Friday, March 03, 2006

An interesting incident

Though I love travelling, often I don't get time to do that. Recently I went on a journey by train and witnessed an interesting incident.
I was wondering how life teaches one to deal with problems and people daily. With all due respect to the Marketing Managers from the world famous B-schools, I will narrate this incident to show that Marketing and Selling is the job for one who does it practically and some people with almost no theoretical knowledge do it better than those who study loads of books in the classroom and fail at the time when they have to deliver.

This Tea-Coffee Vendor of the Indian Railways is an example of successful marketing and that too with oodles of self-confidence and panache.

So, here on the train were four elderly gentleman playing cards with utter involvement and professionalism and were sharing their piece of mind among themselves with sometimes entertaining the fellow passengers (may be intentionally).
And then they stopped this Tea-Coffee vendor and one of them(who thought himself to be the cleverest of all) asked the Vendor: Coffee hai?
Vendor replied: Haan Hai
Man: Coffee Acchi hogi to?
To my amusement and surprise this vendor replied: Nahin, acchi to nahin hogi.

Now the gentlemen were too surprised at this answer but the way the vendor replied made them more interested in the coffee than the playing cards. The vendor was now the centre of attention and the next remark from one of the gentleman was:
Dene ke pahle hi bol raha hai ki coffee kharab hai.

But this answer has increased their curiosity so much that they can't resist ordering 4 coffees. Now this guy started pouring the coffee in the cups and after filling two cups he said that:

Coffee khatam ho gayi....Sir, chai le lijiye.

The gentlemen asked for 2 more cups in order to share 2 coffees among 4. The vendor showed his prowess again.

Sir, cups counted hain. Extra nahin de sakta.

Now they agreed to take 2 cups of tea from him. The hawker was smiling after putting the money in his pocket. His smile symbolized a deal completed successfully.

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