Here is a "magic formula" for Selling

This recipe is written for our folks at TE Connectivity

“Cricbuzz Ka Keeda To Hoga Hi Na, Jab Ho Cricbuzz Ka Mobile App”

With increasing cricket fever Cricbuzz - India’s No. 1 Cricket app launched its TV commercial filled with loads of laughter which revolves around the concept of being cricket bug when you have Crickbuzz app. The Milk Ad features a Cricket Crazy husband engrossed in the Cricbuzz App, and throws the pack of the milk towards his wife, imagining cricket ball in his hand. 

What’s the magic selling formula that TV hucksters use to convince millions of people to pull out a credit card , call an 800 number and place an order for a product they do not need ? The answer may surprise you.

No matter how silly and shifty these TV pitches are, when you scrape away the hucksterism ,you see that they follow a legitimate and proven sales formula that includes creating excitement and curiosity ,identifying a problem, offering a solution, reciting the benefits of ownership , establishing credibility ,adding value, up-selling and ending it all with a strong call to action.

Here’s how it works

Without exception these TV Pitches are delivered by people who are wildly enthusiastic and breathlessly excited about the product they are hawking. Excitement,apparently phony over-the-top excitement,grabs buyers attention and arouses curiosity. They then state a problem ,” The problem with blankets is that they always slip off.” The fact that people really don’t have much trouble managing a blanket is immaterial. The need for their product , no matter if the need is non-existent ,is presented with great conviction.

A lengthy ,fast-moving, and repetitious recital of the benefits of ownership ,complete with product demonstration, is delivered. “You will slice a tomato perfectly every time with one simple motion, and cleanup is a snap ! ” “ You will save time and you get perfectly uniform slices for salads and sandwiches !” they add.

A studio audience paid to ooh and ah and applaud wildly in response to the product demonstrations is often used to establish credibility. Short customer testimonials are sometimes filmed and interspersed throughout

the pitch for the same purpose. Statements like ,”If you have a car ,boat or Yacht , you would be crazy not to own one of these ! “ are typical.

But wait , there is more! “Act now and we will include a second one free of charge. All you pay is shipping and handling.” This offer to double the order appears to be adding value for the buyer, but in reality it’s an up-sell.The shipping and handling charges more than cover the total cost of adding another unit and generate additional profit.

Remember the Domino pizzas cliché coupon codes – RX 100 and get 50% discount on 2 large pizzas today. And you fall for the bait…

The seller creates a sense of urgency “You must act now to get this special offer.” “Have your credit card ready and call within the next 10 minutes, and we will include Sanjeev Kapoor’s recipes at absolutely no extra cost to you.” Some even show a ticking clock counting down the time left to buy (e-bay).

There is a lesson to be learned here. While the products are cheesy and the pitchmen are clownish, sales and marketing fundamentals are being closely followed.

Creating excitement and curiosity, identifying the problem, offering a solution, reciting the benefits of ownership, establishing credibility, adding value, up-selling, and ending it all with a strong call to action will close sales for nearly anyone.

Sd/-

Roohul Haq

Jai Ho - Elections !!

There is always a euphoria on the coming elections in India ---whether its National or State. With the Delhi elections round the corner, I am reminded of a poem very apt for the occasion.

Here I bring my manifesto , O voters be merry,
The tree of your desire will yield blooms and berries...

I am an independent fighter ,banking on my inner stream,
Alone i fight the veteran foes without a guiding team.

Let my rivals boast about their glorious acts and deeds,
I am proud of my cooks , skilled to serve and feed ...

I will gladden every heart, satisfy their need,
I will stop once for all ,the drains of all the streets...

I will brooke no budgetary cuts on cinema songs and commerce,
but when it comes to industry , i will economize...

My sensitive conscience cannot even rest in peace,
unless a water pump is installed in every crooked street...

I will revamp the system ,change the course of life,
And in every voters home a ration card provide...

You have borne heavy taxes for 200 years,
I will give you tax relief ,set you free from fear...

