Author: animeshjmathur

The One thing giving you a pushback

Energy, Fear, Human Brain, procrastination, Productivity

The human brain is designed for ensuring your survival at all times. Given that most of us – especially those who live in democracies are generally safe – the brain does actually does not need to do too much for survival. But because that’s the inherent design, things can’t be changed.

Which means that the brain will pushback on all kinds of new things that you think of doing, because it inherently means that it will need to work more. If it works more it will consume more energy, which in turn is a risk if there’s a sudden need for survival issues.

I have been trying to analyse everyday – sometimes successfully and sometimes without success – at which points did I face resistance or pushback, which caused me to procrastinate. There’s actually an interesting podcast which Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan used to do called The Joy of Procrastination. They had an interesting take, that you should actually plan your day based on the procrastination points that you face everyday.

Once you realise that the pushback or resistance or procrastination or fear means that the brain is thinking that new work is involved, it could actually be good for you. So thinking in these terms, I am working now each day on trying to identify one point of resistance and then actually do that thing. Sometimes it has been writing an email to a prospect, sometimes its a difficult conversation with a colleague.

I am not sure if all the activities that I have done are actually becoming successful but there’s a great sense of relief after I do the thing, where I was facing push back.

While I am working on that aspect I am also trying to figure out, how I can make the Domino effect come into play, when I am doing these things which are giving me a pushback. I will keep you posted if I can build an “algorithm” which can help me make me geometrically more productive because of these activities.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Choosing your investment based on your aspirations

Financial Independence, Goals, investment, money

I have written earlier in most of my posts on your financial freedom that you should choose to use the investment to get life experiences.

Today I was watching ETNow Swadesh. Its a business channel in India. I am always looking out for pieces of wisdom from people who are much smarter than me. So there was an interview going on with Sunil Subramaniam. He is the CEO of one the Sundaram Asset Management (Mutual Fund)company which runs mutual funds.

While everyone talks about creating buckets for different life goals while making the investments and choosing the type of investments. He came up with a unique logic which is more attributable to people who live in developing countries like India. Our currency on an average depreciates by about 5% every year with respect to the US dollar.

So in case your aspiration list is about visiting multiple countries, like mine is, his logic is, to invest in global funds where the depreciation of your local currency will not have an impact. Otherwise your buying power falls by that amount compared to the USD.

If you are in the US/Canada/Eurozone/UK then this logic will not be of too much benefit to you because your currencies are typically pegged to the USD. But if you are from a developing nation and if its legal in your country, then you should look at this logic.

Since I practice what I preach, most of my investments happen as SIPs (Systematic Investment Plan) I need to figure out how this logic would work because as the currency depreciates, my ability to buy US stocks becomes weaker, so how are my returns going to be protected.

Till I figure that out.

Carpe Diem!!!

Raving Fans & The Single Target Market

expectations, Marketing, service quality, single target market

Raving Fans was a book written by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. A printed version is not available easily and I haven’t seen it on Kindle when I was searching for it a few years.

If you are fans of the The One Minute series like The One Minute Manager , The One Minute Sales Person etc. then you will know that Ken Blanchard writes books which are very short- just around 100 pages – but with a deep meaning. They are written in story format which ensures your interest in the book.

I was re-reading the book Raving Fans today. Being a short book, I started it in the morning and had finished it in a few hours. By its name Raving Fans is all about customer service. But if you get down to the underlying concepts that they write about, they are pure marketing.

One of the core concepts that they talk about in the book is about choosing the correct market where you can define the perfect experience and ensure you overdeliver on what you promise.

They also therefore talk about who you should NOT have as your customer because then you cannot make them Raving Fans.

Which brings me to what I keep talking about choosing the Single Target Market, because then you get to know your customer intimately and can give them an out of the world experience. In a B2B setting as I mention you also need to go down to the role, the level etc since there will be multiple people involved in any decision.

If you can get this book the Raving Fans, I would highly recommend you reading it. In today’s world where customers shift loyalty so fast, its a must read book.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market – Who’s not your customer

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

I keep harping about the Single Target Market whenever you want to enter a new market. The Single Target Market helps you define your segmentation or niche very crisply, including the use case. Sometimes though its difficult to identify this easily because you believe your service is good for different people and you don’t want to miss any market.

When I am going no where with this discussion, I change track and ask the people, whom do you not want to do business with. So to use the analogy of the picture above you could start by eliminating the blue and orange soft toys.

So from a B2B perspective, we first identify which is the geography we would like to start with so that we immediately focus our energy on the most efficient geography, then we identify who would be the lousiest industries to work with – this could be because those industries don’t have the need or they don’t pay well or they haven’t reached the level of supporting infra for your product or service to work etc. This way we eliminate more than half of the universe that we could target.

So now we start moving forward. Out of the industries that we are left which are the top 2 in terms of spending in the area that we operate. You fish where the fish are, why make life difficult. With this you eliminate may be the remanning 30-40% of the market. What is left then is about 10-20 % of the market from where you started.

Now between these, which companies can you easily make an entry versus some extremely large companies where the hierarchies are so huge that you will never be able to make an entry. Then you would like to eliminate the companies who may not be able to afford what you have to offer.

So from the whole universe where you could market or sell your product or service you have now come down to less than 5% of the market that you started with.

From here it becomes a choice of selecting the kind of customer you want to do business with. Then you have to be relentless in your focus on these customers and have the marketing stamina for the next 2-3 years if you want to make any meaningful inroads.

This is a counter intuitive way to move forward but if we don’t narrow down our choices we will not be able to dominate the market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!