Author: Vikas Marwaha

Business Strategist with three decades of rich experience in sales, marketing, team building, turnaround management and channel management
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Harley-Davidson- A Cult Following – Can We Translate This To Our Business?

Harley Davidson – Cult Following

I have picked top three reasons that we can also use in our day to day life and become a cult (may be at local level):

Brand Positioning: “Rebel by Choice” – Clear brand positioning by bikers, for bikers, the company cracked the magic formula very early on in its initial years to create a differentiator. The motorcycle manufacturer created a unique identity for self as  a cult that allows it’s members ‘freedom’, ‘individualism’, ‘rebellion’, and the ‘American way’. Lesson for us – Try and find a positioning for yourself or your business, build a seamless connect between yourself and your customers (use technology – it’s really very low cost – just try) They should feel a sense of pride being associated with you. Have you ever tried and decode some common things that we do; go to a particular saloon, go to a particular eating joint etc etc. Can you create the same Brand positioning for yourself (you are also a brand) or your business? Just think…

Create Brand Loyalty: Harley created a club called The Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.), This club would allow Harley to connect itself with all stake holders like customers and potential customers. There are more than a million members spread over 25 countries worldwide. Through H.O.G, Harley would sponsor biker rallies, organize charity drives, and offer special promotions to its diverse fan base. Moreover, new members could enjoy their first year free-of-charge. In Indian context Pidilite is a shining example of such Clubs called “Fevicol Champions Club”, approximately 100000 carpenters are part of these clubs and they value this community. Can you thing of some loyalty programs for your customers? Ask your selves why your customers should buy from you again and again?

People Can Get Attached Emotionally to your Brand

Diverse: Diversify your sources of revenue, Harley used its success and added new product line to its overall product basket. Harley has now a complete range of apparels & accessories; you don’t just ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. You need to dress the part as well. The best example in India Context is ITC; it started as a company with Tobacco product and now is into Hotels & FMCG. Now most of us will think that these are big companies, how I can copy their strategy but take one example of your neighborhood market and you will find many small businesses using their success to diverse and expanding their circle of influence. Question is can we look at expanding our circle of influence and expand beyond what we do?

Though apart from these there are hundreds of other reasons on why Harley is successful but the top pick of this list will be reasons that link customers to your heart. All successful brands have become top brands by gaining Heart Space of the consumer and take example of any local level business that has been successful has done it through Heart space only (in the longer run) , even my local Grocery shop does Home delivery , personally knows my liking , my name, my best timings etc… I am a loyal customer not because of price but because of other factors .

In these tough times , this can be the biggest differentiator.

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Most Successful Team in the World – All Black, New Zealand Rugby Team

All Black – New Zealand Rugby Team

The New Zealand Rugby Team is a Phenomenon in itself, for last 125 years this team has rewritten history on many occasions. It can easily be called “THE BEST” team in sporting history.  This team is called “The All Blacks”; they have won approximately 3/4th of their international matches (win % age close to 75%). This ratio is much higher than any other team, be it football, cricket or Hockey.

The question is what Makes Black Caps So Successful?

  • Ego Management: Black Caps have been winning 75% of their games, yet these stars stay grounded and don’t have inflated egos. This is one of the best traits – stay grounded, most of the times success can get to our head easily.
  • Element of Surprise: Most of the teams become complacent when they are on winning streak, but “When you’re on top of your game, change your game.” Successful teams keep an element of surprise and that’s the major reason they are one step ahead of their competition.
  • Invent Your Own Language: Best Team Glue is the ability to create a language that the team understands. A strong sense of community and belonging cements All Black players to their team. The team Haka (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiKFYTFJ_kw)  has a great impact on the competition; this at times breaks the confidence of opponents .
  • Learning Environment: Never stop the learning curve; this is the basic mantra of All Black Caps. Hunger to learn new techniques and create a bench mark, challenge their previous best is the hall mark of successful teams. Patrick Lencioni, author of “The Ideal Team Player” says team members in any organization should be humble, hungry and smart. Every leader wants his team to be Hungary for more
  • Team above Individuals: Every player plays for the team first rather than individual mile stones, such players are shown the door immediately. One selfish mindset will infect a collective culture.
  • Dream Big: Leaders motivate their teams to Dream Big, The All Blacks are taught to embrace fear of failure, and cleverly use a healthy loss aversion to motivate even greater performance.