Thinner still will become the clothes of beauties sweet,
Schools will remain closed for seven days a week...

Teachers will draw their salaries for idleness complete,
If students bunk their classes , whom will they teach ?

Conventions of sloth and slump will be reinforced ,
Youngsters will adorn themselves with hair,touching the toes...

Police station will be abolished ,lock-ups will stay,
why should an additional nuisance on our hearts prey...

Come On these are elections we do idolize,
gives a lot to gossip and time to shred...

Sd/-
Roohul Haq

Gracious new year 2015 -Unfold

This is an article that  I wrote for TE Connectivity employees during the year end 2014. 

The other day, a friend told me that he was feeling bad that the year had come to an end so quickly. He felt he hadn't ticked off everything on his bucket list. And in my usual positive tone I said, "But you have your whole life to complete your bucket list."

Really, what is the big fuss about the year ending? And why does December make some of us feel so dull and dreary, when it should, in fact, make us feel cheerful and optimistic. A year well-lived or a year less-lived is just like a glass half empty or half full right? It's the way you see it.

For me 2014 was a momentous one, and I refuse to see it in any other way. It gave me wonderful opportunities, I worked and met with diverse people and I gained several more lessons that will serve as useful oars to help me row my boat in the coming years.

I'm sharing some of these lessons with you today... Because you too have been an important part of my journey this year. You've pushed me to be a better L&D professional, a more rigorous writer, a more receptive listener and, most importantly, a more evolved person.

As I share with you the little knowledge I have, I push myself to higher standards too. And thus I take this opportunity to thank you very much dear reader... most of this year would have been incomplete without you.

So now you're a part of my inner circle, and you're the special ones privy to some of the lessons I've learned in the last year.

Travel opens up your mind, brings you closer to nature

My most memorable trips this year were to tiny places like Bargarh in Jharkhand & Puri in Orissa (Konark temple in east), Mumbai & Pune in the west, and Tamilnadu & Kerala in the south. I moved from the east/west to the south of India and saw five very diverse states, both culturally and geographically. From the rustic temples of East India to the lush green backwaters of Kerala, my eyes had a veritable feast. And more than anything, I felt a greater sense of pride in my nation. I was amazed by the grit of the oriya culture and people, who showed a firm resolve to transform their lives and state, and I was intrigued by the people of kerala whose knowledge of natural healing and spices explained their love for life and learning. And to top it all, in both places I was close to nature, so close that all I could hear were the whisperings of the temple jingles and the murmurings of the insects in the spice gardens.

  

It's more fun with people than going it solo at work

Whether you work or you travel or you live, being together with people, even just one more person, is more fun than being alone. People add a lot more joy to your experiences. They help you think harder, they push your comfort zones and they challenge your levels of tolerance. You may get along with some, and you may fall apart with some. But they all eventually make you stronger and more complete.

One of my biggest rewards this year was being part of HR-TE and groups that helped me do just that. I travelled with a bunch of HR enthusiasts, I worked together with people from across the country and I wrote for thousands of people (indirect staff) from all walks and ages of life. And through it all, I never once felt alone.

When you have an idea, allow it to bloom on its own

I believe that the true power of any idea is when it gives life to itself. The best ideas are those that come to you naturally. Moreover, once the seed is planted in your mind, it will grow in the most organic and beautiful way. You, of course, have to water it on time, but it will unfold on its own, allowing you to capture its light and radiance in due time.

As an L&D professional and writer, the last year saw me explore many ideas. I'd often start out wondering if they were any good, little knowing that they had a mind of their own. So I went along with them, experimented and let them work themselves out. The results were not always the same, but they egged me on and today I don't let a thought go by without exploring its tiniest potential.

What can happen tomorrow is best done today

These are fast-paced times, when you don't know when the day begins and when it ends. As you grow in your personal and professional lives, the things you have to do just keep increasing in scope and scale. Thus responding to the urgency of time and opportunities is becoming the need of the hour, literally. Sometimes doing also means simply sitting back and enjoying the current moment, as it's going to flee so very soon, just like butterflies.

