leadership – AppiVa Software Pvt Ltd

October 22, 2020May 4, 2022

Arrogance: its impact on business

Multiple times I have experienced how the arrogance of business owner impacts the business, as well not having a good marketing strategy can bring bad results for your company,, you need make that your social media grow for this you can check this advises for getting more TikTok likes. This is one of my recent experience that further strengthened my belief on things a businessman should avoid to have a successful business. Also I have experienced how a bad manage of a payroll can bring problems to your business so getting rid of your payroll inefficiency can be something very bad for your organization.

Recently there is a fish shop opened in our area, the owner of the shop known to me. They provide home delivery services. Earlier I used to go out and purchase any fish , but with this shop nearby, I get delivery at my home. The price also comparatively cheap and quality is good. My neighbors also started visiting the shop as quality is good. I generally call him and order the quantity and get it delivered.

And then suddenly one sunday, he disconnected my phone. I thought he must be busy and after 30 mins, I again called him and still he did not pick up the call. I then messaged him in whatsapp that I want to order some fish. Then I got a message back that to order any fish for home delivery you need to call another number. I tried to reach other number and did not have much satisfaction the way it happened. I also felt little bad for not picking up my calls. I finally decided not to order anything from this shop and started again ordering any non-veg items from a local shop nearby.

This seems to be a common phenomenon in my of the businesses. In the early days, they were quite approachable and nice service. But when they grow bigger, during growth period, they started neglecting their core early loyal customers. In turn, loyal customers shift their loyalty, and that is when downfall of the business starts.

In my opinion, a business should always respect and take care their loyal customers. Early stage customers have bigger role for the success of any business. They not only help generating revenue but also fine tune product and business idea.

In our case, one early adopter of ezTask.io, helped creating robust reports and based on these reports, we got some more customers too. I am always pickup any call or whatsapp message from our early customers. In the current situation, Social media has revolutionised the way marketing is done, the best strategy to acquire customers during early days is through work of mouth and it can happen through your loyal customers.

June 30, 2020January 17, 2022

Best ways to manage your sales team – a collection of best practices

Running a sales team is not easy, it needs a coordinated effort among team to get best of individual team members, . We have compiled some industry best practices and by following such practices, I am sure it will immensely help sales people.

Its considered challenging task to manage or balance between encouraging quality performance and pushing sales reps with new goals and also for sure be more environmentally friendly teaching of the members of the team the benefits of paperless paystubs.

Sometimes success depends on your team abilities to meet the task with great performance.

Here are some steps to lead you sales team with lots of motivations and encourage to touch a height of success.

Understanding the meaning and the importance of sales

First thing is to understand what is the importance of sale in order to have a fruitful growth in business.

How sales should be done, what are the important points should be consider during sales.

Without sales, business will die.

For managing a sales you need a great sales team for creating a relationship between customers. Without a team it can not be done.

Having One-on-One

Having One-on-One or individual meeting between you and your team members is most necessary part of sales process.

It helps to understand your team members in and out in personal level and to build a good relationship with them, give managers the ability to keep a pulse on how the the rest of the team is feeling.

Take time to understand your team members, who they are, what motivates them, what they want out of a career and show care.

Paying attention to each team members pay off to great investments.

Being the best leader for another means you must first become the best version of yourself.

While you’re giving your reps candid feedback, allow them the opportunity to do the same. You won’t regret it.

Track progress and success

When you start your sales you need to be update with your success and failure rate, what fails you, how you succeed, everything matters.

You need to define what is win means to your team, because success can only comes with both behaviour and results.

Both are important, works in parallel manners like if you only focus on behaviour how you talks to customers and keep repeating in the same way without knowing if it is the good way to have conversations with customers, in this for you result do not matters whether you win or lose. So its important to have good behaviour which leads to positive results.

Managers importance

As successful mangers leads to successful salesperson.

Mangers play a vital role for developing powerful team. Mangers should be very confident and competent to lead a successful team as a good leader.

Should always have conversations with team, discuss ideas, be happy with the team and never discourage your team

Hire who fits in the culture

It’s all about hiring people who will continue to build on that high-intensity, winning mentality that you created when you assembled your first sales team. Hiring individuals that do not add and complement to the existing culture could break all of the success that the team has had.

Analyse your weak spots and improve them

Every salesperson brings something unique to the table, but they also may lack a skill that is holding them back from the results they want.

So it is important to understand the weakness of each team members and start leverage it.You can assign work to your teams according to their area like in which area they are good and let them work on their weak points by learning from other team members, it builds more cohesion and less tense competition.