These are just few of the things that Black Caps do, going forward will try and share some more.

Please do add your thoughts in the comments below, on what are your secrets that make your team successful. This will help all of us.

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Being Under Estimated is a Competitive Advantage

Under Estimation – Competitive Advantage

When Karsanbhai Patel introduced Nirma in 1970 (Indian Company) , Hindustan Level ( Now Hindustan Unilever) Management reacted in a typical MNC manner “ This is not our segment , its way below our level”, we need not concern. .”  But in very short span of time, Nirma’s success made them take a closer look at the low-income market and take an underdog seriously. This was only after when they faced huge losses in market share at the hands of Nirma.

It started as a single product one man outfit in 1969, Nirma almost touched close to Rs. 17 billion in close to three decades. Nirma’s mission to provide, “Better Products, Better Value, Better Living” contributed a great deal to its success. It was highly successful in keeping companies like HUL out of this segment and could carved a niche for itself in the lower-end of the detergents and toilet soap market.

FMCG Wars

Nirma Became top player in not only Detergents but also toilet soaps , By the year  1999-2000, Nirma had touched 38% share of India’s 2.4 million tonnes detergents market. HLL’s share was 31% for the same period!

So what was the reason for Nirma’s success, it did not have any competitive advantage over established players, yet it could beat them.

Some key things that Nirma did to differentiate from others, simple but effective:

  • Distribution (Reach): 400+ distributors and more than 2 million retail outlets across the country. This was a huge Game Changer as it enabled Nirma to make its products available to the remotest village.
  • Cost : Nirma Changed the rules of the Game, they had very high focus on keeping the costs low, kept their operations so lean that they were able to provide high value products at very low prices. The staff strength at their plant was very low (500). In contrast, Tata’s Chemical’s plant, about twice the capacity employed 10 times the number of people.
  • Short Distribution Chain: The material was shipped directly from plant to Distributors (except few places in South), rather than depots. Other companies had depots and this added to their cost as the chain became longer. Nirma had its own printing press to further reduce its cost for printing and packaging.
  • Brand Wars : Nirma maintained a very robust speed of upgrading it’s product basket. They also mastered the game of managing the geographical diversity of consumer preferences, e.g. North Preferred Pink coloured soaps whereas South preferred Green coloured Soaps. Initially, the advertising spend of the company was very low, as compared to other FMCG companies. Nirma spent only 1.25-2% of its turnover on advertising as compared to the normal 6-10%. They followed a simple process to place the product on the shelves first, receive feedback, and then create an enduring ad campaign

Nirma’s Success story is an example that at times Being Under estimated can be a Big Competitive Advantage …

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Predictable- Advantage or Disadvantage?

Vinod kambli & Sachin Tendulkar

No prize for guessing who these Gentlemen are and what were their achievements? World know’s them or at least Sachin.

When both of them started, Kambli was the aggressive one. Bowlers feared him and his aggressive batting style.

In fact when he started his test career he was the first batsman who broke Sir Don Bradman’s record (Vinod Kambli made his second double-hundred in just his fifth innings, in 1993. Sir Don Bradman made his second double century in his 13th innings.)

On March 14, 1993, Kambli played a fantastic inning and became the first Indian batsman to score consecutive double-centuries in international cricket. What a feat and that too at such a young age.. He is still the fastest Indian to score 1000 runs in Test cricket (Cheteshwar Pujara recently scaled this landmark in 11 Tests, 18 innings, whereas Kambli needed only 14 innings)

Surprisingly Kambli played his last test match when he was just 23 years old… what a waste of talent.

Whereas Tendukkar struggled a lot in his debut test series against Pakistan. He made 15 in his first test and took many body blows from fast bowlers. He could shine only in the fourth test match. When he hung up his boots he held the records for most centuries in both test and one day matches.

