It all begins with a promise.

Bone-chilling heights promise to drive the vibes of fear that even Freddy can’t match.

At the same time.

The to and fro movement that causes you to touch the edge and come back again & again.

Provides an adrenaline rush that opens your nerve ends wide open.

The courage to do this comes from the re-assuring fact that the elastic rope will definitely help you go back plus this experience will let you break your soul-numbing daily routine.

Now, Picture this.

If there is nothing pulling you back again, once the energy in the rope is gone, oscillations will stop automatically.

No more touching the edge. No more fun.

You’ve got something big to plan out.

Everything else would depend upon whether you go back or not.

Even if you are Bear Grylls , you have an uphill task ahead.

This is something that we all have experienced, not in the literal bungee jumping sense.

But with the ongoing digital content revolution.

Which has poured in so much content in every form you could ever imagine.

If you are willing to make a dent in your industry, Disrupt convention.

Acquiring knowledge on a subject is the way to go.

We dive in the vast pool of information to learn something new so that we can come back and implement it.

With so many ignited minds around, it is indeed an amazing dive with its own sense of energy.

Somehow though, getting back with the elastic rope is not so easy because you have to do it on your own with boat load of How-Tos in our head.

As we easily start comparing results that other people get, neglecting the fact that they have earned it with even more struggle.

The return journey would be tough as you have to travel on your foot with one step at a time without any common means of transport available.

So the only solution is to start.

Get going.

Hold tight even if  a stone beneath your feet slips away.

How do you get the discipline to do something everyday?

It is difficult. But if you tell yourself that there is no other option like the bunjee-freaking Jump situation, you will trek back, you will push yourself.

You might find out many errors in this post, as this is a come back post.

I did not want to save this post as another draft because it was not good enough.

In this case, Hitting publish was the way to get going.

Please share your thoughts on getting back from such a situation, I am sure you’ve tried and succeeded.

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What are the building blocks or pillars of doing awesome things consistently?

We have come along through many stories of evolution in the past century, every single decade, every single year from Man-Powered factories to Super-costly & celebs struck print advertising to Memes of brand related definitions in the boardrooms and now social media buzzing almost everyone.

It has been difficult to grade something good or bad on the basis of our assumptions which are directly or indirectly linked to prevailing trends and not exactly the inside stuff. Brands which are a cut above the rest have been there in the past and in fact in most cases not with the right kind of dollars to spend on ads and technology, they invested on human assets of relationship & service and delivered.

It is quite intriguing to understand what stays and what doesn’t in marketing, business or life. As everything might come with a perfect starter manifesto kicked-in but a not so relevant execution plan & results and vice versa.

As a student we get imparted with a lot of knowledge but very few of us learn about its application in the real world for example the value proposition models that are taught in business schools are rarely implemented to get the best results as most of the times there is a lack of home work.

I completely understand that the path to success cannot be scripted in a blog post as it at least wants a book from a great visionary. But the three amigos will make the message clear and easy for you to find out what’s under the hood.

Yeah, so here are the three amigos and they form a formidable team, watch out. »

♦INSPIRATION:

“A bird inspires a photographer to display nature with the fullest potential, dangerous animals like snakes and tigers have inspired martial artists all over the world to develop few of the most lethal moves and the most common one ; some songs always inspire us to definite mood swings.”

Inspiration can be derived from any source, we just need to have the right frame of mind while observing things, as most successful businesses are inspired from the very nature of the cause or the need that they support. It is something that drives us to accelerate the paddle shafts of our lives in the worst situations and helps us in recovering from vital falls as well.

For an instance if marketing is not inspired from consumers, it fails to deliver at both ends and is considered as spam (and that sucks because you made efforts but not in the right direction).

To be in a business it is inevitable to inspire your employees with the culture, your stakeholders with a vision of long-term future and inevitably your customers with your products and services.

Practo (To DO) Stuff -

- No matter what your situation is, keep looking for something inspiring as when it reacts with your hard work, we get the best solutions ever.

