C for sales

While reading “What you do is who you are”, the author shares an incident. He talks about the sales philosophy of Mark Cranny at his Loudcloud days.

Cranny also talks about the four C’s.  

  1. Competence: your salesperson should know in and out of the product.
  2. Confidence: your salesperson should pitch with it.
  3. Courage: your salesperson should have self-belief in a product he/she is selling.
  4. Conviction: not to be sold by the customer on why she wasn’t going to buy your product.

He believed that you were either selling or being sold: if you weren’t selling a customer on your product then the customer was selling you on why she wasn’t going to buy it. I loved it and felt like sharing. 

customer success

Growth comes with too many things to handle. If you are catering customers where they are dependent on you for everyday chores, customer success should be paramount.

In the book, category creation the author talks about the Customer Success Team. A team dedicated to delighting end-users.

As a leader of your organization, it becomes super important to define the success on which the CSM team aligns to. There have been many occurrences where product development prioritizes CSM requests to last, that should not happen.

Last not least, celebrate small wins.

consumption

We consume information, news, content in many ways. As per the author of category creation, these are the common modes.  

  • Visual: consists of images, pictures. 
  • Musical: sound and music.
  • Verbal: words, speech, and writings.
  • Physical: body, hands, and sense of touch.  
  • Logical: requires cognitive capabilities 
  • Social: where actions are taken in collaboration
  • Solitary: where actions are taken alone

I found it worth sharing. 

company of one

The book is the author’s journey where he talks about running a company on his terms: a small team, a focussed market, and limited customers. Like any other book on the organizational building, it talks about the culture, mission, and health of employees.

I agree with most of what the author mentions. He cites the example of Basecamp, Buffer, and other startups on how they were built. Reading it has been a welcome change in the era where every author is shoving you with how to build the next unicorn.

A fresh breather with a special mention that small companies can be built and stay self-sustainable. The focus on core: delighting their customers, solving their pain points and making them their evangelists.

story

Aren’t we writing a story in every single moment in our life?
Our anger, love, hate, empathy, action, reaction everything is temporary. As we old, decay and die the only thing that will stay is our story for others.

You can be an asshole treating waiter like shit or hitting your maid for adding too much chilly by mistake.

You can be someone changing the lives of others helping without anything in return.

This journey is ours, we have to write the story: good, bad, praiseworthy or memorable is on you.

price

I have been told time and again by my friends that Indian customers are stringy to price. Most haggle irrespective of their income or wealth.

My friends say we Indians don’t have the desire to progress or willingness to pay. We like to continue doing donkey work rather than paying for automation.

I do not agree with all these. If you are not creating enough value proposition and 10X over ROI no one will pay for it.

Why will I pay you anything if my life is getting 10X better?

India’s e-commerce growth is driven by discounts. This analogy does not play everywhere.

customer support

One of the chapters in company of one, author talks about customer support.

Customer support and level of delight are what makes a brand stay out of the crowded competitors. He gives an example of Rackspace’s famous pizza story and Trader Joe’s.

Startups run after growth and getting new customers. They can apply various marketing approaches, discounts for the same. The major differentiator happens to be how they treat their existing customers. A 10$/m customer for 10 years period worth more than 100/m/y customer.

Treat your customers as you would like to be treated. Many companies like Trello, Basecamp got all their customers via word to mouth. They were able to achieve it by delighting their customers.