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 […]

Customer Engagement, Marketing

Whats Worse Than Delivering A Bad Customer Experience?

Ignoring a customer who after having a bad experience, makes the effort to share his feedback to help you understand where did the slip up happen. Last week, I blogged about my not so great experience of watching a movie at INOX Cinemas. I  shared my feedback to the cinema by the following methods: I gave my feedback to the employees there at the cinema itself. I tweeted my blog post (and tagged their official twitter account)  which not only chronicled my experience but also shared some ideas about how they could learn from the same and improve the overall […]

Sales

Introducing the “SIMPLE” Framework To Increase Your Sales Effectiveness

In the recent past, there has been a lot written about the fact that the entire buying process has undergone a sea change and due to which selling is becoming more and more difficult. I am herewith suggesting a process if when followed can still help sales teams succeed and improve their sales effectiveness dramatically.  S — Surprise: This is the first step in the process and also the most important step. In order to be able to do this, you need to understand your customers business better than they themselves know and find an insight which will surprise them. You can uncover […]

Customer Engagement

Brands, Please Stop Sabotaging Yourself (Like @InoxLeisure did)

Today, I went to watch a movie at the INOX cinemas in Bangalore with my extended family. There were five of us and a small kiddo.  We bought Gold Class tickets and went and took our seats. The entire experience so far was neither too good not too bad. I was fine with that.  The movie started and 10 minutes into the movie, someone came by and asked me to show my tickets so that he could verify if we indeed had Gold Class tickets. I let this go once. Then came the interval. We ordered some snacks and came […]

Innovation

Reframing Failure as Iteration Fosters More Innovation

One of the biggest hurdles in fostering a culture of innovation in an organization is the fear of failure.  This is one of the most critical aspects of a culture. The fear of failure creates a lot of additional hurdles in the innovation process.  No Breakthrough Innovation: The biggest impact on the innovation process that the fear of failure can have is that this almost ensures that there will be no breakthrough innovation coming out of the innovation process. Any breakthrough innovation requires at some stage for the team to decide to follow an insight/idea that is unconventional or against […]