- As children we always remain excited about one or the other thing but as we grow, things that inspired us become childish for rest of the world and for us. Go fetch them again, if Super-hero comics inspire you get them, if classic Disney toons get you kickin!! Go get them.

- Feed your head with some really inspirational content and because of some uber-generous people it’s easy to find, start by watching this gentlemen here.

So inspiration acts as the fuel for everything ( Journey and the Goals ) and making it all the more exciting.

♦COMMUNITY:

“A team of 11 Maradonas or Peles cannot account for a world cup triumph even if they were the most eclectic players to sizzle the football grounds ever, Why? Because a team is a team, it is formed by different styles merging into one phenomenon.”

Our Families, All-time cool school and college gangs or colleagues at the work-place, we are surrounded by people of our community since the time we enter the world.

The process of sharing experiences becomes the best learning ground to understand some really important values of life. We recognize some teams and some kind of act as back-room heroes in shaping our story, so it’s never really about you but about them.

Talking about business and marketing, nurturing a community is the best way to let your message free flow and also the feedback to free flow, knowing where your customers are is just the start but understanding the reason for their prevalence at a particular place is rather important aspect of successful businesses.

For an example, a software firm can form developer communities not just for the heck of it but to provide them with a platform to work upon & share ideas thus ultimately driving them with the velocity of vision to achieve a mutual end goal.

Practo (To DO) Stuff –

- Sharing and Caring was a moral science lesson in school, but this is something to follow, being part of a community we should share (selflessly) as much info as we can which can help other members.

- Listen, whether you are a leader or a follower listening to your fellas is important — Consider it a cool dealio.

- Don’t make buzz generation your  prime affair, because it’s no more than fizz coming out of a soda bottle, to make your service taste well is what matters big time and creates a lasting relationship.

Love your people, It is an art in itself and it takes time to perfect and you can learn it from someone like Gary Vaynerchuk.

♦INTELLECT:

“Bone chilling cold, no Starbucks or Dominos, no Facebook or Twitter and places where air with oxygen is considered an oxymoron are the ones where you get the coolest heads(The Monks) on earth when it comes to peace of mind, Why is it so? They almost have nothing tangible but are satisfied and happier than most of us, they have attained intellect and they know it is greater than knowledge.”

Now don’t for a second think that the only way to attain such state is to meditate single-legedly, It is rather simple or not that simple.

This is how to get on with it – It’s nothing like wrestling a Guerrilla in your mind, Just try doing some extra bit of work while your mind intakes knowledge, start questioning the input and think about the application of output and you are getting closer.

This is the reason why the world today has millions of engineers but just a few handful who create path-breaking inventions, millions of  doctors but just a few standout with lifesaving work. You can see the difference easily now, dig deeper inside yourself and try to touch base with your inner self.

Marketers can get to the crux of things so easily for there clients, solving a strategic question would become simpler as we can lock up a lot of clues in our mind’s library if we achieve such state of mind.

Practo (To DO) Stuff –

- Make five new buddies (How, Why, When, What,Who) on every project as they will make you hit the final mile.

- Think beyond your computer desk, go out and make your body rejuvenated as this will make your work more efficient.

- Do a good deed a day, In my opinion nothing can’t be more fulfilling then helping someone who is in a need.

So it’s kind of recipe with some definite proportions of all the three amigos which makes it awesome, while wrapping up I’d like to hear your thoughts on the same, as always comment section is all yours.

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How does an artist create a fabulous sculpture?

It’s simple, Take a stone or a wooden block and remove everything unwanted and what you get is called a masterpiece, the greatness though depends on the approach of finishing being pursued.

The most successful brand managers and marketers understand this very fact that the way they market things is an art in itself and what makes it great is the simple representation of the motive. Simple here does not means using a pencil to design things but it means to remove superficial claims, the boring factoids of new & free and not shedding the brand image in consumer’s mind by absolutely different messages, CAN YOU GET A BRIGHTER SKY.

I’ll start with breaking everything into steps which can help us remove what is ignored by consumers. Selling things in a market place where a lot of other brands are there filled with many speculative consumers looking for an ideal deal is kind of tough job { With the internet empowerment it has got even tougher }, because every body has a different message to convey about the same product and the best way to stand out is to have a remarkable product and spreading the right word for it in the market without joining the spammer breed.

