Indian customers act the most entitled when they’re worth the least

I mean basic English can be expected , Pretty sure that is a requirement in any organisation these days.

I don't think English is such a hard requirement. This would be true if you grew up in decent cities but definitely not true for a large chunk of the population.

You have a fair point on the problems. But there are certainly issues. I have worked with 4 Indian clients and all of them have a tendency to treat you as Service company when you had clearly sold a product after a POV. All the 4 keep changing the goals of what a successful ROI looks like and there is a particular tendency of unprofessional reaction when requests are rejected. I am talking about massive companies. I am beginning to think that this might be a big reason why India focussed Saas would suffer. I hope I am wrong. You can not build product companies with service mindset. Entirely possible that companies would need to reinvent how to do business discovery in India. But as of now looks like Indian mindset problem.

Honestly speaking, I've never worked in sales (I've worked retail but that's different) so I have no idea of the sales POV. The points you're making seem very legitimate. I can imagine clients saying "swalpa adjust madi" and asking for unpaid customisations. However, two things : 1. Since I worked retail I know customers are already trained to expect different types of after sale service for different products. So I don't think the problem should be generalized to customers at large. 2. There's a world of difference between the comment you made and the diatribe OP wrote. Yours actually fosters a discussion.

We’re willing to spend 10₹ every month for a low quality product rather than pay 100₹ for a product that’ll last us a year.

And what's wrong with that? Being expensive does not always equate to higher quality. Most people can't disposable income on expensive stuff just to see if "this expensive stuff is better than the other expensive stuff". I purchased an expensive pair of Addidas flipflops costing 20x the street version but they didn't last one year. Now I have trust issues and won't buy expensive flipflop.

Ah my overly patriotic grapeviner. If only you paid attention to what I mentioned at the start of the post before trying to prove your nationalism here. To address your concerns obviously only a person selling to Indians would know how they are , I clearly don’t see how me selling to Indian clients makes me unable to talk about them. Fun fact I’m also Indian. So don’t you think I’d also want us to not look like clowns ? So think of this as some kind of tough love rather than me attacking your sweet motherland What I’m trying to say is customers / clients have to start respecting people who work in the service industry or people who are helping them with their requirements. Gone are the days where “Customer Is King” and you’d bend over to please your client. Understand the product you want , Listen to what the seller or service provider is saying and research. This is not some kind of fish market where you come and say I’ll give you 300₹ if you want you take and hope for the seller to take the bait.

I relish these battles . I always end up winning them so it’s all good.

Absolutely true...

Definitely. I feel like we look at everything from the cost perspective rather than the value perspective.

It’s served most people well - that’s a cultural aspect.

That’s the other side of the problem which leads to this vicious cycle continuing forever. As some sales guy will find a naive client and end up giving him shit loads of things he doesn’t need and miss selling him shit too. Which in turn brings us back to “everyone is trying to scam us”.

This is exactly the entitlement mentality. Just cause 1 in 1000 might end up taking up the service. Doesn’t mean I’ve gotta deal with the bad 999. If they’re treating me with respect I’ll give the same respect. Wanna be a dick I’ll be a better one.

See different people would have very different experiences. I don’t think you’ve worked in a sales role so I’m not expecting you to actually get what I’m trying to say here. But yes there’s been close to 40 likes on this post so I believe the majority kinda understands what I’m trying to say. So let’s not start generalising things on the exceptions but rather on the majority.

40 likes 😂🫡

Not true. When you’re selling to someone who’s in the mid management level or senior management level of a company. It’s expected that they know how to at least communicate in English as it’s the common business language across the globe. I don’t know what’s the whole I’m a Hindi speaker I won’t learn or use Hindi gimmick we’ve got going across the country. Even Government schools teach English as a subject even if it’s not an English medium just for the very reason that it’s what you’d need to communicate with people. I don’t think there’s any decent college who’s medium is not English. We want Hindi imposition across the country which doesn’t make sense but we are anti English. The reason I’ve used Hindi and not other languages here is that in my career so far I’ve seen South Indians are still okay to speak in English. It’s the North Indians that I have had more “speak to me in Hindi else hang up” kinda calls with.

So you should learn to speak in Hindi if your clients are comfortable in it. Or don't call such clients. End of story. But thinking someone will learn English so that they can understand your sales pitch.... Lmao. Reading it out loud is making me burst out laughing.

I agree maybe the English point is a bit irrelevant and mostly out of my frustration dealing with the last client. It’s not that Indian’s don’t have disposable income, It’s more like we always live in this belief that everyone is our to scam us and hence even people who have the money look at it purely from a cost perspective rather than the ROI or value perspective.

As the saying goes “ Survive in India and you can survive anywhere in the world ”

I don’t have an issue with talking to a potential customer. The problem I’m raising here is that they act entitled. You don’t get this with foreign clients. They treat you with the same respect you treat them However Indian clients think they’re doing you a favour by listening to you explaining the product or service they themselves had enquired for. Then on top of that they bargain as if it’s some kind of sabzi mandi. I understand negotiation but the tone they bargain in and the amount they want is completely unacceptable. Ex: A product which would cost you 6 Lakhs for 2 years. They would bargain and say unless you give it in 3.5 Lakhs we don’t want to listen to whatever it is. When the quality is different for both 3.5 L and 6 L.

I get it. Certain audience demographic can consist of such absurd negotiations as you've mentioned. But at EOD, you as sales person must align and make sure to get that account. Or if you already covered your target for the month/ day, you can ignore those headaches.