THE SUPERIORITY OF NUMBERS AND OTHER IRRELEVANT CONTENT

The United States of America.
Custer's last stand : The battle  of Little Bighorn 25th June 1876.

As the buffalo became scarcer, Indian tribes lives became hard. The Indians have had enough of being pushed into reservations too, the final straw being the US violation of  the treaty of Black Hills, and the unstoppable incursion of white Americans,
 as rumors circulated that gold (as in California) was there for the taking in the Black Hills. General George Armstrong Custer, a potential future US president, by nature headstrong, fought against forces led by the Indian Medicine Man and Chief "Sitting Bull" and Chief " Crazy Horse".
        Custer disregarded his scout's information that the Indian camps were enormous in size, and estimated about a thousand braves whereas, actually there was 2000-4000 Sioux braves. As was obvious, Custer and the US 7th Cavalry were wiped out, the only living being remaining being ironically Custer's horse 'Commanche'. Custer only had about 700 troopers  and then further proceeded to divide them into three units.

     No guys, you are still at the same site. I just started off in a different tack this time. Remember all the feedback you had to provide about competition including the market share variance if any and the order value of the competitors in the last quarter etc. Let's admit it this kind of data is impossible to give if you are selling capital equipment and your market is vast. I had often found myself as the sole person of my company in charge of everything of a state ( area  not less the entire UK). These forms were frustrating for so often you were required to give break-ups and they were huge waste of time. Moreover, it is quite probable that these forms were used as rough paper -no one ever read them-What do you do?-you collect market data or do you sell? I believe that the objective is served if your boss tells you what information he needs any time (when his boss calls him) and what he needs some time. You than satisfy his need by a mail/letter/fax whatever.
Simple, isn't it? The Indian mentality is to see if you have given the info in the form..Gee! Another example of why western sound marketing principles will not work in South East Asia, unless you tailor make them so as to suit the natural conditions.Coming back, the competition often had offices having three-four officers while I had to operate from my house, and they ruled.(I finally started targeting big customers and making my brand superior in numbers.and I kept my job that way)

          The point I want to make is FORGET all those things you may have heard about the quality of our sales people vs. theirs. These even out in the long run. What matters is how many players you have compared to the opposition. In an organizational perspective, it is the financial muscle you have.

  In this post,I want to continue my take (through Ries and Trout)on Karl Von Clausewitz's ideas and an important one is " Always keep your forces concentrated in an overpowering mass"-in other words' attack with all your resources at the decisive battle because history shows us that the army which is larger in size always wins. In WWII, had the US not joined the allies-giving them a huge superiority in numbers-the English and the French were being outfought and would have lost.   If you are American, than maybe your national anthem would have been "Dixie" if General Robert E. Lee had 25,000 more men. I did not know that either but the fact is that in Gettysburg ,1863 General Lee had 75,000 men while General Meade of the Union had 88,000 men. 

     

Sales & Marketing------Strategies( THE COLA WAR)

Dear Friends,

 I guess we discussed enough about Sales and Marketing last time. You should be able to say by now that the photo opposite is wrong, if the intention behind posting it was only for Sales &Marketing! Nah, I just got carried over as these guys really look cute in those superhero costumes.

The Error in the Picture
              The thing that is wrong with the photograph is that a couple of more of Marketing's sub-ordinates are not here. And one among them whom you just can't ignore, leaving sales aside,as he is really really indispensable. Monsieur "Strategy" is the one I refer to. 
In our profession,ladies and gentleman, costing is okay but she is no ogre. What is important is how and with what strategy, the approach is made. This is much more important  than the price in Selling of High-Value Equipment.

     In certain  Sales blogs,you often come across Lao's "The Art of War"but as I have said before, I prefer to read Clausewitz's book "On War"which reflects on history's famous wars to underscore the points in his book. Great rivalries today see the market leader take themselves up as the competition. The best defense is not to lack the courage to attack yourself says Clausewitz. If Coke had launched an own variant with a 'youth' target, Pepsi would have had no niche to operate.

[Karl Von Clausewitz was a 
General in the Prussian Army who wrote the  book in 1852 after retirement].

