How to do “more” Marketing with fewer people

“I wish I had more time and more money” – this is something we eternally hear entrepreneurs and business heads saying a lot! If you are one of these people, be assured that help is at hand. Read on to know how to get more hands and brains to work for your business, allowing you to do and get more done.

With reference to marketing initiatives, many businesses still shy away from taking the first step. Some of the successful businesses say they have got thus far on the engine of great sales, so why waste precious time on Marketing. Some others definitely want to get their marketing function working better but are intimidated by the idea of hiring, managing and directing a team of marketers. Some others still are simply daunted by the thought of increased investment in marketing, without knowing when or how it will start paying back some ROI.

We have numerous instances of clients who have held back from rolling out even basic, cost-effective marketing initiatives  - such as email newsletters or social media presence. Why? Simply because they don’t know how to get started or how to sustain the effort, when it completely depends on their own time/availability.

We, at Inception, do understand this hesitation. We understand that when you build a brand and business with painstaking effort, you don’t want sporadic attempts at your marketing effort to confuse your target audience. If one had unlimited resources and expandable managerial bandwidth, perhaps it is possible to hire the best marketing talent and also put in required time to get things moving the way one wants. But buckling under resources constraints, we see businesses that let the status quo remain.

Hear it from us here - why you don’t have to let it go at that!

The comforting truth is that today, given the spurt in new ways of collaboration and interesting ways to outsource work, you don’t need huge budgets or a fancy marketing team to get your marketing initiatives see the light of day.

Freelancer, ODesk and Elance are some places where you can find efficient and effective freelancers to take over many parts of your marketing execution. Just be mindful and  pick someone who has a credible track record of completed work on the portal and also who understands/belongs to a similar diaspora as your business or target market.


Another relatively recent trend is to hire an entire marketing team on an outsourced basis. At IBS, we offer growing businesses an option to hire us as their marketing teams. We take on multiple marketing projects or even very specific marketing activities to help diffuse the bandwidth clogging faced by business owners. We bring not just specific individuals who will think, plan and execute a client’s marketing function but a team of enthusiastic marketers to back them up and handle the every day nuts and bolts work that goes into marketing.


Talking to us at Inception will get you not just an “agency” but a Marketing Ally - who works with you to set your marketing goals, helps you figure out what kind of email marketing would work for you, how your social media pages could be used better and not just that – what is your overall budget for getting everything done. Early on, we figured that growing businesses have a limited pocket and whether they are paying our fees, the email marketing software cost or FB ads  - the money all needs to come from the same place. Which is why, we come to every client with a CMO mindset. Our first job is to translate what you say you need from Marketing into specific areas of work that are best likely to deliver those results. And then see what are the best ways to do so within your overall budget.

Are you still finding excuses to not spend time on your marketing? Start somewhere simple - like email marketing or blog & content or social media. Now you know, where to find the right kind of help :-)
           

About the Author:  

Pavithra is Founder & Partner at Inception Business Services. A Marketing & Management professional with a keen interest in people and passion for ideas, Pavithra moved from being a Banker & Wealth Management professional to entrepreneur. Working with start ups, Brand management, Customer engagement, Content creation and Coaching/Training are areas of work that most excite her. She is a multi-tasking entrepreneur, mother of a 4 year old and wife of a businessman. Mail her at pavithra at inception.net.in. 

Who needs a CMO

Being a Consulting & Outsourced Marketing firm, we at IBS get to meet business owners with varying sizes and types of businesses - from bootstrapped start-ups to profit-making mid-sized companies and even the large companies. One of our key observations is that, no matter what the scale of the business, marketing as a function and area does not always get the required attention.

This is not just the case for new age/digital marketing areas like social media or inbound marketing, but this issue spans across time spent in basic marketing thinking like brand positioning, value proposition to creation and deployment of marketing collaterals and communication.

