CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Trade Clubs

2010-09-27T19:22:00.003+05:30

A professional needs to build his network by interacting with like professionals. Trade clubs is a category to interact with like industrailists.

1. Member of important trade clubs – FICCI is a business organization involving over 400 professionals from different industrial sectors. Immense business knowledge goes on in Trade clubs, industrial meets, exhibitions organized by companies like FICCI. Industrial organizations conduct regular seminars on the latest developments, expansion opportunities and awards achieved by professionals. Besides, one gets to have a one to one interaction with a lot of business counterparts.

2. Regular Communication – Communication at the appropriate time makes a big impact. Those with good Networking have a good sense of Time. Prompt response in communication always makes the receiving party feel important. Thanks to Information Technology spread today, we can pass on information to one another through a wide media options.

Networking entities

2010-09-27T19:19:00.001+05:30

Networking has a few vital entities -

1. Solution Provider –A good networking professional enables others to solve their problems. Networking sites like www.orkut.com have a lot of communities wherein people provide solutions promptly to a range of issues. One needs to look out for messages from people seeking solutions. Wherever it’s possible, solution should be offered specifically addressing the writer’s problem. Solution providers are valued. Knowledge is valuable and knowledgeable people are valued everywhere.

2. Interest in others – www.facebook.com is a site has direct conversation between school time friends. 1 hr of chatting up with his schoolmates creates huge amount of happiness within. He enquires and also provides opinions to them as he’s GENUINELY interested in his friends. Isin’t that a great relaxation for one who’s locked up in his job, and looses his sense of fun or relaxation, obsessed in his work? We have quite a number of business networking sites to interact with professionals. Interacting with friends, colleagues, and industrial counterparts makes one vibrant with energy.

EXPAND YOUR NETWORK

2010-01-23T23:10:00.005+05:30

Lee Iacocca remembered his employee’s birthdays, called them up, wished them, and enquired about their welfare. He was genuinely interested in his employees and called them by their NAMES. This really made each one of them feel IMPORTANT.
His employees, to him were meant a lot.

Customers, mean a lot more for growth and business sensitive professionals. Professionals need to understand that “It’s very VALUABLE to retain an existing customer than it is to get in 100 new customers.”

Maintaining a one-to-one relationship with each customer, understanding and providing immediate solutions, proactively avoiding possible problems all go a long way to make the customer happy with one’s service.

Tags: Orkut, Facebook, FICCI, Networking, Genuinely interested, Customers, Solution Provider

2010-01-21T13:16:00.002+05:30

JOB SEARCH SUCCESS

Getting a job is one of the most valuable things today. Following the Recession phase, after a lot companies began downsizing their staff strength, it was a real challenge for one to get a job. How does counter this challenge? Do understand that:

People who look for problems that they can solve get hired.

Ponder the following points before job search:

1. Start networking – add points related to professional queries, utilising your exp as and where required. Plan what sort of a personality you want to project in the network - manager, consultant etc among your friends or industrial colleagues. Provide professional solutions to different issues, take relevant industrial examples to support your arguments. Every company values Solution Providers. This helps you to market yourself for unadvertised jobs. Professional associations, employment agencies etc. can be some groups to be joined. Try it in linkedin.com, zoominfo.com & some job specific networking sites.

2. Shortlist the companies/industries in which you want to offer services. Identify your USPs that would make a big difference to the company’s business if you worked there. If possible, take statistical details, like your previous companies’ latest sales reports, your sales contribution in the previous quarter and how you contributed to an increase in the same. Be aware of the companies’ products or services beforehand.

3. What’s u’r qualification, exp, what do you want to be 5 yrs down the line? What do you want to be in your career 10 yrs down the line? Plan this out and then go ahead into job search, This helps in marketing tuned to your goal. Profession without goals are meaningless and remember, for cash support, you can find a lot of other freelancing opportunities.

4. Industrial shift – This is a worthy option in a job troubled scenario. Who are you, & how u can add to the company’s value based on your exp.? Present this in covering letter, as just a history of u’r careers, or a diplomatic statement supporting u’r qualifications offers no value to the company. You need to let your would-be employer understand that you’d be an asset to him due to your experience and industrial grasp.

