Sell, sell, sell cars any which way

Biting the referral bug: First Maruti, now Ford.

At India's largest automaker Maruti Udyog (MUL), selling cars using innovative schemes is par for the course. So, when the banks decided to tighten the purse strings and raise interest rates, MUL decided to get inventive. It recruited a fleet of salesmen, or rather, it converted existing staff, line workers, managers and others, into salesmen and started a referral scheme, encouraging employees to name friends or relatives who wanted to buy cars.

By the end of the first week of July, the company had over 8,000 referrals and had sold over 2,100 vehicles; and the conversions are continuing apace, says Jagdish Khattar, Managing Director, MUL. One employee, in fact, had managed to refer a massive 57 sales.

And seeing MUL's success, several other auto manufacturers are biting the referral bug. Ford India has already done so and others are expected to follow suit soon. But Khattar points out that MUL is not giving any monetary compensation or additional incentives for these sales. "If we don't sell cars, they lie around in our yard and we need to slow down production. So, what our employees are doing is keeping the lines moving. We are getting these sales, not 'buying' them."

It will be interesting to notice if other carmakers can do the same, and some might wonder if this marks the first step towards the launch of American-style customer referrals.