Religious Business houses..!!

Festival Season is on, and we just celebrated arguably the biggest festival in India, Diwali, for Lord Rama's Victory over Devil Raavan. We celebrate this festival as a symbol of victory of truth and virtue over lies and evil. But then this celebration should be done every day, not once in a year, so why does we do that. It is mentioned in old and historic hindu mythological literature, particularly Ramacharita Manas, about whole life of Lord Rama and the war between him and his counterpart Raavan, his victory and how it was celebrated in his hometown ayodhya.

But to the amaze, it is nowhere mentioned, to celebrate it every year on such large scale and not adopting and implementing its meaning in your daily lives.
Then how we have landed up doing what is not required or necessary..??

The answer lies in one word..!!

"Religion"

We think religion as a very necessary thing and its whole purpose is giving back goodness of God to the society or part of society it is followed by. But actually is this the case..!?
My intention here is not to hurt anybody's sentiments, but to raise the level of our thinking, which we all have restricted to ground level in these issues.

I can think of every religion as a business house, whose vision and mission is to make profit by serving more and more customers , similar to the any other business on this earth.

They have all the function areas which we can see in any business around the globe.Every religion has a board of directors, led by a chairman, which makes the decision of what should be the year's target and growth path of the religion.

They have multi level managerial posts assigned to different gurus, to manage different products, catering to different set of customers. Where they treat God as a product to earn profits from their target market,devotees of particular God.

They have different centres spread across countries, while headquartered at one place on earth. Every religion engages it in marketing of its product by innovative use of traditional and non conventional ways of marketing. Whether by making the news of ganeshji drinking milk,viral on privately owned TV and media channels,or in print and social media.

There is a tough competition among all the religious business houses to get a good share of market and in turn good share of profits, and for that, each one of them positioned their products differently and claim their product to be the best among the lot. Every firm has created different marketing campaigns, which attract customer and increase the brand recall and recognition time to time. 

These marketing campaigns are nothing but sales promotion campaigns in the form of festivals and fasting for some days, which gives more customer base to the company and therefore increasing returns.

But then in the whole process of value creation of each firm, who is the net looser. The customer, who himself doesn't knows that he has been used as a customer by so and so firm, and therefore enjoys whatever company offers at any price.Its time for customer to wake up from his sleep and realize the injustice he has been through, before it's too late.

"Jago Grahak Jago.."

Issued in public interest..!!

What do we desire..??

I have been discussing the concepts of marketing and other management issues, but in this piece of writing, I would like to talk about a very important topic which is considered as the foundation of every person's life, whether a marketer, a banker or a CEO.
This is one topic which is already over discussed by many great personalities, thinkers, leaders, mathematicians, scientists etc. etc. and still there is no defined theory or formula derived by any of them to give solution to the problem that this topic has beside it. I am referring to the topic whose understanding can make a difference in everyone's life.

I'm talking about "Success and Happiness".

These can sound to be merely a set of two words, but actually it requires introspection to understand the level of engrossment in life.

I will not talk about the meaning of success and happiness, because that is known to everyone, but will consider their impact on an individual's life.

Is there any relation between Success and Happiness!!?

After attending many discussions and reading numerous articles about the topic, the conclusion can be drawn is, there is a strong relation between two and summary of the research, suggests that success leads to happiness and happiness leads to success, which to an extent is valid.

But does success every time leads to happiness and does happiness always leads to success..??
I don't think the question needs any answer, we all know it..!!

Then what to do..?? Which one to choose..?? Success or Happiness..??

There should not be an either-or situation while talking about success and happiness. Both are required in life, the challenge is to attain a perfect balance between both.

Life is fast moving in today’s world and everyone want to be better than others and earn money and fulfil their dreams, but while doing that, somehow leave the jist of life behind. People forget happiness and run for more and more success, and when they achieve that success, that is no more valuable for them, because by that time they already have lost the soul of it.

"Success is a body and happiness is its soul."

But how can we find a balance between success and happiness?

Now when we understand the importance of balance between success and happiness, we also need to understand ways to do so. There are 6 things to be followed, to achieve what we are looking for.

