Word of Mouth or Marketing Campaigns - What Sells for You?

"Pan Singh Tomar"  What?? was the utterance from a friend who I invited to see the movie. 

Yes no star and low budget movies are not marketed extensively hence not known to many and most film goers. 

As against this RaOne was hugely publicised movie and hence though product was (technically superior but was) low on entertainment value was huge grosser. Huge Hype can sale Inferior Product also. 

Similarly most products , not market extensively though better than highly marketed products and services are less known and hence less consumed. 

However things are changing , and changing fast.  In the case of Pan Singh Tomar Social media i.e. consumers themselves have taken up the job of marketing the product. Word of mouth publicity for the movie is drawing crowd to the theater. 

Problem  with huge campaign and low product is that now social media can take out the air from their Tyre and same social media can add extra stepney to the good but lesser known products.

Kolavri D can go viral to become huge success similarly political unrest and rising can over throw governments - this is the power of social media.

Companies  rather than going for huge campaigns should now start spending & spreading on social media and whatever is saved can be used to better the product. In the case of movie invest in script and music. Let the people take charge of collective Chief Sales officer.

MK Gandhi was d last leader we know !!!!

Yes be it Delhi Police hitting Common men on the road , Bengal Govt's CM's Kin hitting Policeman , Mumbai Pradesh Congress' Chief's Benami Wealth, Bangalore Assembly Porngate, Bihar Fodder Scam & 16 Years to File Charge Sheet, Adarsh Scam's Culprits , 2G's Raja, Kalmadi's Commonwealth or IPL's Modi  - entire country is facing Casualty of Culture. 

Companies also face similar Casualty - Apathy towards happiness of employees, pathetic customer experiences, no concern for environment, camouflaging accounts to fool shareholders,  dual books to fool taxmen - something is wrong culturally.    

Same applies to our society as from where else these politicians and entrepreneurs come from? We need to put sign board in the housing society like " do not spit"  or "do not throw garbage". WHy? Do we also need similar boards in our home? Parents up their sleeves to protect misbehavior of child in school and on play grounds.We feel smarter when we get things done by bribing.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the CULTURE we live in. Culture Percolates from Top to the Bottom.  Its the failure of the leaders at all levels. Leadership Crisis  killing our Society. Room for Leaders at the TOP all all levels. Any takers or anyone dare to take plunge??? MK Gandhi was the last leader we know.

HOW TO WOW !!! – WHITE PAPER ON CONSUMER FOCUSED COMPANIES

When CIO of Dell Jerry Gregoire says ” Customer Experience is the New Competitive battle field. ” , its an awakening call for every CEOs.\

” We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”  Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

Every enlightened CEOs are thinking , talking and executing WOW !!! Customer Experiences. Rest all are internal issues.

Check out white paper on  

How to WOW !! White Paper

Share your thoughts & proposed actions.

Kingfisher Air - Attacking the Root Cause or Root of the Brand ???

Our Dear Dr Mallya is now asking their people not to treat their CUSTOMER as Guest as they have a severe cash problem and it is not a good policy now.

He mean to say that its their treating Customer as Guest policy is one of the causes of their problem. How unfortunate ??

He is attacking the fundamental of the business basics. He must know that if any one will bail out or invest in his cash strapped company , the only reason would be their policy of treating customer as their guests.  Brand he has built which people loves today is only because of their CUSTOMER policy. 

Even CUSTOMERS have paid too steep price to Kingfisher Air just because they threat them as their Guests. 

Its not their CUSTOMER policy but everything else is lousy. Only good they have done is to raise the bar of customer experience.

I am sure he will not attack the root of his BRAND and  attack the right causes of the problems.

Community Creation & Social Media

Blogging after few days. 

Well was busy with setting you new blog www.cforcapital.wordpress.com ( Focused on creating community of banking / finance professionals and capital seeking entrepreneurs )

2) One more in the offing www.wforwow.wordpress.com ( Focused on Community of Chief Customer /Experience Officers, though very rare in India but aim to grow this fraternity through this community )

3) White paper on Healthcare ( Health Dispensers ) Industry on How to create WOW!! Customer Experience for their Customers 

4) Creating content for my website at www.sunilgandhi.com

Lot of content creation planned for few few days. 

This blog will continue to have pieces on entrepreneurship, social media and personal experiences on life journey.

Cheers.

Does your enterprise Balance Sheet reflects TRUE Assets? No Its Not.

Opening the Balance Sheet and looking at the asset side will not give the true answer.  

Reasons:

- Fixed Assets are revalued and not MTM. We all know how much it will fetch if we are out to sale NOW. Yes but its Assets as long as it produces the goods which are acceptable in the Market with our cost structure.

