Author: animeshjmathur

Marketing is Education – Part 4

differentiation, differentiation, education, Marketing, Positioning, route to market

How many of you have heard of the perfume brand ….Fragonard

When we think of perfumes, the typical names which come to our mind are Nina Ricci, Channel, Givenchy, Boss etc. Fragonard…never heard of it, or at least I had never heard of it.

When we went to Paris, we had taken the Paris Pass. One of the coupons as part of the Pass was the visit to a perfume museum where they would show you how perfumes are made.

So we decided to take the tour because we had never seen perfume being made. They had various language guides and the moment they had a large enough crowd they would start the tour. Our guide was tremendous. Inspite of the fact that she was French, she spoke very clear English and explained the complete history of how the initial perfumes got made, then how the various flavours and fragrances are created etc.

After the history and the processes she spoke about how perfumes evaporate, how they should be kept, what kind of containers should be used, and the concentration levels if the perfume has to last long on your body.

All this information you need to understand was biased towards what they were offering. This is not to say they were giving wrong data. They were however showcasing data that got you oriented towards their offering.They also took up the issue of not doing mass advertising to create a brand awareness, head-on, and eliminating it as a objection, as part of the education process. This differentiation of using education rather than showing models has kept them in good stead. They have been in business for more than 100 years I think.

All the queries were so masterfully handled by the guide, it was as if she was an amazing teacher.

At the end of the tour then she came up with the offer, since we had spent time visiting them, only at that time (limited time / scaricity )from her (reciprocity)- because she had given all this education free of cost to us, quite a few of us ended up buying a lot of perfumes.

My family and I had not gone with any agenda to buy, we still ended up buying more than Euro250 worth of perfumes. And the bigger fact is that we didn’t have a buyer’s remorse, that we had been tricked. We were actually feeling so happy that we got such good perfumes.

As a sidebar – the perfumes are really good, they do last much longer than the other brands even in the hot weather of India because the concentrate level is much higher than others. Also since they are packed in metal containers , unlike most other brands which are packed in glass, these last much longer in the bottle also.

You see the benefit of the education they gave me, I have given you the exact things they taught me about what should be seen while buying a perfume. They have made a permanent client. Whenever I go to Paris, Fragonard….will be on my list of places to visit to buy perfumes.

Can you see how you can utilise education to create a strong image in the mind of the customer.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Precision like the Swiss – how to use it in your marketing

Marketing, messaging, Methodologies

When we were kids, we were always told about how precise the Swiss were in terms of their engineering and how a Swiss watch would be accurate for years to come….those were the days of the mechanical watches. As you roamed the streets of Geneva during those days , you could see shops where there were people with magnifying glasses on their eyes, putting in the various gears of the watch.

Now I went back to Geneva after a very very long time about two years back. Those watchmakers are gone. I wanted to showcase those watchmakers to my wife and son but couldn’t.

However what has not changed is the precision that the Swiss follow in all walks of their life. As usual, I had made Geneva my base and bought the Swiss Travel Pass which allowed us the use of all their train, bus and boats. If you are short on time and want to visit multiple places, the travel pass is the most convenient thing.

Everyone knows how beautiful Switzerland is and how safe it is etc. etc.

I am not sure however if anyone knows or speaks about, how synchronised the whole transit transport system in Switzerland is. You get only 3-4 minutes between interchanges, but you can be sure that you will catch all your linking transport. And this is not only about trains or only buses, but all the trains, boats and buses.

One day we decided to go to Interlaken from Geneva. After reaching Interlaken and admiring all the beauty from the land level we took the …..to the restaurant on the highest point. After having our lunch over there we decided to take a boat ride on the lake – all three of us love boat rides. When we reached the boat station, the next boat was not until about 3:30 PM ( I don’t remember the exact times now). The whole tour would take about 2 hours. So I was worried that we would not be able to take the train back to Geneva via Berne from Interlaken. We then started thinking in terms of avoiding the boat ride because otherwise we would reach Geneva past midnight. While Geneva is very safe, I generally have a fear of being so late in a foreign land.

Now this is where the drama comes. The steward at the boat was extremely friendly. Before he started boarding I got talking to him, sharing my dilemma. Once I told him the final destination he made out a itinerary for me, so that we would get a ride on the boat as well as not reach Interlaken at midnight.

So we got on the boat. After about 25 minutes of a boat ride in a chilly winter afternoon in Interlaken, at the second stop he asked us to get down. Right opposite the docking area was a small station. The challenge with the small station was that there was very little English so we were not sure if the train that was coming us would take us. But the steward had given us the train number and the destination.

So exactly in 12 minutes or so the train arrived. We sat in the train to reach the mainline station where would catch the train coming from Interlaken. The challenge – there was only a 3 minute gap and the platforms where the two trains were going to park were quite a walk. But our train reached there exactly as promised. We moved at a brisk pace to reach the other platform and to our surprise, the train we had to catch was just entering the platform as we reached.

I haven’t seen such precision, such attention to minute details across different transport systems in different cities like I saw it there.