Everyone has admitted to the fact that no matter how good the product is, getting the word out for it should be initiated at some level because that’s what forms the foundation of the first part of making a category in consumer minds.

If we can learn how to design better buttons for websites, better garnishing for food so why can’t we understand to do better marketing by observing things.

Ingenuity{Innovation + Application } is the key and you don’t have to be super-creative, just do some research work and carve out something better as this great quote says -

“Innovation is trying to figure out a way to do something better than it’s ever been done before.” ~ David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue

I am not going to disclose a secret here nor any new rules but just a simple idea that we can keep the minimalistic skills of selling in our mind by doing some brainstorming on conventional wisdom and break loose of it without being over the limit.

This is just one thought road of travelling, The focus would be on connecting our strategies to common sense and how we can use it more often than usual and thus utilize the customer touch points without being invisible.

• All of us have learnt about the five senses which tell us how people perceive things, here is a reminder –

Eyes – Sight

Ears – Sound

Nose – Smell

Tongue – Taste

Touch – Feel

As every single brand message, which is elegantly designed for consumers is focused on touching the customer on one of the above senses so that a particular consideration and then a particular intent is generated. Another important fact to be noted is that it’s not just the perception but also the old page about the product or service  stored in our mind’s library that affects our decisions.

• To explain this further here are two simple rumblings from random observations – { Each point below is sponsored by the Human senses. }

- Why we need something different to taste on weekend?, Why most of our favorite songs or movies keep on changing? because we get bored.

Lesson - Don’t reply on trends and rules which have stood since a long time, make innovation a rule as one of the most common reasons for ignorance of a brand message is that people get bored with things which have been there in the same way for years,

- Our eyes get hurt when we see flash light, tongue hurts when we eat spicy food, skin hurts when subjected to something too cold or too hot.

Lesson - Being extreme is not the solution, messages should be carved out without flashy yet irrelevant colors, promotional stunts should have some substance so that they generate more intent the buzz.

Do some home-work on what you have just read and try experimenting the same on yourself, it will definitely give you many such take-aways.

So the bottom line is that everyone has a different set of these sensing tools and thus the sense of your message can be perceived differently as well, So it’s very important to get the message right thus getting the right people and also being super humble to them in the process, so that they never feel that they are interacting with a company but with a human, that’s where the first part of loyal business chain begins and after earning the first follower it just goes on and on if you have the ability to offer a great product/service.

As I mentioned this was one way of doing it, so let your thoughts flow.

How can you carve out a masterpiece from your marketing ?

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Bang!!!! You’ve just been struck badly, what are the first few thoughts coming over in your mind?

Your answer could possibly be something like this ” In an ideal case that could have never happened, if we did this, if he did that, if we had this,if we were not there, but we were on the safer side, but we had the right plan and more of these Ifs and buts…….” Now this was being idealistic in a post case scenario, now let’s be a bit realistic and look at the positive cravings of such a happening.

Me and my colleague who was sitting on the driver’s seat met with an accident last to last Friday while travelling back home from the office, our scooter had hit a big stone block which we could not really see at that time, just a little glimpse and a we were down on the road. Thank god, we had 2 more super-helpful people from our office travelling with us who helped us get the first aid. The first thing that came into my mind was to scold my associate who was driving but then I thought it was not his mistake either in the first instance and if It was than talking something crazy at that time could not have been good at all to anyone’s interests.

The reason why the feeling of playing the blame game iterate in our minds is because IT JUST HAPPENS, you end up loosing an important employee, you tingle the frontal lobe of your old clientèle because of some mindset mishap and you quite often strike your gums badly while doing toothbrush in the morning{I know its painful but again IT JUST HAPPENS } you don’t throw away your toothbrush after that or stop doing the whole thing in the morning .

Things go wrong just like that and mistakes can be made by just about anyone in the circuit, as a working personnel in today’s environment you interact with many people and they don’t think or do as you do or think almost every single time, so conflicts do happen.