The comforting truth is that today, given the spurt in new ways of working and collaboration, interesting ways to outsource work and available options, one does not always need huge budgets or a fancy marketing team to make all of this happen. To flip the question of this very blog's title - perhaps we should really ask “Who doesn't need a CMO?”

A CMO typically supports the Business Owner/ CEO by thinking, planning, strategising, executing and recalibrating the various aspects of the organisation’s marketing. She would help prioritise spends, research and understand the customer needs and help translate the business vision into an actionable marketing plan. She would add the tools needed in the organization’s marketing arsenal, choose the best vendors to work with and manage the results one wants from Marketing for the business.

So why don’t many organisations have a CMO yet? High hiring costs, requirement to spend time in on-boarding the CMO, lack of a basic team to support the CMO in her execution, or maybe it is not a full time requirement right now, the reasons could be many.

For such organisations, working with a shared or outsourced CMO-on-hire is a great solution at the current life stage. By doing so, they can:

1. Get access to this kind of talent at a portion of the cost
2. Get access to a full-fledged team of marketers without having to invest in the people or infrastructure
3. Begin with the end in mind - get a sense of metrics, what to measure and so on for what gets spent on marketing
4. Invest little to reasonable time from the CEO / Owner level to make this happen

At IBS, this is one of the core ideas with which our journey began. By offering this very service – of an outsourced CMO or outsourced marketing team to growing organisations, we are able to ease a significant part of the business owner / CEO’s bandwidth. This in turn, allows them to do more with their time and resources. It is also a very fulfilling proposition as it gives us a sense of tremendous ownership and satisfaction, when our work directly impacts the intensity and quality of an organisation’s marketing efforts. Needless to say, there are challenges and constraints in the model, that need to be addressed right from the start. Nonetheless, given the benefits, we increasingly find, quite a few business owners, who are ready to embrace the idea of an outsourced CMO.

If you would like to understand how this works, give us a call or mail in to inception@inception.net.in, We have some interesting examples of how CMOs-on-hire work. Besides, we love nothing more than talking to different businesses and understanding their approach or expectation from marketing as a function.

About the Author:  

Pavithra is Founder & Partner at Inception Business Services. A Marketing & Management professional with a keen interest in people and passion for ideas, Pavithra moved from being a Banker & Wealth Management professional to entrepreneur. Working with start ups, Brand management, Customer engagement, Content creation and Coaching/Training are areas of work that most excite her. She is a multi-tasking entrepreneur, mother of a 4 year old and wife of a businessman. Mail her at pavithra at inception.net.in. 

WORKFORCE DIVERSITY CAN HELP YOUR BUSINESS

At Inception Day, the People Panel saw a lot of interesting aspects of attracting, managing and retaining talent for start-ups and growing organisations being discussed. Moving on from gender diversity, the discussion also looked at diversity of other kinds – religion, language and origin. This prompted this blog on what workforce diversity really does for your business.

Organisations today, are supposedly more aware of the need for gender diversity. (At IBS, we are guilty of maintaining a rather skewed one which not surprisingly is currenty in favour of women!) Are women more suitable for working in start-ups or early growth companies because of their inherent instinct and emotional make-up? Perhaps more women are at liberty to opt for alternate careers or perhaps they rate smaller companies and start ups higher because of flexibility options? Whatever the reasons, there was no doubt that a healthy gender balance is a very good standard to work with. As our Keynote speaker K Pandia Rajan shared, at Ma Foi, they had always strived, from Day one, to keep the gender ratio at 48-52% at all times. This he felt had been an important rule while building a world class HR services organization.

But diversity of the workforce is not only split two ways by gender. Especially in India, diversity by means of religion, language or mother tongue, origin state – the list is quite interesting.

Here is a quick cheat sheet of sorts for you to know what Workforce diversity can or should be doing for your business.