Its things like these which make Switzerland such a “hot” tourist destination.

Why all this story – because if you can anticipate in advance how will each of your marketing pieces work and what will be the next steps and who will do what, when the prospect takes which step, then your whole system will work smoothly to get customers into your funnel and pass them on.

If on the other hand if any of the pieces are mis-aligned, then , there will be friction in your marketing which the customer will sense and you will delay his buying.

Till next time see how precisely you can match all the moving parts.

Carpe Diem!!!

Velocity of cash

cash flow, Financial Independence

Many years back I had read one book by Prof Ram Charan- Every Business is a Growth Business. Prof Ram Charan is one of the most well known gurus of multi billion dollar CEOs. I have mentioned his books earlier also.

In this book, that I mention above, he tells a story about how a lady in India , who is selling some items on the road and has a simple logic – she wants to sell of all the items that she has got to vend that day, even if she has to give a little discount for a larger quantity because then she can turn the cash around.

In business the equivalent logic is that profit and loss is on the balance sheet for record purposes, what matters is the ability for you to cycle the cash. If you can turn more cycles on your working capital you can generate much higher profits. Cash is real. Profits are only for the books. Companies close because they are not generating cash, not because they are not generating profit. A lot of people in business even now don’t understand the value of cash and hunt for Gross Margins. Gross Margins are important when you are giving a lot of credit because then if you are not even making margins then your business will crash.

Something which I am trying to wrap my arms around is that Cashflow is more important than Networth. I have been a big proponent for the magic of compounding and how it creates magic , the longer you let the money compound.

I have recently been reading a lot of books written by Garrett Gunderson and also following his YouTube channel. His emphasis is that Networth is like a P&L statement which has little significance if cash is not getting generated. His view is that assets which don’t generate regular cash are worthless. As per him the fundamental issue for generating financial independence is cash flow not net worth. I am always looking for ways that can help me figure out a quicker way to financial independence.

As per him like in a company if there’s a machinery and it’s generating products that generate cash for the company then this asset has value. A building which is lying vacant and not generating cash just sits on the balance sheet without creating any value. The value of the land on which the building is sitting may appreciate over time. But the cash which the machine is generating can keep multiplying depending on the velocity that it can generate.

So if I am making 10% margin on every $100 of product sold and I am able to cycle that cash 12 times in a year, then at the end of the year I would have made $120 dollars (a 120% return) while the $ that I invested in building the product are still with me. On the other hand the land lying idle will appreciate maybe 5-10% per annum.

While the above concept is clear to me, what I am trying to get a handle on, is that, for an individual oter than giving property on rent, what other methods exist to get the assets to create cash flow.

If you’ll have got personal assets other than property which is generating cash, I would like to hear from you. Pls put in the comments below

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Possibility thinking

Affirmative action, Human Brain, Labelling, Marketing, possibility thinking, Sales, Thinking

A lot of times I get stuck in my thinking. This especially happens in stressful situations where I ascribe an intention without the facts. To all of us, a person not picking up the phone – seems like the person is trying to avoid us, then our mind goes in frenzy identifying all the reasons that the person could be avoiding us and our mind takes us back into some random situation and we feel all bad and low.

We end up putting labels on the person, that he/she is bad, deliberately doing this to us etc. etc.

Its quite possible that the person’s phone was on silent and she didn’t notice. She may end up calling you when she sees your call and then you realise you have ended up wasting so much time.

So generally what I have started doing when I feel that something is not okay, I take the initiative in trying to check out first if everything’s okay. A lot of times I have come to realise that the person was going through some personal challenges of his own and could not have been in a position to talk with me.

But more than that I realize that there was nothing personal that this person had against me.

Now why did I give you all this story. Because a lot of times when a prospect stops responding to you, we end up ascribing all kinds of motives. When a product that you were so passionate about is not picked up in the market, then also we start ascribing all kinds of ideas.

With possibility thinking you try to look at – is there something else, is there something which I am not noticing, is there something which is absolutely unrelated to us because of which the prospect has stopped talking to us.

In sales this happens most when suddenly the prospects stop responding to your mails. More often than not I have observed that the manager gives another responsibility to the person you were interacting with and he puts your proposal on the back burner. Nothing personal with you.

One of best ways to get someone to open up in such situations is to write an “apology mail for bothering her and asking if there’s something we could have done better to not have put her off” In most situations an apology mail like this gets the person to respond with the exact situation because most people want to be fair and they don’t want you apologising for something you didn’t do.

On the other hand you could also have competition which you never thought of , suddenly appear and suddenly sabotage your sale by targeting the boss of the person you were interacting with.

With possibility thinking you like to keep asking questions without getting negative about the situation, and then getting it clarified. Time is the most important thing for a sales or marketing person. Spending that time , rueing about and ascribing all kinds of ideas to the person is a waste of time. its better to keep eliminating negative possibilities and identifying more positive possibilities.

This is not about positive thinking, about a glass being half empty or full. This is about being constructive in your usage of the limited resource that you have – called time.

Till next time then. Keep thinking in terms of possibilities.

Carpe Diem!!!