Yeah…time flies.

Shilpzzzzz @ Happiness.com

The whole nation celebrated the recent Web Awards 2032 , which saw our very own Shilpa Sehgal honoured for her truly seminal work in the field of education and harmony through the social media space. To us ISB alums, it comes as no surprise (and we are so proud) that she has managed to touch the lives of almost everyone on this planet through her Happiness.com portal that spreads sunshine round the globe.

In case you have been living under a rock, Shilpa launched her ‘happiness portal’ soon after her graduation, and in no time, revolutionised the social network space by disproving the concept of six degrees of separation and reducing it to one (herself). True, she had started her research even before joining ISB; the entire of class of 570 + many alums, already knew her even before joining through a very visible and friendly presence on the ‘wall’. The other early signs were the networking events at ISB, when every student realized that they had a common friend in Shilpa, the effervescent presence everywhere on campus through that awesome ability to attend to a thousand events within a single day.

Our ‘Shiiiiiilllllpa’, of course, also managed an ELP, a PAEV, was a core member of the Marketing Club, the Mumbai Gang and the sweetest girls on campus squad and if that was not enough, decided to take off on an exchange too….. Phew. Her famous Chaat parties, the 08 lounge, an interesting influence on the presidential elections for the Class of 2012, her ability to talk more than all the profs combined, cool as ice table tennis at the ISL and most importantly a friend and guide to all (especially in the matters of the heart) – are only a few snippets of what makes this beautiful bundle of energy. Truly, beneath all the flutter is a heart of gold that touched one and all on campus, and today it envelopes the entire world that we live in.

And, when asked if she had a message for us, Shilpa simply replied, “Love Unconditionally”….Saludos Senorita

This is framework to evaluate any projects that come up in an organisation. is the organisation covering all the four risk bases

1. Marketing Risk: Are they in touch with the market realities?

2. Technical Risk: Do they have the capability to pull off the product/project they want?

3.Organisation Risk: do they have buy in from all stake holders?

4. Resource Risk: Is there enough business value in the project to be able to sustain it in terms of resources?

Basically

1. Can I articulate the market need and how it benefits my organisation?

2. Is the innovation I am proposing relevant to the market? Is there a need?

3.Do I have an organisation credibility and fit to pull off the project?

Ed says that when someone is presenting a proposal…people work from their area’s of strengths…but we must question all other aspects of the project also to see all bases are covered.

I know this is a booring kind of a post…but it is more like notes to myself when i am sitting in my next job and am given a task to bring the next awesome thingy to market….I should sit back and check if all risks have been identified and evaluated.

Let me know if anyone of u find this useful…

Cheers!

Shilpa

The five Pillars that drive Sales Force effectiveness

1. Definers: The size, GTM strategy, the sales strategy, structure, teritory design all come under this pillar

2. Shaper: Coaching, Training, culture, Incentives, divers which shape the way a sales foce functions comes under this pillar

3. Enlighten : This pillar has drivers which give customer insights, like CRM, customer research, knowledge and best practices sharing.

4, Exciter : This pillar is what drives how motivated your sales force is to perform. It includes drivers like culture, leadership, compensation etc.

5. Controller : This pillar has drivers which measure progress and control the process. Goal setting, forecasting, cordination, communication fall under this gamut.

So here are the five pillars…next time you look at a sales force effectiveness problem…list these down, identify sub-bullets, analyse where the issue is and then solve the problem!

Some key takeaways…which may not may not be clear to someone reading

Persil is an old brand from HUL with some bleaches etc and when Tide came in with a new technology with enzymes ‘Persil repositions Tide instead of imitating them’ and talks about how Persil is gentle on your clothes..which give out the message that Tide is not gentle. I liked the idea of re positioning your brand.

Variants in Brands

Variants in brands are basically variations in the existing product eg Maggi Aata Noodles. The speaker was against variants as a concept because he felt that is undermines the main brand. eg by launching Maggi aata noodles nestle is admitting that Maggi noodles is  not healthy! Another interesting take in my view!

But the most interesting part of the session was the Surf Campaign…

The global HUL team came up with a campaign which said ‘stains are good’ because they help children to learn and they wanted the India team to implement it. However the India team was not too convinced by it because the value system in India/Asia/developing countries has always been dirt is bad and learning happens in the classroom.

But the insight was that Indian mothers are ok with their children getting dirty if it in the process of learning some values like Another interesting insight was that boys after the age of 8 become emotionally distant from their mothers and their moms really want to know what their little boy is up to. Mothers are somewhere scared deep within that their sons wont take care of them ‘emotionally’ once they grow up. If their child has values like  empathy, sacrifice, forgiveness, loyalty,righteousness and overt expression of love they feel good and feel that the son is getting the right values and will take care of them in the future.

Surf advertisements take these insights into account….they touch the emotions of mom’s and then surf sells more…data shows it! I did not know selling soap required so much of though!