·         As are your customers, so be your employees:

      One of the key learnings at my earlier organization (HSBC) was that customers are a diverse lot. And in any direct to customer business, a similar diversity in the workforce is often a useful tool to help your employees connect better with different sub-groups in your customer or target audience.  This was reiterated during the People Panel discussion at Inception Day. A couple of participants felt that their retail business was better oriented to service customers from different backgrounds because they had store staff from similar backgrounds.

·        Balanced needs:

      When it comes to workplace expectations, a diverse workforce may force you to create a more holistic workplace. Having a diverse team can also aid you in running your business at top gear right through the year since different groups would need time off at varying periods, particularly in the context of the wide array of festivals celebrated by different communities.

·        Better Insight:

More perspectives culled from employees of varying background can be very useful in gleaning customer or other business insight. A workforce drawn across a wider spectrum of communities can be the simplest way to get access to varying outlooks with reference to your business.

·        Global ready:

      If your business has anything remotely international about it, a diverse workforce is a great stepping-stone to ensuring you have a culture with the basic ingredients for being global. Global or multinational organization building begins right here!

·         A Neutral Culture:

      A diverse workforce is a very good way to ensure that the organization’s culture is not dominated by any one group or community, or even completely flavored by your own ideas (if you are the main owner/promoter). While we all tend to impose our conditioning upon the businesses we build, a team that is drawn from across multiple communities and backgrounds can help temper this and push towards a more neutral culture. This is probably healthier for the organization in the long run.

     

      (And oh well, here’s one more reason that is on the lighter side and definitely one for the foodies. Imagine the sheer range of culinary delights that you could sample in the office just by ensuring you have people from differently communities and sub-cultures J)

You don’t need a whole bunch of reasons, as long as even one of these appeals to you strongly. It may seem easier to work with people who are just like us. But the benefits of pushing ourselves beyond this comfort zone and ensuring workforce diversity are far too many to ignore.

We are going to be thinking a lot about this even for our own firm. How about you?

About the Author:  

Pavithra is Founder & Partner at Inception Business Services. A Marketing & Management professional with a keen interest in people and passion for ideas, Pavithra moved from being a Banker & Wealth Management professional to entrepreneur. Working with start ups, Brand management, Customer engagement, Content creation and Coaching/Training are areas of work that most excite her. Multi-tasking entrepreneur, mother of a 3 year old and wife of a businessman, Pavithra confesses that her 2013 resolutions include being regular with her blog writing and any encouragement in that direction is welcome. Mail her at pavithra at inception.net.in. 

People for Start-ups

CAPITAL P

While doing my research for this article, I was amazed! When you type ‘resources for start-ups’ the most common and top of the line entries focus on financial resourcing, idea resourcing, design resourcing and so on. So little has been said about ‘people resourcing’. Getting the right people is half the battle won, for after all, they are the ones who will take the company forward.

Here are some important things to keep in mind while hiring for your organization.

Sharing the vision:

In this day and age of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Job sites etc. it is easy enough to get applicants to see and apply for a job at your company. However, irrespective of which level you are looking to hire for, an important criteria in the process should be to ensure that the candidate shares your company’s vision and truly believes in your proposition. The candidate should understand the values on which you have established your start-up, the path you chose to expand the business and be able to identify and contribute to these through his or her own skills. Fantastic growth and hence immediate increase in pay, on-the-job perks etc. are things that many candidates look for when they join start-ups. While growth in Start-ups is definitely faster, the expectation of immediate rewards can lead to disillusionment and disappointment in newly hired candidates. So while recruiting for your start up, remember to give a balanced picture and focus on the vision rather than on the compensation.

The Law of Averages:

When recruiting for your start-up you will find a lot of young talent applying for the positions. While it is tempting to hire fresh young candidates to keep the enthusiasm and energy going, it is equally important to have a few seasoned employees on board. Senior team members tend to bring in a practical angle and are great at handling relationships given their years of experience. They discern the possible and the probable and add tremendous value with their insights. The cost of such resources may be higher but well worth the investment. The ultimate goal is to have a good mix of young talent that is enthusiastic and buzzing with ideas and having experienced hands giving direction and shape to the organizations development. Once the balance is achieved, you have a winning workforce!