Clausewitz tells us at length about how the strengths of the enemy can often be converted to weaknesses.One of the best examples of this (says Ries and Trout)is how Pepsi Cola of New York socked one to Atlanta's Coca-Cola. In 1915,Coke was sold at a price of 10c for an unique capacity of its bottle which was 6 1/2 oz. Coke had no real competitors, which led to complacence.

MARKETING WITH SALES AND THE REST OF THE GANG

HOUSE OF CARDS

Hi Friends,

So-how are you and how's life been treating lately..Me? Its been a lousy few days.

As you must be knowing by now about my addiction with the net,I was on a high the other day when I saw a blog post. My eyes stuck to the title which said " Now shove this paper on sales face-Marketing". not those exact words, but I'm sure you get the drift. 

I stared at it open-mouthed in surprise and tried to know more about the author. But no information was available except for his name. Then it struck me that holy shit! this guy does not know the difference between sales and marketing as yet. Just think of a hypothetical situation where you are walking along with a werewolf expert in a deserted countryside. Suddenly a werewolf sees you both and gives chase, and your friend asks you " Who's that guy?" ..Eeeps!!! And you were counting on this dude to protect you!!! 
So, this post is gonna be about Marketing and Sales-the much misunderstood dynamic duo-so that the werewolf doesn't get you............

      The entire act of fulfilling a need of a section or few people by allowing them to purchase whatever it is they want is called marketing. Marketing is not one thing-it is a process where different activities come together and start from checking the need an entity has, devise way to fulfill that need, and sell it to the person who is wiling to pay the highest amount of revenue. We have our needs implanted biologically and later psychologically inside us since we are born. In the womb, all its needs were catered to automatically but after birth, the baby say feels odd and therefore bawls. It wants milk which he got every time he wanted it. So it now bawls and presto it gets it. This is the process of breast-milk marketing.  In subsequent posts, we are going to visit a man named Maslow, who will a important cog in this learning process.

We will learn about the need, how to fulfill it, how to position it, the importance of advertising, where to target it,how to give it, how to fix the costing etc. Look at the illustration above guys,  the cards here are the different functions, the card house is marketing. Some of the cards are more important like the one at the bottom-those are card (sale); card (need); card (costing). The cards above are slightly less important maybe. It all depends upon the application.

Rahul Bajaj and Bajaj Auto Ltd.

REST IN PEACE.

Rest in Peace, Friend

The Demise of the Cold Call  

(From Hi-Value Capital Equipment Selling)

    

               In life, everything changes. From processes to organisms, there is nothing  absolute.  It is a fortunate fact that most of these changes take place very slowly, as otherwise, we would not have had our laws of academic fields (collectively called philosophy, here after) by which we try to understand, the things which happen all around us.        

               Some wits are of the opinion that science breeds ignorance. Their logic is that for every question science answers, two questions prop up. Therefore, science can never answer all questions because at any one time the number of questions is bound to be double or exponentially more then the number of answers. The thinking is I admit, original but the conclusions are in error. I ‘ll dispute this statement with a single sentence which is “do automobile designers start their design from the wheel?” No indeed! They do not.   
          

                  

           Similarly, capital equipment selling has also changed, in the sense that “cold calling” has become old and died. Let me define it still further, the cold call hasoutlived its usefulness just as the steam engine had given way to more modern locomotives. Cold calling was indispensable at one point of time for all selling, like the steam powered train. But in high value machinery and capital equipment selling, we do not design cars from the wheel.    However in volumetric selling, it’s still very much there-sales of hardware, valves, electrodes, machine oil mainly consumables etc. all depend upon cold calling.

                What is a high value sale? I’ll define it Anything from twenty grand and up. Earlier we did not have access to all that is happening in the world instantly. Hence, there were good chances that unless you shared the same watering hole with your competitors, you wouldn’t know who required your product. As competition grew more and more intense, watering holes became redundant and cold calling started. You dropped on potential customers and got introduced, got leads, got inquiries too if you were lucky. This is cold calling.

