March is the month that insurance companies, mutual funds, their agents, banks, relationship managers, etc. love! Throughout the year sales of all these products have been taking a hit. All life insurance companies are funded by the strong and rich parent – SBI, Hdfc, Icici or the foreign counterparts.

One branch of one life insurance company has done sales of Rs. 1.8 million for FEBRUARY – the equivalent figure in say 2007 would have been about Rs. 45 million. So the sales team sits down and makes a stunning projection (obviously without conviction) – and the top management believes it (because it wants too, though it knows these numbers are there just like that).

So what do you do with the backlog from April, 2008 till today? You pretend that the whole gap will be more or less covered in the month of March. Will it happen? Well at least the body language has to be in tandem with the thoughts, correct? So a March ‘scheme’ is launched – it will take the agent to Mauritius, the sales manager to Egypt, and Branch manager to Europe, and so on…

What do these agentd do to make the trip to Mauritius? They go out and buy the Mumbai, Delhi,……. telephone directory…and the March Marketing Mania starts!