Having competition between the team members may leads your sale in reverse direction, so having good relationship within the team members is important.

Practice Before Talk To Real Customers

The most important thing that should be to understand by sales teams is the habit of practicing before they talk to real customers.

Need practicing because sometimes we didn’t know how to speak, what to speak and most important sometimes we are not familiar with the product which we are going to sale, so first practice to understand your product.

Without prep and practice before they start conservation with the customers leads to disaster to sales.

As a leader, if you are not establishing a culture where roleplaying and practice is inspected, then you will allow your sales teams to practice on your customers.

Always explains with an example

Start motivating your team with an important examples so that they can have a clear idea about the process of work, because you are in a leader positions to handle you team, if you gave up then also your team.

Better providing a joyful and positive environment, sometimes mind needs peace for work-flow. Success comes by team when we have clear communication with each other, collaboration of ideas and dependability – let them work dependent to their own ideas and projects so that they can get up with some good strategy which may help in sales, you’re empowering your team to respect and adhere to the same business drive as you have.

September 20, 2018January 17, 2022

Managing Disruptive Technologies in business

Disruptive Technology

Every company in every industry works under certain forces—laws of organizational nature—that act powerfully to define what that company can and cannot do, a well salary for employer is one of those thing that companies have to deal with, if you are business owner you can follow this tips to make sure you are paid well. Managers faced with disruptive technologies fail their companies when these forces overpower them. Lets take a look at history of manned flight innovation. The ancients who attempted to fly by strapping feathered wings to their arms and flapping with all their might as they leapt from high places invariably failed. Despite their dreams and hard work, they were fighting against some very powerful forces of nature. No one could be strong enough to win this fight. Flight became possible only after people came to understand the relevant natural laws and principles that defined how the world worked: the law of gravity, Bernoulli’s principle, and the concepts of lift, drag, and resistance. When people then designed flying systems that recognized or harnessed the power of these laws and principles, rather

than fighting them, they were finally able to fly to heights and distances that were previously unimaginable.

As in the analogy with manned flight, these laws are so strong that managers who ignore or fight them are nearly powerless to pilot their companies through a disruptive technology storm. However, that if managers can understand and harness these forces, rather than fight them, they can in fact succeed spectacularly when confronted with disruptive technological change. I am very confident that the great managers are very much capable on their own of finding the answers that best fit their circumstances. But they must first understand what has caused those circumstances and what forces will affect the feasibility of their solutions.

Here are some of excerpts from the book Innovator’s Dillema

Managers may think they control the flow of resources in their firms, in the end it is really customers and investors who dictate how money will be spent because companies with investment patterns that don’t satisfy their customers and investors don’t survive.

The highest-performing companies, in fact, are those that are the best at this, that is, they have well-developed systems for killing ideas that their customers don’t want. As a result, these companies find it very difficult to invest adequate resources in disruptive technologies—lower-margin opportunities that their customers don’t want—until their customers want them. And
by then it is too late.

As I read the book, I will be publishing some more excerpts from the book. Please keep watching this space.

July 11, 2018July 11, 2018

Quick decision making and task management

Quick decision making and Project Management

This is my first venture. I was a techie, transitioned to tech manager, tech architect, technologist throughout my career. And when I first thought of the idea of a startup, the very first thing that came to my mind was to develop a technology driven product to simplify some of the complex tasks. As part of the job, we use various tools from productivity to project management. Same with sales and marketing, they use different tools for collaboration, tracking, task management etc. The main problem is that there are no common integration point to synchronize information or activities among these tools. Platforms like slack took the advantage of it by providing a simple chat interface for collaboration, with plugins supporting various tools. However, still it did not solve the problem of ontime decision making when multiple stakeholders are part of a task. Imagine you are part of a task that needs to connect with customer, chat and take a decision. And all the message exchange with your customer will be archived part of the task for any audit in future. There will be a summary extractor to show summary of the discussion on the fly. This can be done not only in chat but also for voice based or video based collaboration. And what you get for such type of collaboration

– Firstly peace of mind, as the decision you have taken is already archived and you dont need to explain again and again for any adverse situations.

– Then, you saved resources of chain of calls to take a decision

– Thirdly you saved time

– Lastly, your customer loved it, as s/he does not need to respond multiple times

The main purpose of any task automation tools are to aid in quick decision making by automating some complex processes. Then dynamic/real time report and audit of archived data.

Are there any tools in the market that provides such features?