Below are three learnings which can be applied in daily businesses -

1 – First Up, Things Look Bad –

The time I was struck it was about 2:30 at night and when I saw my face in mirror it felt like I am a third world virus stricken mutant from Resident Evil Apocalypse and it’s never going to get in the right shape.

But within 12 days it went away with just a little mark left which would shed away soon, Any mistake or error committed appears worse than it is in reality and thus persuades us to press the impulsive panic button towards a not so sure solution and we lose again.The lesson would be to stay calm and continually focus on the recovery part for a better future and not on what has happened already.

2 – Impulsive Reactions are Illusionary –

Just to get it straight into your head, read this great quote -

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  VIKTOR E FRANKL { Man’s Search For Meaning }

Here I am not stating reacting impulsively as “bad” but it does create illusionary sense and that is a truth, Guess what If I could have blamed my colleague for bad driving at that time both of us could have been in a worsened situation as our injured bodies were bleeding. Because our mind is not in the normal responsive state so the decisions made can’t be expected to be optimum at all, as we just can’t evaluate the situation with the angry acid in our heads.

When your employee has done a mistake in making a presentation which eventually led to the loss of a new business deal, you can’t just blame the employee for it as it is a huge possibility that your judgment of choosing him was wrong or the time , facilities that were given to him were not appropriate for the work to be done. It’s quite obvious that you won’t pat his/her back for the mis-happening, just make them understand that you as a team have lost something and share your thoughts on the measures to make it correct which can only be achieved by teamwork. So use the space between action and reaction, you will make an impact.

3 – Recovery Takes Time –

Yepz as you are well aware our body is a set of processes as our businesses are which keep on running with many in-built structures and whenever we meet with an accident the process is halted and you want some rest.

I am not pitching you to stop working for sometime when you end up being a part of something like this, the vital functions always happened at their own rate, like my heart kept on beating I gave my body enough fuel to run just that I was not involved in some physical activities for a short while.

In businesses the vital operations should go on no matter what has happened, just try healing the part which has been hurt the most. Get into a new programme to boost the motivation levels of your workforce, fix some time to speak with your stakeholders at a nice place and talk more than business and how can you make the world a better place at both ends. Give time so that the change can happen in its natural flow as you have anyways tweaked the cause of that particular change.

While concluding, I would assert that using questions such as WHY ME? are illogical as you are not the first person on the earth in a similar situation, So cheer up get the first aid, I know the antiseptic will be a little painful but it’s just the start of a smooth recovery.

How did you tackle your last panic button situation? What is your best strategy to get out of such situations?

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IMAGE CREDIT – GEARFUSE

How many times someone has pushed your innovative side by saying Think Different? Think Out of The Box? or Think the Improbable?

If you are here reading this question, I am sure this has happened many times in your life as well that you tried to think how to think out of the box. I am no different or I must say I was no different till yesterday, but then I realized that if you apply common sense to “Think Different “, it becomes clear.

Just pause and think for a moment that in what all circumstances{most common ones} you hear these words from people -

- You are looking for advice from the Wannabes or the Been there done that’s on how to start something new.

- You are stuck in a rut while working on your next video,blog post, sculpture e.t.c but you don’t admit it, but anyone can smell that in normal conversations with you and push you to change your mindset.

Directly or indirectly you are being persuaded by someone to change your mindset, Here is the i-deal -

Think different does not means breaking through shackles{rules} which have been there for years, it does not means creating something which has never been created before because almost everything you can think has been invented, this is not something to get de-motivated in-fact the big ideas have always come from enthusiastic meetings of some old ideas and it’s a proven fact, because whatever we write, think or create has been influenced by some or the other idea which had popped out before.

So think different means, changing your perspective and your frame of reference when you are working on something.The audience which you are creating with your product or service, can you think what they want in an ideal offering.

This sounds very simplistic but is quite tough to pursue, the best way to do it is to get a notepad and make a checklist of such things which might come in your target’s mind and this development of thoughts should be elaborated and as a final step do some match the following with your resources{your skills,tools and gut feeling}. So it’s a technique to stick with the basic principles of delivering stuff, I would call it mutual-practical-brainstorming to work out things and it can prove to be an important currency of thinkonomics.

