The Sales Associate Profile (2)

Raj Gupta is a small business owner in Ahmedabad, India. He owns a furniture store located on a busy street and has operated that store from that location for the past 15 years. He has a website that initially provided information on the business such has location, hours, and some photos of the products available for sale in the store. Two years ago, he hired a consultant to help him make the website more dynamic and interesting and it was suggested that he include an E-commerce function, initially for a select number of items. Despite the high costs associated with this, he decided to proceed and within 6 months that feature was included in the site for certain items that could be easily shipped. After launching the E-commerce function, he saw limited success, but slowly over the course of several months, he noticed not only an increase in sales directly from the site but realized that the foot traffic to the store had increased by 25% from the previous year, with increased sales from the store itself.

Recently he read an online article about US MRKT and decided to try his hand at becoming a Sales Associate (SA). His application was approved within a day and he selected a product related to his business experience, a company that sells furniture and home accessories with delivery across the US and also to 30 other countries. Raj realized that the Indian community in the United States is close to 3 million people, so he decided that he would target them first. He engaged with the Product Owner (PO) and participated in the training sessions (online) and reviewed all the materials they offered. Once he started, he searched several online Indian communities and introduced himself as an Indian national and a US MRKT SA, through his branded Facebook and Instagram accounts. On a daily basis, he started posting on both with the PO-supplied content, and soon started to receive positive feedback, with messages and questions from followers. Within 3 weeks, he had identified 4 leads that he immediately submitted to the US MRKT CRM, which then generated a response from the PO Rep, who contacted each lead to engage with them and to ascertain their actual interests. Within the two months of activity, he had generated 3 sales and earned $750 USD in commissions. He now receives 3-4 leads per day and realizes about 5 sales per month. The commissions generated are paid to him in US dollars via PayPal.