- Stocks have two elements: Bogus & Inflated to boots profit and dead stock reflected having no market value. Remove these two to arrive at true value

- Debtors also have two elements: Generated through bogus sales and almost doubtful to doubtful debts

- Loans & Advances includes money given to associate concerns which is not recoverable in most cases. 

Therefore after adjusting the Balance Sheet with above realities , you may arrive at the RIGHT figure of the assets.  & if you adjust assets with actual liabilities , you may be surprised { shocked } with your networth figure.  

Therefore Balance Sheet is not the right place to find out the TRUE assets of the company.  Its the Non Balance Sheet assets that counts and matters the MOST.

Assets = Resources under Influence of an Enterprise which can be leveraged for Wealth Creation for all stake holders. 

An enterprise can influence its people working for it to give their best, its suppliers to supply best at most competitive rates, its customers to patronage again and again and refer new customers also,   its share holders to invest when opportunity demands , its relationship with government and other agencies to quicken the process and also policy influence,  its relationship with local area  groups/infrastructure ( What Tata Steel has done and is doing for the town Tata Nagar )  to garner their support as and when require , its Brand Promise & of-course its assets in the Balance Sheet. All these are the assets. All resources and relationships MUST be leveraged to create wealth. Not all area under INFLUENCE are reflected in the Balance Sheet.  

Question is HOW to leverage assets and HOW to expand area of Influence ?? Truly successful companies are masters of both. If any one is missing success will be limited but when both are present  success is to be seen to believe. In personal category Amitabh Bachchan , Dr Manmohan Singh are the shining examples of how they leveraged their Assets ( Voice / Acting and Knowledge / Experience - nothing is reflected in their balance sheet on the contrary these assets have made their balance sheet stronger ) and expanded area of influence.    Two of the largest enterprises in the country Reliance leveraged their capacity to deal with govt , capacity to execute at jet speed & Infosys leveraged owners' foresightedness , perseverance and governance policies to create wealth.  None reflected in the Balance Sheet.

To conclude its Assets outside the Balance Sheet that makes enterprise Balance Sheet stronger. Not the other way. Take stock , become aware of your off balance sheet assets TODAY and have plan to leverage them fully.

Assets = Resources under Influence of an Enterprise which can be leveraged for Wealth Creation for all stake holders.

 

Is the BRAND you represent LOVABLE??

Which are the brands do u as a customer LOVE??? If you take too much time to think you don’t LOVE any.  If the name is on your sleeve that’s LOVE.  

Passion for Customer will make your Brand Lovable.  We all know LOVE is a two way game. Customer will LOVE your brand only if you love your customers. What we do for our loved one requires no mention.  Passion of not sales person and marketing team, but its passion at the TOP that matters the MOST.  Yes (mostly ignored) culture of the organization percolates down from the TOP.  “Shining in the sun like a pearl upon the ocean “ is the Hindi movie song  but it has a message for every enterprise.  Yes end to end experience to the customer from the brand must be like that. It should be shining and visible from among its 100s of competitors.
 

You should be clear leader and on top of the mind of your customer in your category. Whenever there is a talk about delightful customer experience expamples are given about brands like Starbucks and now Zappos.com or Kingfisher Airlines in India. Hardly MOST companies embrace WOW !! / Delight and Memorable Customer Experience as their business strategy.  Its never their in any Business Plan.
 

Zappos.com sends pleasant surprises to their customers along with orders . They invite customer,suppliers or anyone to visit their office in Las Vegas. I wonder why many companies even can not copy the best???
 

Entrepreneurs who celebrate their day to day business will delight their customers (even employees and suppliers too) . No one else.  What Laloo Culture could do to Bihar and what Nitish/Narendra Modi Culture is doing is for everyone to see. We are also witnessing what no culture at all can do at central leadership level. Its a clear case of CULTURE issue. Culture at the TOP matters the most. Bucks stops and start from there. Enterprise indulges in many many training programme for its people every year. True training deficit is mostly at the TOP { Who can tell their bosses/owners ???} .

Make it a point in next Management Meet  that objective worth pursing for next 12 months is Talk of the Town  { Customer Experience and Culture of Employee Happiness. } . No other strategies. Whatever it takes to achieve these two goals are the guiding actions. Period. Make your area of Influence a merrier place. Celebrate your entrepreneurial endavour. Its about brand in action & its also about CSR in action.

Note: We all know how miserable Loveless life could be. Same applies to your BRAND. 

Are U curious enough to remain Successful & Relevant ?? Perhaps No.