And in the last year, one of the biggest lessons I learned was to not only respect time and discipline, but to also unwind when necessary, to let go and enjoy life's small and big experiences. Time does not repeat itself, moments seldom return, like the waters beneath your feet in a river, dipping your feet in them just once is a treasure.

Stand by who you are, being true to 'you' is a reward in itself

Understand and be self-aware about oneself. This is the greatest gift for the world that sees and admires you. You are a unique value proposition at every moment and reward yourself for that, every day in life.

  

“Be a creator”

Tap into the artist within you, even if you can’t draw or paint

Sell without selling out

Never feel bad about selling your creations. Never feel bad about the art that you cannot sell. Just create. Vincent Van Gogh never could sell his art in his lifetime

Authenticity is a pursuit, not a destination

Finding your true voice is a constant and evolving process

Celebrate ordinary moments... you'll make an extraordinary life

Festivals come and go. New Year's Eve too will come and go. You'll make resolutions and you'll break resolutions. But what gives more joy is living each and every day to the fullest... of knowing that you've not "spent" one more day of your life but you've "gained" one more day in your life... with more experiences, more memories, more wisdom and more love.

So I may not have ticked off everything on my bucket list in 2014...and optimistic I am... because 2015 is another year... that I can't wait to see unfold. 

Sd/-
Roohul Haq

House Hunt

Let me write a prose that most of you would identify with ...It's the search for a Home

I'm surely going to get exhausted one day,
Searching for a house, I will pass away

Worn out by day long search up and down the road,
Torn by the hunger-pangs my belly made uproar

Big was my belly what could I do ,my friends ?
How could I help it, I was short of funds.

Buying a watermelon I moved towards my destination,
A stumble on the road proved a lucky stroke.

All at once ,my night of sorrow changed to a sunny day,
As the melon fell and broke , a Jinn showed his face...

"I am your humble slave," with folded hands he spoke,
"Any tasks impossible I can undertake"

"I can change at your bidding the world's very shape "
 I can make you, if you like,the manager of the Mindscape.

"I can turn trivial joke into a poetic feast"
 Turn a poet into poetess with my clever sleight

 Even in the night of sin,you will bath in sunny rays,
 You will reap the harvest ,while the pujari prays.

 I am not a man to conspire with the foe,
 I can elevate a fool , make him rule the globe.

 Let the time wince and whine,seize the fleeting pleasure
 Here, clutch in your hand the keys of Kohinoor( not Bang Bang version) treasure...

"I don't want the earthly riches", humbly I replied,
"Get me,pray,a house to live,I shall be obliged "

 Hearing this the Jinn back into the melon slipped,
"Strange",he said,"Everyone is caught in a similar fix"

"Could I conjure up a house, I would not shiver in cold,
 Why should I have lived then in the melon hole...

hehehe

Sd/-
Roohul Haq


 

Knowing your Emotions –A guide to self awareness

One of the most intriguing facts of life is how much we are aware of ourselves. This led me to formulate some of the simple steps that can be implemented to understand our emotions and become more self aware…

A key aspect of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is knowing your emotions, allowing yourself to feel them, and expressing them appropriately.

A second key area is knowing your values. Your values are the attitudes, beliefs, opinions and experiences that govern how you behave. Your values shape the choices you make every day, and you're either in or out of alignment with them. Your values are always a function of your life experiences, so another good activity is to write your life's history. Now I'm not talking a novel, but a couple of pages listing key experiences that have shaped who you are, professionally and personally. You might consider your family life, your education, your cultural heritage, major successes and failures, traumatic events, and your hopes and aspirations.

The third key component is assessing your skills. Your professional life requires you to tap into a wide variety of functional and technical skills. Skills are foundational such as, time management, building relationships, and communicating effectively. And many skills are specific to your job, function or industry like finance, design, or teaching.