Companies are looking for people who can add value by exp, by guidance, by leaderhisp, by responsibility.

Present your profile for people to call you up at the earliest. The problem with job sites is that you may not get the job nature that you desire. Or the jobs may be internally given to employees.

Tags: Solution Providers, Networking, Career goal, experience, USP, industrial shift

ALL THE BEST

REACH OUT,CAPTURE MORE CUSTOMERS

2009-11-02T07:52:00.002+05:30

Reaching out to the customers in the least of the time is the priority of companies today. Customers give this the maximum priority. Today, customers define their priority. Companies go all way to provide the same. A lot of companies opt to provide more than what's required as well.

Maruti is a simple example of excellent distribution network today. Making themselves available at the nookest locations in India, Maruti has forced those living in most rural areas to think of a better standard of living. Providing the best choice options to customers companies have a wonderful distribution pattern today.

But how do companies do this?
Companies define a few vital parameters to the aspiring distributors:
1. They should have a location of a x b sq m in their possession or at lease. This enables creating their showroom, servicing centre, and more facilities.
2. They should have x Rs. as a cash backup, for any eventualities.
3. They should have a good awareness of the place that they choose for their centre. This helps in designing better strategy measures. Any promotion means, any other measures for a better propagation would better be dealt with by people belonging to and aware of the locality in and out.
4. Any other company specific means or requirements.

All these Franchisees will have a good plus point. They would be working for an established company. So their time won't be caught in creasing a Brand name. They now have to only propagate more about themselves.

The company would benefit a great deal by opening up more centres at the apt locations to reach out to the maximum number of customers.

Distribution is a very important facet of companies that want to expand their sales by direct customer interaction.

CONVERSATIONAL SMARTNESS

2009-10-26T20:40:00.008+05:30

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most successful professionals in US today. Holding very interesting sessions with a lot of professionals, she has built a wonderful network of people. It's amazing how she make people absolutely arrested to the television during her conversations. One of the really observant factors is that she lets her clients speak out. Speak out freely. And professionals like Tom Cruise and other interviewees do get arrested.

There are very interesting professional observations to make here:

1. Listen - As one said, a marketing professional reads his clients' mind 70% by listening and only 30% by speaking. When one listens to his client, he not only LISTENS to him attentively, but also judges the validity of each statement by their body language. Voice tone and intensity are also attributes that one observes while listening. And smart people drive the speaker to emotional level pretty fast.

2. Speak less, make the client speak to your tunes - A lot of stalwarts also shed a tear or two if driven to speak on sensitive topics in the right tone. Vinod Kambli shed tears and spoke out his emotions in a very sentimental conversation with the serial host. And didn't he reveal a few secret facts emotionally therein?

Smart professionals do drive their clients to behave the way they way to get the desired result.

WAT'S BLOGTHIS?? BLOGGER HELP

2009-09-28T21:13:00.002+05:30

What is BlogThis! ? - Blogger Help

Blogspot is a wonderful and money making contribution from Google. Google's made a big wave in the Net market by providing some very wonderful features starting up with the best and fastest search facility, mails, document storage, photo storage features, Google chrome and more. Google is designed new search features for Mobiles.

Now, utilising all that it's provided to Net viewers, Google is also providing surfers to earn while surfing. Don't believe it?? Yes, it's true. Google does provide one an opportunity to earn from the net while surfing.

Bing is Microsoft's answer to Google's web threat.
Microsoft got a big jolt to viewershare thanks to Google's features. Huge percentage of surfers used google for its SPEED, NUMBER OF LINKS and ability to search on any topic that one can think of.

CAN U STEAL MARKET SHARE ??

2009-09-09T19:58:00.002+05:30

“Nothing official about it” was a market share capturing statement. Pepsi used this statement in 1996 Cricket world cup to steal Coke's market share despite Coke's image as the official sponsor. Pepsi drafted this wonderful ad slogan exploiting an understanding of consumer's thought processes.

Market Research provides a company with vital competitive information and an insight into customer decision making factors. Knowledge of consumers' tastes and varying factors provide a measure on future marketing decisions.