Here are some interesting Surf Advertising…the first three worked well and the sales of surf went up. One of the reasons for this was that mothers looked at the kid on the campaign and fell that wish my son also does things like this…:-)

Empathy: Teacher/ Dog Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNE3l2LPiEY

Forgiveness Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrW6uo3maiY

Brother/Sister Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi4yKET-tBg&feature=relatedt

Hiccup Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi4yKET-tBg&feature=related

This campaign did not work very well because mom’s were not proud of the child in this campaign and they did not get the feeling that I wish this was my daughter! And the sales of Surf actually went down!

Am I as an individual really that influenced by advertisements!? Apparently yes!

Key Takeaways

 Segment based on needs and benefits and not descriptors like age socio-economic status etc.

The descriptor variables have their value but it is more to know how to reach out to your audience.

Eg your segment for home theatre system can be the following

Image is everything segment: People who are more bothered about how the system looks vis a vis how it performs. This segment can be males on an average of 37 years reading TOI (descriptor variables)

Performance is King : People for whom looks of the system does not matter but performance is key. This segment would have its own set of descriptor variable like average 50 years, female etc etc

Common Basis and Descriptor Variables are as follows

• Segmentation Basis : Needs, Wants, benifits, usgae situation, usage rates, size, industry
• Descriptor Demographics: Age income, marital staus, family type,size gender, social class etc. in case of B2B you need to look for industry, size, current suppliers, technology utilisation etc
• Psycographics : Lifestyle, values, personality characteristics ( of decision makers in case of B2B)
• Behavior: Use occasionally usage level, complementary and substitute products used, brand loyalty
• Media Patters: What do they read/watch
• Decision making: Individual /group. high involvement /knowledge/ price sensitivity

Now that we know that Segmentation is important. How do we come up with questions for segmentation?

1. Judgement: the researcher decides what attributes would be important to the potential customer and makes a questionnaire and then conducts a research.

2. Voice of Customer: A customer is asked to randomly talk about the product as they are using it and then these statements are used to prepare the research questionnaire

eg a person using a vegetable peeler  says” I cut myself often”, ” I am left handed” ” Here is a rusty one”

These statements are converted statements which are then posed to multiple customers to check the importance level on a scale from 1 (least imp) to 7 (V imp)

The peeler is safe to use

The peeler can be used ambidextrously

The peeler is durable

3. Structural insights: Participants in a focus group discuss a product/ service from the following perspectives -

• Moving from an undesirable state, which entails solving of immediate problems, preventing potential problems and maintaining stable state;
• Moving towards a desirable state, exploring interest opportunities,
• Displeasure in use
• Ineffective /frustrating outcome

4. B2B Day in a life of a customer :

This technique is about actully spending a day with your customer, you get insights which you can then use to modify your product and market it to the right segment.

Bottom Line: Segmentation is important. Segment based on needs and then have descriptor variable to describe the segment. If you get your segmentation right you would be able to charge a premium price for your product and service.

The crisis started in Thailand. Thailand had acquired a burden of foreign debt that made the country effectively bankrupt even before the collapse of its currency.Thai government to float the baht, cutting its peg to theU.S. dollar.  Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand were the countries most affected by the crisis. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Laos and the Philippineswere also hurt by the slump. The People’s Republic of China, Pakistan, India, Taiwan, Singapore, Brunei and Vietnam were less affected, although all suffered from a loss of demand and confidence throughout the region.

Russian Finacial Crisis: 1998

The following was the reasons for the Russian financial crisis

• Declining productivity,
• an artificially high fixed exchange rate between the ruble and foreign currencies
•  Chronic fiscal deficit were the background to the meltdown.
• The economic cost of the first war in Chechnya that is estimated at $5.5 billion (not including the rebuilding of the ruined Chechen economy)
•  External shocks,
•  the Asian financial crisis that had begun in 1997
• declines in demand for (and thus price of) crude oil and nonferrous metals, severely impacted Russian foreign exchange reserves.
• Political crisis  when Russian president Boris Yeltsin suddenly dismissed Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his entire cabinet
• Russian stock, bond, and currency markets collapsed as a result of investor fears that the government would devalue the ruble, default on domestic debt, or both.
• Government debts on wages continued to grow and workers went on strike

Russia bounced back from the August 1998 financial crash pretty fast because the world oil prices rapidly rose during 1999–2000 (just as falling energy prices on the world market helped to deepen Russia’s financial troubles), so that Russia ran a large trade surplus in 1999 and 2000.

Mexican Peso Crisis: 1994 : Tequila Effect

Mexico had a fixed exchange rate system  However, Mexico lacked sufficient foreign reserves to maintain the fixed exchange rate and was running out of dollars at the end of 1994 because the outgoing president had run up a huge deficit. The investor community was loosing faith in the Mexico government because of various reasons like assassination of the presidential candidate that is was not possible for the government to raise funds from the market. The peso had to be devalued and changed from fixed regime to a floating regime. The peso tanked heavily under the floating regime. This lead to a other currencies in the region (the Southern Cone and Brazil) to decline. US gave a 50billion loan to prop up the peso. Since governments and businesses in the area had high levels of U.S. dollar-denominated debt, the devaluation meant that it would be increasingly difficult to pay back the debts. So it was in the interest of the US government also to prevent the peso from going down.

