I just watched Rocket Singh Salesman of the Year movie and couldn’t help, but related to one of the articles earlier published @pluggdin (Ethics, Startups and the case for being ‘Practical’).
First a little bit about Rocket Singh Salesman movie.
The movie is about Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor), an average student blessed with charming personality. After trying out his luck with MBA, he decides to get into sales and surprisingly, he actually cracks it. But after a certain point in time, question of ethics come in – like any sales person, he needs to decide between ethics and ‘practical’ aspect of business. While what he does is a no-brainer, the movie takes the cake with great sense of humour and honesty.
Rocket Singh Salesman of the year
Reviewing movie @ pluggd.in isn’t something I am here for (heck! they won’t let me do that), but being a startup in mobile vas space, we have faced similar ‘ethical’ challenges and wanted to share my experience with the entrepreneurial community.
To give you certain context, we build vas services and without operators we are like fish without water. Operators do not care to speak to small companies like us and one needs to really pursue them for a meeting (that’s where Rocket Singh’s persuasion skill helps).
What sometimes works is when you show them some “real-but-somewhat-fake” big numbers, when you show them ‘big names/advisors’ in your company advisory board (who are just name sake and have allowed us to put their names in our presentation for percentage equity) – and even though we feel a little ‘unethical’ about this, this is how business seems to work (yes, we cracked one deal and will announce the details when the timing is right).
Coming back to the movie, Rocket Singh Salesman of the Year is an awesome feel-good movie, but if you are a startup/small business, do think whether you want to hire Rocket Singh as your salesman.
Extracting from another article (Startups and the ‘Blurred’ line of Ethics – Where do you draw the line?), there are enough examples from Silicon Valley where companies like YouTube/Orkut have crossed ‘that’ thin line of ethics and practicality – and like it or not, it has worked for them.
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Case in Point – YouTube’s Growth
If you thought YouTube’s initial success was purely a result of UGC – get ready for a shock.
The tipping point actually came from Lazy Sunday, a hilarious Saturday Night Live skit (from NBC Univeral) which exploded on the Web in January 2006, generating over 5 million views for Youtube.
Lazy Sunday @YouTube
Even though lazy Sunday was available on iTunes (on subscription basis), people hopped to YouTube for free videos. And that set the viral growth for the product.
Was it legal to put up a subscription-only video for free on the Internet? Did YouTube ever tried track down the piracy? Not actively.
They essentially followed the “wait-till-we-get-DMCA” approach, and it worked. It did set the traffic numbers and adoption right.
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Infact, once you start a company you actually outsource a lot of unethical practices to service companies – for example, the bribe one needs to pay for registration (well, you can always waste time in getting it done yourself) is actually outsourced to a CA (who sells a packaged service).
What I am trying to say here is that businesses do have their notion of ethics and sometimes it’s really a difficult choice to choose between ethics and practical solution.
And if you have Rocket Singh as the salesman, you might lose out to your competitor who is far more practical and has a ‘cozy’ relationship with clients (call it short-sightedness, but I do get goose bumps every month end, when I have to figure out how to pay salary to my employees)
Question to entrepreneurs – what has been your experience doing business with big clients?
100% Ethical or somewhat practical?
Note from Ashish – Guest article by Ashwin, whom I have known for several years (and seen his struggle with operators) and trust him for his experience.
hi Ashish,
some very interesting thoughts from you
We are a very young start-up (Whimsia Custom Works) in the space of customized apparels, personalized merchandise and other accessories (with a unique execution model).
Our clients are institutions (small and big) that have needs for such merchandise or customized clothing etc. (eg. company shirts with special design, logo etc.).
Now that I’ve given a brief background on what we are, I’ll come to your question on our experience in dealing with big clients.
Well, i learn the hard way almost every other day that references and personal contacts are a sure advantage in approaching big customers. Sometimes they have to chased, wooed and convinced about a deal. Sometimes, certain purchase managers may also come forward with bold requests (read bribes) that have to be dealt with delicately.
At the end of the day, it is as much about the sales person’s personality and negotiation skills as it is about the actual product/service. I have seen companies/people living with the ‘assumption’ that their product/service being superior on certain parameters will guarantee them revenue. I hate to break it to them, but the reality may not always be as rosy and comfortable.
Especially in a market like India where competition is fierce and price sensitivity is almost unanimous with the masses.
ps: I haven’t seen the movie Rocket Singh yet
regards,
kunal
I have in my past venture worked very closely with such “Big Institutions” and they are typically short on management time. So utilize their time to the maximum they only like to hit on big and certain things. Showing big numbers and names depict the size of the opportunity and add credibility and certainty.
Like it or not when it comes to making money for your bread and shelter, ethics will take a back seat. Its only when you get secure the need to get unethical becomes unnecessary. To me there is no high moral ground here, its only about finding your way out.
