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.