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.