“Let us start a Youth Club!” I exclaimed in excitement. Ken had never liked the idea of clubs, especially the ones which had a youth word in it. “We will arrange something nice, like an event where all members can participate, interact & become friends” I continued not realizing Ken wasn’t too interested to continue. Ken yawned and rubbed his stomach signaling he is hungry two times in the last three minutes. What is with good looking guys I wondered.

“Look Kev, I know you are not that interested in clubs, etc but this is our only way to get know some girls in this apartment dude” I followed up. The sound of girls made him sit up and look at me like as though I mentioned the names of the cine-actresses who he had been dying to get introduced to. “It will hardly take two hours of your time in a week, lets meet every week, plan an event and organize one in 2 months time” I continued, and end up saying “this is the only way we could get to know that girl on the second floor”.

Ah, what things boys do to get to know one girl?

“OK man, but I don’t can’t afford two hours every week. With college exams’ coming up it is difficult to spend that kind of a time. May be one hour every week. Anyway you have planned half the things in your mind”. It was a more a statement than suggestion. He thinks he is a real stud, he wants me to cook the meal for him to eat I thought.

With the current scenario, something was better than nothing. May be with time and once we get things started he will spend more time on helping me out in the operational activities I thought.

Ken was the only friend I had in my apartment. It was newly constructed and was just ten percent occupational. We were among a group of fifty families who occupied the property in the beginning. Ken went to the most heap college in town and looked like someone who was referred generally as stud among guys. He had all characteristics to woo any girl in town, yet had this can’t-do-the-rituals-but-want-the-blessings attitude.

We somehow mobilized some guys in the apartments and spread the idea of making some friends in the lonely planet in the middle of the city. For some reason I knew from the beginning the idea of opening a Youth Club would attract lot of attention especially among the guys, but girls, they are a breed on their own. But what about that second floor one I wondered.

Once the preliminary debates were handled it was time to enroll members into the club. I took the responsibility with Ken and went to every house to update our database (an old accounts ledger from college), with information on each and everyone's name in the apartment. The first few houses we went to there was welcoming reactions. Infact everyone offered us things to eat and a drink at least. I wasn’t too pleased with every one talking to Ken with almost diligence and ignored me completely. Was it the clothes I was wearing I didn’t know.

Ken was dressed in a blue denim and black adidas T-shirt. There were words Impossible in nothing written in white right in the middle with a Adidas logo on its top. He had this typical boy next door look. I wore brown cargo shorts, which was quite old by standards and a t-shirt which looked no better than a piece of curtain cloth.

No wonder no one even paid attention to me I grumbled within. They must have been thinking I am some sort of a wannabe. I was getting more frustrated as we entered a new house, as Ken made smooth moves with each passing opportunity.

Then we came to her house….

*********************

To be continued.

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Labels: Boys, Girls, Story, Teen, Youth

The orange light shined brightly from the mosquito repellent burning in my room. The darkness prevailed all over and it was 11.30pm on a Saturday night. I was lying down facing down on my pillow. Voices surrounded me from the window next to my bed from the club just outside my residence – voices of young drunk men and women. Lucky people I said to myself, for once I cursed my New Year resolution to stay away from alcohol till my birthday.

Thoughts flung through my head, thoughts of yester-years. Then a parallel thought emerged from the blue. Should I start writing again? I asked myself with uncertainty. My non-conclusive mind absorbed every bit of information it can process in parallel, and before my CPU crashed asked me pick my laptop up to type in few words. Should be a matter of amuse with a little muse!

This time after a very long refreshing break, I am back!


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Labels: comeback

EPOCH, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Customer Life Time Value, Acquisition Cost, Churn Analysis, Porter's Five Forces, SWOT Analysis, Core Competencies Framework, PEST Analysis, Dupont Model, Customer Value, ROI, EPS, Mintzberg's Framework, MBTI, Hofstede's 5D Model, Innovator's Dilemma, Game Theory, Paradoxies, Post-Modernism, Porter's Value Chain, Prisoner's Dilemma, Milton Friedman, CAPM, Technology Hype Curve, Kotler's 4 P's, Mckinsey Matrix, GE Matrix, Portforlio Theory, St Petersburg Paradox, Risk Vs Return, Minimum Variance Portfolio, Virtual Value Chain, John Maynard Keynes, Mutiplier, Web 2.0, Locus of Control, Phillip's Curve, Monetarism, Competition, Globalisation - Thomas Friedman, Converged Digital Technology Infrastructure, Aggregate Expenditure Model, Knowledge-at-the-point-of-action, Hedging, Fisher's Effect, Personalisation, Consumerism.

Labels: MBA

How important is Sales in someone’s life? It is very pertinent and important for any living human species to have the ability to be able to sell itself in the market. And more importantly, as a business student (regardless of a MBA student) the quality to be able to sell is regarded just about the essential.

I see this around in my everyday life where people turn sceptics towards Marketing or Sales in general in my business school, which is something that astonishes me for the right reasons. And their cover or argument would go along the paths of what’s important for a business organisation – Finance/Cash Flows or Marketing/Sales (Everything else falls within these functions or a dimension of this), which then results in them making a decisive stand about Finance, simply because they are not comfortable with marketing (which is more related to people/consumers directly or indirectly). One of the worst decisions or arguments of any one is this!

There are three kinds of people you will find in business-schools – (1) People who clearly know what they want to do /study and they end up doing that; (2) People who discover new meaning and knowledge along the way of their study and they end up doing that; and (3) People who have no particular interests or clue in general about their interests and end up doing something for the sake of other (fringe) benefits.

