Reviving This Blog; Announcing My First Book

Hello everyone! Three years without a blog post. That is not good!

Well the fact is I had taken a long blog-posting sabbatical to devote my creative juices and energies for penning a book, my first one. The manuscript of “Gita and the Art of Selling: Memoirs of a Sales Yogi” is all ready; and, a contract with the publisher (Leadstart Publishing) all signed, sealed and delivered.

So I say in an Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque (and The-Terminator-like) vein: “I’m back!”

The Shrimad Bhagavad Gita ["Song of (the) Blessed Lord"], often shortened to simply The Gita, is a sacred Hindu scripture. Authored more than a couple of millennia ago, it is one of the greatest texts in the history of theology, literature & philosophy. It has been described as a lodestar of eternal wisdom that can inspire anyone to accomplishment and enlightenment.

The Gita embodies the teachings of the Divine One, Lord Krishna ‒ a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, the protector of the universe in the Hindu pantheon of Gods. At the start of the Kurukshetra War in the epic Mahabharata, the warrior prince, Arjuna lays down his arms on the battlefield refusing to fight his own cousins. The Almighty dispels Arjuna’s tumult and turmoil through His discourse, the Bhagavad Gita.

But what is the tenuous relevance of The Gita to selling? How does a spiritual and philosophical magnum opus relate to business matters? The truths and the tenets espoused in The Gita are amazingly germane to the executive experiencing flap and dither on the battlegrounds of sales. In this book I hope to connect the dots between the precepts of The Gita and best practices of selling.

Selling is pervasive in modern society. It is an integral part of every walk of our social and economic lives. Professional selling revolves around trade and commerce; yet, the process of preparation for sales is a science and its execution an art. So mastery in the profession requires flair and finesse in the artistic, scientific and commercial elements of the craft.

There are umpteen books on the process, techniques and methodologies of selling. All of them invariably adopt a regimented, structured and scientific approach to the subject matter. Not only do these theoretical publications make for some vapid reading, but they also fail to flesh out the subtleties of sales and the artistry involved in its practice.

In this book, “Gita and the Art of Selling: Memoirs of a Sales Yogi,” I have attempted to use the fine art of story-telling to convey the essence of selling and sales management. It chalks up inspiration from ancient literary masterpieces, like Hitopadesha, Panchatantra, etc., which wed education and entertainment to convey esoteric messages on purity and morality.

The retro storyline of the book is woven around a protagonist, Mahesh Kumar, who joins a nascent outfit, BCL (Bharat Computers Ltd.) and moves up the rank and file of its hierarchy. He learns traits essential for sales success; and acquires qualities crucial for effective sales management. Mahesh narrates ordeals and occurrences from his stint at the fledgling enterprise that grows rapidly into a behemoth. His career progression too is equally impressive.

Thus Mahesh describes the unique sales culture and conventions at BCL ‒ termed 360°-Selling ‒ that create a shining example of entrepreneurial success in corporate India. He discerns the fascinating links between apposite tenets in the Gita and prudent sales practices.

Mirroring the Gita, this novel has eighteen chapters. Each chapter details a major event or a milestone in Mahesh’s life. All chapters are enjoined into one seamless narrative thread. The memoirs are based on a rhetorical mode of narration for story-telling; yet use exposition to explain sales theory. The insights expressed in each chapter links to a canon espoused in the Gita.

The novel has been penned as a funnily-serious or seriously-funny (despite the oxymoron) book that reads like a thriller, feels like a soap and serves as a sermon. In some ways, it parallels the mishmash of a typical Bollywood potboiler with four “-tions” in it ‒ action, emotion and recreation; and education added to the mix.

The book has been scribed with three cornerstones in mind:

1. Style: The body has a narrative style ideal for light reading. The syntactic and semantic presentation is such that the fictional story flows smoothly and reads like a “humorous thriller.” At a superficial nuts and bolts level, I hope the book makes for nice and nuanced reading in English. The plot of this memoir develops like a Sagen, but attempts to achieve the effect of a Märchen. It bridges the traditional chasm that demarcates fiction and non-fiction.

2. Substance: The exposition of sales-related content is non-fictional & non-pedantic. With its 'learn while you laugh' or ‘laugh while you learn’ mode, the novel aids learning. It unravels the processes & practices that are the bedrocks of sales. The building blocks of sales are described using straight-from-the-gut stories. Also exposed is the blueprint for sculpting a big-league sales team.

3. Soul ‘n Spirit: At a sublime, spiritual level, this essay serves as a self-help or motivational book, which professionals can use for selling skills improvement, personality development etc. The hope is that the novel will trigger sales success and business achievement for the reader. If the material provides inspiration for taking a leap into entrepreneurship, that is icing on the cake!

My target audience for this literary effort is the well-educated, urbane crowd in the 18-30 years age group. That is a raw, inexperienced group at the dawn of its professional career and can potentially benefit the most from the wisdom shared. Skills and knowledge I gained in my stints have been shared. I believe the sales insights presented also cater to the needs of the upwardly-mobile, 30-50 years-old demographic.

Will post again when the book hits the stand in all its print and paper glory!

Is Content Still King?

Dee in her post “Is Content Being Dethroned By Social Media?” said:

“…A well-known Internet marketing slogan is “Content is king.” But is content being dethroned by social media?

Social media sites like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon are changing the online business game. These sites drive huge amounts of traffic. And all you need is good content and a lot of friends. Notice I did not say great content.

… This brings us to the key to social media marketing. Friends, the more, the merrier…”

Her point was that with popularity of social media (including bookmarking) sites it was relatively easier for online marketers to fetch eyeballs to their websites. Even relatively pedestrian content can be used to generate a ton of “eyeballs”. Obviously she mentioned this in the context of using social media as a marketing channel.

