The 80/20 of a daily routine

I have been analyzing my daily routine. On a weekly basis if we were to just take 40 hours of work, then after a month of monitoring my daily activities I have realized that

1. I spend more than 30% of my time in peer to peer meetings and unscheduled internal calls

2. I spend another 30-35% of my time in emails

3. I spend about 15% in reviews / feedback sessions with my team .

4. About 5-7% is spent on meeting customers to understand what is happening at their end or to give presentations or to get feedback ….this is one of my Unique Abilities and I love interacting with customers.

5. I spend less than 10% on actual marketing activities like conceptualizing marketing messages, strategies etc.

The last item I am able to achieve with the focused thinking time that I keep writing about.

The other day I was listening to the Ultimate Entrepreneur podcast by Jay Abraham. He had a guest by the name of Dr. Alan Barnard who is a practitioner of Goldiratt’s Theory of Constraints.

In this podcast towards the end they speak about a new offering they’re bringing to the market which shows entrepreneurs how they can convert their existing top line into the bottom line in less than 4 years.

That’s what got me thinking. I have been talking so much about 80/20, prioritizing, small hinges move big doors etc. in my blogs. To actually be able to convert the top line that I get for the company into the bottom line I will need to focus sharper and sharper on the 80/20 of the 80/20 of the items which actually get me business. Items where I have high impact and where presently I am spending less than 15% of my time.

I am on the experiment to see how I can convert the amount of my present top line to become my bottom line in next few years. Will keep you posted.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education – Part 3

education, Marketing, Methodologies, Technology

In this part today we will look at another set of great marketing successes who have used education as a method to differentiate themselves and made me their customer.

Example 1: Jay Abraham. I referred to him in the first part of this series. He is big time into giving away knowledge free of cost. There’s so much knowledge which I have gained from him, that when I could afford I started investing in his programs. Due to him I learned that there are only 3 ways to grow a business. The strategy of pre-eminence. The marketing Parthenon etc.

Example 2: Motilal Oswal.This is one of the biggest brokerages in India. When I was starting to learn about the stock markets, I read a lot of the Berkshire letters to the shareholders by Warren Buffet. I read a massive amount of books on the subject. The only challenge was that all the content was international. I was looking for content specifically for India.

That’s when I found the Wealth Creation studies that have been authored by Raamdeo Aggarwal each year for the last 20 odd years. These studies don’t talk about their company at all except maybe for the methodologies they use. Due to that, you gain trust.

When I read those twenty odd reports, I was able to understand the Indian stock markets. So when I had to choose my brokerage, I chose motilaloswal. There were others who were offering cheaper options but because I had trust in motilaloswal, I took them.

Its however difficult to create pure education based content and put it out. Even though I am so much in favor of creating educational content around your offerings, its especially tough when you are in the technology space where there’s so much happening. So I also struggle to get this to happen.

Having said that, I would still think its the best way to build trust with customers.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Creating the message for your niche

differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation

While finding the niche is tough, I have found creating the messaging to make people raise their hand to show interest is the toughest part

This requires immense attention to the nuances of the words being used. You need to keep chiseling on the words such that you use the least amount of words with the highest impact.

But even before you get down to putting words on paper, how do you make out ” what’s going on in the customer’s mind”

The famous Clayton Christensen experiment on the job of the milkshake was directed to exactly figure out what’s going on in the minds of people who buy a milkshake in the morning at McDonald’s.

You will need to test hypothesis and have the patience to continuously iterate and improve on what’s working and dump what’s not.

Somethings which I have found very useful are ideas from Jay Abraham and Dean Jackson. I would highly recommend reading Jay’s book Getting All you want from What you Have and listening to the MoreCheeseLessWhiskers podcast by Dean.

Once you know the usage, which we discussed in the last 2 posts, you can start making some hypothesis by getting into the shoes of the customers.

In the dry cleaning example that I used yesterday…maybe you could think if they are a single parent doing multiple jobs or they could be a family with both parents working….each could have a different challenge

In the case of the Disaster Recovery example which was a B2B case, maybe the customer has their own DR site is now looking for a different kind of a DR…they would think in terms of the different types of technologies available, feasibility etc. While someone who is going for a DR execution for the first time could be more interested in where do I start from.

Like I said earlier, this is one of the toughest jobs because you have to be creative in conceptualizing and building the message but you have to be scientific in measuring and testing your different messages.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Growing the business in a niche – Part III – Life Time Value

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, Sales

In my post yesterday I spoke about how you could go about partnering with inflencers and other merchants / companies who sell to the same niche.

There are 2 decisions to make the above successful.

First is the fact that you will need to hustle and connect with people. No one is going to find you. You have to make yourself found.

The second is the arithmetic behind the number of people you can partner with.

Which brings me to the concept of Life Time Value. This concept is explained very well by Jay Abraham and then Joe Polish and Dean Jackson

Most people, including people working in large companies don’t understand this concept, due to which they take short term decisions in accepting the first order.

Let’s say you have an average deal size of $100,000. In this you have a gross margin of $10000/-. This customer can buy from you the same product or service maybe 2 more times over the next 5 years. Which means over the next 5 years this one customer can give you a gross margin of $30000/-

Now if you have given this customer exceptional service then she may also refer one more customer like herself to you who could also give you another $ 30000/-

Which is a total of $60000/-. However you won’t make this if you don’t get the customer in the first place. The longer you can keep your customers to keep coming back for mere the higher this value becomes. As Joe Polish says, it also helps you to stop thinking in episodic nature and start thinking of very long term relationships with your customers.

Which brings us to the next point, how much are you willing to spend to get the customer first. This could be in terms of giving your partner all the first year margin or giving added value of $10000 to the customer. I am generally not in the favor of giving a discount because it becomes very difficult to raise prices once customers get used to one price point. Like I mentioned in my post yesterday, you could go on the ilovemarketing podcast or the morecheeselesswhiskers podcast and get a lot of examples how businesses of all sizes have used this.

The more you can afford to spend to get a client upfront and the longer you can be at it, the more successful you will be in getting your product or service to take over the market.

Till next time

Carpe Diem!!!