Manager's Manager: Lord Krishna

Lord Krishna was called by Hundreds and Thousands of names and certainly ‘Manager’ is not one of them. Here we will see how he is the Greatest Manager of All. The particular example we are referencing here is the battle of Mahabharata fought at Kurukshetra.

Mahabharata was the biggest battle fought in ancient India among Pandavas and

Kauravas, and had each and every other king/ruler fighting from either of the sides. Duryodhana representing Kauravas and Arjuna representing Pandavas, reached at nearly the same time to Krishna for calling him to fight from their side. Krishna asked them to choose between him and his complete army. Since he alone was capable of destroying the world, leave alone the opponent, he would not raise arms and play a non-combatant role. Arjuna chooses to have him and Duryodhana was happy to have gained his mighty army.

What is expected from a manager and how it applies to Krishna.

1. Manager should decide on a Goal

A manager should have decided a Goal and Krishna had 3 clear cut Goals that he followed and achieved 100% targets.

a) Paritranaya Sadhunaam – Welfare for Saints

b) Vinashaya Dushkritaam – Destroy Evil

c) Dharmasansthapanaay Sambhavaami yuge yuge – To establish and strengthen Religion in every Era.

2. Manager should have Motivational Skills

When Arjun reached the battle fields he looses his determination to fight when he saw that among the opponents were many of his relatives young and old and that he was going to kill them for the sake of Kingdom. He resisted from fighting and dropped arms. Krishna motivated him by his speech later named “Bhagwat Gita” that’s still read and followed. Arjun recovered and decided to fight.

3. Manager must have skills to build tactics to achieve Target

Pandavas and Kauravas had soldiers and warriors strength in the ratio of 7:11, Panadvas having 1.53 millions and 2.41 millions. With this count it was clear that the battle could be won only with Effective Strategies. The fact that Pandavas won the battle proves that Krishna was successful not only in building strategies but in implementing them to achieve success.

4. Good Manager must have Leadership Quality

When Krishna asked Arjuna and Duryodhana to choose between him and his army, the choice was, in fact, between a Leader and his Resources. While a Good Leader can gain from limited resources, a Bad Leader will lose even with vast resources. Knowing his excellent Leadership Qualities, Arjuna requested Krishna not only to lead the entire mission but to personally lead him by agreeing to be his “Saarthi” (Charioteer), guide him and lead him to success.

5. Manager should be good in Direction and Controlling

Controlling an army of 1.53 million soldiers and warriors to fight against a bigger army was not an easy task. The 1.53 million soldiers were divided in seven divisions, led by a Commander each, further controlled by a Supreme Commander who himself was guided by the Pandavas and Krishna. This all was made possible with help of Lord Krishna’s great Management ad Controlling Skills. Management Guru Henry Fayol says that without appropriate Role Allocation, no mission can get desired results. Team spirit and appropriate Role Allocation can achieve everything. What was Arjun’s position, what was Bhim’s role? How Dharmaraj Yudhishtir will do his work, all these matters were decided by Lord Krishna.

Agreed that Lord Krishna was ‘God’ and almighty and that he could have done the task himself without involving a single person. But the Battle of Mahabharat had him in a non-combatant role and that the Pandavas won the battle is due to his extra-ordinary Managerial Qualities achieving 100% target. And thus, we can call him the Greatest Manager in the World.

ways to KILL a great MARKETING plan

A good marketing plan is like a battle plan or a game plan; it should serve as a blueprint for the actions you need to take to grow your business. There are some things, however, you should avoid when putting together your marketing plan:

1) FILLING YOUR PLAN WITH FLUFF:

"Fluff" is anything not specifically relaed to a number, sraegy or tactic. Generalities also qualify. saying your target market is "everybody" or "adults-50-plus" isn't specific enough and will lead to problem down the road. Start to think in terms of a niche. instead of "everybody", scale down to "young males 16-plus who play video games and ride skateboards". instead of "adults 50-plus" turn this into "adult 50-plus" urn this into "adult women at least 50 years of age who shop online at least three a week."

Remember, marketing is all about buying customers. Imagine going to a grocery store and buying everything. You may want to, but in reality, your resources would never allow it. In marketing terms, this means buying your ideal customer with the resources you already have. So figure out who our ideal customer is and hoe much can budget to buy that customer. Then come up with a plan and stick to it.

2) NOT DOING THE NUMBERS:

Marketing all about math, and math is all numbers. Taken a step further- business is all about numbers. If you don't know your numbers, you won’t succeed in business. Creating any marketing plan without knowing how much it’ll cost to acquire your customer, what your average sale needs to be, what your profit margins need to be and how many times your average customer needs to buy over a lifetime, will set you up for failure.

