Author: animeshjmathur

Riding the elephant- you still need to market

B2B, Marketing, need, relationships, Riding the elephant, route to market, Symbiotic relationship

While I keep harping about the advantages of using my philosophy of riding the elephant. You need to be aware that, at the end of the day you need to keep your marketing principles in mind over there also.

I have written on some ofvthese points earlier also, but its important to identify the need of the elephant. The elephant has to see the benefits of giving you a ride.

This is a critical aspect, because if you try to tell the elephant about your capabilities to cut branches of trees, then the elephant may not be interested in you. On the other hand if you show the elephant that you can help him get bananas faster, it may become your friend and give you a ride. However some elephants may not be interested in bananas, so you may end up missing judging and spending time in convincing the wrong elephant.

Year before last, we invested a lot of time in building a solution on one of the biggest cloud service providers. We had a unique solution and we thought that the cloud service provider would take us along where they saw prospects. But inspite of spending more than a year we realized that the technology platform that we were working on was not a priority for them in India. So this elephant was not interested in the fact that we could help it get bananas faster, because it was not interested in eating bananas.

So whether you are going out on your own or you are using my philosophy of riding an elephant you still need to identify that one need in the market which you can address.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Riding the elephant- once again

Marketing, Product Management, route to market, Symbiotic relationship

Today’s post is a short one. You all know my philosophy for a small business in the technology space- ride a large OEM (the elephant) and wherever the elephant goes, you get a ride . In case you are interested I had written around 4-5 posts earlier in the year on this whole philosophy.

Today’s post is about how my team has used the same concept. I have trained some of my team members into following this philosophy and while it took them some time to learn the techniques of first learning to give before asking and building long term relationships.

It took about 8-9 months with our technical and marketing working closely with the OEM to keep building solutions on their platforms without any desire for business.

But now that so many of the OEM’s people see the kind of investments we have made and our commitment to their business, they themselves have started taking us forward.

We are still no way near reaching the full potential of what’s possible with the relationship, but if my team does it right then it can have a snowball effect.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Getting better in increments-Part 3 – for financial independence

compounding, Financial Independence

In this blog you have read a lot about the magic of compounding and how it can help you reach your long term goals.

I have also written multiple times on the benefits of Systematically getting money deducted from your account to directly go for your investments so that you don’t have to think about it. Tbe moment you bring the thinking into the process, chances are things won’t happen.

The last item that I have not written so much about is what do you do if you have already crossed the age of 40. Since compounding works over a very long period of time, what do you need to do to get financial freedom.

I had couple of times written about the Hemchander-Fibonacci number. If you use that logic to systematically invest the sum of the previous two numbers on a consistent basis, then you can beat the challenge of not having enough time on your side to make compounding work.

While not as aggressive as the Hemchander-Fibonacci equation, even if you were to increase your investments by 4% points every month or 10% every quarter, you could have a 46% higher core this year entering the compounding equation. If every year you keep doing this, you will have compounding work on compounding to give you an exponential growth.

Even very small increments done o er a long period consistently can help you achieve financial freedom. So don’t get bothered at what age you start investing, the key is to see how you can keep growing the core on a consistent basis.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Pre-empting conversations

Affirmative action, client management, Fear, Trust

While my experience has been sales and then marketing, I also carry a revenue responsibility.

When you carry a revenue responsibility, managing client engagement becomes a major task.

A lot of times deciphering the why behind the what becomes a tight rope walk. Especially when you are selling services, where, unlike in the case of a product, the boundaries are not clearly defined, managing the gap between the customer expectations and the delivery of services is an every day challenge

One thing I have found useful is to pre-empt the conversation. You don’t give a chance to the customer to come and complain. You go and tell her the challenge, what could be the impact and how you think you are going to solve it. Then you ask the customer for suggestions so that she sees herself as superior to you, which helps manage her ego . Also since you have informed her of the problem, before she could complain, she is now partly responsible for finding the solution. This affirmative action also increases trust.

A lot of the out-bursts which happen when a customer complains, can be completely avoided if we pre-empt things. However most service delivery people are scared to do this out of fear, that the customer will fire them, not realizing that the firing in a complaint situation is even worse.

If you are in services, its always a good idea to pre-empt the conversation if you want to be successful.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!