Variety is the spice of life

No relationship can last forever unless parties involved keep reinventing. Whether a friendship, marriage, employment or business partnership, neither party can take it for granted.

You need to remain attractive to the other in the ever changing backdrop.New options emerge all the time for both parties just as initial basis for the relationship wears off over time.

To borrow loosely from Kamasutra, innovation is the glue.

Winners everywhere

Do you want to be original or do you want to copy the best?

It is not easy to answer this.whether you are writing a proposal, making a pitch, designing a logo or website, do you want to be original or try to copy from a winner?

With Internet making it very easy to copy, the temptation to copy a winner is quite big. Just as Google figures out that your content is not original, serious visitors will figure out that it's not your own.

You lose on two counts. A visitor thinks you are a copycat. More importantly you will be seen as a me-too and you will lose the chance to be different.

In the bigger scheme of things, the second one is worse.

Be original. Even if you fail that way, you control your destiny, not someone else.

Chances are you will win.

Are you a good Story Teller?

Everyone who needs their place under the sun , needs a story thats different, relevant and interesting. The same applies to marketing.

How are you not a 'me-too'?

Are you just latching on to the latest 'buzzwords' or 'hype words' or do you have a story that nobody else in the market place?

A Groupon story of 'local discount deals' quickly gets copied by LivingSocial.com .

A 'Harvard Connection' story is better executed by Facebook which kills Myspace on its way.

A 'Your body is your Game Controller' story brings 'Kinect' to limelight and can help it compete with a Wii.

Whats your story and how is it different , how difficult is it to copy and how well is it executed?

Think or Tech?

iPhone,Blackberry,Internet,Facebook,Twitter,Google, Cable TV,Mobile Phone..... The technology around us is endless and seems to be all invasive in our lives. Do they help us think better?

I heard a colleague comment recently that her daughter feeds her kid based on what internet 'advises' her rather than her mother.

It may be wise to separate technology from our innate human quality of THINKING. IDEAS /Thinking/Judgement has to be independent of information overload.

A better phone or laptop will not make you ideate better or think differently. Thats a quality you need to develop independent of these. On the other hand, 'over dependency' on these devices may blunt your cerebral abilities.

When you want some fresh thinking, switch off that device first.

Does 'Experience' matter?

As jobs get commoditised, people get replaced by those who can do it cheaper,faster,better. How do you ensure you are in the second list?

- What innovation are you bringing to your job, everyday?

- The biggest impact seems to come from technology- internet, mobile,TV,convergence,social media.... How is this impacting your job/helping you do it better? Are you using these?

- How relevant is your experience? With everchanging marketplace, the experience of an environment 10years ago may need to checked.

- Are you learning from others' failures and successes so that you 'experiment' less?

- How 'networked' are you for absorbing ideas from outside your 'field of comfort' and apply them to your current job?

There is a reason Robots did not replace humans. we need that creativity all the time!

The 'BIG' temptation

Temptation to aim for something BIG the very first time, is quite common anywhere in life. Whether its Chinese olympics or the 56inch LCD tv or the Whopper Mac ......

This is not free of risks. Anything BIG falls, it makes BIG noise. Aiming for something BIG in a business context has more risks and chances of failure because the complexities have grown tremendously.

This tendency is especially common for people coming new to the organization who want to impress with MEGA things. But one needs to know that you are more remembered for the failures than successes and so you cannot afford BIG failures.

Aim for smaller objectives, smaller projects, smaller goals and ideas.

They tend to be more successful and give you the footing to try something bigger.

Cutting the Middle wo/man in marketing

How many of the marketing folks you know of , talk to the customer DIRECTLY?

Or do they depend on secondary/tertiary information fed by sales/colleagues/press/analysts etc?

Nothing comes close to interacting first hand with the customer and I see many marketing folks not very comfortable with that. The truth between the lines , the informal communication, the true meaning behind the words... all this one gets to appreciate only by interacting with the customer directly.

But interacting with customer needs lot of confidence , knowledge and skill. This is the reason perhaps many organizations do not 'allow' marketing folks to talk to customer directly as they are not sure that the marketing folks dont create a 'wrong' impression with the customer.


But this is the 'moment of truth' for marketers. The one most powerful in the organisation is the one who drives customer and business. Let that one be marketing folks. Amen to that!

Staffing sales and marketing positions

When you need to recruit /position someone for a sales and marketing role, it might be helpful to keep in mind the following:

- Unlike many other functions, the magic formula of skills for success is unknown in sales and marketing. Can you describe what skills you need to be an ace salesperson who always achieves?

- As an external and internal facing function, S&M needs more all rounded skills than many other functions. It might be that the person may have 50-60% of the skills and the rest have to be developed or mentored.

- Every role in sales and marketing can be linked to organizational goals . This linkage is critical else some of the roles may remain side-liners ( with the danger of elimination in times of trouble)

- Since there is no SOP ( Standard Operating Procedure) for many of S&M activities, which change with customer,market,business situation etc, the roles need continuous mentoring and monitoring.

- Look for people who have a bent of mind to continuously learn and have tolerance for frustration. Both are key to success in sales and marketing.

Good luck in building your sales and marketing teams!

Innovation in Sales and Marketing

Pressures of today's sales and marketing challenges mean that you cannot do the same old, same old....

Are you one of those who thinks customer's thinking is always right? How can you be so sure? Just because customer is on the other side does not mean customer is omniscient.

Are you one of those who thinks that your thinking is always right?

Good ideas are good but how 'implementable' are they in the 'CURRENT' context?

Many a time, there are many ideas on the table on increasing pipeline,sales etc. Check these ideas to see how many are 'do-able' ( else they would have been tried long time ago).

How many of these are tried by our competition? Whats working for them and whats not?

Are we reinventing the wheel that the idea was tried before in our own organization but did not work?

Can we try the idea in a small way so the 'failure' doesn't cost a LOT?

Try and fail fast rather than NOT TRY AT ALL.

Good luck.

What Customers want

This post is to all those who are figuring out what to say to a B2B prospect.

Here is a low down on the prospect:

S/He is extremely busy/overloaded with mails/phones/work and may not necessarily be looking for help from you.

Given a choice, the prospect would not like to change things but complete whats on his/her plate.

Prospect would like his/her image in the organisation to go up.

Now lets analyst the impact of each of these to our message:

- Do not bore them with your offerings. They care a damn.

- Do you know whats bothering them NOW? Else dont bother contacting

- Does your offering become a solution to their CURRENT PROBLEM?

- Can you convey this in 3 lines or LESS?

- WIll this improve his/her image in the organisation?


Check your message against this list.

Good luck with your messaging.

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!

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.

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

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?