Equity- A start-up’s best tool!

What happens when you start a company with minimal capital and are keen on hiring talent? Today, the trends are shifting towards offering a part salary and a part equity stake. Many start-ups are extremely successful in attracting the right talent by offering compensation through equity- wholly or partly. The advantage of this set up is that often you will end up attracting those who are genuinely interested in the company’s business model and want to be part of it. “The people you want to attract to your business are the people who want equity”- Bill Harris, founder of Paypal (See what else Harris says here). People come on board for the challenges that the start-up offers and are happy to be compensated for their work through equity. As an owner, you are also sure that your liability is limited to the performance of the business and are not taking on the burden of fully salaried employees.  The flipside to this though, maybe that your relinquish decision making to some extent. However, if you can find a perfect trade-off, this approach may serve you very well in the long run. You can read up on how to calculate equity here.

Keep looking- even if you are not hiring right away

Almost every guide on hiring for start-ups has this point. And yet I believe it is not emphasized enough! From personal experience, I have seen that keeping your mind and doors open can land you resources you would have missed out on had you believed otherwise. So many hires happen without it being part of the plan. If you meet a like-minded person who you think will fit into your business scheme (maybe not today but sometime in the future), express your desire to have them on board. Even if they do not consider it immediately, they know that there is an opportunity open to them to consider. And even if they will never consider it, they may know others who will form a good fit for your organization. So stay open to networking, not just for business but also to procure the right talent for your organization.

People contribute directly to the organizations performance, and hence getting the right people and offering them adequate reason to stay will put your company’s growth on the right trajectory!

If you’d like to read up some more on hiring for your start-up, here are some reference links:

http://www.instigatorblog.com/8-things-to-look-for-when-hiring-startup-talent/2010/04/14/

http://www.instigatorblog.com/10-steps-sourcing-startup-talent/2010/04/13/

http://www.instigatorblog.com/startup-recruiting/

For more interesting perspectives on People and Talent for start ups and young organisations, join us for Inception Day on 1^st June 2013. Our People Panel promises to be a great forum for talking about this. To confirm your participation at the event, click here: http://event.ayojak.com/event/inception-day-2013

About the Author: 

Madhumita Ganapathy  - Associate Consultant at Inception Business Services

Madhumita is a brand marketer known for her exuberance and zeal for getting things done. An MBA grad, Madhu started her marketing career at ITC and has been with IBS since mid-2012. She has contributed immensely to shaping  some of our young client brands. She now supports us in her new role as Associate Consultant based in Connecticut, USA. Apart from her passion for brands & marketing, Madhu loves classical Indian dance, travel and writing.

Connect Madhu on LinkedIn.
or

Connect with her via email at madhumita@inception.net.in

LOOKING IN AT CULTURE – MY YARDSTICKS

Most organizations boast of having a culture. And no one is wrong when they do so, because every organization does have a unique identity and a way its employees perceive that identity. Organizational Culture, as defined on businessdictionary.com, is “the values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization”.

Removing all the jargon from this definition, what it really boils down to are some basic questions. What does the organization believe in? How does it react to employees who may not share the same beliefs? Do the employees feel proud and happy to work for the organization? Or is it one long dreary engagement between two unlikely entities?

So much has been written on organizational culture and matching the employee and the organization and so on and so forth, yet we find a high number of dissatisfied, disgruntled and positively unhappy employees around us in this corporate world. So here are some of my yardsticks to evaluate or understand an organization’s culture – looking in from the outside. Starting from the first job these yardsticks are valid and have value in every transition made.

1.      The Start

There was once an interview I attended where the interviewer questioned me for about 45 minutes. When I stepped out I felt like I had just committed a felony and had been interrogated instead of being tested for my knowledge on the relevant subjects.