• Optimist & Believer: think positive, believe in yourself, your abilities.
• Heart and effort: Do whatever you are doing with full efforts and with all your heart into it.
• Estimate: Do not overestimate yourself and underestimate others and also other way round.
• Line of transition: know the line of transition from happiness to success for you, by understanding yourself.
• Continuous Learning: never stop learning at any level of success, at any age at any point of time.
• Grateful: give your level best to fulfil your aspirations, but  also be thankful for what you have.

The key to achieve balance is by understanding what you want of your life..!! Everybody wants success, but at what cost..!!? Even at the cost of losing meaning of life itself..!!?

'Sales & Marketing' in 'Recruitment Process'

The most important phase of career of any person is of the first exposure to the corporate world, the time person searches for a job. This is the time when a person gives more than his 100% to get a job he desires.

Let us bring a new perspective to the whole selection process of companies, by bringing analogy in 'recruitment' and 'Sales & marketing

Let's first look upon the selection process of any company, which can be understood from the theory of 'purchase behavior' of customer. If we take the perspective of a company (customer) going for buying new products(employees), the process which is adopted is same as the purchasing behavior of any customer.

The selection starts from the step of need recognition, where companies have the demand from different departments for workforce, to handle the increasing pressure or requirement of better skills.

Then the next step is information search by respective company, about the potential candidates, their requirements and expectations from the company. 

The third step is evaluation of alternatives (candidates), by following the process of Group discussions and Personal Interviews. In this step, companies churn out non suitable candidates out of the process.

Next step is purchase decision, where companies decide which candidate will be fit for which job and recruit accordingly. 

Post purchase evaluation is the process of performance evaluation  of the recruited employee and accordingly decide whether to keep the employee or not.

Thus Recruiting & marketing have an analogy, but is there any similarities between getting selected in the recruitment process and sales and marketing?

Now I am talking from the perspective  of a candidate, who is willing to get a job. He is not a candidate for the recruitment process, but he is selling his services to the company which is recruiting him. He is not sitting for the interview, he is doing sales and pitching himself as a product or service provider to the customer (recruiter sitting in front of you). 

He is selling his skills and ability to the company and thus there also exist analogy between getting recruited and sales and marketing.

The interesting fact here is, whether you look from the company's perspective or from a candidate's perspective, the market is always a buyer market, where the seller can only hope to sell his product or services, as there is no guarantee that every seller will be able to make sales. This is because supply is more than demand and that too of 'unmatched' products and services.

Therefore, if you want to become a good marketer, first market yourself successfully, then think about marketing any company's product or services.

Why should we hire you ?

Whenever we appear for any placement process for a job in a company, the one thing which each one of us should think is why should company hire me?

This is important because this could be a question asked from the side of recruiter at the time of personal interview which is the most important part of the placement process. 

There can be many answers to this single question, depending upon the mindset of an individual, but is there any general answer which can act as a backbone for our answer?

Yes!!
There is..


& That is
"I will be adding value to your company..."

The value added per minute will be more than value added by other in the same time. This value addition will not decrease every year, but will keep on increasing and thereby creating more profit for the company and a better growth for yourself.

This is your differentiating factor, but the next question which is round the corner is how you are adding more value than others? What differentiates you from the other potential candidates?

Then the answer has to come from the deep introspection of yourself by analyzing your own strengths and skills, which you think will enable you to add more value to the company.

Know yourself and improve your chances of getting placed.

The Greatest Marketer..!!

When we talk about greatest marketer, the first few names which come to our mind are Philip Kotler, Steve Jobs or probably Don Draper from the famous 'Mad Men', but here, I'm talking about a man who has changed the whole perspective of marketing. This man paved a path for marketing to be applicable in the field of politics.

That man is none other than our very own Prime minister Mr. Narendra Modi. He is being considered as the greatest marketer alive on earth because of the brilliant application of marketing concepts but the amazing thing is, he has never studied them in any university.

He has not only brought a radical change in Indian politics by establishing victory in the game of throne of the Indian government, but has also set up a benchmark for every other politician to meet in order to even think of getting close to his victory.

He was not a just another prime ministerial candidate, but was a complete wave of change which carried every citizen of this country with it towards the sea shore of a new country, Modified India.