Market research, previous strategy performance analysis, proactive measures are a few tools required to increase a company's market share.

NETWORKING

2009-09-08T18:01:00.007+05:30

Some of the greatest businessmen cared to remember their customer's birthdays, call them up, wish them, enquire about their welfare and learn more about them. Genuine interested in their customers made them do this spontaineously.

Networking, growing one's friends' circle, is not just about having a lot of friends. Rather, it's about being an "interested" friend.

Networking has a few vital entities -

1. Own individuality - one needs to have his self respect, his earnings and ability to help others. He needs to be a confident individual who not only solves his own problems but also has tremendous interest in helping others solve their problems, as well.

2. Interest in others - He has to be intetested in others, just because he knows them. He should value his friends and their growth.

3. Member of important public clubs - He is a member online networks, trade clubs
and expands his network.

4 Business Knowledge - Interaction with a wide horizon of people increases one's knowledge horizon. Knowledge enables him to provide vital points in important meetings, conferences etc.

All these entitites, maintained as a part of living, will not only enable one to maintain his friend circle, but also grow his network at a great pace.

WAT'S U'R PRODUCT WORTH ???

2009-09-08T17:02:00.005+05:30

Tata Nano hit new lines, a few months before. Launching Nano at a price of Rs 1 lakh, Tata hit the untouched car market. It reached out to people of an average salary, but with high aspirations. Tatas have grabbed the attention of a very competitive market, in the post-recession era.

Pricing is one of the most important Marketing strategies in the market today. Utilized as a vital customer winning tool, solo pricing plans have created a market share growth for a lot of companies. FMCG market witnesses huge price in the same product. To mention a few, Nirma and Surf cater to different markets in the washing powder category.

Capturing Product Market - (In)Tangible

2009-09-06T18:48:00.005+05:30

Products or services form the crux of any business. Be the customers' needs like appetite(provided by Food services companies), thirst(cool drinks, pure water sealed bottles), or his wants(Nokia mobiles, iPods), companies offer excellent customer service.

Nokia's leading market share in the Indian Mobile market stands out in the same regard. A happy customer creates few more customers, enabling better revenue over time. Today, mature companies are offering individual customer care, via service centres.

As they say, losing 1 existing customer is far more valuable than getting in 100 new customers.

Marketing Personality - Selling

2009-09-01T21:05:00.003+05:30

Excelling in a Marketing career demands very valuable qualities in a professional. Abilities of selling, strategizing, promotion require invaluable attributes to excel.

Selling demands one to push a product into a customer, no matter what the competition is, no matter what the product is. The salesmen are trained specially to divert sales dialogues towards their products' excellent features.

Henry Ford said, "Ford offers cars of all colours as long as it is BLACK".

That was a period in early 20th century, when Ford was looking forward to FORCE his car down the customers' market, with just one color. But, this was the wonderful way in which he promoted his product. And his focus was just one thing then,"to 'sell' Ford car."

Sales target based day wise plans, prospective customer identification, High level of individual confidence, conversational skills all go a long way in successful sales deals.

Marketing smartness

2009-05-28T10:49:00.005+05:30

A lot of professionals enter the marketing arena fresh from their MBA with an imaginary marketing scholarship, and market capturing agility. While a few do succeed, it gets really tough for the newbees in the marketing line. Marketing needs a primary customer taste understanding for anyone to succeed. This is the fundamental principle. With this knowledge, one can reach the customers much faster, can communicate with them in their understandable terms and sell their products. Customer tastes and their modifying factor knowledge makes it easier to design marketing strategies as well, better. One can market research analytical data to work on the marketing plans and modify them as necessary.

Marketing Management

2009-04-17T16:57:00.001+05:30

The chunk of any company to prosper today is Marketing.
There was a time in the early 1900s when the market had very little brands and more number of customers. There, the supplier was the King. As Henry Ford once said, "You can choose any color for your car that you want as long as it is Black." Demand overtook supply in the early 20th century. Time changed a lot. Today, there is a huge competition for every product, be it a 1/- chewing gum to 20 Million $ cars. And this market needs a lot of smart marketing to be captured.