V
I haven’t created any business nor sold anything. So my thoughts might not amount to anything.
However, I think your attribution of youtube’s success is flawed. There were several other video websites other than youtube, including google video and a couple of others. And I can bet all of these had unlicensed content on their sites. Why couldn’t others get similar traction out of the illegal content? Even to this day there are lots of video sites trying to gain traction with illegal content… But Hulu beat them all with a totally legal option.
I remember evaluating several of these websites for embedding one of my videos and ended up choosing Youtube over others because of their superior video quality[in comparison to others], features and ease of embedding and uploading.
I think what mattered is they were there when the time was just right for the idea and their execution of the idea was far superior in comparison to others.
Thanks to article I decided to watch Rocket singh tomorrow.
I liked the term outsourcing of unethical ways. This reminds me my first Job that was of sales engineer for welding electrodes company. Ours was very small company and our customers were mostly coal mines and power stations. My Sales manager always used to tell me that you should keep your discussions at level you want to keep it. Some time people may approach you with bold requests (and they actually did) asked them to talk to our distributor. He always advised us not to get involve directly in any such request. Outsourcing of unethical practises. Not sure it is unethical or practical.
Quite interesting point. This is way every ethical / non-ethical ppl argue.
almost every time i discuss this topic with others. And today i had same discussion with my mom. I believe no one can draw that line for you. Its you who has to decide where to draw that. If you follow what others did for being ethical/unethical you are definitely going to fail. Like someone follows gandhiji or someone follows big businessmen in India (I think i am prejudiced 
)
Here is how I came to this conclusion…I am supposed to draw that line I would consider following points…
1. Is being unethical is in the root of my business ? How long i will have to practice ethical/unethical practice ?
Bribing for registering company is sort of one time task. Its not repeating one. Its painful for ethical ppl like me, but i believe when we are starting my enterprise my primary goal is to build service. If i loose all my energy in just fighting with system, I am unethical to myself. Here, I am not changing my view, But i am ignoring it for time being.
In second case, where i need to bribe every single client i go to (Like say government projects, or like you said operators etc..)…I am doing it every time i go there. I am building that as part of foundation to my enterprise.
Disadvantage of these are multi-fold.
First, People working under you believe thats way it should be done. And follow same practice in their work. I know a friend working in Indian multinational where they take government projects as well as private company projects. People working for both have different mindset. Though they are same software engineers. It becomes companies culture. for example, government bank and look at a private one. its all about culture.
(I do have details to prove it..!!)
Second,
When it gets caught, (Something fails or those results you claimed are not archived) you loose all good will (if any) you had. So long term loss.
2. If i am doing unethical then for whom ?
Like example you gave here, Youtube and operators you deal with.
For you tube, they were unethical to NBC. But not for their clients. So probably at that point they didn’t pursue that ‘ethical’ theme, Even they knew its not legal. But if they don’t remove even after complain for DMCA, Its for sure unethical.
But at the same time, today say one uploads a TV show on youtube (after google acquisition) their response would be much faster then earlier as now even NBC is a potential client for hosted services.
Same way google explained their “Don’t be Evil” for china censorship. As they explained, they are bowing down on censorship from china government, (Say for tibet) But same time they are allowing access for all other sets of information that otherwise they will never be able to access. Option was to either don’t enter in market or enter with restrictions. I believe its correct as far as they don’t “lie” to their customer. If they say “We won’t give information about you to government in any case” and they give, Its back stabbing. Customer won’t come to it even from US, with fear that they might do it with them also.
So my conclusion is
1. Don’t “build” unethical enterprise.
2. Don’ lie to your customer. When it comes to sales, Make sure your “lie” ineffective for your customer. e.g. You say Mr. X is in chair for my company who is guru in security. But at same time you build a product which justifies that, and even though Mr. X was never part of company, your client really does not care about it.
so don’t say its Mr. X has designed it.
“Keep your lies in paper. Don’t Sell on it.”
Nice article and interesting comments.
IMHO, falsifying or misrepresenting facts definitely helps in getting attention but if you are looking at building a long term, sustainable relationship with your customers/users or other stakeholders it probably works to be brutally honest and ethical. Sure, you may end up taking the scenic route…for a while. It is definitely more difficult to climb out of a hole after an embarrassing episode where you are caught lying. Your credibility is lost…probably for good. My 2c.
Sigh!
As for dealing with government officials, lets follow a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy!
–Santhosh
I find it ironic that despite his whole “honest” approach, Rocket Singh stole the company’s resources and then self-righteously accounted for it and tried to settle it with the boss later. He took it for granted that it was for the taking, as if they were his own resources and not the company’s property. Overall, I was left with a bad taste in the mouth.
I’ve seen this in another movie called “Badmash Company”. Apparently, nothing has changed in India. Gaming the system trumps integrity any day.