3) RELYING TOO HEAVILY ON CREATIVITY:

Creativity is fine, and in my opinion, nothing is more creatively fulfilling than succeeding in business. But focusing too much on creativity at the expense of tactics and outcomes can hurt your business.

4) THINKING MARKETING IS ONLY ADVERTISING:

While advertising is part of any marketing plan, marketing is much more than strictly advertising. It is the way your receptionist answers the phone and how you set up your internal company culture. It’s the strategic aspect of identifying your ideal customer base, discovering your competitive edge and USP, setting your pricing and promotional strategy; and creating a system for repeat business.

5) FORGETTING TO MARKET TO EXISTING CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS:

For businesses that have moved beyond the startup phase, there’s no quicker way to massive growth than current customers and a “warm” pool of prospects. Generally, it costs up to six times more to get a new customer than to sell to an existing customer. So if your current customer than to sell to an existing customer. So if your plan doesn’t include initiative to tap into your current customers, you’re missing out on a huge untapped resource.

If the metaphor “marketing as warfare” fits, know that wars are won by attrition. If you can out-strategies and out-discipline your competition, you will win more marketing battles.

Crazy Marketing Mania

Marketing is many, many, many things all working to support one another and to touch your customers many times. And yes-I meant to say “many” that many times. Marketing is a process, not an event; you have to think marketing all the time. All to the items that can be simple marketing tactics. They don’t even have to cost anything. That’s the beauty of guerilla (A member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment) marketing. It uses time energy, knowledge, information and a whole lot of imagination rather than writing big checks. Here’s a quick review of 10 guerilla marketing tactics that can be employed with little or no money, and are sure to give you results.

1). STAGE A PROTEST FOR “GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE”:

Imagine what would happen if you had picketers outside your place of business with picket signs that read, “we are protesting good customer service at this location!” or “ This place is full of nice people interested in customers!”

First, you will get noticed. Second, you may get coverage by local media. Stage a repeat visit of the protesters and next time publicize their intent of returning. You never know who might take notice and what it will do for your business.

2). CONDUCT A RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS:

Pay the toll the car behind yours and ask the toll collector to give your business card to them, telling them you paid their toll. It’s a low-cost guerrilla marketing tactic that has imagination written all over it.

3). NOMINATE YOURSELF FOR AN AWARD:

There are many awards given by many organizations that accept self-nominations. Use the award designation as part of your bio when speaking or when writing an article. Prospects love “award winning” people and business.

4). AWARD A “CUSTOMER OF THE MONTH” AWARD:

Customers like attention, especially if they are in a special group. Award a plaque or certificate; these won’t get thrown away and will remain at your customer’s place of business as a remainder of their relationship with you.

5). TIE YOURSELF TO A NEWS EVENT:

This can also be a current event covered by the newspaper. I do this by reviewing Super blow commercials as a marketing expert and get free press out of it. Find a news story and issue a press release to publications, radio stations and television stations, offering yourself as an expert to comment on a related subject. It’s one of the best ways to get free PR.

6). PROVIDE SPECIAL ATTENTION TO TRADE SHOW ATTENDEES:

Do this the night before a trade you‘re attending. Hang door hangers on hotel room doors at designated trades show hotels, offering a hook and an announcement or a special offer. Leave bags of candies, aspirin, and insole pads for shoes or a cloth carry bag to collect trade show information in. your competition isn’t doing this, so you will be noticed and thanked if you put yourself in front of your prospect again.

7). HOLD A WACKY CONTEST:

You can announce the contest to your prospects, customers and the media. You can then announce the winners to the media and hopefully get press each time. Have multiple winners to delight multiple customers. Contests can be wacky and imaginative: a messy desk contest, ugly tie contest, pet /owner look-alike contest, etc.

8). COUPON OFFERS:

Even use the back cover stock to print an offer. Pass out notepads with coupon offers intermingled in the pages. I know of a printing company that partnered with a pizza company and placed a coupon for a free pizza an increase in business with these giveaways.

9). CREATE A FUNKY HOLIDAY:

Today is “Orange hair day,” or “give Ice-Cream to a friend Day.” These are made up and from a brainstorm session. Your holiday that cross promotes your business, service or products are only limited by your imagination. Don’t forget to publicize it, announce it, market it over and over, and have fun with it. You will definitely get noticed.