I am finding it awesome to use this in certain things.

What are your thoughts on thinking different? did you get what you want from this post? Share your thoughts friends as that is the lifeblood of this blog…so keep the comments rolling in.

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I read a lesson long back in school in our moral science class, at that time it was just as good as any other lesson but now I can relate it to marketing and it works well.

“Do to others as you would have them do to you”

You might think that it is just linked to the customer service part of the business but if you dig deeper in your mind it has a depth for marketing as well.

Before getting detailed I would like to give a simple example, consider yourself a door-to-door salesman selling a commodity, you have been given a sales pitch by your sales manager and you want the customer to listen to you so that he understands what you are really selling.

Lets apply the rule -

“Listen to others as you would have them listen to you”

I hope you got the answer for this one, so every step you take towards marketing something, try to look at things from the customer’s angle as in what they think or what they want and tweak your appeal accordingly.

We agree or not most of us are directly or indirectly involved in marketing initiatives at some points in our lives, but being human we never want ourselves to be called a marketer or a salesman.

Sometimes I wonder how peculiar this opinion is to understand, The point is that if you are telling someone about anything which you know and want him/her to take an action on it in the near future not necessarily a monetary action, You are marketing stuff.

If you can connect the dots with this rule you can make meaning with your marketing efforts.

Let’s have a look at two practical perspectives on application of this golden rule –

The format for the the story is explained below –

Example Case – X and Y Perspective

Party 1 – X
Party 2 – Y

What does X wants?

General Questions and problems.

What Y can deliver?

Ideal solutions after applying the rule.

CASE 1 – C SUITE’s Perspective –

Party 1 – Board Members
Party 2 – CMO

What do board members want?

You’ve just popped in the conference hall and you can see gloomy faces all round the corner of a long table. They want to listen to a new marketing plan, an updated version of a not so successful campaign.

What you can do?

Any idea about how to get the rule working here in this situation? it’s very simple you want them to listen to your plan first of all make it a point to listen what they have to say I am sure sometimes you will get some undignified B.S but it would help you to tweak your story and grasp out all the benefits which pertain as answers to all the questions which they ask. So design your plan into bite sized chunks and make it relevant for them to consume information.

Case 2 – Brands and Agency’s perspective –

Party 1 – A Brand
Party 2 – A Private Marketing Agency

What do brands want?

They have been inundated with a lot of pushing from industry bloggers, rising new breed of consumers to do something socially special about their complete branding plans. They want to inhale some fresh air now, by that I mean they are searching for an agency which can keep them updated about everything and also keep up with the core values of the company which are usually propelled by the founding fathers and lost over time in the process of growth.

What they really want -

- Improved Interactions with Customers.

- Being Aware about Everything Latest.

- Guarantee That They Will Get ROI.

What you can do?

As an agency you want a deal with them and you have thousands of global competitors looking for the same, try to understand what they want and match it with what you can deliver.

What you can really give -

- Don’t just spam them with names and memberships of various social media channels, learn what their goals are and match them with the right social sites.

- Develop a feed channel to update their representative on -

Tackling Competitor’s new product or strategies.

Technology advancements which can propel productivity.

A complete report of the ever-changing end-user with the use of social CRM tools.

- Being open with your approach to build confidence, don’t push testimonials let your work do the talking.

So as Guy Kawasaki says we have to always remember that we look at possibilities from a telescope and the world looks at us with a microscope to find every single error that we might commit in the process of delivering, so while planning your work it’s always good to switch to a microscope and learn what they want. A minimalist statement would be to change the way you look at things.

Try it yourself by flipping the words of this rule and see how things work out,please share your thoughts on the topic and make it better with some more uses and analogies.

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What keeps you thinking about different things? What is it that makes some things interesting and some not so interesting?

It is information and “Information is not Knowledge” ~ Albert Einstein

Yes quite rightly said from one of the best Techy rock star thinkers, Information is not knowledge and you can’t persuade someone with your knowledge. It seems quite simplistic here but in our mind it is a traverse journey because this gets polished every single day.

