Blog
Words. Wisdom. Winners.
Seeking sponsorships
Ever since our TV Campaigns went off, the deluge of sponsorship emails has been uncanny. However, what came in today, caught my attention. I rarely respond to such emails unless they catch my attention in the right manner. This one did too, though not for the right reasons
Original Email
|  7:53 PM (11 minutes ago) | | ||
| ||||
From: edited <edited@gmail.com>
Date: 23 December 2012 19:47
Subject: Fwd: sponsorship proposal
To: sponsorship@edited.com
- Writing an email, is an art. Never forward an email, unless absolutely necessary.
- Make the email personal, especially if you are writing in for the first time. A quick 5 minutes search would have told you who the head of marketing, or the head of the organization is. Address the email to them. Name them in your email. This goes a long way!
- All emails should be 100% accurate in grammar. Else they lose respect, even if they were truly genuine. You are from one of the best colleges at DU and I would expect the highest standards of written vocabulary from such a student
- Last, but not the least – realize that you are asking someone for their money. This money has most likely been earned through a lot of hard work. Establish why this money will be best utilized, when you ask for it. There are 100 other colleges and 100 other avenues, of spending this money. So why you. A document cannot answer that. You can!
What the surgery taught me
I ran yesterday – for the first time in 8 months. It hurt, quite a bit. The leg is clearly weak and reminds you that natural healing doesn’t happen overnight.
However, I didn’t tell anyone that it hurt. Because of which even I forgot about it after a couple of hours. And the day went just fine. As if I had never run!
And that’s been the biggest lesson for me – in the past 8 months. I don’t know if the surgery was a major one or not. I don’t know how many people go through this AVN jazz. In my head, it was something that had happened to me and I had to get it sorted. Just like any other challenge that comes your way.
I didn’t amplify it. I didn’t talk about it a lot. And suddenly, even if it was supposed to be a big deal, it wasn’t! People took it normally. Most forgot about it. Most didn’t even realize that something that happened.
It was as if I altered the truth, through my perception. I changed how the world (and I) would react to a situation – by changing it in my head. And it worked!
No one offers their sympathies. No one says, “sorry to hear about the surgery”. Which they would have perhaps, had I made it a big deal in my head. Had I perceived the situation to be worthy of sympathy in my head.
I have always been impressed by the power of the human mind. This entire experience just reaffirms that belief.
I ran today too. It didn’t hurt one bit!
The 30-Day Acknowledgement
If there is one thing that life after ISB has made me realize, it’s that work will never stop. I am a workaholic, I love my work and work always assumes priority over most other things.
The unfortunate victims of this realisation become friends and family.
Hence this 30-day acknowledgement.
Over the next 30 days, I will pick up one individual everyday and send them an acknowledgement email. The individual will Ofcourse be someone whom I should have stayed in regular touch with, perhaps am already, but I don’t really take out the time to express myself the way I should. And the acknowledgement will be for the good times we have spent together, the things I have learnt from the relationship and the things I miss.
I hope to get a part of myself back through this exercise. And say thanks to people who have had an influence on me.
Starting today….
What have you lost being an entrepreneur?
A regular pay check?
Company of people smarter than you?
Stability of a big firm?
Time with family?
Time with friends?
Time with books?
Time for yourself?
Your hobbies?
A mind free of thoughts?
And what have you gained instead?
A smart entrepreneur will always find a way to balance the losses and gains. For him, the losses don’t exist. They don’t happen. They are merely excuses by people who claim to be entrepreneurs but would have had these losses even if they weren’t!
Entrepreneurship isn’t an excuse to cut off from the world. It’s a choice. To control your losses.
Key challenges – the famous slide!
Fantastic anecdote by Ravi, while at Wipro.
Change of management – new head of sales is brought in. Super sharp. Direct. No nonsense
Meeting with top management. One gentleman presents a slide, with the title “Key challenges”
New head stops the gentleman. “Whose challenges are these?”
“If you as top management cannot solve these challenges, you expect me to solve them for you?”
One of the biggest lessons I have learnt
Dont ask for anything, till you havent done all that you should have and could have!
What is entrepreneurship
I was at ISB Mohali this weekend. Fantastic experience – lovely new campus, enthusiastic bunch of students, wonderful weather, the ISB touch visible all across! One of the clubs had invited me for a talk on entrepreneurship. And I found it best to summarize what it was about, by walking them through their own journey.
It was in March 2011 that I went to ISB Mohali to capture the progress of the construction in my lens. Visiting the campus in its (almost) end state was a perfect salute to the start of ISB Mohali’s entrepreneurial venture. The ISB is truly unlike anything else we have seen in the globe, when it comes to education! Mohali is the 2nd venture and poised for as grand a success as its first one!
What your customers will never tell you!
The Internet has a fundamental problem. You don’t get to meet your customers. They only call you or write in. And when they do so, they only share what they have been through. What they will never share, is how they feel!
Experience is factual. Can be described, can be written about, can be talked about.
Feeling is emotional. It can only be felt!
Which is why I would never rely on a telephonic interview.
Which is why I would, if it were to me, have a customer event, everyday!
What next?
What next is an extremely easy question to answer when you are starting up. There are problems to solve, growth to be achieved, paths to be discovered and segments to be scaled.
It’s the hardest question when you are big.
Replace starting up and big with something new and something old – and you have a situation spanning everything in life. Relationships, money, career – whatever you can think.
I am guessing the ones that succeed are the ones who never ask what next. They just keep starting up. Even if it’s the same thing.
“I Understand” doesnt work
Its the most fucked up statement in the world. Doesnt mean anything and clearly doesnt show any intent.
Whosoever says “I understand” most likely doesnt. Else he wont be saying this in the first place!
What drives cynicism in customers?
On any given day, I receive 30-50 emails from customers. I would bucket them in 3 categories – positive feedback (about things that are right or wrong with crazeal – these emails basically help us improve), enquiries (please tell me how to) and complaints (I had a bad experience on crazeal)
The complaints category is the most fascinating. What stands out is the inherent cynicism. More often than not, a complaint to me is the first instance of the customer reaching out to us. But even in this first touch point, their starting assumption is that no one will hear them. So the emails almost always end up with a – you better solve this else I will report this to the customer court and splash it all over social media.
Why would they react this way? Why would the very first email end up with a threat? When you don’t even know if the company is serious towards solving your problem or not. I can completely understand the threat in the 2nd contact, if the issue remains unresolved or worse still not responded.
My only explanation is the fact that this complaint email is not the first instance, but the second. The first one was the experience itself. And we failed there. It makes our job harder because we rest a lot on the merchant to deliver the right quality. And if the merchant fucks up, we fuck up (and rightfully so).
Here is my humble request – drop the cynicism on the first instance. Give the company a chance. Just one. Maybe the bad experience wasn’t planned. Maybe the company wasn’t there out to dupe you. Maybe, just maybe, they didn’t mean harm at all. It was an honest mistake.
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