A good way to determine which skills you need is to look at your job description and performance review. This will give you a list of major skill areas and perhaps even an assessment of your skill level. You want to identify where you're exceptional, acceptable and in need of improvement. Another great tool is to use the assessment affiliated with the Strengths Finder books. It provides and affordable and well-rounded view of various skills.

 A fourth key component is your communication style. We all have preferred ways of communicating that fall on a continuum ranging from indirect, or even passive, through to assertive and direct, and all the way over to aggressive. We also have communication patterns. Some people share information in a linear point by point fashion, where others use a circular style that weaves together information to arrive at the main point. 

The fifth theory to explore is your work style, knowing how you approach work, and how your approach affects, and is affected by your colleagues, is really valuable. One of my favorite tools is the DiSC Assessment. It's really helpful when members of a team take it together.

The sixth key component is your personality or temperament. This is not how nice or outgoing you are, but is based on research in psychology and measures how you view and approach the world. Again, there's some assessments for this. The two most prominent being the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter .Both will give you an understanding of how you process information, make decisions, work with others, and organize your life.

Seventh, we all have a conflict style, which is how we approach conflict that's a combination of our assertiveness and our commitment to cooperation. I recommend the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument to assess your conflict style. You'll learn how you score on the five styles of conflict and the best style to use in different situations.

The last major component is your leadership style. This is your philosophy and approach for how you lead others. There are lots of models out there, but my two favorites are The Leadership Practices Inventory, which is affiliated with the book The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner and the Situational Leadership model by Ken Blanchard that's affiliated with the book Leading at a Higher Level. There're other aspects of yourself to explore, but I consider these the core eight, as they relate to our professional work.

Building this knowledge of yourself is not something you can do overnight, so pace yourself. Pick a couple of things to explore first, and then go from there. You'll also change over time, so self-exploration is a life long journey, and a rather fun one at that.

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Roohul Haq

 

Waste of Talent !

Recognising the wastes of Talent can be one of the greatest opportunities for organisation to improve performance. This is food for thought and I want to dissect the issues pertaining to this phenomenon

How is the organisation changing the rules of their expectations ? Is organisation looking for new ways to accomplish more with fewer resources ? With all the challenges, how does the organisation view the capabilites of employees ? Does it see the waste of people's abilities as part of the solution?

If people are mostly conducting business as usual,improvements will be limited.New strategies are hindered by misaligned efforts.A small portion of people are engaged to drive success.So why then do workplaces waste talent and abilities to such a large degree ?

In many organisations, the typical work roles are still relatively narrow in scope and focus on precise tasks instead of what people could contribute.In addition,leadership structures are designed to keep power and authority to a few, with everyone else having little of either.Beyond the mindset of leadership,processes need to be created to channel more of what people can deliver in a work day.

A pragmatic approach to put a structure across lean priniciples will help organisations appreciate the types of abilities that are commonly wasted while providing many of the processes that direct these abilities.
Let us look at the hidden causes ( much like the hidden factory in manufacturing) that will decipher how we can prevent waste of Talent

1. Work roles limit people by design ; Most people can do so much more!
Organisations put people in cross functional problem-solving teams and find many employees possess tremendous leadership skills that have gone unnoticed when they spend most of their time making products or handling goods with little interaction. It's not just a matter of rare abilities that could be uncovered, but that a significant number of people can lead,generate ideas,make decisions & perform other roles.
2. Power is limited to only a few people
The comfort of assigning power to a few is deeply ingrained and restricts much of the talent or abilities that could make a significant difference.With so much wasted ability,it becomes obvious that this situation provides some benefit to those in leadership roles.why?Managers often believe that they are in leadership roles because they think better,solve problems better and have more ability than those they lead.
3. People are reluctant to do more work
Have we asked this basic question "why do people/employees not participate more fully in most endeavors"? A familier response could be "people do not want to do any more than they are paid for in their jobs" -The discretionery effort in HR Parlance.A prevalent assumption exists that people could do more ,but they don't want to do more.In fairness some of this is true.Another notion is that
managers feel if they are the part of some problem solving exercise,they invariably would end up
solving it at their discretionery effort and time(with or without the help of reportees)...and workload would increase
4.Channeling abilities creates new work
People are generally afraid of doing something new often because they are afraid of failing.Beyond problems with common attitudes,many workplaces lack the processes needed to manage the output of people's abilities.The problem with allowing people to contribute more is that those activities create more activities and even more activities
5.There is no assigned cost to people working at lower capacity
The massive waste of people's abilities means that most organisations achieve only a fraction of what they could accomplish.The acceptance of this situation is notably reflected in the lack of any reference to or concern about the unused capacity of the workforce.Most assets of the business are assessed in terms of capacity ,such as building or equipment utilisation. However management teams rarely discuss the percentage of peoples abilities being utilised each day.

