“You sell it and they may forget you You serve well and they may remember you always.”
This has been source of great inspiration for me as Sales & Marketing person working to create great memorable experiences in lifecycle journey of customers.
Post pandemic curves coupled with spike in unemployment has led to quite an uncertainty. There has been cuts in discretionary spends and people are more conscious of what to buy and consume.
By industry definition; sales has to sell and getting numbers is their KRA; getting more profitable business is Sales KRA. Marketing on the other side is responsible to create that demand, the hype and the pull for enabling sales. So who calls the final shots? Who is more powerful? Marketing or Sales?
An Expectation of sorts
Marketing expects sales will give them all the credit for their success viz. improved revenue and profitability to Marketing and the reason for failure as “their inability” to sell effectively. Sales expects marketing will build the brand so strong that customers will queue up to buy the product. Marketing will ensure that we get 100% “qualified leads” that will help sales guys to close more deals. This is true in every situation whether its BFSI, FMCG, Automotive, IT ar Consulting. Marketing is supposed to be the more glamorous role of sorts with “corporate” location and functions; while sales is the classical “feet on street” role where you meet real people and real consumers.
Covid-19 scenario has helped the industry realize the benefit of going Digital. Last 5 to 6 years there has been this wave or hype around Industry 4.0. Primarily we see the application of Digital technologies to enable industry 4.0. Most companies have been toying with the idea of using digital technologies to enable operations excellence. There have been 100s of pilots and a few implementations where the companies have reaped the benefits of using digital for Improving yield, quality, and overall OEE, thereby improving profitability. Now is the time where everyone has decided to board the industry 4.0 journey and every manufacturing company big or small, process or discrete, automotive or chemical, electrical or foods, pharma or oil & gas wants to do it ASAP.
We all might have observed people in movies playing certain roles as a character, similarly, we also do the same. In the midst of every situation, we play a role as a good friend, partner, colleague, or as an individual hero to our own selves. There was a famous quote that most successful people have lived by and we want you to step your journey ahead with the same quote by AYESHA SIDDIQUI:
“BE THE ROLE MODEL, YOU NEEDED WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER”
We have heard the word VUCA for years now, what does it really mean…. It is a world which is constantly changing. Be it the economic impact of 2008 due to Lehman brothers, the influence of the digital world, emerging needs of the global consumers, the rise of a generation with a cause “The millennial” or the unexpected pandemic these are but the real experience of the jargon VUCA. Today the experience is far beyond the corporate world and has impacted every facet of our life.
The VUCA influences rapid transformations be it the economic outlook, consumer purchasing behavior, changing consumer needs, changes in the entire value delivery system for instance from mom and pop stores to supermarkets to e-commerce, physical money to the Paytm a and the traditional communication on TV to talking to a more informed digital consumer. The changes are happening at a lightning speed.
VUCA requires different kind of leadership and thinking. The most AMAZING part of the VUCA world is that leadership can come from any quarter and therefore anybody can be a leader… Wow!! How can this happen. The reason is fairly common the organization is looking for a solution, and whoever offers that is a leader.
A new year brings 365 new opportunities. To do more. To make mistakes. And to learn from them and grow. While this is certainly what I wish for you, dear reader, there is one mistake I hope you stay away from this year, which is to take some of the social myths on their face value. This is concerning because most of these social myths are out there ,without people knowing them to be false and without anyone calling them out.
“ Why around 80% CMO’s Don’t Make It. What It Takes To Get To The Top”.
The top marketing job in the company is a minefield where many talented executives have failed. While some of this is attributable to the ambiguity of the role itself, its also a function of how a CMO builds consensus among his / her other C-suite peers and looks at his / her department more in terms of the business impact it delivers and not merely a function relegated to marketing activities.
The core principle of Marketing comes from an intersection of science + art + human behaviour. As a lot of you will be starting or planning to accelerate your marketing careers, I am happy to share 5 essential skills that have helped me to be a successful marketer.
In 2008, I was at Microsoft looking after a territory in South India region. The 2008 financial crisis hit hard every business. Majority of business in South India was hit as it was not only impacted by India slowdown but also outsourcing business was hit because it was directly connected to US Economy. It was a tough period, we applied numerous strategies and some clearly proved to be very effective. Those learnings are very useful in the current times during this pandemic as well.