       

                But today with the modern technology you have at their disposal, that same information can be obtained from the internet in more details. Now let us  suppose you are an entrepreneur and you are purchasing filtration machines, of whatever type suits your purpose best, which is to filter and recover the mined coal particles and recover them. Say a  salesperson from a company comes along and makes a request to meet you. You meet him and he says they make filtration machines and he thought he would enquire if they have any requirement. You have plenty of things to do then to recite your requirement (you had met the man for the solution) so you direct him to an engineer, who tells him what he wants to know.  Say, if the proposal develops then  the person will want to meet you, but will you want to meet him?

Why a " Business Administration" Diploma is Important in a Sales Career.

Yes, Indeed. Why do companies give so much weightage to MBA's (or even BBA's maybe) ? You are selling engineering equipment? So, how come irrespective of your engineering degree, if you and a MBA start from ground zero, you lose out every time?

Have you ever pondered this question ? In almost every office you'll find slimy apparent know-alls... Ask them this and you won't see their ugly mugs for the rest of the day!

Okay friends, enough of foreplay than.MBA's study for two more years after graduation. It stands to reason that they must be studying something. Yes, they do study a lot of 'shite' , but they also study plenty of things that matter.

HOW TO ATTEND A TENDER OPENING (PUBLIC SECTOR)

AS YOU'RE ON THE WAY

I do not know about you guys but I find the journeying part of any process, the most monotonic. The beginning is well, a little hard but after you begins and before you end   is the period which you may find boring, but is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART in a tendering process.

In my sales career, I have had the experience of excellent beginnings neutralized by poor follow up. And it is here that temperament and the confidence is necessary. People will try to sledge you so that you lose your concentration. There are no ground rules here. Everything is below the belt. And it is here that experience pays.

Therefore, it follows that it is here, in this stage, that you will be subjected to ridicule & challenges and as in cricket, it is necessary to keep your head straight. Think of all those runs you have scored against better attacks (if you have not, imagine you would have...forget about real life, if you cannot even DREAM about winning, you are suffering from acute loser blues! My friend, perhaps you should consider a different career and I'm not trying to be funny).

I think that before we move on to another block, maybe we should have a recap. And here goes

Tender Openings: What a specialist does

1. Be present when the tender is being opened, if it is a press tender.Do not be late.

2. Try to make a rolling-your-eyes.."young kids really" expression to the bossman.

3. Don't antagonize anyone but stand up to get the information you are entitled to.

4. If the indentor is known to you, do be in a hurry to end the process, so that the other guys know the least.

5. Judge the competition and you have the idea about their bids.

6. Do not be the first person to leave the room but don't be a pest either so that they can push you out.

7. Give interesting technical answers should you get a chance.

8. Keep your ears in the customer's room. No, I don't mean use the extendable ears invented by Fred and George in "the order of the Phoenix" but think about it and it is possible.

ANECDOTE

One of the biggest dealers of KBL once tried his best to get me out of the race. He could not do anything at the lower level and went up and met the GM of the IOCL refinery. His attempt flopped and I got that order for 2 nos HSC pumps with drives and accessories, i.e. M+P landed that supply order. I don't need to mention the dealer's name as the biggest dealers in  Assam and one of the biggest in India. The same company M+P  later became a little inedible. but life is like that. Moreover, I was lucky that by the time I quit, I had acquired the rudimentary basics of  capital goods marketing. Today M+P market in NE has gone down and the conditions exist which are only a little better then when I was there. It's become the wild west all again

Finally, I forgot to tell you how to ask for an extension. Irrespective as to whether you are organized or not, you'll always find that you are unable to complete in time. Send over a fax or an e-mail asking for an extension because of blah blah( the best excuse always is to the tender justice). Remember, always ask two times what you want and you will  get it. There is a way to do everything and everything is best done in that way. You should either do it or learn how the other man does it, and then try it your way. Its the runs which matter, not how they come

I guess that does it for today.

See you next time. 

Take care and have an awesome day

Bilbo

(I put in the Beatles photo ‘cos there is a similarity...we are on the road too but specially because I am a fan)

Dear Sir or Madam, will ya read my blog

it took me days to write it, I just slogged.

Its got a number of ads like a flick

Please why don't ya just click....
..Starving Blog writer...
Starving Blog writer...........