Try just one thing….then move to the next

I hope the content I give is useful and interesting. It’s good to know that some people read it and some people like it. I am grateful to all of you who regularly read my blog.

However I will be really happy to know if you have used the various marketing and sales ideas which I have given, actually helped you make money. Whether you work for an organisation or are an entrepreneur, at the end of the day its about getting business to happen. Action is what is critical to get anything to succeed. So if you don’t try out the ideas, you wouldn’t know if what I am writing about can be applied to you.

Like the picture above, the film can be in the mind of the director, but until someone cries action and people start acting, a film cannot be made. No director won an Oscar for a film which was not made.

My advise is good for the small companies / entrepreneurs. Its not for the mega corporations who have lots of money to spend in creating brands and then assuming business will come. Mine is more about the small company which does not have enough funds so they have to ensure that whatever they do gets converted into revenue.

Even within these types of companies, there could be some who can afford to invest in relationships and build the business while for some it mean creating a pipeline of prospects today so that they can survive tomorrow and ensure a smooth flow of business.

However you will not know if what you are reading is worthwhile if you don’t try it. If you try and it does work excellent, let me know. If you try it and it doesn’t work, even then let me know. I am trying to see how broad based is the possibility of the ideas I share. These are all things which I have tried to work out and see. When I see some success, I try to see if they can be applied to other areas also. If because of my ideas you can get more success, I will be extremely delighted.

So I look forward to your comments.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Practical and Theory

education, experiences, ideas, Learning

You can’t experience heaven without dying yourself….this is something which my father used to say, when emphasising the importance of actually “doing & practicing” versus “learning by reading/ listening to podcasts/ viewing videos”. Its like what Mike Tyson used to say – everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face…..when that happens, its what you have practiced practically that keeps you in the ring.

I am a big propagator of the idea of lifelong learning. I have been an avid reader of books, I listen to a lot of podcasts and watch a lot of videos. Most of the people I read or follow have very interesting content. I used to find it very intellectually very stimulating. But it would all get lost in the daily humdrum.

But the items which I would practice would stay with me for a long time. As Joe Polish says there are three ways to learn – the first is to learn yourself, the second and better way is to Practice what you learn and the third and best way is to Teach from the experiences of what you practiced.

All the authors can write or talk about the ideas and challenges that they encountered. Consultants can give you ideas based on the interactions they have with multiple clients after synthesising them. Each has its value, because you can at least avoid the known “snakes in the grass”. But its only the practitioner who can give his/her experience with the “doing”.

As an example, some consultant or podcast may tell you, Facebook advertising is cheap and you can target on an amazing amount of niches because Facebook collects a lot of data of its users and preferences. But you want to say target, “start-up” entrepreneurs. When you actually go through all the filters, that Facebook provides for advertisers, you don’t find a way to target start-up entrepreneurs. This situation has actually happened with me a lot of times, when I have tried to implement some thing that I have read or heard.

Its not that the consultant is wrong, its just that they have not actually worked in your specific situation. Your learning comes out of applying the things you read and hear and then adapt it to your situation. Then the thing stays with you.

That’s why I keep prodding all of you who read my blog to give me feedback on how you applied what I shared in the posts and if it did help or where it didn’t help.

Look forward to hearing your feedback.

Carpe Diem!!!

Execute….and you can change trajectory

execution, ideas, Marketing

I keep writing various things on marketing and sales – generallyfor B2B, personal finance and human performance.

My experience has primarily been in B2B marketing- providing industrial automation solutions, then IT and now some amount of media related work.

I was talking to a close associate on the weekend and she raised a point asking if the blogs I write can actually be applied by all kinds of companies in any of the industries that I have listed above .

I believe, except for pure start-ups, with whom I have never worked, if you even have a few customers then, what I write should definitely help you in your marketing and grow your business significantly.

But I can only give you ideas, at the end of the day, its how you take those ideas and execute that will determine your success. A lot of times when I am taking coaching or listening to podcasts, I get a lot of ideas going on my mind, but till I don’t execute them, I don’t realize the challenges that come up. So while these coaching calls are interesting , it’s not useful until I execute.

So while I hope you find my posts interesting, they can be useful only when you use them and then give me your comments, whether things worked out or they didn’t.

Till next time then….keep executing.

Carpe Diem!!!

Execution – the key to success of any endevour

execution, ideas

I am a big picture person. The guy who gets ideas. The guy who can construct a solution by seeing both inside and outside the box. I am the guy who can identify the ideas that need to be executed.

My blindspot is execution. I have to exert immense amount of concentration to identify execution challenges.

However, a big picture is very good to show how the puzzle will look like when made. However someone really needs to put the pieces together to make the picture. The more the pieces of the puzzle the bigger is the challenge from an execution perspective.

When you are in a corporate environment, it is the slippages in execution which cause the biggest problems. And these are not big slippages which can be observed easily. These are small, almost unobservable things which go unnoticed and then you suddenly get a surprise.

Today two such things happened – due to which this topic came on top of my mind. One was that someone was to load money into a prepaid account so that Google Ads would function and the second was because someone was to give feedback on a resume submitted and he didn’t think it was important to give that feedback to the right person, we lost 2-3 days in the process.

On the face of it, these are such small issues. But like the saying goes ‘you waste your life because of the seconds you waste”. Same way when you add up all the misses that happen in a year, the cost is a few months of revenue lost.

Like I said I am a big picture man, so getting down to identify why something missed target, takes an enormous amount of energy and diverts me from my strengths which is marketing. But when I start identifying the causes then I like to really go down and identify the root cause.

Ideally if you are like me, a big picture person, you should ave a team of executioners who complement you and ensure that the big picture is made. They are the guys who site with checklists to ensure that things get done at the end of the day.

And they should monitor the laggards in your team so they perform. If inspite of monitoring the laggards don’t perform, they should be thrown out. There’s no point in carrying dead weight around.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!