To summup

If you want to make a profit in the business of sales marketing, you need to get organized to manage tasks from end to end. And there is no better way to that than using software, the choice of right software will make it or break it.

January 8, 2018

Are you scared of starting your own, then this post is for you?

Start your own business

Happy new year 2018 and its time to live your dream. Are you planning to start something new in 2018 and have already thought pros and cons about it. And finally family life, EMIs etc. Finally concluded lets wait for some more time and then will think of my own. Then this is the post for you. Here are collection of 37 quotes from famous people and will definitely give you adrenaline to get started.

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” – Pablo Picasso
“Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Jack Canfield
“You can’t plan for everything or you never get started in the first place.” – Jim Butcher
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Start before you’re ready.” – Steven Pressfield
“A year from now you may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” – Les Brown
“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.” – Ray Bradbury
“You don’t have to be good to start … you just have to start to be good!” – Joe Sabah
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” – Beverly Sills
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” – Henry Ford
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
“The hardest thing about getting started, is getting started.” – Guy Kawasaki
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
“The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.” – Dawson Trotman
“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
“If you have a dream, you can spend a lifetime studying, planning, and getting ready for it. What you should be doing is getting started.” – Drew Houston
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” – Les Brown
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” – Mark Twain
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tsu
“It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.” – Henry James
“The beginning is always NOW.” – Roy Bennett
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot
“All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
“The only thing that stands between you and grand success in living are these two things: getting started and never quitting!” – Robert H. Schuller
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The greatest time wasted, is the time getting started.” – Dawson Trotman
“The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps – we must step up the stairs.” – Vance Havner
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Sally Berger
“He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.” – Horace
“The distance is nothing; it’s only the first step that is difficult.” – Marquise du Deffand
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” – Calvin Coolidge

January 1, 2018January 1, 2018

Influence others and make your friend

Networking and influencing others are the basic necessities for any business. Without too many contacts and networking it would be almost impossible to grow your business. So are these qualities to increase network of influence learned? Here I have listed some of the best techniques used by world’s renowned leaders.

The very first thing that comes to my mind for winning somebody is Dog. You meet him everyday in your street, the moment you are within 10 feet, he starts waging his tail. If you stop and pat him, he will almost jump out of his skin to show you how much he likes you. And you know very well that behind show of affection on his part, there are no ulterior motives: he does not want to sell you any insurance nor any real estate deal. Have you ever thought that a dog the only animal that does not have to work for living? A hen has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk. But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love. This is the first thing we have to learn is loving others without any strings attached.

The second most important thing is listening others and curiosity to know. When a patient visits to a psychiatrist, the most important job of psychiatrist is to listen. They are paid because of their ability to listen. Everybody wants to say. The cheapest thing you can find is the advice. However, nobody wants to listen. The american telephone company once did a survey to find out which word is used frequently and your guess is correct: its “I”, “I”, “I”. It was used 3900 times in 500 telephone conversation.

If we merely try to impress people and get people interested in us, we will never have many true, sincere friends.

The third important thing to succeed in any business is smile. An insincere grin? No that does not fool anybody. We know it is mechanical and we resent it. Here we are talking about real smile, coming from heart, a kind of smile that that will bring a good price in a market place. There is a far more information in a smile than frown.

The person who knows how to use these three characteristics i.e. love, curiosity to know others and love, are always successful in professional life and personal life.

November 16, 2017

Some of the mistakes by entrepreneurs

An entrepreneur is also a human being and prone to error. Here are couple of mistakes I have compiled from internet and are very well applicable to everybody.

Top 10 mistakes Start Up Founder do at the Funding Stage of his/her business; 1. Quickly jumps into every opportunity by not understanding that many are traps.

2. Believing all the discussion will lead to success.

3. Gets disappointed quickly at the time of early rejection.

4. Instantly abusing / blaming the investor if the discussion fails.

5. Communication gap, understanding the requirement needs to be improved.

6. Approaching irrelevant opportunity and push them to listen to their solutions.

7. Glorifying own solutions – Particularly when it is a IT based solution. Underestimating other domain or non tech space.

8. Always looking to connect instantly with the opportunity without understanding that the person on the other side also engaged with other commitments.

9. The mindset of others not understanding the importance of their solutions. Mis-interpretation, Mis-quoting of others words.

