Author: Mukesh Gupta

Customer Engagement, Strategy

What retail industry can learn from networks

I was reading a blog by Om Malik on his discussion with Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder of Juniper Networks. They had a long discussion on the future of networks. What stood out for me was how much can retail chains learn from the way the networks are evolving. There are quite a few parallels that we can draw from networks/clients to retail industry. For example, lets equate network providers to retail chains, the bandwidth to the inventory on offer and clients (mobile and otherwise) to the retail outlets. In such a comparison, the following aspects come out of the entire discussion: […]

Strategy

White blood cells & the pursuit of perfection

Today, I came across a blog on Wired Science – “White Blood Cells Solve Traveling-Salesman Problem”.  While some of the best mathematical minds have been tackling the traveling-salesman problem for decades and some have found efficient solutions, no one has figured out how to completely solve the puzzle. For a given number of cities, a traveling salesman must plan a route that visits each city once, covering the minimum possible overall distance. For any practical tour schedule of even eight to ten cities, fancy algorithms and serious computing power are usually needed.  Rachel goes on and explains that “these cells […]

Innovation, Strategy

Celebrating failure

Today, I read a blog by Seth Godin on How to fail. In this blog, he talks about how to fail better. He also mentions that not trying new things due to fear of failure is also not a good option. He also goes on and provides some random ideas that will help you fail better, more often and with an inevitably positive upside. With more and more organizations looking to innovate more often and much faster, it is not enough to know how to fail. It is important to encourage employees to take on the risk of failure. The […]

Sales

Perseverance & Engagement

One of the most important and under-rated virtues of successful sales people is “perseverance”.Successful sales people stay in contact with all their prospects and keep them engaged despite not getting business from them. The ability to stay engaged with these prospects helps them get the sale whenever the prospect decides to buy or provide references. This helps build relationships. This is the key differentiator between also-rans and the hugely successful sales people. The insanely successful people build great relationships with not only those who give them business but also who do not give business. The key to build and keep […]

Sales

Restrospection & Introspection

Let’s consider an example of a sales person. Sam is a sales manager for a software company and is responsible for selling software licenses to a set of customers. He had a meeting with one of his primary clients which did not go well and he lost the deal to his competitors. He had thought that his relationship with the customer was very healthy and he was very sure that would land the deal. He did not realize when he lost the deal. He now has to go back to his manager Tom and inform him about the lost deal. […]