Season's greetings

Season's greetings and best wishes to all visitors of this blog for a great new year 2010!

Amateurs built the arc, Professionals built the titanic

Never be afraid to try something new!

Tomorrow's winning ideas can come from people you never expect!

The Budget Issue

How many times have you heard 'our marketing budgets are getting cut coz they are easiest to cut'!

B2B sellers who sell into marketing functions ( advertising agencies for example) talk about how their clients are unable to find money for their services and hence the shorter revenue inflow.

Here's my question to them:

Have you gone to your clients offering a 'Revenue Driver' or a 'Revenue Multiplier'  - not just another item to spend to 'Build their brand........"!

Let me explain. If you are able to offer something that drives their revenue up directly or multiplies their revenue ,as DIRECTLY as possible, will your B2B client be able to snub it off ,citing budget cuts?

If your offering is truly a Revenue Driver or Multiplier , businesses will find money to fund your offers. Budget cut will not be your showstopper.

On the other hand, all you are offering is helping build a brand , your clients do not have the visibility,patience,spend for the future . Especially in today's times.

How directly relevant can you make your offering to your client's revenue?

Where the mind is without fear

Hope you have read the poem by nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore with this title.

If you haven't, you can find it here .

This post is not about the great poem/author.

It is about where such a mind is required - in 'Marketing'.

A fearless mind is required to

- To question conventional wisdom /products/services/offerings/pricing/channels....

- To question the customers' conventional thinking if your alternative thinking can help them

- To question every marketing technique known, to see if it will work in the ever changing business world

- To question oneself to get better all the time


"....Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action..."

Timeless words indeed!

Confusing Activities with Results

Across teams,individuals and organizations, people seem to think activities are sufficient to get hired/appreciated and paid. While there is no doubt on one needing the other, one needs to realize that activities are not sufficient.

To ensure that one is spending time/money/resources on the right activites , the right way, 'Results' alone can be the performance criteria.

The principle applies equally well to an employee, a vendor, a partner and for most of the business relationships.

Activities might keep you busy, but not for long if they do not produce the right Results!

 

Sales Person is a customer too!

Many a time, customer objections seem to make salespeople think of them as idiots/unreasonable/irrational....

Every salesperson is a customer too for a number of products/services all the time.

Every salesperson selects/deselects/buys/ a large number of products/services from a number of sellers(vendors). Can you use that knowledge to address customer objections BETTER?

Whenever a customer objection araises, apply the following train of thought:

- If I were the customer , what would have made me raise a similar objection? what issues/impact factors/drivers would have made me behave that way?

- What would have convinced me against that objection? What exactly was I looking for when I raise such an objection?


This process in my view, will certainly improve the way customer objections are handled. Try and let me know.

Central Idea and the balance 50%

Steve Krug says in his book 'Dont make me Think' that every web page content can get reduced by 50% without losing its meaning. The thought can easily extend to the books we read, presentations we attend,speeches we listen to.

In the age of 140 character communication ( pioneered by Twitter), stripping the communication to its bones saves a lot for everybody ( removes irrelevent audience,saves time/money for audience and the communicator,makes the transaction cheaper and is the need of the hour ( when everything mentioned here is in short supply today!).

Do you need 400 pages to say 'Focus on core competency'?

Do you need 50/60 slides to present one great idea?

Do you need 60 minutes of my time when 5 will do?

Do you need to print a book, when a blog will do?


If you are still not convinced, understand the japanese motto "Anything complex is costly. Anything simpler is cheaper". I rest the case.

will web2.0,web 3.0 work for you?

while a section of the world is finding web 3.0 glamorous, a larger slice of the business world is still figuring out whether web2.0 is of any 'real' use to them.

Don't get carried away by the news on Dell's $3mn revenue from Twitter! Not everyone is a Dell.

Look at these before you leap:


1. How net savvy are YOUR CUSTOMERS?

2. Do they ever buy anything on net/mobile? ( you will be surprised at the number of businesses whose online procurement is a practical disappointment )

3. Does their buying process allow them to make a decision from just a few web pages/conversations?

4.Is your product/service customised for online purchase?

5.How does it compare with your competitors' online offerings?



Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Making Customers BUY before the sale

Its debatable whether men are good listeners compared to women, but one thing i have often heard is that sales people are NOT good listeners. All the training programs teach them to be good listeners but they want to hear themselves talk all the time!

A common perception is - If they dont talk, they are not selling!

Ofcourse the above observation does not apply to all sales people, definitely not the successful ones.

This post is not about making sales people, good listeners. But listening helps you get the customers to BUY all the time, even if you have not made the sale yet!

Every now and then in the sales process, make the customer BUY something!