CURIOSITY is what keep us relevant , interesting  & growing as a person or company. Yes, we stop to remain interesting or growing once we stop to remain curious. I know everything and I am successful and don't need to know more is a  KILLER attitude. Literally KILLER. It kill companies and starts downfall of individuals. 

Observe children and you will learn HOW curious they are about everything on this earth. Curiosity is the mother of  learning and for continues learning continues curiosity is important. Life is a continues changing process. It changes daily every moment. However successful companies once achieved success think they have the permanent expertise to remain successful. 

Meet a child and meet a hugely successful person or even some 40 odd year plus person. Child is extremely curious to know , asks questions and try to understand while successful and senior adult would mostly behaves in I KNOW or I don't care to know or learn attitude. 

I was watching Classic Legend programme on Zee TV by Jawed Akhtar and he was talking about legendary actor Ashok Kumar. He said Ashok Kumar was so curious through out his life that he started learning new languages at the age of 64. He was always wanted to know and learn new things till he lived upto the age of 90. I think that was the reason the star ruled bollywood for 60 years.

Yes its absolutely important to remain curious about new things in life. Companies MUST not only keep learning about new products and services but also about new way of doing things, new ways to attract and treat people, new way to manage the affairs every few years. 

In history we have plenty of examples about very successful companies and person failing miserably after few years. Even we have seen countries first Japan and now European countries failing after remaining successful for many years. Someone has rightly says " Success Immortalises the way of doing things in the mind of successful companies and people. "

Pattern of thinking MUST be broken to get to see things with new perspectives. I know and I don't care attitude is about FIXED pattern of thinking.  

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein

"I am a big believer of boredom , boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity and out of curiosity comes everything." Steve Jobs

With success and growing age  , unfortunately MOST of us individually or as an enterprise fall in this trap, without fail.  To remain interesting one must be interested. Not Curious is equal to Not Learning.

Shakeup everything if you are so successful and inculcate a sense of curiosity in your enterprise { people} . May not be relevant today but if you want to remain successful tomorrow also , its the first ingredient.

HOW Social Media for Professional Firms !!!! ???

Professional Organisations like Advocates, CAs , CSs , Doctors , Architects , HR and the likes are great knowledge repositories in their  area of  expertise. People go to them for WHAT they know and HOW what they know can solve clients personal or business problems. 

In Pre Internet era life was miserable or not so happy. Few , large and influential people from these professions were in advantageous position. But situation changed slightly with the arrival of Internet. With their website all the firms and professionals were on the same platform and visible to everyone ,  potential clients. Similarly through the sites of many businesses approaching them has also become easier then for professionals.

However life is changing NOW and changing considerably. Yes arrival of social media is blessings  for knowledge professionals. It offers enormous opportunities to  showcase expertise. Many companies are now using LinkedIn profile for recruitment. Similarly self employed professionals can participate in debates in some interest specific groups, answer questions on LinkedIn, commence their own blogs, can have facebook fan page, tweet regularly to update as well as attract clients. Yes all these can be done and can be views by any prospective clients across size, industry, and geographies. 

This is the power and power of social media for professionals , especially small and medium firms.  Get your social media content and customer strategy in place and be ready for pleasant surprises. Its about Personal Brand Building. Do it regularly , do it carefully, do it with passion and do it with a difference.

Are U FANATIC about Customer Experience??

While studying a report on customer experience at one of the UK based banks, I came across the term "bank puts much of its success in recent years down to its
fanatical focus on customer experience (service) . "

I wonder how many CEOs are FANATIC about the Customer Experience their company creates!! Forget FANATIC, are aware and care about it ?? Its the role of CEO to create WOW!! and Delightful Customer Experience for their all stake holders and more precisely CUSTOMERS.  

Every business is under going challenging phase ( low margins, tough competition, difficult to retain real talent , china threat ) , technology is changing rapidly ( mobile, to tab to smart TV to smart machines, innovative products and execution capabilities ) new ways of of doing business ( online, franchise, outsource, collaborate )  new age entrepreneurs ( young , energetic  with no legacy baggage, ready to challenge convention ) , govt policy paralysis ( slow to No - tax or procedural reforms forget FDI ) , high sales but low cash flow & profitability, fudging of accounts not only to manage shareholders and analysts but also to have elusive sense of self belief.  

In this grave situation only hope for survival is severe Customer Focus & creating Stupendous Customer Experience.  Yes its to the extent of Fanatical about it.

How many business plans talk about this?  How many strategy /board or owners meets have this on agenda? Wonder many businesses today struggle to survive and crying of recession!!! If customer is not your competitive advantage , what else can be??