Author: animeshjmathur

Time and leverage

Leverage, Productivity, scaling

In one of my A-ha moments recently, I learnt a very useful lesson. I keep talking about using leverage (not debt – for those of you who are exposed to financial markets). There are various kinds of leverage – with say automatic machines weaving cloth versus people weaving cloth. Suddenly you have one machine producing more than a 100 weavers could do in a day.

Your wordprocessor and spreadsheets are all examples of leverage. One of the best examples is 80/20 and its fractal derivatives.

But each of these things have their own constraints. What once started by increasing leverage, then becomes standard operations and then you find the constraints in that.

So what was the A-ha moment. Time is limited and is the same for everyone. However leverage is infinite. The more you keep using leverage the more you can get more out of the time you have.

No wonder Aristotle had said – you give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum and I can move the earth.

All the highly productive people are very highly leveraged and if they constantly keep looking for finding leverage points then there’s an infinite amount of productivity they can achieve. Isn’t that amazing.

So a couple of weeks back I spoke about how I am trying to identify points where my brain gives me resistance and try to work my way through those to improve my outcomes.

Now in addition to that I am also looking at how I can find leverage points and see how far I can go.

Will keep you posted on my progress.

Meanwhile if you know of ways to improve leverage, please share in the comments section below.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Making the customer a part of the solution

B2B, Customers, Trust

I read this statement many years back when I was starting out. I don’t remember who was the author. But he had given so many examples that I believed him and thought of trying it out.

Since then, one of the reasons for whatever success I have had in the B2B space, is because I always take the customer into confidence about the challenges that we have and then ask how we can find a solution.

In case of a delivery problem I tell the truth about where or how we are going to fail . After hearing the truth, the customer may initially fire me because the job is not done. But because she is a partner in the solution she then figures a way out.

Similarly if the customer trusts you because you have provided exceptional service in your earlier deals then you can use him to figure out a solution. This is especially useful when there are cost constraints. If you can have the customer advice you in building the solution which ensures that the key challenges are met, while non essential items are reduced to keep costs in control, gets you to win the deal.

In both the above cases , this is only feasible if the customer trusts you. When they trust you and then give you advice, they feel obligated to make your solution successful. The downside is, if you screw up then she will help you only till it does not impact her own reputation in the organization. If her reputation is put at stake because of the fact that you did not deliver, then she will drop you like a hot potato and ensure that she never ever works with you.

Robert Cialdini calls this the concept of Co-Creation. He even cites various data points from research, even from non B2B situations . So this is a universally applicable advice.

Try this and let me know your success or failure when using this idea, in the comments section below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Alerts are the new Apsaras

Distractions, dreams, Focus, Goals

In Hindu mythology, the king of the Gods, is a God named Indra. In his court he had some very beautiful ladies with magical powers. Generally the Apsaras were involved in entertaining Lord Indra.

Lord Indra is not part of the Supreme trio of Hinduism- Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv.

Lord Indra is depicted to be a God who is very insecure. So he is always worried if the demons will dethrone him. He also gets very insecure if any Rishi goes deep into meditation / trance and is able to get more powers than him.

So whenever he used to find any Rishi on the verge of becoming more powerful than him, he would send one of his Apsaras to perform their magic and somehow break the trance / focus of the Rishis. Once the focus is broken they will have to restart the process of acquiring the knowledge for which they had gone to meditate.

On the other hand the Apsara was given the target to some how seduce the Rishi and keep him from going to seek the knowledge which would make him more powerful compared to Indra.

When I was listening to one of the stories of the Apsaras yesterday, I realized that in today’s world, the alerts on our cellphone do exactly the same job. They seduce us and divert our attention and break my focus. Once my focus is broken, it takes me another 40 odd minutes to get back to focus and that too if there’s no other distractions.

Further these Apps try to keep me engaged as long as possible with some or the other offer or information. The longer I am involved with the App, the longer I am kept away from doing my work which can help me achieve my goals and become more powerful.

So since time immemorial distractions have been created to keep people from achieving the enormous potential they have. Today its technology that’s doing it.

Till next time then….let’s go for dreams.

Carpe Diem!!!

Consistency in your marketing

B2B, Consistency, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, messaging, single target market

I keep talking of the single target market, the messaging , the related supporting “infrastructure ” . Marketing books talk about the 4Ps and various other different ways to structure your marketing.

What gets missed out is the consistency to ensure that we follow what we plan. A lot of times, some new urgency comes up and what was planned gets put on the back burner to attend to the urgency.

One of the ways you create a brand is by ensuring that your customers see you on a consistent basis and remember you when they have to take a decision for that kind of a product. Everyone knows Coke, so why advertise. But the Coca-Cola company wants you to first think and ask for a Coke when you’re thirsty. That’s consistency.

Even in B2B , where decisions are generally not impulsive you have to ensure that you are consistently messaging your audience. You have to be patient with B2B because you don’t know when a requirement comes up and they reach out to you because you have been consistently following up.

That’s why the concept of Marketing Stamina becomes even more important. You have to plan with a 3 year window and keep focused to ensure that you are always “in the game”

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!