Since ages the outflow of information has incited conversations which further on give rise to relationships, spiritual beliefs, traditions and almost everything. What we think, talk or mingle is an outcome of different chunks of information from absolutely different origins. Some chunks keep on upgrading as the time passes by and some remain the same, for instance “Once upon a time”, this is nothing more than a sentence which acts as a starter in most of the stories which we have read in our childhood, we still perceive it as we did it earlier.

Let me take you through this journey in a common- sensical way -

Getting Informed – The way we take information into our minds is an evolving process which is affected by a lot of factors.

In today’s world when stats from Facebook are more useful in comparison to the stats from a government agency.

Three most viable sources from which you receive information are -

- People with influence and command, The offline and online Influencers aka rocks tars of whatever they do, they have the experience and thus cultivate some fabulous insights.

- Big brands which offer different products and services, Earlier it were ads which did it for companies big time, now the ratio has shifted quite a lot for example we know a lot about apple from the awe-inspiring Steve Jobs, or we have learned a lot about Zappos from the team cultivator Tony Hsieh.

- Our Peers, as we trust on many of our special friends and try what they learn, because we are curious to know what they are doing.

Maturity to Knowledge –

When your information starts getting categorized about a particular topic, you are on the path of becoming knowledgeable. Being knowledgeable does not means reading some books on a particular topic; it is a complete process which involves polishing what you have gained as information with thoughtful conversations with other people, trying what you have learnt practically and getting to an outcome.

The Persuasion Factor-

Finally we have reached a stage where we know what we are talking about and we start sharing that knowledge to make lives better, how—I’ll make the connection – for example, lets take a twitter feed people share different information about interesting things, but there are certain percentage of tweets which are linked to what a user is good at or what he/she might be working on and they directly or indirectly persuade people to click on the information shared and spread it further on, so whether you present, give an interview or sell something you are persuading someone.

Precisely it’s about making things easier for others, telling them how to tackle the problems which would come along in their journey. The psychology behind this generosity of persuasion is the increased level of confidence after assisting someone and knowing that the acquired knowledge is worth something as it helped someone.

5 Quick tips to help you tackle information in a better manner  –

Try to consume information through different channels – Listen to blogs, podcasts, videos, some really cool ads, daily newspapers, the basic reason is to get not to monotonous and ending up bored with stuff you had decided to know about.

Ask Questions for Self Assessment – Keep on asking questions like why am I reading or watching something? How would this piece of information help out in the future? Remember Q&As  at the end of every exercise in our childhood, why not check what you have learned from a YouTube video or a podcast from someone like Mitch Joel.

Implement Stuff Regularly – It stems from the fact that practical practice makes a man perfect, #modernproverbs, From the simplest of the things which we learn lets take words which we learn in building a good vocabulary , Try an implementing words in your daily conversations and one fine day you find them embraced in your language.

Be Open to New Ideas – It’s not an axiom but it’s not widely accepted either, We should not think that we know it all as anyone can open doors to a better way of doing things, don’t you get surprised when your junior colleague tells you something which never got in your mind.

While concluding I must say don’t be to harsh on yourself to get information it would become a pain, Try consuming some funny and refreshing doses of content as well without the analysis and just to be happy. This was my mind-map.

What are your thoughts on an information pattern? Do you frequently get overloaded with it?

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IMAGE CREDIT : Lenareh

Which Brand makes you fight with your peers to defend its awesomeness ?

I am sure there are not many and there is a big reason why?

People use things to get substantial benefits and fall in love with them further on due to some added emotional goodies which the companies provide.

There have been lots and lots of thinkers with lots and lots of analogies on consumer behaviour and how brands should act on some related things, for some its the Pareto{80/20} rule, for some its flipping the purchase funnel to reach the cult consumer.

Branding is rooted much deeper then the Name, Logo design and the product itself because one other thing which becomes an essential part of branding is the customer experience in the serial interactions which brands have with consumers and the point of creating the space in the consumer’s mind to have the next interaction.