Many companies approach the interviewee with the idea of stressing them out, purportedly to understand the individual’s capability. However, my view on this has always been that jobs in the corporate are not ‘life-endangering’ and ‘constantly under stress’. Compare a job in marketing or finance to one in a hospital- as a surgeon or a nurse. People quite literally perform under stressful conditions there! However in business you have time to evaluate your options to approach a problem in the best way possible, especially jobs at entry and mid-level. So the concept of stress interviews never has made sense to me.

2.      The People

When you walk in through the door, you notice a lot of small little things- the décor of the office, the arrangement of cubicles, a professional air around the place and so on. Yet, to me, the most important and palpable vibe comes from the people. When you sit down and the interviewer asks you if you’d like a glass of water, you know they think a little beyond themselves. Trivial and obvious as it may sound, there are many places where the interviewer may dispense with this or other cursory politeness. This for me is a no-go. The demonstration of care begins from minute one. Because culture is not something that begins when you join or stop when you leave – it is the cumulative effect of many such small behaviors.

3.      Scope to Learn

Unless you are at the point of retirement, every job will have a learning curve. The biggest challenge for most organizations is to keep this curve steep for as long as possible. When evaluating a job, I believe, figuring out the organization’s attitude towards encouraging learning is critical.

If you choose to pursue a course to improve yourself, would the organization support the move? Would the job give you enough time at work to read up and research the latest in your field of work? Would it be viewed as something one should do on one’s own time? Answers to these questions would help in assessing the organization’s attitude towards enhancing your learning experience. And this is for me an integral part of the work culture.

4.      Your Peers

Our experiences at our workspace are largely defined by our peers. How your colleague responds to you will essentially make up how you are going to behave in the organization. When your peers guide you, encourage you, and help you learn the ropes you know you have the right support system. Additionally if you can use them as sounding boards for great ideas and they respond to you, you know you have struck gold! What is important here is the fact that the organization is an eco-system comprising of you as well as others. The better you vibe, the better your experiences in the organization.

5.      Your Boss(es)

This seems like a no-brainer in the organizational culture context. Statistics say that amongst the most common reasons people are looking to quit their jobs is the fact that they are dissatisfied with their bosses. They associate a plethora of problems linked to poor leadership. You can read some instances here. So what is seemingly obvious is for some reason not so obvious. When you join a organization you look for leadership and direction but on a more personal level, you look for challenging tasks, fulfilling work allocations and appreciation- all of which the boss will hand out. So often, organizations invest in building a culture and then fail in maintaining it because of a few bosses who believe otherwise! Culture is as great or weak as it is in the hands of your managers.

To some the above points may seem like the makings of an ideal and perhaps unrealistic work culture. But truly, culture-wise, there are many organizations today that are consciously investing in giving their employees the best they have to offer. Some offer work-life balance, while others offer a great work atmosphere, while still others offer great learning opportunities. When you see the right mix of some of these aspects; you can be sure that the organization has taken efforts to build its culture with great care.  

If you lead an organization, you may want to relook at some of these points to take a reality check on what prospective colleagues read about your culture when they meet you.

Write in to us with your thoughts on building or evaluating culture, especially in start-ups and growing businesses. We think it is a very important aspect of building a sustainable organization. Which is why some of this will be discussed in our People panel on Inception Day on 1^st June 2013. Read more about that here. For Event details click here: http://tinyurl.com/adktfmz and for Registration click here: event.ayojak.com/event/inception-day-2013

About the Author: 

Madhumita Ganapathy  - Associate Consultant at Inception Business Services

Madhumita is a brand marketer known for her exuberance and zeal for getting things done. An MBA grad, Madhu started her marketing career at ITC and has been with IBS since mid-2012. She has contributed immensely to shaping  some of our young client brands. She now supports us in her new role as Associate Consultant based in Connecticut, USA. Apart from her passion for brands & marketing, Madhu loves classical Indian dance, travel and writing.

