The Making of Hero: Four Brothers, Two Wheels and a Revolution that Shaped India by Sunil Kant Munjal

Author:Sunil Kant Munjal [Munjal, Sunil Kant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It cut both ways, of course. If a dealer’s performance dipped, he would get a call from the head of sales. God forbid a dealer turned out to be a bad apple with unscrupulous practices; he would be sacked forthwith. But if he was basically a sound chap going through hard times, Hero would support him until he was back on his feet. Until they became septugenarians, my father and uncle Om Prakash would travel extensively across the country, visiting dealerships and sussing out the competition. They would listen to complaints and problems and advise them on how to interact with customers: with humility and friendliness.

The bulk of Hero Cycle dealers were ready to come on board and invest in new dealerships after Hero Honda was born, a testimony to their faith in the Munjal family elders. They were typically young, drawn from the next generation of the Hero dealers and eager to partner in the new venture, and equally important, willing to make the capital-intensive transition from dukaan (shop) to showroom.

My father played a key role in visualizing the showrooms, along with Raman. Clear criteria were fixed for training, signage, space, service quality and the investments that each dealer had to make. No compromises were made on this front and a Hero Honda dealer typically made higher investments in showrooms and workshops, as compared to those of competing brands like TVS

Suzuki, Escorts Yamaha, Bajaj Kawasaki and Kinetic Honda. For instance, while their showrooms were 500 sq. feet, ours were 1,600 sq. feet. If a service centre was attached to the dealership, an additional 1,500 sq. feet were required.

The significantly higher investments in the workshops relative to the competition initially caused a lot of consternation amongst the dealers. They were worried that the higher investments would not be recouped, if the flow of business was similar to that of their competitors. In retrospect, they needn’t have worried.

First, revenues from the workshops overtook those from the showrooms; also, owners of competitor bikes began making a beeline for the workshops, as word spread in the market about the Hero Honda customer experience!

In that sense, Hero Honda was ahead of its time. The company understood that the market was shifting from a seller’s to a buyer’s market and tried to stay one step ahead of all marketing developments, while maintaining high quality standards. It kept the customer at the centre of all its strategies. More than 150

authorized service centres were set up.

From 1985 to 1991, once every three weeks, my father would visit Delhi from Ludhiana and summon the entire marketing staff to the conference room. He would then give them a talk on maintaining relationships with the Hero dealers: how to address the dealer, how to dress, what kind of courtesies one could accept from

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