Customer Engagement

Why Dan Pink’s radical prescription for sales could be misleading

In his blog on HBR, best selling author Dan Pink argues that paying commissions to sales people has  a counter-intuitive effect of undermining enterprise profitability. You can read his post @ http://hbr.org/2012/07/a-radical-prescription-for-sales/ar/1. I would agree with him on most of his arguments. However, as with most theories, this theory has its limitations as well. In my opinion, sales commissions work if the following conditions are true: The sales process is simple and involves only the sales person with no dependencies on any other colleague. There is no upper limit on the commissions that he/she can receive. Earnings via commissions (as a […]

Customer Engagement, Ideas

Step by step guide for success with social media

In the past week, I have now met three people who head marketing functions for their organizations and all three have complained about how their foray into social media has received such a lukewarm response. They all indicated that they are not sure if this is something they should continue to support or just let it die their natural death. They were not the only one’s who were finding it difficult to sustain the initial rush of getting on to social media. So, clearly there is a need for a detailed framework or a step-by-step guide which organizations can use […]

Ideas

37Signals and their workplace experiments

Late in May, 37Signals.com had announced a workplace experiment – a whole month to yourself. The big idea was that their employees could take the entire month of June and work on whatever they wanted to work on. Their idea as mentioned in their blog post: This June will be a full month of free time to think, explore, mock up, prototype, whatever. People can go solo or put together a team – it’s entirely up to them. This is a month to unwind and create without the external pressures of other ongoing projects or expectations. We’re effectively taking a […]

Ideas

Next generation of digital books

TED recently announced the availability of TED Books. I quote from their site: Shorter than a novel, but longer than an article — a TED Book is a great way to feed your craving for ideas anytime. A TED Book is to a book as a TEDTalk is to a lecture: It’s shorter and more personal, more direct and engaging. And the new TED Books app (coming soon) lets our authors blend their words with multimedia extras that enhance your understanding. Look for rich images, audio, video and social features, along with links and documentation to provide a broader view. […]

Business Model, Ideas

The book that can’t wait & some more

Argentina-based publisher Eterna Cadencia has released El Libro que No Puede Esperar – which translates as ‘The Book that Cannot Wait’ – an anthology of new fiction printed in ink that disappears after two months of opening the book.   In my opinion, this is a great idea for book publishers. This ensures that once you open the book, you are more likely to finish reading the book. Another idea that has been around since 2009 is the Espresso Book Machine. This was initially launched by Xerox. This is a fully automatic machine, which can print a library quality paper […]