have to learn the language to communicate, right?
I am a very shameless person when it comes to learning.
I am willing to make mistakes.
People have been laughing at me and I have never felt offended.
It's a part of your learning process.
I mean, I still remember, but I used to transport myself back into my student days.
I'm sure I would have made a hundred thousand mistakes.
My teacher would definitely not have laughed at me.
If she had laughed at me or he had laughed at me, I would never have learned anything.
Anybody who's sincere as a friend, they will take one step further, come to you and correct
you.
They will say, this is how you say it.
You need to have a sense of belonging.
You go to Africa, you become an African.
You don't go as if you're an Indian or an American.
You start thinking with them.
The moment you've endeared with them, the moment you become one among them, their trust
in you multiplies manifold and you buy trust with sincerity and with honesty.
And there is no substitute here.
So how does this thing of working in over 70 countries, the first time you said it,
I always looked at it and said, how can a person work across 70 countries in over 30
years?
I'll make it very easy.
Africa as a continent, this alone has got over 45 to 50 countries.
So without even going too far.
And then not only have I flown around, I've also driven.
I've driven all the way from Morocco, Chennai, all the way up to Ivory.
And I've driven from Ghana, both eastwards and westwards.
Eastwards I've driven to Otogo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, and up to Ecuador.
I've already counted a dozen countries here.
When I fly to the East Coast, I go to Tanzania, for example.
You already started Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana.
They're all like neighboring countries.
If you're based in Zambia, you're already covering about 15 countries.
Most Indians, they go work for an organization.
They're based there.
And that's what they do.
So their travel responsibilities are limited as compared to that of mine, because I was
always representing a bigger organization and a totally different market.
So I was not essentially meant for one country.
Or that is probably what people did.
Always relished the prospect of being thrown into a totally different place.
How do you go to a place and become one with that place?
So does it come intuitively?
Most of it, I would say, is an attribute that you develop right from your formative stages
of your childhood.
And I think that itself shows the kind of sense of assimilation that comes along with
it.
I mean, language was not different.
I used to listen to people like I was a maniac.
I used to see how their tongue twirled inside their mouth, what kind of sound came out.
People would think that I'm crazy.
But then, yes, I used to pay that kind of attention.
And I ended up learning.
There is no use of anything that you learn if you can't practice it.
And there is nothing that you can preach if you haven't practiced it yourself.
So let me go in the other direction.
What was the market which was very hard to crack?
United States.
It looks so easy.
I'm telling you, it's very hard to crack.
Because people don't want to interact.
You have to devise means and strategies.
You have to take a different route altogether to impress the Americans.
Because their psyche, their approach, and their level of acceptance is slightly different
because consumerism is different from that of ours.
Because of the fact that they've already been subject to developed kind of marketing for
very long, unlike us.
We grew up from the analog to the digital stage.
And they've already been in the digital.
So it was difficult.
And then there again, America offers a vast bouquet for you to choose from.
You have pockets of people in the United States.
If you speak of hospitality industry, if you speak of small little motels, it's a strong
hold of pateis.
Because I was handling the subway sandwiches.
And I was the vice president franchise.
My job was to make, develop a franchise to scout, locate, develop, and then train the
franchise outreach.
I developed 126 franchise within a calendar, which was then a record.
Invariably, most of them were good news.
So it became easier only after I identified the set of people who would be easy to deal
with, convince them and persuade them to take up this franchise.
That was how I was successful.
So there are always huge markets in the cracks, right?
Absolutely.
And then I very firmly believe that if I'm not able to get this, I will try and get some.
There's no reason for me to be disappointed.
Like we've been on this right from the beginning, that your intentions have to be right and
your actions have to follow up whatever you say.
So that is where it all begins.
Very rightly, we are creatures of comfort and convenience.
We might think that this is what I want, but then if the situation is not in your favor,
you would choose whatever is available.
The reason I could convince and persuade them was because I went there earlier than their
mail command would arrive.
That was the thing I had in mind.
Yes, that was the key.
Did I practice anything unethical?
I never did practice anything unethical.
I never pried anybody.
I never lied to anybody.
I never said this is the best coffee.
Never.
I didn't say it.
So I would never dwell on something called the best.
No.
The only catch here when I speak of body and theny was the fact that I made this guy open
and sore half an hour.
This is the only thing which I do.
When he sees me, he has to wake up.
I used to tell him stories, engage in conversations.
Believe me, it always works.
None of these were taught to me by the business course.
Probably learned something new, but then everything I got to do there was to accentuate which
I only knew.
So somewhere I think right through you found that there was a measure of similarity between
the developed markets, the not so developed markets and the way you say it, because I've
always had this feeling that when you go into a new culture, a new country, it's hard to
adjust and adapt.
I will ask you this small little question.
You see, it will be a trigger point for people to start thinking.
See when it comes to education, when it comes to acquiring an added letter, academic credential,
we are quite open.
We don't find those things very strange.
But when we speak of going to a different country, we want to look at it as a strange
thing.
There is nothing strange in this world.
Believe me, there is absolutely nothing.
It is only the things that we have not seen.
If you're open minded, believe me, there is nothing which is going to be strange.
You will start learning things much more easily when you have this desire to assimilate.
What am I going to do?
I'm going to Kerala.
I don't speak Malayalam.
What am I going to do?
If I go with this mindset, believe me, you're going to have problems.
So I went to Kerala.
Of course, I mean, I did speak good Malayalam.
But then even if I didn't, for me, it was no big deal.
I went to Assam.
I went to Manipur.
Believe me, I didn't speak one word of Malayalam.
How long does it take?
Two days, three days?
At least you will be able to say thank you in their language.
Start off with that.
There's a huge lesson in what you just said for all of us, especially within our comfort
zones, Murali.
And I think like you have so amply demonstrated today, our comfort zones are restrictive.
Maybe the sad part is a lot of us don't really extend ourselves beyond.
The fun part is all our fables, all our mythological stories have all taught us the same thing
which I'm doing.
In our stories, we want people to be heroes, but we personally don't want to venture.
That is something, that is the mindset.
That's a lovely way to put it.
In our stories, we want people to be heroes, but we don't want to emulate.
It's also a learning at so many levels.
People assume that sales is about pulling the wool above people's eyes, but you've
just demonstrated.
It's very, very far from.
If you want to call it a profession.
I don't call it a profession.
I just call it an extension of your life.
How did you manage to get the teams you were working with enthused?
You were leading by example all the time?
Once you're able to roll up your sleeves and then dirty yourself, people will follow.
There is no substitute to demonstrative leadership.
You can have no conviction.
Exactly what you said.
I really enjoyed the conversation and you walked with the cards you were dealt with.
Thank you so much that it's erupted people somewhere on the right side.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
That was Murali Subramaniam talking about a career in sales that went across the world.
Thank you for listening and we'll see you again next week.
My first job, the podcast is a production from Ideascape Communications.
Guest relations, promotions and creative is managed by Deepa Ravi with occasional support
by Vindhupal Nair.
Archiving and technical help is provided by LPS Jayachandran.