What’s the real purpose of a computer? Is it a necessity just for the people who do computing for some or other kind of professional activities? Obviously, all people from the field of IT will laugh at the above questions, in this age of networking through information technology. They’ll try to convince the na ve people by saying big things that a computer can do. Unfortunately, hardly anyone bothers about what the inexperienced buyer really wants to know, which language does the buyer prefer for communication?
Statistics may project anything, however, there is always something beyond that. Total sales growth of PCs in percentage or shipping data don’t reveal PC penetration in this country. Many of the frequent PC users keep one desktop at home, and another laptop they carry while roaming around for work or going to office. There are other possibilities too.
The fact is even today, PC penetration in our country is very low. This is the picture in urban areas. The situation is even worse in rural sites. Why the situation is like this? Even if it sounds very odd, the truth is we have failed to generate the needs among most of the people. Those who spend lots of money for separate electronic gadgets, hardly realise that one PC is enough to serve the multiple needs. And of course, it is cost-effective.
Most of the PC literatures are full with technical jargons. How’ll those appeal to the common man? Say for example, a PC contains ‘512 MB RAM’, how’ll it appeal to a common man who doesn’t even understand what’s RAM? And it’s never possible to educate everyone on technology, which’s not very essential too as far as use/spread of the technology is concerned. We all use electrical appliances, how many of us understand the difference between volt and watt? Still we use electricity why? Because, we understand how much useful is it to us?
We need to generate exactly that kind of understanding among the people. They should start feeling that a personal computer is an essential device that eases our day-to-day activities, rather life. It’s a combination of utility and lifestyle a solution that integrates all the available electronic services, for communication, for entertainment, for work and so on
Now the question is who will do the job? Obviously, our resellers have to shoulder the responsibility. In fact, they have been doing this, but the methodology needs to be modified. First of all try to understand the customer s need and amount of money he/she is ready to spend, then slowly reveal the potential’s of having the right PC.
A very common mistake is to display products based on price range. A common customer is interested in whether his jobs can be done with a particular PC or not. Flow along that line. Price-based approach is never right at the beginning, which often hit the sentiment of the customer, leading to no sales or postponement. Talk of the potentials in layman’s (local) language.