Think of it as a long journey from crafting a consumer to a repeat buyer to an advocate to an evangelist, Only a few brands are successful in making this simple looking thing happen, It’s an art that’s why these brands just love it and think they are doing great work.

Shared below are 3 opinionated facts to make it happen it for you.

React to Everything With a  Zeal :

It has to come from within you can’t read manuscripts to embrace it, because it’s not that hard just keep on looking for new ways to make your customers happy.When the purchase has been made, the next step of your relationship begins in which they will seek answers for their questions some times foolish ones too.

Two reasons why they might ask -

- They have problems using it, quite obvious ones- but don’t give them obvious answers, give them some knowledge of the solving process.

- Their peers tell them about a better product from a different brand which makes them inquisitive about what they use, tell them about your wow factor which makes them look cooler.

The way you react in your revert to these situations decides the future relationship.

By using zeal above, I meant that do you consider providing a remarkable customer experience a cause or just another thing to complete business cycle, if you are not enthusiastic enough in serving them you’ll definitely loose the battle one day to your competitors.

So here is the deal brand folks –> ” Care “, I know you have heard about this a lot but business people always say we’ll look into it and never do anything about it and talk shit in the press releases about several Techy CRM related stuff about which they know nothing more than the full form, as my friend David Horne says it’s not high-tech that works it’s the high touch.

Give Them a Talkable Service -

The Sweetest gestures are human, surprise them with something unusual and keep your messages personal and that can be done by involving your employees completely in the process .

Embrace the power of free and don’t just through stuff away, learn the situation completely and then do it, for example if you are a PC Repair guy after every service that you do  gift a PC touch up kit or do-it-yourself guides with which they can do stuff themselves, so be a bit customization oriented because that’s what makes them feel the personalized touch.

If you tell them something useful in your service, the next time when their connections have a problem, they’ll try to solve it for them and conversate about how good the company is.

Keep Innovating Inside-Out -

When I say inside-out it does not relate to the hard work that is anyways required, but here I am talking about the existence of an individual business where you should keep educating your firm on the kind of responses they can make to create those accidental evangelists.

Because if they have the right kind of information only then they can share that with consumers, Educate them on the difference between a repeat customer and an evangelist.My take on this is to make your employees as evangelists, who do a lot more than their job and think of the company as an asset.

Launch new ways to excite your customers not really with coupons and stuff but with things which are non-commercial like flowers or wishing them good luck on their special days.

So it’s all about some very simple steps, For the people who think ROI is important, here are some statistical words — FYI — In general businesses like Hotels, Restaurants, Medial Prescriptions and Computers the sales which you get from WOM created by the evangelists are on an avg. 37% higher in comparison to your marketing initiatives. Don’t keep panicking about the fact that you can’t measure the intangible values like trust and belief but focus on measuring the number of sales as a result of your efforts.

The original religious evangelists who worked hard to preach the world the lessons from the almighty did that due to the belief, the trust and the confidence that they were showing a path to a better way……..ask yourself can you imbibe the same level of trust in your customers.

IQ Question – Did you notice in the first line above I have linked awesomeness to a Porsche car?

The reason is obvious, I don’t own it but I have always heard fascinating stuff from the people who own it, It’s my dream to drive this and am working on that. They have created thousands of fans like me not just due to a great product but due to some great customers.

Is there a real human firm behind that logo? What are you doing to embrace WOM in your business goals?

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Now, whether you use the product or service or the feeling with the same level of audacity again depends upon the user interface, I am sure for most of you UI is still gloomy when it comes to its offline effectiveness.

I would like to share a few ideologies which have the essence of simplicity and make some great examples of UI.

Starbucks,How many have you have tasted coffee in a Starbucks cup? apart from their customer experience and remarkable taste, they offer a great user interface, now how do they do it, Think for a moment why most people drink coffee, the most obvious n common reason is to think, and that’s what their cups do….there is always a thoughtful thought printed on it.

Advertising, Why do ads which offer some level of engagement with a small brand message work so well, it’s because they convert their audiences into users and deliver a simple user interface for them to connect with the product or service on offer. Check out this cool ad from Honda to dig deeper in this concept Start Me Up: Brilliant Billboard.

