Reporting back

It’s been a few months since I last posted anything. I had been tied up with closing some old, family issues with banks and local authorities and then my back problem erupted again so I was on bed for a few months. All-in-all a pretty eventful period.

A few learnings along the way – some things got re-iterated and some are new .

Persistent follow-up – I am usually not every good with doing follow-ups – but with government officials and with your employees, its a very good idea to ensure you are following up regularly on commitments, pending items etc. And a good mechanism for follow-ups is having a checklist on which you keep striking-off things which are cleared out.

Delegating – I have always been a very strong advocate for delegating tasks – but by delegating to the right person, you can actually improve your productivity tremendously, while the other person gets an opportunity to improve her skills. Over the last few months we did a lot of hiring. Hiring is a time consuming job, but if you can get to only interview shortlisted candidates, then it makes life easy. There is off-course a downside. if you were involved in the shortlisting yourself, you may have hit upon a raw diamond which you can cut and polish. But mining diamonds is a costly and time consuming activity so you might as well depend on someone else to handle the job of scouting through the dust.

Most people in the world are good folks – this is a belief I have carried all through my life till now – during these follow-ups with bank officials and agreement signing etc. I found in most places, people are generally cooperative and helpful. If you tell them the constraints that you face, they actually suggest possible solutions as well. If you actually ask someone for help, people go out of the way to figure out ways to help.

Life is short – Live it – Enjoy it now – This realisation actually started from the onset of the pandemic and the multiple waves that it got. I used to love going to different places with the family. But over the last 3+ years I have actually got scared of travelling to new places because of the uncertainty of the different variants of Covid which keep popping-up and also the medical facilities available in the country that I go to. Due to this, so many places, that were on my bucket list, to visit, I have to hold. Due to that there is a feeling of regret. I don’t like having regrets. If I had travelled earlier, I may have covered a lot of the places on my bucket list. I am hoping to get out of my fear for Covid and restart travelling – let’s see.

Identifying the right elephant to ride – this has been one of my pet theories for getting into the market. I am even more convinced about this theory today. Not all elephants are friendly and agreeing to take you along, on the ride, to where they are going. If you can identify the right elephant, you can rapidly cover a long distance. The assumption of course is that you want to go in the same direction as the elephant.

I would love to hear back from you and hope to post regularly again

Till then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The power of Silence for Focusing on your business

Focus, Marketing, peak Performance, Productivity, single target market, Uncategorized

For a lot of people who follow Buddhism , today is an auspicious occasion since it Lord Buddha’s birthday. One of the things linked to Buddhism and the overall philosophy of religions that originated in the Indian Sub-Continent is the practice of “Dhyan” and Yoga. While there are a lot of people who follow and practice Yoga across the world “Dhyan” is something that is missing in our lives. “Dhyan” involves sitting in pin drop silence and just focusing all your energy to think.

We all (me included) are so busy running after deadlines all day that we don’t give our brains the bandwidth to actually do what it can do best – which is THINK. When you get into the “Dhyan” stage you are able to connect a lot of the dots which otherwise seem impossible to connect.

I have many times earlier, mentioned a practice by Dean Jackson called the focus finder. Its a very practical way to do a brain dump and then get on to the activity of Thinking.

Today I was a little frustrated that I was not being able to figure out a solution for identifying a Single Target Market. I keep giving you folks a lot of inputs on why you should go about identifying the Single Target Market and the incredible benefits it can have in your marketing.

But today I had a mind block and I was not able to think through on what would be my STM. After lazing around mindlessly and watching un-necessary web series for about an hour, I decided to just sit down with my notebook and pencil and started jotting down thoughts as they came to me about my “bullseye ” (the STM)

While doing this my brain also kept throwing up additional items that I could include. But I had to make my STM as sharply defined as possible. So I kept listing down, all the people whom I would not be able to help.

Automatically I ended up putting a lot of AND statements to ensure that there were as little possibilities as possible for some additional markets creeping in.

Once this was done I went two steps further, I even identified the the markets, one variable away and two variables away. This would help me, in case, the STM I have defined is not viable economically and I have to expand it a little bit.

While I spent close to 2 hours dilly – dalling, I was able to achieve all this in a matter of about 45 minutes, when there was pin drop silence and I was only focusing on this activity. These 45 minutes were more precious because of the immense productivity I got.

If feasible I would suggest everyone to regularly do these focus exercises, they can increase productivity levels dramatically and because you take out everything from your brain and put it on paper, there’s no chance of missing things.

Till next then.

Carpe Diem!!!

What would you like to read about

Uncategorized

Today I have a very small request – I have written about various topics. But they have all been what I thought about writing.

Is there something which you would like me to write about. Are there any marketing related challenges that you face that I could possibly help with.

Pls let me know in the comments section below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Gatherers versus Consumers

B2B, Marketing, psychology, Uncategorized

Gatherers – I heard this term today, while listening to the Morecheeselesswhiskers podcast with Dean Jackson. I heard this in the morning and now its evening, this term is still ringing in my ear and the implications it can have in marketing.

Dean’s logic was that we are hardwired genetically to be gatherers. Since historic times, when human beings started staying in caves, they would take food and store it in the cave so that in case it rained or for some reason they couldn’t go out hunting the next day, they would have food for the family.

At that time if they found some bananas, they would “gather” it and take it to their cave. Till now that characteristic has not changed. People end up buying things, they never use, so that they however have it – just in case – gathering. If you are an avid reader like me, you may also have a lot of books which you have never read, but you bought them, so that you don’t end up missing them- another sign of gathering.

Consuming on the other hand is about something which we actually use.

Now here comes the interesting part. You can utilize this psychological concept in your marketing. How many times have you observed people offering you a free book. Chances are that you ended up taking that book by providing your email address. There’s also a very large chance that you didn’t read much of that book even though the title of the book had interestedyou earlier. So you gathered it but didn’t consume it.

So how can it be used. You offer a product worth “gathering” and in return get them to give you their emails to which you can then prospect on a regular basis. So now I have to think in terms of how I can create an item which is easy to gather which can help me generate leads.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!