10). CREATE A UNIQUE ASSOCIATION:

Imagine appealing to a target group, getting members, receiving paid subscriptions, offering a set of benefits, and being at the center of attention. I have often thought about creating the National Listeners Association or the take Fridays off work association. Remember: you are trying t again attention and awareness that eventually turns into sales. Also remember you are a guerrilla marketer without a blank check book to spend on marketing.

Online Marketing Trends

Where to invest, what to invest and which deserve a rest.

Allocating your small business marketing budget to maximize return on investment and minimize the risks of a low or negative return can become a lot more unpredictable when your investments involve trends and emerging technologies. Investing in trends requires smart timing and consumer analysis. Missing a trend or sticking with a has-been spells opportunity lost at best and negative returns or loss of market share at worst.

Trend # 1
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION:

As the volume of web content grows, consumers will demand even more relevant and personalized search results. That means search engines will be looking for more relevant and personalized content from publishers and brands. In fact, the search engine algorithms are already beginning to pay more attention to date of publication, geo-location, and mobile device browsers. Past behavior and social media content. Don’t abandon your current SEO strategy in search of personalization. But make sure you allocate a portion of your budget to testing content. Keywords and links that are targeted towards niche audiences.

Trend # 2
PAID SEARCH:
Consumers still use search engines as a primary means of finding products and services to fulfill their needs, and they will still be clicking on relevant ads. Search advertising prices will remain reasonable, and average returns will remain comparably high as larger companies with decreased search marketing budget continue to allocating visitors at lower-cost SEO tactics in hopes of attracting visitors at lower prices. You shouldn’t shy away from investing in the highly qualified leads that paid search is capable of your small business.

Trend # 3
E-MAIL MARKETING:
This may even become more powerful as e-mail service providers improve social media integration, search engine access to archived e-mails, auto- responders and new integrated applications. If you don’t already use an e-mail service provider, invest in one now. If you already use an e-mail service, invest in your e- mail list and in producing valuable content to nurture leads and attract repeat customers.

Trend # 4
SOCIAL NETWORK MARKETING:
Social media has one redeeming quality for marketer’s lots and lots of eyeballs. That’s attractive if you’re a major brand, but profitable interaction continues to be the exception for small business now rather than the rule. A good test of your social network marketing potential is to survey your current customer to see how many of them consider social network to be a primary from of communication. You should probably experiment with a facebook fan page and if you find that a meaningful percentage of your current customers indicate an interest in following your business.

Trend # 5
BLOGGING:
If you are writing a blog to help with search engine rankings or to inform exiting customers, you should continue to test or invest. If you are blogging in an attempt to attempt to attract new prospects and convert them to customers, however, this is the year that exposes the blogosphere’s vulnerability to the law of averages. Instead of blogging to convert your website visitors into customers, work hard to test and develop great landing page content. When you find something that works, don’t change it.

Trend # 6
WEB PRESENCE:
If you want people to see the content on your website, it might make sense to advertise the location of your website content by placing ads on other high-traffic websites. Driving visitor traffic to your website isn’t the way to go now, however. Instead, you need to drive your website content to the visitor traffic.

The difference stems from the fact that content aggregation website like YouTube are boosting consumer demand for instant gratification and what I call “ content nesting”. This allows consumers to browse through content fed to them through a single web page, or nest, so that they don’t have to click on links to individual websites. To take advantage of content nesting, your content needs to be nested in as many content aggregation sites as possible.

Trend # 7
MOBILE MARKETING:
Demand is increasing dramatically for mobile applications and mobile web-browsing due to wider adoption of devices like the iPhone and Google Android phone. As more and more people adopt these phones and features now, look for small-business marketing services to start providing lower – cost mobile marketing solutions like text messaging, mobile e-mail marketing, mobile website, mobile application development and location – based marketing.

Trend # 8
PODCASTING AND ONLINE RADIO:
Online radio is on a growth trend, but that’s because so-called terrestrial radio is surfing so much that radio advertisers are switching their investment to digital formats. This is the year of exploration for online broadcasters as they struggle to find and attract loyal audiences.

iTune has long been the leader in podcasting, but there are still no clear leaders in internet radio. Internet broadcasters need to make their media more sharable and more mobile to attract money from advertisers. If you are looking to attract an audience by broadcasting or advertising on the broadcast media, you have to go with online video and wait for radio to finish reinventing itself.

Trend # 9
ONLINE VIDEO:
Watch for video to become more accessible to small businesses through online outlets. Online video is interactive, memorable, widely accessible, cheap to create and highly shareable. There’s also a lot of investment happening around video, which is sure to create even more low-cost opportunities for small businesses to participate in video promotions.