Connect Madhu on LinkedIn.
or

Connect with her via email at madhumita@inception.net.in

CROWD SOURCED FUNDING – AN INTERESTING WAY TO FUND YOUR BUSINESS IDEA

You wake up one morning and it hits you. The product or service that wants to get created stands in front of you and beckons you. Sure enough every entrepreneur has faced this moment - the moment your idea stares you in the face and awaits your efforts to make it a reality.  And it is here that your journey begins- you hit the drawing board and plan how you want your product or service to take shape, who are the people you want to rope in and what your ultimate goal is going to be about. And that’s when you realize you need a lot more than your idea- you need money. 

It’s a common journey for most entrepreneurs. While the ideas and resources required may vary from case to case, the common need for most is the dough (so to speak). A lot of entrepreneurs begin with investing their own savings, mortgaging assets and borrowing from friends and family. Yet there’s that point where one realizes- this just isn’t enough. Additional funding is the only solution to this roadblock. The options available today are numerous ranging from bank loans to Angel investors to Venture Capitalists and so on. 

However, the focus of this article is an interesting angle to fundraising. Kickstarter.com is a US based fund raising platform that provides tools to raise funds for creative projects.  Launched in 2009, Kickstarter has had over 96,000 projects that have been launched on their website since their inception. While you can read more about Kickstarter.com here, in this article, I am focusing on what it really stands for and how you as an entrepreneur can fund your project using a similar concept.

The basic model is that of crowd sourcing funds. You have a fabulous idea and not enough monetary resources. Wealth, on the other hand is distributed. This is not about a few big Angel Investors or VCs trying to make money by giving you a boost. It’s about the number of people who believe in your idea and are willing to back you up with their own small contribution. 

The core concept of Kickstarter hinges on the idea of connecting likeminded groups of people- when you find a set of people who see value in your proposition, they will (literally) put their money on you. It brings together people who are genuinely interested in seeing ideas through and helping people achieve their fund raising targets. It allows participation of a multitude of people who may not have millions of dollars to throw into a project and yet can be a part of a fabulous, one-in-a-million idea by contributing as little as $5. The rewards offered, give them the feeling of having and owning a badge or a title of an investor and the chance to receive uncommon, project-related merchandise. The promise of an early preview or early benefits in association with the business idea drives individuals to make the contribution and opt into a cause they believe in. And most importantly, it makes this group of investors belong to a community of those who have contributed. In marketing parlance one could say this model attracts the innovators and early adopters. In many cases it even attracts the early majority.

So if you have a fantastic idea waiting to see the light of day and your biggest constraint is money, just look around- you may find that there are many who believe in your idea and are willing to invest in it in their own small ways. Build a fundraising program that is inclusive and accessible to a large group of interested investors and ensure that you make them part of your journey. The quantum of money one can bring in is not necessarily a criterion for an ‘investor’. Ensure that one can donate a minimum amount (based on the tiers you set up) and yet become part of the project. Attract the ‘right kind’ of people to invest in your idea. Design the fundraiser to catch the attention of those with interests similar to your business’s idea. Passion for similar things often leads to heavier investments by individuals. 

It definitely beats the other option of doing an Initial public offer hollow ! Without the hassles of regulatory shenanigans, you can get access to a large base of investors. The one thing you must remember is that when you crowd source funds, you owe every investor the courtesy of being accountable to them especially because they don’t have the big regulators protecting their interests. You got to respect that. 

When you begin to look around, figure out the value you can deliver to an investor at various levels of investment. Include them into your grand plans and reward them with exclusive previews, merchandise, access to resources or whatever else you can offer through your business idea. You will be surprised at how many people are actually interested in making things happen for your business! Insignificant as a small contribution may seem to begin with, remember the saying little drops make an ocean!

