Category: Strategy

Entrepreneurship, Strategy

Could Online Retailers Be Profitable and Grow?

Most online retailers are not profitable yet and the industry estimates are not looking good either. The online retail industry has so far been competing with each other on price and costly customer acquisition, which in combination does not auger well for profitability. The prevalent belief is that only at scale (aka, a billion dollar or more in revenue) can these retailers believe to be able to amortize their customer acquisition and marketing costs. This belief stems from the assumption that you need to pay (or offer a hefty discount) for people to shop online and to market (aka advertise) […]

Strategy, transformation

Personal Focus in a Word for 2014

I read on Mitch Joel’s blog about the concept of 3 words in a year that Chris Brogan started and Mitch and others have made into a tradition. When I read more about the concept, I kind of liked the entire idea of defining 3 words that will be the foci of all my activities in 2014.  When I sat down to think and reflect on what these 3 words could be, I realized that there is only one word that would become the focus of all my activities in 2014.  And the word is “Transformation“. I would like to […]

Strategy

Its time for Celebration and Some Introspection

Celebrations: My last blog post was the 250th post on this blog. When I started this blog, I had not realized that this would be such a long, fulfilling and an interesting journey. Thank You: Along the way, I have met a lot of people who have shared my beliefs and those who did not share my beliefs. Irrespective of us agreeing, I have gained many more friends.  In order to write a blog post, I have read many different perspectives that have already been shared by other bloggers. This enabled me to stumble upon some of the best content […]

Sales, Strategy

This is the Time to Re-design Your Sales Planning Process

Right now is the most important time of the year for a sales leader. Its the time when you not only are trying to support your teams to meet their annual quotas, but also supposedly need to be in the planning mode to make decisions on the sales quotas for the subsequent years. If you are like most sales leaders that I have known, you are finding it difficult to maintain a balance among both these activities. And in most cases, the closure of the year takes more precedence than planning for the next year, which would be best to […]

Customer Engagement, Leadership, Strategy, transformation

Three Conversations that Help you Remain Customer Centric

In a blog post, Eric  Barker shares the insights from Harvard Business School professor Gautam Mukunda, author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter and list down “Denial”, “Hubris” and inflated “Egos” as some of the most common mistakes leaders do. The post also talks about some good advice that leaders can do well to heed to. I think that leaders need to create and keep an open line of communication to three kinds of people to stay grounded to reality. Frontline staff: Regularly engage your front line employees who sell/service your customer for a frank and open conversation. Keep these conversations open […]