Trend # 10
COUPONS, DISCOUNTS AND SAVINGS:
If you engaged in heavy discounting to attract salessurvive last year’s economic downturn, you’ll need to spend this year slowly weaning your customer off your lower prices. Resetting expectations won’t be easy, so try swapping discounts for special privileges like loyalty discounts, free upgrades and other offers that won’t lock you in to price comparisons.

Focus your social media strategy

I see many Social Network Media (SNM) user‘ profile and find many interesting things, which I could not even imagine. I shocked after seems all these things, Here I am trying to explain my understanding about SNM usage, I would like to give you some tips to help you avoid online overload, which help you to understand real meaning of SNM and you can get benefit out of SNM.

1.Define your goal:

First of all you need to define what outcome(S) you hope to achieve through your social media efforts. Define your goals. Then ask yourself, ‘What are the easiest and fastest ways to achieve these goals?’ Whether you own a dry cleaning company, a retail store or small accounting company, you need to be able to clearly spell out your goals, and then choose the tools that will help you most effectively achieve them.

You need to ask yourself, “What social media platforms will help my company accomplish its goals the fastest?” focus on only one or two of the sites you determine match your needs and really make them work. (You can see why you need to have a clear understanding of your company’s goals before you can begin defining your social media goals.)

2. Make your profile dynamic:

Remember, since most established and effective sites will be around for a while, you don’t have to go crazy and sign on to all of them at once. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a business owner is to set up a profile for your company on a social media platform and then not maintain it. No one likes to frequent a store that is empty most of the time …people are influenced by what other people are doing and where other people are going, in the virtual world just as they are in the real world. If someone pops in to your network and sees a lot of activity new members joining, a new post or two written by you or other members may be some great new photos to browse the buzz of activity will hold their attention and make them want to stay awhile. But if that person visits your site and see no new activity or commentary added in the past three days, they’re outtalking there. This phenomenon has occurred with many (social media profiles) as they have evolved: the ones that are updated the most are the ones that people come back to more frequently.

3. Walk the walk:

If you are going to promote your company on social media channels, your product or service should appear to be very strong. Whether prospects or clients visit your site, your blog, your Twitter page or your facebook fan page, or see it desired on other people’s social media sites, you need to make sure they see a very professional, on-brand product. Your company’s profile need to be attractive and in sync while showing readers that you and your team know exactly what you are doing.

4. Delegate and manage:

Make sure you have designated or hired someone to maintain the profile. If you make an in-house person responsible, make sure he or she understand how to use the platform(s) and is fully engaged I the process. Another option is to hire an outside company to ensure that your profile pages are updated regularly with content and news that is interesting to the audience your are trying to attract. Try working on just one or two (three at most) social media sites at a time. Once you get these up and running and you feel you have the time to manage it, you can add more. Evaluate where people are finding you or interacting with you to determine any new social media avenues. Regardless of the tools, ensure you have chosen ones that let you to set up an online profile that’s the most effective for your company. And commit the necessary time and effort to ensure that these tools will continue to help your business.

The Wafer Sultan - Mr. Chandubhai Virani

They came to town three decades ago to run a canteen in a cinema hall on contract, saw the immense potential for the fare they introduced and went on to conquer the wafers market in the state.

This is the summary of the success story of Chandubhai Virani and his brothers Meghajibhai, Bhikhubhai and kanubhai, whose Balaji wafers has a 90% share of the wafers market in the state.

They come to Rajkot from Jamnagar district in 1982 with the dream of building up a successful business and took the canteen at the Astron cinema on contract.

Chandubhai Virani, now the managing director of Balaji Wafers, with a touch of nostalgia remembers those days when the family sold roasted groundnuts, sandwiches, and potato wafers to the cine- gores. “Right from those days, we believed in reasonable pricing & good quality. This earned good turnover, through the profits where a little lower. This policy also won us many loyal customers. We always received feedback from our customers about the quality of the stuff and stuck to the highest standards of quality,” Chandubhai says, during when I spend free time with him.

As a demand increase, they stopped buying wafers from out and started making it. They sold the wafers to the around the theatre also. This was the first step in setting up their business. They had two helpers to assist in wafer production.

Chandubhai opened an independent retail outlet in 1983-84 to sell wafers and sandwich brand named it Balaji Sandwich, which is successes outlet. Balaji wafers now produces 9000 kg of banana and potato wafers and 7000 kg of other salted and fried items (making) a day.

