A guest lecture on the topic Advertising and Sales Management was held on 12th August 2017 at 10 am. in the M.Com. Department.
The guest faculty for the Programme was Mr. Alwin Joseph, who has completed his M.Com from this College. He worked as a Host Acquisition Specialist in Airbnb and presently he occupies the post of City Supply Manager at FabHotels, a Gurgaon based Hospitality Company.
The Programme began with Ms. Royline Sequeria from M Com. Part I introducing the resource person. Mr. Alwin commenced the programme by sharing his experiences while working for Airbnb. He explained to the students how an empty room in one’s house could be a viable business opportunity if it were advertised as a bed and breakfast inn on Airbnb. Airbnb is a thirty one billion dollar company established in 192 countries all over the world. It has over 4000 property listings such as hotels, apartments, and bungalows in Goa alone. FabHotels where Mr. Alwin is presently working convinces existing hotel owners to permit them to take over the management of all the affairs of their hotel for a commission. Mr. Alwin gave practical insights into his job in the sales department by explaining about the process of initiating contact with prospective hotel owners. He explained that a good sale is one which has the shortest negotiation period. When negotiating one should not focus on uninterested clients as sales targets will not be met. He also said that the fruit of a challenge is wonderful.
Mr. Alwin then went on to explain the intricacies of human biases in formulating sales and marketing strategies such as anchoring bias, bandwagon effect, availability heuristics, blind spot bias, choice-supported bias, clustering illusion, confirmation bias, conservatism bias and so on. He played videos to elucidate the concepts and he stressed the importance of market research when entering a new market.
This productive and interactive session ended with a vote of thanks by Ms. Melisa Ratos, student of M.Com Part II.