10. Needs to know the difference between the investor and middle men.

April 1, 2017

Hiring for a Startup : A challenge

Hiring resources is always a challenge for recruitment team. But when you are hiring for a startup then the challenge is doubled and risky too. The very first thing for an early stage startup is to have good resources for product development. A good resource also needs too remuneration, package in addition to good facilities. However for a startup, such facilities are not available and its difficult to provide such packages to attract talented resources. But one thing that is guaranteed in start is challenging work. A startup can challenge an established enterprise in terms of innovation. Big enterprises always advocate for innovation but when it comes to actual implementation, they look for a case study or two for the idea to make sure that the idea can work. But when you are executing an idea after verifying case studies then its not innovative idea. As per wiki “Innovation can be defined simply as a “new idea, device or method”” that means its “new”. When we are talking about a “new” entity, then its quite difficult to get case studies. But big enterprises cannot work, AFAIK, on an idea which is not implemented or its not proved that this will work. But startup are completely different, they are headed by people of ex of some big enterprises where they failed to convince their higher authority to implement the idea. Then they start a startup to execute the idea, which is innovative. Coming back to my hiring strategy, its always a risk. In the beginning, I started working with freelancers. One good thing about freelancers is that they will create an impression that they can take you to the moon and its their pastime to do that. However, it reality its quite opposite. I remember, I once recruited a freelancer from Delhi to create REST apis using PHP. Though I had to throw the whole code base into dustbin due to poor quality of code but I still remember her words “If you pay for a maruti car, you cannot ask for a BMW car” that means the buggy code is fine as the payment for the work is less, but it was a good payment too. What a logic. I then started working with interns, in the beginning got some good interns from KIIT University. These guys are really good and created a framework for my android project within 6 weeks, thats truly an achievement from a student in final semester. After interns I tried to recruit full time employees. It was a good experience. In Bangalore, there are lots of fresh engineering graduates looking for job. But all of them cannot be recruited and cannot start from day one. They need training and mentoring to be productive. I generally dont conduct interview, rather give them some assignments and based on their performance I take decision. When you know how to use google then its almost not an issue to do any assignments, thats exactly happened. Some candidates beautifully completed assignment in technology which they dont know anything. I was happy that I got some good candidates but alas. That is the experience, I have till now. But some engineering graduates are really good and I can say its luck that matters to get a good fresh engineer for your startup. That is the story.

March 2, 2017

Choose yourself :: Can it be possible?

Its been a while since I last time wrote a blog, though I want to pen thoughts in different platforms but running two families, my family and my startup, at a time squeezes my time.

Recently I started reading a book “Choose Yourself by James Altucher“, a nice book for aspiring entrepreneurs. In childhood, we do what our parents want us to do, then in young age, we again by parents, teachers and also a part by girl friends. In the process, we got accustomed to other’s command and wish that we forgot about what exactly we want. In the job, we just got carried away against our wish by project, manager, work pressure etc. Our very own desire gets covered by parents, teachers, girl friend, manager, etc. And finally when we try to start our own venture, we try to do things based on our past experiences, always seeking others instruction, permission and approval. But when somebody rides a boat, then its captain to decide the direction in smooth ride ans also in rough sea. It’s like telling someone with hundreds of thousands’ worth of plastic surgery to instantly go back to looking how they used to look. Their body no longer knows how. I kept kissing ass. I kept falling down. I kept being dishonest to my needs inside.

I would like to add a paragraph borrowed from book here

“When you give up searching for frontiers, inevitably you end up stuck in
a swamp, sinking deeper into the mud the more you struggle to get out. I’m not sure that analogy holds, but you get what I mean. Success comes from continually expanding your frontiers in every
direction—creatively, financially, spiritually, and physically. Always ask yourself, what can I improve? Who else can I talk to? Where else can I look?”

This is absolutely correct, its you and you to drive your own boat by looking into opportunities and increasing your boundary in each and every direction, then only your chances of getting opportunity will be more and more. The moment, you stop increasing your boundary then your area of opportunity will get squeezed by others. Others will overtake you and the the era of “Choose Yourself” will be “Let others decide”.

October 16, 2016

JCI Chanakya 2016

I just attended JCI Chanakya Bizz 2016, this is the first time I attended such program to pitch my startup. I have mix of experience from my participation. The whole volunteers of this event are very supportive, especially Mr. Karan. I was bit scared of facing in stage with host of high profile investors. I did not attend to get funding but to get experience. There are couple of feedbacks that I received will be remembered for long and will be my guiding force

Focus on one item and pitch for that idea. Dont mix too many ideas
This is very early stage to look for funding and its better to “GO-TO-MARKETING” and experience the real world
Entrepreneurship is always a path of difficulties and high chance of getting injured but dont lose the track and keep your head up.
There is always uncertainty and your passion will make it success

It was really a nice learning and will remember it.