Bottom Line: Bad fiscal policies by the outgoing  government leading to a huge deficit and loss of investor trust which lead to a problem of liquidity, a falling peso and overall crash in the economy of the region.

Other Financial Crisis which i may or may not write about

1. Asian Crisis 1997
2. Russia: 1998
3. turkey: 2002-2001
4. Argentina 2002
5. Global Financial Crisis 2007-2010
6. Greece: 2009

Key Takeaways

I. Form vs Function :

Do not get stuck on the form of the product or service you are offering, look at the function.

eg if you are producing laptops you are in the business of mobile computing, don’t get stuck on the form of the laptop if you do someone else will make a mobile phone with the same capabilities and eat into your business

eg Patato chips companies are in the business of snacking …thier business may move to the cereal producers

eg If you concentrate on making a better and sharper sword and loose the big picture of the sword is being used to kill people, you would die by the guns and the bullets

II.  Three traps you need to avoid while coming up with a new innovation

1. Saddle and Chasm Trap : There are graphs which show why this trap is called what it is but that is not the important part, what is important is what this means. More technology is not always better. After a point of time adding technology looses value to the end customer and you need to realize when to stop pumping money into improving the technology of your product

Eg Swiss watch makers were in the process of making their watches accurate to the millionth of the second but after a point of time the customers did not really care about accuracy but more about style. Timex came into the picture and stole the market that could have very easily been taken over by the Swiss watch makers

Eg For a microwave, after it has acheived the basic temperature that is needed to heat/ cook the food, any money spend on further improving the technology would not really help. They money is better spend else where in maybe improving the style and colors.

2. Sustaining Innovation Trap : As an entrepreneur avoid jumping into the path which is a natural progression for an existing big player, chances are if you are targeting their best customers they will react and since they are established players, you will find it difficult to beat them. Hence look for the customers that are not as attractive to an exiting player and chances are that the big player will let you survive

3. Customer Resistance Trap :   No matter how great your innovation is, if it requires your customer to change their existing behavior there will be resistance from the customers side to adapt to the innovation. Read more on this link (http://shilpszzz.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/egar-sellers-stony-buyers/)

III. B Plan vs Plan B

“Entrepreneurs should emphasize on business discovering and deemphasize  on business planning” John Mullins

While a B-pan is important, you  should be ready to change depending on what you discover in the market and go with plan B..C…D…whatever it takes. Lots of successful business including google had  failed with thier initial business plan.

Eg Red Bus (http://www.redbus.in/) initially had a plan to give computers and ERPs to all small bus vendors so they can get real time info on the seats availability, however since it required significant behavioral change, it did not work out and they changed their business model (http://alturl.com/5i3fo) and now it is a sucessful business.

IV Gut Decision Making

There are two types of gut decision making

1. ” Knowing Gut” : this comes from expertise on a particular subject

2. “Sensing Gut”: this is just a feeling

The interesting part is that the former is not necessarily superior to the latter!

Gut instinct should be used as a ‘data point’ in making a decision. After the decision is made reflect on the specific conditions boundaries in which your gut was proved wrong/right. Like for example I have noticed by gut about people is normally correct but when it comes to a gut feel about numbers I am almost always wrong…similarly look for the boundaries and limitations of your gut and use it like any other data point to make decisions.

V. Pre-mortem Exercise

If there is one take-away that you as my patient reader want to take away from this whole post it is this one…..this is an exercise you can use for not only you business decisions but also decisions you make in your personal lives.

Basically if threre is a decision you want to take…assume you have taken it and everything that could go wrong with it has already gone wrong. You have to assume your decision has failed, how critical and the preventive action that you can take.

So those were my takeways from the first session…it took longer to write than I though it would but I enjoyed it. If you manage to read it till the end..tell me what you think of it so I am inspired to write for session 2 to 8 also!

Cheers!

S

Each of the 8 sessions had a one line funky take away..

Session 1: Those who live by the sword die by guns and Bullets

Session 2: Price the customer not the product

Session 3:There are no traffic jams in the extra mile you go for the customer

Session 4: The customers preception is your reality

Session 5: Customer loyalty can be bought, brand loyalty must be build

Session 6: If you torture data enough, it will confess

Session 7-8: Pricing Pressure is an effect not a cause.

Some of these may be self explanatory…some I hope you understand once you read what I have to write about the session.

Ciao…happy reading!

Cheers!

S

Btw…Do to comment on my posts if you want me to keep posting or I may just decide to write and keep it hidden on my ‘portable computing device’