MIP Assignment #2

Saeed Ghani Visit

Outlet: Makro Saddar

Group Members Muhammad Usman Zia

Shoaib Ahmed

Sikander Saleem Allana

Syed Ali Raza Abbas Naqvi

Wajahat Mehdi

Date Dec 19,2010

Course MIP

Instructor Ms. Nida Aslam

Saeed Ghani is famous for its wide array of herbal products ranging from pure and finest forms

of natural perfumes (Attar) and pure hair oil to all sorts of herbal cosmetics (in category of skin

care, hair care, tonics and treatments) which include ubtan, rose water, facewashes etc. Starting

off as a single shop in 1947, Saeed Ghani now has twelve shops in Karachi and three outlets in

Lahore. Much of this success can be attributed to the sales force and the research and

development team at Saeed Ghani. The type of business in which Saaed Ghani operates requires

high levels of interaction with the customers; therefore the role of the sales force is crucial for

the performance of the company.

Our group visited the Saeed Ghani outlet at Makro, Sadr. The outlet was smaller compared to

others in the city and thus had less variety of products and two sales personnel ready to entertain

any potential customers. Although the shop was smaller, it had the almost all the top selling

items of Saeed Ghani. The salesperson instantaneously tried to get our attention while we were

passing by and gained our attention by particularly naming products that boys usually use, like

different brands of perfumes and attar. As a part of the assignment, we had to shop to analyze his

personal selling skills, so we asked for different perfume brands that were available in non-

alcoholic forms. The salesperson responded to our queries in a very welcoming manner and was

very responsive to our needs. He applied the different non-alcoholic perfumes on our hand for

testing purposes and also demonstrated how to apply it to see how it actually smells.

He was very receptive to both our verbal and non-verbal cues because he realized quickly

whether we liked the scent or not. He was helping us make a decision by asking us open-ended

questions like what type of scent are we looking for and when we were unable to explain he

would add a few options like strong scent or soft scent etc. and he even suggested his own

choices (the ones that were considered the top sellers). There were also situations when we were

discussing our views on the product like whether this perfume leaves spots on the clothes etc.

and the salesperson would intercept try to change our perceptions by presenting fine arguments

like he replied to the above query by saying that if you apply the perfume on the hands first and

then rub the hands on the clothes it will not leave any spots. The salesperson was also very active

when communicating the benefits of the product if we enquired about any product by pointing at

it.

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And most importantly the salesperson job did not end once we finally decided what products to

buy, he would also describe how the product is to be applied and in what quantities. And they

were trained in such a way that they would pack the product in a desirable packaging and also

provide the customers with brochures and flyers (attached in the appendix) providing more

information about almost all the products.

Adaptive Skills:

Two young ladies arrived at the store when we were in the middle of our conversation. The other

salesperson was quick to attend to them. It rendered us an opportunity to observe the fact that

salespersons were extremely adaptive and were not the same to every client. They were quick to

realize that women are more interested in beauty products, so they started giving them

suggestions as to how they could improve their facial texture, fairness and get rid of acne

problems. We, however, were treated differently because they probably had an idea that no

amount of persuasion will ever lure us into buying herbal beauty soaps, so with us, they confined

their suggestions to perfumes only.

Expressive Influence:

It appeared to us that the salesperson was a reserved and a shy person and even though he was

trying to influence and persuade us into buying more perfumes; his tone, suggestions, persuasion

skills were just not influential enough. Not only did he not succeed into selling any more of his

perfumes to us, he wasn’t very successful in selling his items to the ladies too. It takes more than

a laidback ‘Ji ye sabun chehri ki safai ke liye hai’ [This soap is for facial cleansing] to sell your

products. The store could certainly use a little more assertive shopkeeper who proposes reasons

that the buyers find hard to reject.

Receptive Influence:

Receptive Influence includes inquiring, listening to and facilitating the customers. We do not

find any major problems with salespersons’ listening or facilitating skills but they were not

equipped with inquiring skills at all, especially about needs customers themselves are not fully

aware of. All they did was answer our questions or give suggestions about the kind of products

we were interested in but didn’t delve into finding other needs that any of their other products

could satisfy.

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Appendix