Why Social Media works, It’s not just the opinion of some influencers anymore its a proven fact that social media has changed how we look at businesses these days, Hey!! are you trying to find out where is the UI in social media, at the heart of this social system is the ability to customize things and connect with different people that’s the user interface of social media.

Why Steve Jobs Rocks While Presenting Stuff, The part of the reason is the UI, because he connects with his audience directly by picking up certain groups, he talks about 2-3 important points, he does not goes off the topic easily and he makes it too easy to understand his messages through the slides .

While I was writing this post, I realized that “The best User Interface is human”, Confusing, wait I’ll make you connect…

Lets take an electronic device as an example here, If the person using it is able to understand what the maker of that device wanted to convey as a benefit that’s what you call user interface.

We need to understand that making things simpler makes them more human and if our message behind things is remarkable it would work well, It’s about removing the clutter from your apps, computers, customer service and a lot of things, removing anything which should not be there is UI, not giving the user a lot of things to remember is UI.

So when you think of something which involves more than 2 beings, think of how the user interface works and you will make something really cool.

What is UI for you? Why does it matters in businesses?

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Throughout the social sphere we get insights, statistical data which keeps us updated on the B2B and B2C know how, But most of us underestimate the core of all these things.

At the core lies a simple creature called human and his conversations. So it’s not rocket science but still it’s nowhere near bathroom singing either, the core of B2B and B2C structuring lies in the fact that whether firms communicate with firms or firms communicate with consumers, people are involved in all these conversations.

As the new interactive media has given us the chance to understand these conversations why not learn more and more about them,for that we need to understand how a conversation starts, which direction does it choose to move on?,what are the factors that make it good or bad for a brand?

I got through this idea on Jeremiah Owyang’s blog who is one of the social web’s rock stars when it comes to in-depth knowledge and its implementation.We had a small conversation on how support can become social and then Jeremiah called it much of a P2P support.

Since then I was analyzing how can we understand and integrate the P2P model in businesses.

Here is my take on how we can get on with some very important parts of the businesses today -

Production:

On the production front, the usual scene which you can imagine is some exhausted workers doing the same thing again and again with some crappy machines,Now imagine for a second these are the people who can easily become creativist because they do stuff daily they have all the ideas revolving around them but they are still forced to consume what the manager says and you get an average product.

In a P2P model I don’t think there would be a better channel then the one between your production guys and consumers when it comes to talking about a product and innovating something much valuable out of it. So educate them about the social tools and how they can make use of the social channels to give response to any kind of queries from consumers.

Sales:

Are you one of those people who think of a man with a tie and a briefcase after hearing about sales? ah…..come out of that mindset if you have that kind of thoughts, I have heard people saying that sales persons do not have a heart? that’s kind of amusing isn’t it as today if you don’t listen to the consumer you get ass kicked.

So when sales get into the P2P model it becomes easier for sales representatives to find out what are the customer’s needs and what kind of benefits provided would make him by the product.

Human Resource:

I have heard this notion before like a million times that sweet sounding people who hire employees suiting a set criteria work in the HR department, the problem here is that companies also think the same way.

But the HR people play a very important role in a company because they get the right people to work, so it’s very important for them to be socially connected with the thought leaders in their stream to get insights on what profile suits what kind of person and that’s what you call recruiting in proper sense not hiring. This is just one part of what HRs can really do in a firm, they can educate people everyday about the ethics which they should be using to have a personal brand within the enterprise and outside.

Marketing:

Hey now that’s my department !! I think the most evolved part of the business when it comes to being socially active is marketing but still many marketers think of it as just another advertising platform to get there message heard to a bigger audience, but we have to keep in mind that people don’t like messages no matter how they come.They want conversations which can only happen if you have got some value in the product or service which you are offering.

So P2P model should act between marketers and consumers plus marketers and employees as they know how something should be designed with the best user experience ever.

So is this P2P business model really worth considering? What are the barriers which would be faced while implementing it?Would reputation management become a bigger problem if employees are socially connected?

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