Chandubhai says quality is his primary concern which gets priority over taking on the multi-national brands. Balaji wafers in stalled a semi- automatic plant in 993-94. The plant had capacity to make 180 kg of wafers a day. When they started, their business, they made just 60 kg of wafers a day, that too without the help of machines. They had a keen competition in the market. They did not want to lose out on production and compromise on quality. That is why they opted a semi-automatic plnt. It helped them improve production and enhance the quality. At that time production division was under the supervision of Chandubhai, while Bhikhubhai and kanubhai looked after sales and marketing.

After conducting a research to find out how companies abroad stored the wafers fresh they installed a modern automatic plant in 2000. The unit has a capacity to produce 450 kg of wafers an hours and packing in the latest technology bags. Balaji make turnover of Rs 4 crore.

The fame of taste reached to the whole Gujarat hence it was time to takeover the whole Gujarat so the biggest automatic plant of Gujarat came into picture in 2003. Now production capacity was increase by three times. Today, production capacity is to produce 1250 kg of wafer an hours and packing in the latest technology bags. Today, You can have Balaji snacks in every 100 meters in Gujarat.

Quenching the demand of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan region Balaji group is now looking forward to march over India.

Entrepreneur !?.

The early history of entrepreneurship in India reflects from the culture, customs and tradition of the India people. To process of entrepreneurship therefore passed through the potential roots of the society and all those who accepted entrepreneurial role had the cultural heritage of trade and business. Occupational pursuits opted by the individual under the caste system received different meaning of value attached to entrepreneurship. This is based on social sanctions. Vaishyas are considered to venture in to business pursuits. As society grew and the process of business occupation depended and the value work tended towards change and the various occupational role interchanged with non-role group and sub-groups. People from different castes and status also entered into the entrepreneurial role. India needs more Entrepreneurs for its development so let’s understand the meaning of Entrepreneurship

The word “Entrepreneurship” is a French word and, literally translated, means “between-taker” or “go-between”, But in Indian context “Vyapaari” or “Dhandhadaari”.

I must say that “Entrepreneurship is not the proprietary quality of any caste or community. Many may possess the qualities, but are baffled with too many questions why, what and how to get about starting new venture.” Let’s try to understand the concept of entrepreneurship.

So, who does be an entrepreneur? I would say person who makes activity which can generate money by anyway. I read somewhere that if he or she wants to earn money, so they have to need a skill to earn, if you have that art you are an entrepreneur. It may you work with your personal business or work in any organization.

One day my friend come to me and asked me, “how will I become successful entrepreneur in a life?” I replayed to him that by become selfish person, develop good story creating skill (so you can communicate very well with people) & play a roll as good player (leader & manager). After that His face looked like childish, and he asked to me that why you say that become selfish person & good story teller. I explain to him through my experience. Because of become selfish people, if you are not selfish toward your self, goal, work, investment, etc… you can not become a successful entrepreneur.

WHO IS AN ENTREPRENUER
o He is a person who develops and owns his own enterprise.
o He is a moderate risk taker and works under uncertainty for achieving the goal.
o He is innovative.
o He peruses the deviant pursuits.
o Reflects strong urge to be independent.
o Persistently tries to do something better.
o Dissatisfied with routine activities.
o Prepared to withstand the hard life.
o Determined but patient.
o Exhibits sense of leadership.
o Also exhibits sense of competitiveness.
o Takes personals responsibility.
o Oriented towards the future.
o Tends to persist in the face to adversity
o Convert a situation into opportunity.

THE CHACTRERISTICS OF A UNIQUE ENTREPRENEUR ARE:
o Need for achievement
o High need for power
o Independence
o Propensity to take risk
o Personal modernity
o Supporter
o Business enterprise
o Leadership

According to Mr. Schumpeter “The entrepreneurship is essentially a creative activity or it is an innovative function”.

Sociologists, Psychologists and Economists have all attempted to give a clear picture of the entrepreneur. Sociologists analyze the characteristic of entrepreneurs in terms of caste, family, social value and migration.

Psychologists on the other hand attempt to isolate entrepreneurs from general population on various personality trials such as need for achievement, creativity, propensity to take risk, independence leadership etc.

Economists, lighted situational characteristics such as occupational backgrounds access to capital business and technological experience and managerial skills with economic gains considered as characteristic of entrepreneur.

As entrepreneur by implication is one who ventures out, who prefers change as a means of growth and it the process is prepared to take a calculated risk while taking risks he is aware of the possibilities, success as well as the consequence of failure.

Choosing entrepreneurial career is like choosing a life partner. The person has to be there in the job forever and may have to continue in that chosen line for generations to generation and grows in this process if it is matching; if it mismatches it goes the other way round.

Considering this aspect he should always be governed by three basic qualitative instincts to serve in the world of uncertainty. These are – (1) Will, (2) Zeal, and (3) Skill.