The spirit of Lean is based on the vision that each worker is greater than the sum of his or her tasks and is capable of solving systemic problems of the organisation ,generating improved methods of operating, and working with other people in ways that generate better results over time.

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Roohul Haq
 

Potential Isn't Everything ?

I have always been tempted to understand the euphoria regarding potential assessment in organisation. So to make this clear, we dissect the essence of Talent strategy & management and unplug this mystery ...

 

One of the biggest overarching mistakes we see People managers and their organizations make is confusing performance, potential and readiness. It’s important to understand that each has a distinct definition:

·         Performance is how one is performing now in his or her current role.

·         Potential is one’s likelihood of leadership growth.

·         Readiness is one’s fit with a specific role, job, or job family.

 

Confusing these three concepts can lead to disastrous decisions about talent. Those who perform effectively in one job won’t necessarily succeed in a job at the next level. Those with potential need to be developed. And even those who have been identified as having potential and have benefited from development may still not be ready to take on a challenging role or job.

Let us look at this from an Olympic gymnastics coach perspective on what it takes to spot potential in young gymnasts. She looks for traits such as attitude and mental toughness in girls who are still years away from competing at the highest levels. Similarly, in business, when looking to identify those with leadership potential, it’s not current performance that matters (though current performance must be the starting point for identifying potential) as much as what sort of leader an individual is capable of growing into in the future.

Unfortunately, just 34 percent of companies feel that they are effective at identifying those with potential to lead early in their careers, yet those that do perform better. Common mistakes include:

·          Focusing on current performance alone

·          Inconsistent criteria

·          Unchallenged perspectives and opinions

·          “Promote your own” strategies

·          Singular focus on strengths (no consideration of leadership  derailers)

·           Identification without subsequent diagnosis of development  needs

Taking into account the critical differences between potential, performance and readiness, it’s our job to make sure the organization is doing an effective job of identifying those with the most leadership potential. Because resources (i.e.time, money, development opportunities) are always in finite supply, we have to be diligent about investing those resources in that small segment of our organization’s leaders—typically no more than 10 percent of the leader population that represents the greatest future payoff for the organization.

There are two different reasons to assess leaders:

1)      For potential and

2)      For readiness (performance is best ascertained by gathering performance feedback)

 When an individual is assessed for potential- the assessment will look at a number of factors, including: learning agility, drive and commitment, critical thinking, risk taking, perseverance, interpersonal savvy, receptivity to feedback, and propensity to lead. If individuals display these factors, there is a better chance they will succeed as they move up the leadership ladder.

 

Assessment of readiness- on the other hand, is done against the Success Profile for a specific role (e.g CFO, VP Marketing). This assessment provides a prediction or signal that someone is capable of moving into a specific role or position and succeeding.

 There is tremendous value in each of these assessments, as they both provide the objective data needed to understand current talent capability and gaps. This is why many highly effective organizations use both- using assessment for potential to focus on growth and assessment for readiness to inform promotion and placement decisions.

 

Plus, it’s far more effective than relying on being able to “spot” those who are ready for key jobs right now or those who can be developed to step into those jobs in the future.

 

So the interesting question is"Are we hyping the Potential Assessment too much"?

 

Sd/-

Roohul Haq