BUY your time ( Invest more of their time and get ENGAGED in disussions)
BUY your opinion ( Agree on your ideas)
BUY into your sales process ( Agree on next meeting/next step)

If you dont stop ,listen and get them to BUY something from the above, you are not getting their commitment further into the sales process. You may wait till the end and ask if what you offer is what they want, they say NO, and both of you have wasted a lot of time,money,resources.

If they are not BUYING before the sale, may be they are not going to BUY at all!

Losses from a more 'Perfect' decision

Is there a PERFECT DECISION? Is it worth it?

Like Colin Powell said, 60% information is good enough in most cases for a decision.

You wait for 10% more information,it may make the decision 10% more perfect, BUT it may be too late and the cost of delay may be much more .


Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Creation and Maintenance

With 'twittered' work/life, everyone is too busy chasing today's goals , texting,tweeting,short mails,short telecons....

As we do this, the tectonic plates are shifting right under our feet. Web is taking over traditional marketing, Competition is not just global, but growing exponentially, deals are happening/breaking for reasons never comprehended earlier.

While managing all this is not easy, my suggestion to you is not to forget the importance of creation while running on 'maintenance'.

Let me explain.

What we do for today is maintenance.

What we do for tomorrow is creation.

In life/work, both have their importance. More so in the current context, when you take lessons on communicating in 140 characters or less.

If you dont spend atleast SOME of your time/energy/resources on creation, what you are doing for maintenance today may not exist tomorrow.

Maintain AND Create.

Selling in Recession Times

There is no shortage of depressants during recession times (and CNBC does not help either!)

How are companies growing inspite of recession? How are they selling?

1. Relationships: Perhaps the most important during recession. They help in two ways:

- Right relationships tell you where the spend is, irrespective of economic scenario

- Your existing relationships are best bets to growth during tough times. ( I know of companies who have not added clients for one year but have shown tremendous revenue growth, by sheer account mining)

2. Relevance: Is your offering ( not product) relevent in the current scenario? When businesses take a 'Keeping Lights ON' approach to all spends, does your offering have relevance to this approach?

Can you modify/package your offering to keep it relevent in the 'Keeping Lights ON' scenario?

( e.g. Instead of selling servers ( capital budget), offer them on usage basis ( revenue budget)

3.Review: What inefficiencies in your current sales & marketing processes can you take out? ( you lived with them during boom times, because you could.)

This could mean process changes,training,resource optimisation...

4.Rally : More than ever, these are times when the entire organisation needs to sell ( and not just S&M folks!).

How can other functions help in revenue generation?

The 'Third Life'

I am sure you heard of 'second life' ( a friend told me recently that real estate in this world too crashed due to global recession !!!)

Increasingly I am finding people in a 'third life' . I also see people falling between the first,second and third lives.

Let me explain.

what I call the third life is the one we live on the mobile network (the second life is on the web). The blackberry,mobile web,audio conferences, calls around world time zones,mobile office,mobile twitter make this third life taking 40 -50% of your first life.

How do you co-live in this third life, in which you only hear or read others but almost NEVER see them! This third life happens alongside the first or even second making your responses even more tricky!

I also see people stuck in the first life, without even realising that the world has moved on to second and third. They are uncomfortable if they don't see themselves in a physical office or in a physical home with others.

I see others seeing this as an opportunity to live two or three lives in one lifetime !
Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

The Most 'Powerful' word in English

Before I give you the word, here's what this word can do for you.

1.Cut through 'Bull'

2.can help you really think 'out of the box'.

3.Assess people better

Use this word thrice in succession and its power multiplies. The word is lot more relevant in today's world in which yesterday's wizards are found to be today's scamsters.

The more you use it,the better placed you are.

The word is WHY.

Let me know what difference this word makes for you.

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Marketing in a recessionary downturn

Let me wish you a 'peaceful' 2009!


Here are some thoughts that might help you market during recession.

1.Relationships: Nothing is more important during this period. If you know the right people and they value your relationship, they can guide you to where the spend is and help focus your marketing efforts. Here's the dampener: You cannot think of CREATING relationships ONLY when you need them most! I hope you have been nurturing those ,even before recession!

2.Segmenting: No recession effects the entire economy the same way. Have you looked at segments which are unaffected/growing during these times? Who is likely to grow most during these times? Which markets/geographies/verticals/categories?

3. Fundamentals:  Now more than ever, you need to focus on your business fundamentals/basics. If there are issues with those, recession is not the factor hampering your growth. While the world gets carried away by CNBC, make your basics stronger so you become the preferred choice.

4.Account Based Marketing: Have you exploited all that you can , within your existing relationships? Have you up sold/cross sold? Can you make new offerings to help them achieve during these tough times?

These are times that separate men/women from boys/girls. All the best and have a great 2009!