It’s clearly better on the longer-run to stay within the first two for obvious reasons. But seldom, are the percentages of people falling into these brackets more. This also includes the aversion towards a business function like Sales or Marketing. At a honourable stage in my MBA I would like to conclude the following about the degree.

There are two reasons why someone should do a MBA – (1) To be able to find a “Market” or “Sell” (directly or indirectly) a company’s products or services; and (2) To be able to value a firm (including Financial Cash Flows and other related knowledge streams).

This is purely my conclusion of why someone should do a course as strategic in nature as a MBA. Opinions may differ, people may rant back, categories mentioned before may not be pleased (especially people who form the first segment), arguments will evolve and it will be such in nature that it would be as close to “Which came first – Hen or the Egg?”.

Now after having established that fact, I would like to take a deeper look at the societal impact in general regarding Marketing and Sales. I have already written about this in my previous blogpost about defining the exclusivity of “Brand-Me”. So I would not like to go deeper into that topic in trying to explore the dynamics.

Rather think about this – How many of us sell everyday? (Please take a moment and think at this stage before you read further!)

In almost every stage of our life right from the time we are born till we get a hospital-bed (to get to the grave) we sell ourselves. We want to get an admission in a good school – we sell, We want to go to a better school – we sell, We want to go to a Classy College – we sell, We want to get a great job – we sell, We want to galvanise our people (Schools, Sports teams, Associations, Clubs, Social Bodies that you are a part off, Workplace, Client-ships, etc) – we sell, We want to marry someone – we sell again! (And many more to name).

This lifecycle of Sales never ends, just the only difference being at different stages we sell different products and services, which may be you at times or someone (something at times) else.

Now having considered this, why not look at Sales as an superior business function (?), rather the only function in a business organisation which is not a Cost-to-the company rather a money making function, and get passionate or accept the reality instead of not realise to garner the benefits. Now these benefits as I mentioned may not be necessarily related to pure professional in nature.

I would like to end this by quoting "Everybody lives by Selling something".


Filtered by sambhar….

Labels: Sales

The last couple of weeks have been the most interesting phase of my recent life. Obviously not just due to the reason that I am interning at the moment at a very Big Consulting firm - learning their Consulting practice, but also has been very interesting in terms of the way the life has shaped up overall.

I am very excited also about what I am learning at the moment. There are few instances where your school education integrates with what you would generally do at work. In my case its just the case of perfect harmony, since most of the things I learn at school is what I get to do at work by just shaping up my approaches towards the delivery mechanisms of the firm.

There was this big workshop I was a part off today which involved quite indepth coverage of our capabilities and deliverables in terms of few of our practices, which definitely provided me with great insights into our overall delivery mechanisms again, and the way we position ourself in the market comparitively to the rest of our competitors and how we can strive in achieving a distinctive competitive advantage. More importantly how we do!

This has certainly created a keen sense of admiration for few of what I am doing, which I consider very important for logically fitting in the map and to remain enthusiatic about it on the longer run. For most of you who have read my blogs more occasionally, would have definitely felt a comparitive leap in the language (vocabulary) that I use on an ongoing basis. Most of my vocabulary is definitely directly influenced by the forces such as my social architecture at this point of time, what I read and listen, etc. There is no certain answer in terms of specifying or classifying anything right or wrong. Rather just an opinion about the change in paradigm in terms of writing.

Also quite challenging enough, Selling has taken a front seat nowadays with whatever I am doing. More so with the Personally selling for some reason. Apart from arguing in a way which is conjusive for a MBA to be able to sell oneselves, another way of looking at this would be to look at it from a perspective of a "Brand-me" thinking. This concept is certainly not new and has been advocated by many giants in the industry.

I am also very keen in establishing a positioning strategy for myself in terms of the way I want someone to look at me, which I again consider is very important in actualising and shaping of yourself. Since at the end of the day its all about Intellectual Property and who has it in this world of "Knowledge is Power" and "Knowledge at the Right of Action".

There ends my random scramblings!

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Labels: random

When someone has the time to check their SPAM mails on Gmail that explains the situation!


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It’s almost like a cycle. Cyclical is what the Economists term it as. Regardless my life seems to have gotten into the same stage where things began one and half years back but now with a different association all together. Come down and listen to the story!

When you arrive at a foreign land which has a stronger currency comparatively to your home currency, especially when you are a student, there seems to be an “elope” attitude to consumption. But then once you get a decent part time job to wash your basins, then the mentality of consumption is stronger since there is no need to compare the arbitrage.

Then over the period in time you begin to progress in the type of jobs that you do and hence automatically the salary scales tend to rise upwards forcing a relaxed consumption without too much of accounting coming into action. Progressively you are also given a credit card by a bank with an imposed credit limit - for many it defines their credit rating, to spend (consumption).

Your habits now tend to have changed, your behavioral spending obviously altered, your saving levels are rock bottom (sometimes different like paying back loans if you are a student like me), your consumption patterns seeming an upward scale and more importantly your willingness to spend increased capriciously.

And then suddenly one day you start an internship. With its utmost joy for having secured one you loosen the grip on reality monetarily. But when you look at the contract papers a flash of thought strikes across your mind making you wonder about the future (on a short run). You are back to “elope” attitude on consumption!

I never knew interns Big Consulting Firms pay just about the minimum wage, if not nothing. And especially for me after going from a university job which paid more than it promised it’s a difficult period in time to try getting used to the “lunch-box” days all over again. Nevertheless, I guess its time to!

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Labels: Life