Business

Sustained Lead Generation- keeping the funnel full

Business, differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management

Today is the financial year closing for all organisations in India. I had an extremely hectic day where we were trying to close a very large deal – which eventually slipped the deadline.

So again tomorrow morning we get back to figuring out how to get the deal in our favor.

As they say – There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip – so do large blockbuster deals have a way of going through multiple iterations before they fruitify.

That’s where having a sustained method of generating leads of average value orders makes a big difference to your pipeline. There’s better predictability in the system for your cash flows and you build the processes and infrastructure in your company to ensure that these orders can get revenued systematically without any chokes.

For most businesses however generating the sustained leads becomes a nightmare because we try to focus on too many things at the same time. If we were to focus on only a very few markets, by segmenting them and differentiating our offerings for each segment, there would not be too much of anxiety. The occasional blockbuster then can be managed within the existing system.

On the other hand if the growth is based on the back of the block buster while there’s no pipeline for sustained order booking then you are in for major challenges. Segmenting and niching the market is the only viable way for a Product Manager to ensure that they can get success in the market

Lets see what the new financial year has in store for us.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Relationships in business

Business, relationships

A few posts back I wrote about Why time is not money and not all time is created equal.

In that part I had spoken about how time invested in building relationships can pay you multiple times over the time invested.

In every relationship and especially in business there are two things which I think are critical

  • You should first learn to give…..if its about only “you” then you won’t be able to build long lasting relationships
  • You need to be able to connect with your top 20-25 relationships every quarter so that you are in front of them as well as you can see how you can help them.

As Robert Cialdini talks I his book on Persuasion…..in human relationships “reciprocity” plays a very big role.

Most decent people are always looking to pay back when you have done something good for them.

Not to say that you won’t find people who are selfish. Those you will be able to make out and you don’t need to be “sucker” in such situations.

However in most cases once you do something for someone first, it automatically builds trust. In today’s world there’s a major Trust Deficit. So then by building trust you are automatically ahead of your competitors by leaps and bounds.

If you keep following this logic of always giving in advance and keeping in touch, you will build deep relationships which will help you in business over the long term

Till next time, keep giving.

Carpe Diem!!!