The Maha Mandi Experience - Experience for a life time!

About Mahamandi

Mahamandi is an annual Socio-Edu- Entertainment event held at National Institute of  Industrial Engineering in Mumbai. NITIE : http://www.nitie.ac.in/

 Students from top B-schools across the country venture out on an adventure to sell certain products made by Navnirmiti, an NGO engaged in acquiring, developing, innovating, producing and disseminating high quality, low cost/no cost (LCNC) learning methods, tools and systems to bring about universalize of elementary mathematics and science skills and competencies.

More about Navanirmiti http://www.navnirmiti.org/

The event aims at providing real time  hard core sales experience to management students at the same time promoting a social cause. The event is organised by Marketing Interest Group of NITIE https://www.facebook.com/mig.nitie

My  Mahamandi Experience

Though we had been talking about Mahamandi for quite some time, live experience of Mandi started about a week before the actual D- Day. We had been making posters & videos, seeing videos, promos etc, but the more exiting live action started with the practice sessions for flash mob.

Here is a small video promo made in my native language, Tamil for the event:

Flash the Mandi to the Mob!

Flash the Mob!

Practice sessions

I was of the personal opinion that the flash mob practice were announced very late and that there would be less participation and that it would be difficult for everybody to pick-up the steps in such short span of time. But, surprisingly, there was very good response and students of NITIE demonstrated that they were not good at picking up Engineering and management concepts quickly, but also good at picking up dance steps quickly. Though I felt that the flash mob directly did not promote Mahamandi in a big way, it was kind of trailer for the big event. It raised the spirits of the participating students and the team which organised it, MIG. It bought a lot of enthusiasm and colour to the event.

Khilona? Is selling toys a kid's game?

The next interesting part was learning about the products which we were supposed to be selling. We had a demonstration session about the products, a couple of days before the event, from none other than Dr. Mandi (Prof. Prasad Teegala) himself. It was an eye opening session since we realised that that so much too that 'toys', which we consider playthings, than that meets the naked eye. Dr Prasad candidly explained us about the products and how to pitch for them.

The Big Day's beginning!

After snoozing the alarm several times, I woke up to a gloomy day. It was raining heavily outside and that, I should say, did bring my spirits down. Already I had a lot of apprehensions about our capability and if we will actually be able to sell out the products. Out of my interest, our team had taken more inventory than a 3- member team is generally given. I for a moment thought, we had gone overboard. But it is at the end we realised that we could have in fact asked for more!

Target the Target!

We chose our location after a lot of deliberation. We decided since the products' primary utility was to the kids though they had secondary utilities for adults, we would target adults with children. It was a 'Mid -day' of a Saturday. Where can you find this target population? We brainstormed. Popular locations like Bandra, Juhu beach, Marine drive get crowded during the evenings after the sun goes down a bit. So, where to go?, we thought. We thought it would be more appropriate to go to a mall where we can meet such people. We decided not to go to a high end mall, so we decided upon 'Hub Mall', Goregaon, which generally attracts 'family crowd' who come there for some purchase rather than simply pass time.

Starting Trouble

Once we reached the mall. We had the biggest trouble any endeavour will face, the starting trouble. We were so shy and afraid to approach any of the public. We argued amongst ourselves and tried to push each other to start. While one guy said that I should start since I knew a little more Hindi than others (All 3 of us from Tamilnadu :P ). While, I argued that someone else should start since I had a 'Rowdy look' (I had intended to shave of my weird moustache which I had made for the previous night's party, but forgot). With no body ready to take the plunge, we started assembling the kits given to us for demonstration and bingo! That attracted our first potential customer to us, a kid. He just walked to us and asked us "Bhaiya, yeh kya hei?"

The Mandi Experience

I was more than happy to start explaining the kid about the product. Since he was only a kid and was not accompanied by any adult, I felt comfortable talking to him, thus breaking the starting trouble barrier. Though the Kid was attracted and brought his parents along, we were unable to convince his parents to buy the products, it was a good start since this encounter helped us come out of our inhibitions

Customer!

'Big' Customers!

After a couple of more unsuccessful encounters, we felt very lucky when one person agreed to buy 4 products. We felt very excited and it was good confidence booster to us. The next hour is little bizarre in my memory since it was one most well spent, exited hour that raced past. The sight of one potential customer attracted more and soon all three of us were busy shuffling the demo products within us to explain them to the our customers. Our strategy was to explain the benefits and other stuff to the adult and also demonstrate teaching on the Kid accompanying. This proved to be very successful and soon we exhausted all our inventory and wished we had taken more.

Learning

Before Mandi	After Mandi
Apprehensions about self's ability	Self Confidence. Mandi was a huge Morale Booster
Bookish knowledge about selling	Paradigm shift in my outlook towards the process of Sale
Starting Trouble	Overcome starting trouble by a good strategy. Choose easy targets initially and then build on it.

Suggestions for future Mandi Participants

1. Not having a good plan is ok but not planning at all is NOT ok. Please sit together as a team and discuss things like where to go? , what to do?, How to approach?, Who will do what?

2. The plan should include the details of the sale process as well i.e. after the person has agreed, what should you do. Like, making the bill, trying to convince him for more products, talk to him about volunteering, take pictures (most important), ask feedback etc. Since we had not planned this part, we ended missing all of this for our first few customers.

3. Take - "Change - Money". Since the products have a denomination of Rs 50, 200 and 250, it is likely that a customer gives a 500 rupee note. You might lose a customer if you dont have enough change. So foresee this and take enough change with you, Maybe, MIG could distribute some change to the students while they collect inventory.

4. Know your product - Think of as many uses to as many customers you can think of. It happened that I was teaching, "3+2=5" addition while selling Judo blocks to a kid and later when I enquired, he was of class 7. So, I had to use different strategy to appeal to him. Think of such situations.

5. Flash Mob could be used to gain more publicity by distributing pamphlets or keeping registration counters at the venue. Flash mob and registration counters could be kept at othe colleges as well to publicize Mandi

To Conclude, I would like to translate the tag line written in my poster:

It doesn't matter where you sell, what you sell and how you sell,

What matters is that you sell and learn

After all, your are not just selling the products,

You are selling yourself too.

"Vitru Vaa!, Katru Vaa! , Vendru Vaa!" Meaning - " Sell and Learn to Win!"

Last but not least, Heartful thanks to Dr Nitie Prasad Teegala for spearheading this event and also for all the encouragement and support.