Lahore School of Economics

A distinguished seat of learning known for high-quality teaching and research

Marketing and Sales
May 09, 2017

Mr. Arsalan Khan, Sales Head Nestle Pakistan paid a visit to the Lahore School and talked to the MBA class about marketing and sales.

He started off by noting that if one looked at the history of innovation, one could see that things were happening at ever-faster pace. If you plotted a graph of texting, you could extrapolate it to dizzying heights, but then WhatsApp cut it short and started its own curve. If you were growing at 10%, you would be losing market share if the category was growing at 15%.

The above trend was truer for distribution where geniuses like Dell and Jobs had revolutionized the field. Disruption was the name of the game. Uber was a good example and so was Airbnb as the largest “hotel chain”.

Regarding sales, he noted that the most important thing was to understand that observations and data had to be matched. Passion for sales was a must. You must find an area in which you are interested.

For merchandizing, you needed to understand the category and the shoppers’ missions. You had to organize your display operations to where the shopper was. He noted recently that in a large retail, Nesvita was placed either at a height of six feet or lower at three feet, both of which did not match the height of an average Pakistani female.

He admired companies like Nestle and Unilever but also noted that it was in the nature of large companies to slow down because of the bureaucracies.

Arsalan had a very interactive session with the class. He asked the women in the class if they wanted to work in the field or in office. Most replied they wanted to work in the field. He asked them about their experiences in the field and the women students not only gave them an account of their work but also made many suggestions which Arsalan found very interesting and useful in order to help women work in the field so that they could learn faster.

Labels: Guest Speaker