Approach to New Business pitches…

In last couple of years I have had huge opportunities to participate / work along on new business development / new pitches. I have learnt a lot from all those pitches doesn’t matter whether we won or we lost. I thought to pen down how one can approach new business pitches, ya I am no authority on this subject…these are just my some of my learning’s…
I think we can take some inspiration from the 4 Ps of Marketing.
First a bit on the 4 Ps (I know we all know!):
1) Product: A product is seen as an item that satisfies what a consumer needs or wants. It is a tangible good or an intangible
2) Price: The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. The price is very important as it determines the company's profit and hence, survival
3) Promotion: represents all of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to provide information to different parties about the product
4) Place: refers to providing the product at a place which is convenient for consumers to access.
So let us see how each P of marketing can be applied to ‘Pitching for New Business’
1) Product: Absolutely critical this is your core strategy it has to address the brief ‘need of the client’. Get this right. One simple step is get the ‘brief right’ and you will get the ‘right output’
2) Price: Aha! Extremely sensitive but if you do a good job then I think we should link it with Performance!
3) Promotion and Place: Now this is gaining lots of prominence. U got to make use of every moment, every single time u makes a contact with the prospective client you got to ensure excellence. Right from the moment you received the first call, the first mail, the briefing session you attend, clarifications you ask for on the brief, during the presentation, post presentation follow up (HUGE, HUGE, HUGE) every single moment is absolutely critical. Treat it as break or make deal moment. Every moment of contact is THE place, THE opportunity for showcasing your company. It’s Showtime! All the Time!
The last one is ‘Passion’….not sure if they teach you in business schools…Take your passion and make it happen.

Trust plays a massive role in our lives. We decide almost everything basis our trust for that brand. It is interesting to see who the new age media scores on this parameter versus the more traditional mediums. I came across an interesting study from Edelman Trust Barometer 2012. The question asked is 'below is a list of place you might get information about a company. For each please indicate if you trust it a great deal, somewhat...
Here is the outcome...
1) Traditional media continue to have highest scores but online sources scores are almost neck to neck
2)But it is the Social Media scores which are growing fast and catching up quickly with other source’s 75% growth over last year
3) Corporate website shown a decline
In sum: Another reason why brands should start to treat Digital media a lot more seriously.

QR Code

Hi

As a part of my endeavour to climb the rope of Digital Media here goes QR code for my blog.

Hope I blog more regularly than thrice a year!

Cheers!

Web 3.0: The 'Social Wave' and How It Disrupts the Internet - Knowledge@Wharton

A fundamental change is taking place online, from information-based web to "people web"
Interesting article read it...link is below

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2808#.Th2OJV_iMd8.blogger

Why do people succeed?

I truly believe in this...

WHY HOW WHAT :The Golden Circle!

Simon Sinek speaks at TED about how great leaders inspire. It is quite interesting do go through it. It did make me pasue and answer WHY at two levels... Personal : Why I do what I do???Why should anyone care for me???Professionally The system I work with whats its purpose? I agree with Simon most employees know what they do but very few know why they do what they do : whats your prupose your cause! Lots of time we know subconsciously but its good to pen it down from time to time!

I am trying and I will share it soon.

Many India's

Many India’s, in one and all evolving differently

Much has been said and debated about the heterogeneity that characterizes the Indian consumers. For many years we have been trying to find the ‘holy grail’ of the Indian Market. Let us take a walk into the past where the life was simple and we had the four varnas that would define the makeup of society i.e the way individuals would live and interact with their outside world.

However over a period of times things have got complicated leading to schizophrenic India. Let us see what has lead to this firstly the biradiri, or community, is still an important part of Indian social interaction and does define certain ways of our living and social interaction. Then with India’s achieving Independence we saw emergence of two India’s one as rich and urban the other poor, agrarian and rural. We called them India and Bharat. This period was also marked by two broad age groups of Pre Independence and Post Independence India though both the generations still shared common value and there was not much of so called generation gap. Though with this things did get bit more complicated but were still simple in comparison to what we were about to witness something which will again turn the wheel of fortune for India…Liberalization of Indian Economy.

Liberalization, gave us two new-age cohorts, the first ever generation of liberalization children and the next generation who will grow up in an India that is confident about its new path and has found its moorings.

Though the varnas had defined only a certain set of occupations like the teachers, kings, warriors this got extended to occupations in government sector or worker in factory with very few in businesses and a large chunk continued to be in agriculture. However post liberalization we saw several new occupations coming up and the most prominent one being IT. Had we ever heard ‘VJ’ I guess our beloved Chitrahar had never got one. The call centers completely changed the concept of 9am-5pm jobs. These changes have made social-economic changes in the way India behaves.

While India’s economic structure changed, so did its family structure. Families are rapidly becoming smaller, and even in larger joint families, the nuclear component is becoming stronger. Rarely does a family patriarch take consumption decisions for all family members; individuals are becoming more important and the nuclear unit of a husband and wife is taking decisions related to consumption, savings and investment.

All this coupled with multi social-cultural regions, multiple languages is leading to a schizophrenic India.

It is high time to make better the existing Socio-Economic Classification used to define and understand Indian consumer. India is a multi-tiered, multi-layered market and needs a multi-pronged strategy, tools and techniques that helps us to decode and understand schizophrenic India.

“In religion, India is the only millionaire…the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined” – Mark Twain (American Author, 1835-1910)