Marketing Experience

The word marketing is an important word for companies, a head ache for some customers and difficult maize for the marketer. I realized all the above, when I started conducting market survey for my internship. The marketing word threatens many fresh MBA's, scaring them away from a job filled with adventure and little amount of humiliation. like any other jobs it has its two sides. Though i just started to conduct market survey, I had to change the introduction sentence that I tell them many times before I could even get near an employee to ask questions. It has to be complicated and yet simple so that the guard does not think, we are here to bug them about a product. It is a hard journey for marketing. 

APPOINTMENT

Getting the appointment is the hardest part. You might call 20 companies per day and be left feeling like all of them have left the country or too busy to sit with you. Some are frank and sharply put you down with Echo’s of No's ringing through your hear. One thing I have realized is to never call up a small company for an appointment for a survey, they always depend on their boss and they are always outside. You can do a lot more being physically present, than calling people. But, never go to a slightly larger companies without an appointment, it’s of no use going there without one. 

COLD CALLING (Meeting without an appointment)

It’s the best method to conduct a survey and it involves going around and looking for prospective companies. It’s one of the most difficult process with little humiliation, little excitement and a tones of funny incidents (mainly based on you though). You will never know what to expect through cold calling. 

Chennai is the place where i conducted the survey and mostly in good companies there were very good response and no rejections. But, still i had to re assure them that I am not a marketer. Tell the words “Sir I am a student, here to ask some questions to find out the reach of the product in the market". Any deviation from this sentence or any reference is made to survey; they immediately think we are marketers. It’s that fast, 10 seconds is all that you get to make the difference. You can always know from their face, what they are thinking about you. Any bad judgment its a quick No and the gates are always wide open to go back out. They have an easier word and there is no other response for a "NO".

 So, the best way to describe what I do is. Challenge is market research or marketing and marketing is a challenge. Only the ones who like to challenge life are fit to fight it. Others simply have to keep searching for something better. 

SIMPLICITY

I am on a roll writing about the simple things of life in my blog.  It caught my fancy recently and it created thoughts of what could have been if the world as not changed. Wondering how simplest of things made people happy. How we managed to complicate the most basic things in life and struggle to cope with it. How the advertising as changed the worlds view, from social benefit to the individuals benefit. The everyday problems in life as become so hard to challenge and questions may well be answered by something called simplicity. Why would we have to struggle in life if the people stuck to their basic needs and there shall be no inflation or shortage? Yet in today’s world the active promotion of individualism has been promoted to make people forget the concept of sharing. Sometimes the mammoth of problems can be simplified and made better.  Braking life’s work in pieces will help in getting rid of the strain and allowing us to know what we can do and not to do. May be simple things don’t appeal as much now as before.

Simplicity sounds so nice these days to me that, Buddhism seems like a perfect religion. Simple things can touch people’s hearts. Make a lot of difference in people’s life.  But, we have complicated everything in our life to such an extent, that simplicity is no longer that simple. We have complicated the world so much being simple is no longer easy. But, the beauty of it can never be ignored. A simple smile on child’s face. The simple gesture that can show love, simple presence of loved one, the simple beauty of the nature. Though simple things make our life wonderful the constant push to complicate things never stops. As we get used to a new technology a newer technology arises to create the desire. Wondering since there are no limits to imaginations I guess there is no limit to the technology and no limits to the complications.

HOW HELPING OTHERS HELPS US

Life is a book full of mysteries and you cannot figure out all of it on your own. It’s the smallest things that helps us to learn in life, if carefully observed with the eye of an eagle its possible to notice. Though simple tools that guides and benefits us are hard to find, they do exist. One such small tool is "helping". When someone approaches us for help, its always wise to consider the pros and cons of helping them. But,  the most extraordinary things happen only when we  never think before, doing good to others.

Except for things like

1) Allowing the strangers to use your credit card.(never done this)

2) Giving away your last hundred to a beggar, when other beggars are watching. (Do this if you want to become a star for a moment :))

Though there is humor to helping people in India and sometimes hardship, we can not always get the best out of it. It’s more like paying to some schools, thinking that we are actually going to learn something useful other than the process of memorizing. 

 Anyways, It took a while for me to realize that in any case, helping is never a one way process and whatever you do will come back to you. They are very small that some time we don’t even notice them. It may be as simple as looking for a job for your friend and finding a better alternative for yourself, in the process or on the process of giving the beggar some change we discover that we don’t have enough cash for purchase or trying to book tickets for a friend and understanding the process comes in handy when you need them. But, even the smallest benefit disappears when we help with expectations. The benefit do not show at the same time or moment, careful observance is needed to know the change within and around.  .

About The Book: Three Mistakes of My Life

If you want to be an entrepreneur you can take out few tips from this book. Written by the Author of “5 point someone” and “one night @ the call center”, it has the right mixture for a good book. Though it might sound like a story of a person who could not make it in life. ”the 3 mistakes of my life” is the best book to show you, what not to do as an entrepreneur and also how to manage setbacks. The story happens in the backdrop of Gujarat earth quake and the successive riots.

  It’s about three friends who come together to start a business. It starts out as a sports shop and slowly develops into a sports and stationary shop. As the story progresses so does the business of the three. But, when they dare to think big everything starts to fall apart around them. The shop they buy on the shopping mall crumbles taking down their dream of growth. But, they manage and put themselves together to start all over again. The rest of the story is about the other problems an entrepreneur faces in his personal life.

     This book is written in simple words and will make you laugh at few instances. Thus, keeping you entertained throughout the story. The one main problem in this book is that the story may seems real in the beginning as it goes on, the author seems to have got carried away a little on the reality. Due to this few instances, the story is little filmy and the characters seem unreal. But all the downs in the book become nonexistent, thanks to Chetan bhagats brilliance in narration. On the whole, this book assures to be a good entertainer and a guide for certain entrepreneurs. 

Changing World

                                   Miss those days when I would be fighting with my brother for the smallest toys. Miss those days when we are supposed to share everything in the house, miss those days when biscuits came in big tins, miss the yellow cloth bag. Miss the beautiful cold morning, miss the old cycles that are the only transport, miss the tasty briyanies made by mom,  miss the time when a landline is a blessing and every call is a surprise, miss all the free time that I had when I was young, miss the empty streets of Sunday, miss the days when all that neighboring countries had was rusting guns, miss the pollution free air in the city, miss the sophisticated scooters, miss the excitement of having the only channel releasing the new movies, miss the days when 10rs is all a school kid used to get, miss all the simplicity of life.

courtesy: BBC.co.uk

                                           I loved the days when lack of money kept families together. Loved those days when new clothes once a year are the cheers of families, loved those days when the crows are kept at bay by the lonely guard, guarding the sun dried grains, loved those days when all I had to have is, what the guy next door had to feel like a king. Loved those days when schools where on leave for the smallest drizzle. How can I forget all those days, when a kid felt, he had everything in life with just a torn shorts and an ice cream in one hand.  I am really happy that, I saw it all and sad the coming generation won’t see it. But, is it not the amazing thing about change, it never stops.