Marketing Strategist

Both Before and after becoming the PM, he has utilized every possible marketing and communication tactics to take down competition. He was the Chief strategy officer for his party and planned many maneuvers which left competition flabbergasted. Use of social media was outstanding throughout his election campaign which targeted Indian youth which forms major part of Indian population. Integrated marketing campaigns were designed which utilized different media to reach every section of society.

He understood the consumer (citizen) and worked on selling hope to them by raising slogans "ache din aane wale hain". He provoked the want of change in people by raising slogan "abki bar Modi sarkar".

The Indian PM, is better known as CMO of India rather than PM, because his focus is shifted from marketing of his party to his country. He planned strategy to enable India to mark her presence in mind of world's superpowers.

He used phrases to tell his story, just as any marketer does. Whether the 4Ps (people private public partnership) or 3Ds (Democracy, Demographic dividend and Demand) or 5Cs water mantra (collect river water, connect rivers, channelize water, control local water & community participation) or 5Fs formula (farm to fibre, fibre to factory, factory to fashion & fashion to foreign), all sounds similar to marketing 4P's coining.

He has been using all mediums of communication, TV, social media, websites and radio also. Recently, PM has started to interact with people of India through all India radio channel, and that is also available at social media through #MannKiBaat for people who don't follow radio channel.

Digital Era PM #NarendaModi

 After becoming the Prime Minister of the country, his dedication towards reaching out to audience through nontraditional ways didn't die out. He established mygov.nic.in which is a unique of its kind website for awakening Indians to take action and inviting others also through social media. He also launched separate websites, social media pages and hash-tags for every campaign ls launched. Whether cleangov.org or makeinindia.gov.in or nmcg.nic.in, each of these websites are attracting more audience than any established MN-C's website. Use of twitter and hash-tags has been commendable in making every campaign a success. Make in India's #makeinindia or clean India's #Mycleanindia, each of them tells story of success through social media.

He is the man having second largest number of Facebook page likes, second largest followers on twitter in whole world. This shows his ability to attract audience and engage them by firing and bombarding different campaigns, again backed by slogans and provoking speeches.

#ModiInAmerica

The recent visit of Mr. Modi, to the states, proved skills of our CMO. It lead to a flood of hashtags, including #ModimeetsAmerica, #ModiinUs, #NaMosteAmerica, #ModiinDC and last but not the least, 'the baap' of all, #ModiatMadison.

He has been an initiator, strategist, influencer, great orator, marketer and of course prime minister of India. He has left world glittered through his ability to understand consumer, formulation of marketing plan and strategy to implement it and finally getting results out of it, that too without any high profile degree and that is why I call him the greatest marketer alive on earth.

Any doubts on that...!!

Which Brands you respect least..!!

While reading an article about global brands and their brand positioning, one question struck to my mind, are all brands equally respectful? 

I gave a thought on that, and brands which do not respect others, I feel sorry for those brands. Such brands fail to get respect from their all stakeholders, even if they are getting good returns. These brands gives an unethical treatment to their stakeholders which includes customers, employees, suppliers, supply chain partners and a silent stakeholder, environment. These brands are least bothered about the well-being of their stakeholders and just focus on making profits.

I understand that major aim of most of companies is profit making, but at what cost they are making money is also a primary question. They practice all unethical means to make sure that their profits are higher, whether that profit might harm the environment and other stakeholders. These brands do nothing good for the society which is using their products or services and instead of preventing the situations which generates any need of social activities, they first make situation worse, then cure it by following CSR activities.

Therefore they try to make a good image in the eyes of their customers and other stakeholders by adopting CSR activities, but at their back they are harming them. Many brands also indulge in pushing themselves against competitor for more customer, but that pushing leads to one time purchase and not sustainable for long term customer. 

Another thing which makes some brands earn less respect than others is the level of commitment they show in keeping their word and promise. Many brands engage themselves in communicating unrealistic benefits the user will get through their products and services but they fail to deliver that.Those benefits were just mentioned to allure more customers and in reality were never the part of the package offered by them. 

Another very major thing which causes brands to lose respect is giving discounts. Most of the brands offer discounts to attract more customers or to clear their stocks, but what about the trust of their loyal customers, who purchased products and services at non-discounted prices. These customers feel cheated and in turn brand value in their minds
is degraded.