So what is that made the diffrence, both of them played for same team and both of them were equally talented. What could Kambli have done better ? What was missing ?

When Kambli started he had a weakness of getting out against rising deliveries, Tendulkar too had this weakness .

Bowlers read this after few matches , but Tendulkar worked on this weakness. He changed his stance and practiced hard to overcome but Kambli did not. As a result Kambli became so predictable that for bowlers he was no longer a threat.

Being Predictable in such a competitive market and situation can be the biggest competitive disadvantage. You need to continuously evolve to become a Tendulkar of your field.. keep learning and unlearning too..

Please share if you like this blog post.

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Skills – Are they Good Enough or you need to Add More ?

Do you know this cricket player? You are right he is Monty Panaser England’s spinner bowler. Monty played 33 test matches and did very well in the beginning, but after few test matches he struggled. Can you guess why?

The answer is that he did not add any new skill and as a result batsman could read him easily. He was sacked after 33 test matches. In fact he played all 33 matches like he played his first match, with no variation and no new surprise for batsmen.

Whereas if you see Anil Kumble or Shane Warne, they came out with an innovation and new delivery style for batsman before every big series, they kept the batsmen guessing, even if they had to rebrand an old delivery. The result is they are legends of the game.

Are u also falling into Monty Panaser trap of not adding new skill , are u upgrading ur self?

In this competitive environment if we don’t upgrade our skills we are bound to become obsolete. We can’t survive on our past laurels; we can’t do the same thing and expect different results.

The question is how do we add new skills? I have personally felt that reading is one the best way to learn new things and add skills, it’s like getting coached by 100’s of experienced people and pick whatever is best for you.

What are the other possible ways in which you think skills can be added?

Would like to hear from you in the comments below., I shall share more stories with you in the next section, please do share your feedback.

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Reset Button – Part -2 COVID – 19 ; During and After – Some Tips for Small & Medium Businesses

Most of us would have heard the story of Bamboo Tree , just to refresh your memory, the story is about Growth and sustaining it ...

When a Bamboo Tree is planted for first four years it hardly grows but in fifth year the growth is exponential. So few people will say that for first four years what was the tree doing? why the growth was so slow?

The answer is simple , to sustain the exponential growth the tree has to form a strong foundation ( roots) and the foundation has to be so good that it can bear the load of exponential growth .

you would be wondering why I have mentioned this story in COVID situation , as I mentioned in last blog (https://freesaletips.com/reset-button-part-1-covit-19-during-and-after-some-tips-for-small-medium-businesses/) that this period of lock down can be used for Self Reflection , Skill Building, Create Digital foot Print for your business, Revisit your operational efficiency and Team Building ( In case you want to know how – contact thru comment section below or mail – these are all free tools,will be glad to help)

In this section of my Blog, I will try and update about a simple concept through which I have been getting excellent results and I have seen and studied that 100’s of companies and professionals have gained from this concept. People who know me would be recalling that we have been discussing this concept regularly in day to day basis. This concept is Technically called Pareto’s Law or the 80:20 Principal.

According to this theory 20% of your customers gives you 80% of Business and balance 80% contribute to 20% of business . Ironically most of our time is wasted or drained in servicing these 80% customers, majority of our bad debts, complaints etc are from these customers… ( U can check ,this holds true in most cases)

Now During & after COVID Lock down:

  • you Should identify your top 20% customers and create an emotional bond with them ( root formation)
  • Try and Create tailor made strategy to Retain them (0 -4 years period) as they are back bone of your business.
  • Now the most Interesting part of this strategy is that your competition also has a set of 20% top customers who contribute 80% to their business !!!
  • Interesting isn’t it ?
  • Now if you can work out or find out such customers (or may be you already know) and utilize this period to crack them or at least break ice with them, you will find that after lock out you will get exponentiation growth ( Bamboo 5th Year)

It is no brainier that after lock down there can be huge impact on consumption and only those will survive who are able to Retain their customers, smarter one will snatch competitor customers too!!