Guest Eyeballs
I agree. You can indeed get a lot of visitors to your site with interesting, or as Dee puts it good, content and a little help from social media sites – Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etc. Your traffic sees a growth spike for a few days, maybe weeks. You will love all the attention your site (or more specifically, content - good, bad or ugly) gets.

And, then the audience begins to erode - as swiftly as it arrived. Your content looses its novelty and, more importantly, gets buried under new content (or links) at those social media sites. Thus, the marketing challenge does not end with attracting this “drive-by traffic”, or as I like to call it “guest eyeballs.”

Resident Eyeballs
You are left with the task of getting more eyeballs. The marketing task then truly boils down to not just fetching eyeballs, but also retaining eyeballs. That is, converting your “guest eyeballs” to “resident eyeballs.”

This can only happen if your site offers fresh content (presumably good) that compels your first-time visitors to return. The only way to accomplish this is by having a constant supply of interesting and compelling content to retain your “(guest) eyeball stream”. And, obviously, the rate at which you refresh content becomes crucial. If the rate of refresh is too slow, your site and its content become stale.

Consumption Keystrokes
Besides refreshing, engaging content, marketers use “registration” as another technique for retention. Registration – which entails the use of “keystrokes” – is commonly used as a pre-requisite for receiving additional value. This value can be in the form of additional valuable content delivered one-time (e.g., a white paper), or on a continuous basis (e.g., a newsletter subscription, or RSS). The value offer can even take the form of additional rights accorded to registered users (e.g., right to rate or comment).

The marketing goal here is to generate return traffic – repeatedly and frequently, or in other words, increase devotion to your site. The value for the user is “information consumption.” I refer to return traffic generated through registration (in its many forms) as “consumption keystrokes.” The prime motivation here again is “content” or, better still, “addiction to your site’s content.”

Contribution Keystrokes
The discussions above are predicated on the site supplying content to attract and retain traffic. This means, eventually the supply of quality content will become a bottleneck. So, website owners will progressively find it more difficult to maintain traffic growth.

So, the ultimate marketer’s challenge is to have a self-scaling and self-sustaining model for traffic growth. Is such a scenario possible? Yes, it is possible if your (existing) traffic – that is, user base – generates content that attracts more traffic. This indeed is the secret sauce behind the successful social media sites!

Sites like YouTube, Digg, MySpace, etc. have thrived as a result of user-generated content – or “contribution keystrokes”. User contributions can be in the form of a rating or review of content; or the creation (e.g., uploading a video) of content. That to me is the quintessence of ‘community’ in the online realm – or the ‘democratic web.’ Once again, ‘content’ is the driving force.

Commercial Keystrokes
The end goal of any website is obviously is to generate revenue. Advertising and online commerce remain as the primary revenues models. In either case this will happen only through keystrokes – “commercial keystrokes”.

From a marketing perspective how well you transition eyeballs to keystrokes will determine your success. The more traffic your site generates, the more successful you are likely to be in generating revenues.

And, of course, that hinges upon your site’s ability to scale and sustain the offer of great, engaging, refreshing and compelling content over time. Thus, as you can see, content is not just the king, but the “emperor” of the online world.

Marketer's Interpretation of Forrester Research on Online Participation Habits

In a recent report from Forrester Research on "Social Technographics," authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff used the metaphor of a ladder to show user participation in social media. They estimate that 13% of adult online consumers are content creators; 19% are critics who comment on blogs and/or post ratings and reviews; 15% are collectors; 19% are joiners; 33% are spectators (often called lurkers); and 52% don't perform any of the previously mentioned activities (Refer figure below for details).

Based on this report, Business Week later published a graphical representation (see figure below) of online participation levels by age group.

What is the significance of these statistical insights on online user behavior to a consumer Internet marketer? Well here are some conclusions I have drawn about online marketing strategy on the basis of figures in these diagrams:

1. Interestingly, in a previous study, Jacob Nielson had talked about the "90-9-1 rule" for online social behavior i.e., 90% lurkers (or inactives); 9% infrequent contributors; and, 1% frequent contributors. The findings of Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff seem to reinforce these numbers.


2. It is remarkable that collectors are almost uniformly spread across all demographic segments. More remarkable is that fact that the ratio of collectors to creators is far lower for the youth (less than 26 years) than that for the (more) mature adult categories (greater than 26 years). Does this mean that the average user does not really care for syndication? Should RSS figure lower in product management and engineering priorities? Well, your guess is as good as mine.


3. The high percentage of specatators and inactives really reinforces the belief that social media's potential is still untapped (despite the mushrooming of applications). It also perhaps implies that the average online user is reluctant to adopt / embrace social media. Is this an indication of 'online social shyness' or 'do-not-feel-the-need-to attitude'?


4. Clearly the teens, youth and generation Y are the darlings of social media. It means the younger age groups feel a greater need for social expression and networking. Hence, it is also likely that these demographics spend more time online than their older-age counterparts (besides willing to be early adopters). Thus, marketers of social media applications need to necessarily focus on these segments for building vibrant and sustaining online communities. So, a social application that these age groups finds 'cool' (and useful) is more likely to spread faster virally than an application that is perceived to be not 'hip and trendy.'


5. The big picture that emerges for marketers is that their market entry strategy is more likely to be successful if it targets the younger generations. The 'joiner' percentages in these segments are far higher than the 'creator' percentages (with almost a differential of 15-30%).

In summary, younger social media users are 'early adopters.' They exhibit greater propensity to participate. Marketers of social media and online communities should keep these online behavioral insights in mind while chalking out their online strategies.