(For more ideas and perspectives on how to fund your business, register and attend Inception Day 2013 and catch our panel discussion on Finance & Funding. Click here to know more.)

About the Author: 

Madhumita Ganapathy  - Associate Consultant at Inception Business Services

Madhumita is a brand marketer known for her exuberance and zeal for getting things done. An MBA grad, Madhu started her marketing career at ITC and has been with IBS since mid-2012. She has contributed immensely to shaping  some of our young client brands. She now supports us in her new role as Associate Consultant based in Connecticut, USA. Apart from her passion for brands & marketing, Madhu loves classical Indian dance, travel and writing.

Connect Madhu on LinkedIn.
or

Connect with her via email at madhumita@inception.net.in

Keep it Simple Silly!

Here is another blog from team IBS and one that is written by me after a long long time!!! 

So what is it that took me so long to break this jinx? Was it that I had something called a writer’s block as Mr. Stephen King calls it? No, I write my own personal blog at regular intervals. Was it that I did not find a suitable idea? No here too. There are a lot of ideas I get on and off which come as special brain waves and I have this “aha” moment where I want to wake up at 00:00 hrs and write about them (like I am right now) but when I start toying with that topic in my mind, I simply cannot find enough substance to add to it. I mean I don’t want to just go ahead and write a blog on 4Ps and 5Qs (;-p).

But here I am sitting in the middle of the night and furiously typing away (it is a pleasure to be typing away on a Mac anyways!) all thanks to Mr. Joel Spolsky (do not fret if you do not know him or have not heard of him as I did not know of this name till two days back!). This blog is prompted by a book he has written called “Smart and gets things done!“. No this blog is not about the book (I will write about this in my personal blog maladhalani.blogspot.com) but I would however recommend this book HEAVILY and it has to be one of the best books I have read.

This blog is about communication. I want to share here a few things, basics as I would refer to them, of communication which I think Mr. Spolsky has used so effectively in his book (it took me just three hours to finish the book and no it is not a suspense thriller, it is a book on how to hire people but I simply could not put it down!).

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Image Source & Courtesy: 

http://www.gocomics.com/features/search?search_string=calvin

#1: Simplicity

There is simply no substitute for simple language! It may be that you have memorized the oxford dictionary cover to cover or you simply like to keep the thesaurus word map open when you are typing something, but using heavy vocabulary is just plain inefficient! Nothing like getting your point across to someone in a simple language all the time making sure that the person reading/listening to you is understanding what you are saying the way you want it to be understood. I must admit it is quite a difficult thing to do!

#2: Humour

I am going to try and jog you down your memory lane a little bit and ask you to compare an important and serious lecture to an important but humorous lecture. No doubt on which one you remember and which one brought a smile to your face even now. Research also shows that after having laughed human beings are at their maximum level of focus. (Nah! That’s a bull crap statistic!!). It’s just so much nicer to read something or listen to someone who has included humour in the context. I am not suggesting making something frivolous here for the sake of it, but you will agree that just making someone laugh certainly ensures you of his or her attention (and happily so!)

#3: Directness

Just get to the point and do not beat around the bush. There is no need to give 10 examples to explain something when one is sufficient. Chances are that if someone does not get what you are saying the first time they will never get it! So unless there is a very strong reason for you to repeat something or explain with more than one example, don’t do it!  You are certainly putting off all the smart people and the dumb ones are not going to get it anyways!

So this is my long due but heart felt blog on communication and a few things to make yours effective. There are books that have been written on communication and I am sure a lot of them serve great value but these are just some thoughts inspired from Joel’s book. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Please do share your thoughts.

- Mala Dhalani

About the Author:

Mala is Partner at Inception Business Services. A Management & Marketing professional, Mala believes in the power of higher thinking as well as the power of on-ground execution. A voracious reader (check out http://maladhalani.blogspot.in) and a talented dancer, Mala is happiest when she is out there meeting new people, exchanging ideas and helping to make the world a better place.