…… To be continued ….

Please do share your valuable feedback in the comment box below…

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Reset Button – Part 1 COVID – 19 ; During and After – Some Tips for Small & Medium Businesses

Lots have been said on this subject in the last few months and days of lock down but what is missing is that most of the articles and discussion is on macro level. It’s no brainier that economy will be severely affected and will take a while to heal.

This type of pandemic has never happened in many many years and the impact will be on all kinds of businesses , small to large. The question is what can we do to reduce the impact?

The answer can be divided into two parts:

  1. Things that we can do During the lock down period and
  2. Things that we should do after the lock down period

Things That we Can do During the lock down period

  1. Reflect : Few years back I learned this beautiful art called “Self Reflection”, it’s a very simple exercise but one of the most effective one. U can write on a paper all the things that u did and then write what else u could have done to make it better. Believe me if ur honest with ur self … it works like magic… Try this. ( Example is I did not visit top 20% of my customers, I started during that after self reflection)
  2. Operations – How many times I wised that I will visit each and every operation and activity in detail but again due to paucity of time or bad time management this was pushed to back burner. Now is the time to review all ur operations, cost, finance, stocks (inventory), customer profile (believe me some customers are really loss making) , product profiles, etc etc… Weed out unnecessary operations , ur loosing money on them also ur valuable time. Study the concept of Pareto Principal ( https://www.smartinsights.com/marketing-planning/marketing-models/paretos-8020-rule-marketing/)
  3. I had an opportunity of having a Online conference zoom call with 600+ people on a foundation day of my company, then we had a session with almost 200+ key distributors and team members, tell me was this possible if the lock down was not there ? Look at the logistics cost and time , man hours that would have been wasted to arrange this kind of a meeting? During Lock down connect with ur customers thru the new age digital platforms, share business plans with them, motivate them,engage them. One of such free tool available is https://zoom.us/ , its so simple that u will love it.
  4. Some times back someone told me about on-line learning platforms but generally we humans are easy going, I did not bother but now during the lock down period I saved lots of time on my daily commute, joined an online course in Digital Marketing ; would u believe the cost , just Rs.600/-( less than $10) . This helped me create this website and could possibly launch a platform for me to reach millions of people across the world. Now u can also join courses of Ur choice , MS-Office, Finance , self development, English learning and many more . This simple platform is known as Udemy (https://www.udemy.com/), apart from this I have now full knowledge on Search Engines , Facebook Marketing , and many more. Try this it’s worth it. Create website for ur Firm , gain customers , register in Google Local Businesses, Do email campaigns and e-mail marketing.
  5. One of our dream was to make our team more value driven rather than sell on pricing, during normal routine we were not able to train them because of day to day pressures of numbers and KPI’s . Now we used the digital platform Zoom to start these training programs, It’s ideal time for u to take up such training with ur respective teams. Lots of trainers are sitting at home ideal . Google free lancers and organize such training for ur teams, Believe me it will be worth every penny.
  6. “There is only one boss. The customer―and he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”―Sam Walton How true , now few people in this lock down would be cribbing and taking negative with the stake holders but don’t u think this is the right time to understand them and connect emotionally with them. Teach and learn from them, understand their needs , ask them about feedback and how u can add value to their business… this list is endless…. Please go all out on this. This will be the biggest differentiation for u when the lock down will be over. Try this , u will loose nothing.

…. To Be Continued…

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My First Post !

Hi, Welcome to www.freesaletips.com , I assure u that you will not be disappointed. I am a professional with 25+ Years in sales and marketing, i have had up’s and downs in my professional life. Daily I see lots of youngsters struggling in sales and marketing profession. I also come across 100’s of senior and mid level professional who have plateaued in their once prosperous careers.

Will try and share very simple and effective hacks picked from my experiences with 100’s of professionals and also from my own experiences.

These will help you gain experience and might save u from making mistakes that probably I made and had to learn through the hard way and at times paid a heavy price for them.

Thanks …

Please keep watching this space for more ..

Regards

Vikas Marwaha

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