Monday, August 11, 2008
NY Times and Sexism
I normally make it a point to discuss only topics pertaining to my journey as an entrepreneur on this blog, but had to make an exception this time to focus attention on the audacity and blatant sexism displayed by NY Times. They classified and printed this article about Women bloggers in the Style and Fashion section! I can't imagine a similar article about male bloggers being printed anywhere other than the technology section. Perhaps they were trying to prove the point many of the attendees at the conference made about being ignored and patronized by the media.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Salesmanship
When I started my first company, I was convinced I hated sales. I disliked the idea of selling something a person does not really need, but ends up buying because I was glib. I questioned the ethics of it, and told myself that I would never be a good salesperson because of this. Boy was I wrong! Well before I acquired my first customer, I realized that practically EVERY aspect of running a business involved sales. I was constantly selling something or the other - an idea, a product, a vision - to someone or another, be it the software engineer, a partner or an investor.
Why I remembered this today - I stumbled upon this really interesting blog post titled "What I learned buying a rug in Turkey". I found myself relating to a lot of the author's experiences and educated myself about the psychology and science behind it. I am looking forward to reading Robert Cialdini's book. I will post a review when I am finished.
Mr. Weisburgh's post reminded me of my own experience recently when we were visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. In order to minimize pollution and for security reasons, vehicles are not allowed close to the Taj and the nearest parking was a fair distance away. When we reached this parking lot, we were besieged with people offering to take us to the entrance using various means of transport - a golf cart, an EV, a horse carriage, and a cycle rickshaw were our options. The horse carriage and the rickshaw drivers got our attention appealing to our emotions - they pointed out this was their livelihood and will likely forgo a meal if we end up picking the golf cart. Having effectively whittled away our choices, the rickshaw puller played the emotional card further asking us to choose between feeding a horse versus a human being. We were effectively trapped though I had misgivings about a man doing the work of a horse - the road had a slight slope and it was no easy task for one man to haul 300+ pounds of our combined weight.
We had negotiated for one way transportation only since we were trying to get to the Taj as quickly as possible before it closed for the evening, and had planned to take a leisurely stroll back enjoying the cool evening breeze. When we reached the entrance, several things happened. Looking back at it after reading Mr. Weisburgh's post, it was classic salesmanship that I experienced, without recognizing it.
1. Reciprocation: During the ride, the rickshaw driver informed us that electronics such as cell phones and iPods are not allowed inside the Taj for security reasons and to make sure we leave them at the lockers provided if we didn't want to be harassed by security people. He also made it a point to mention that potable water wasn't readily available inside the Taj, and to make sure we take our own when we go in since it was a particularly warm day. We were very grateful for this advice, particularly since it was spot on.
2. Commitment and Consistency: The driver told us that all of the entrances would look alike once we were inside, and to make sure we retrace our path and come out of the same entrance if we didn't want to be stranded a long hike away from the parking lot where our car was parked. We couldn't deny the logic of this advice and committed to coming out the same entrance, and out of consistency, agreed to meet him when we returned since he said he would wait for us.
3. Social Proof: The driver was so grateful for the business that when he clasped his hands together to profusely thank us, who were we to say we won't give him our business on the return trip?
4. Liking: The driver provided helpful tips on how to get the most out of our Taj visit and built a rapport with us before he successfully talked us into riding his rickshaw for the return trip.
5. Authority: He told us he was born and raised in the area and had been in this business for a number of years and therefore had inside knowledge of the Taj, thus establishing his authority.
6. Scarcity: Knowing that time was scarce and if we had walked we would have made it barely 10 minutes before closing time (as the rickshaw driver pointed out) made the rickshaw ride more compelling.
I bet the rickshaw driver hasn't read Cialdini's book. Successful salespeople just seem to know the tricks.
Why I remembered this today - I stumbled upon this really interesting blog post titled "What I learned buying a rug in Turkey". I found myself relating to a lot of the author's experiences and educated myself about the psychology and science behind it. I am looking forward to reading Robert Cialdini's book. I will post a review when I am finished.
Mr. Weisburgh's post reminded me of my own experience recently when we were visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. In order to minimize pollution and for security reasons, vehicles are not allowed close to the Taj and the nearest parking was a fair distance away. When we reached this parking lot, we were besieged with people offering to take us to the entrance using various means of transport - a golf cart, an EV, a horse carriage, and a cycle rickshaw were our options. The horse carriage and the rickshaw drivers got our attention appealing to our emotions - they pointed out this was their livelihood and will likely forgo a meal if we end up picking the golf cart. Having effectively whittled away our choices, the rickshaw puller played the emotional card further asking us to choose between feeding a horse versus a human being. We were effectively trapped though I had misgivings about a man doing the work of a horse - the road had a slight slope and it was no easy task for one man to haul 300+ pounds of our combined weight.
We had negotiated for one way transportation only since we were trying to get to the Taj as quickly as possible before it closed for the evening, and had planned to take a leisurely stroll back enjoying the cool evening breeze. When we reached the entrance, several things happened. Looking back at it after reading Mr. Weisburgh's post, it was classic salesmanship that I experienced, without recognizing it.
1. Reciprocation: During the ride, the rickshaw driver informed us that electronics such as cell phones and iPods are not allowed inside the Taj for security reasons and to make sure we leave them at the lockers provided if we didn't want to be harassed by security people. He also made it a point to mention that potable water wasn't readily available inside the Taj, and to make sure we take our own when we go in since it was a particularly warm day. We were very grateful for this advice, particularly since it was spot on.
2. Commitment and Consistency: The driver told us that all of the entrances would look alike once we were inside, and to make sure we retrace our path and come out of the same entrance if we didn't want to be stranded a long hike away from the parking lot where our car was parked. We couldn't deny the logic of this advice and committed to coming out the same entrance, and out of consistency, agreed to meet him when we returned since he said he would wait for us.
3. Social Proof: The driver was so grateful for the business that when he clasped his hands together to profusely thank us, who were we to say we won't give him our business on the return trip?
4. Liking: The driver provided helpful tips on how to get the most out of our Taj visit and built a rapport with us before he successfully talked us into riding his rickshaw for the return trip.
5. Authority: He told us he was born and raised in the area and had been in this business for a number of years and therefore had inside knowledge of the Taj, thus establishing his authority.
6. Scarcity: Knowing that time was scarce and if we had walked we would have made it barely 10 minutes before closing time (as the rickshaw driver pointed out) made the rickshaw ride more compelling.
I bet the rickshaw driver hasn't read Cialdini's book. Successful salespeople just seem to know the tricks.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Thoughts on salesmanship
I was reading an article about the importance of sales in any organization and that got my mental wheels turning. I figured I could use my blog as "lessons learned" ledger, so here's what worked for me when I was trying to sell my Smart Shopping Solution to grocery stores:
- First and foremost, confidence in my product and sales skills. It was uncanny how people I was making my sales pitch to could instantly pick up when I was less than completely confident.
- Characterizing and selling my product as meeting an unmet need, as opposed to a "want". Sounds simple enough, but it took me a couple of failed pitches to figure this out.
- This one took me completely by surprise, but in hindsight make sense: having a competitor is VERY important on a couple of levels. Potential customers get uneasy when they think they're guinea pigs for a new technology or a new product. The more adventurous will try to use that to their negotiating advantage. Plus, it's really hard to make a case that you're fulfilling a need and not a frivolous want when you claim there's no other company in the world that does what you do!
- Fairly basic lesson learned during my days in corporate America trying to communicate with people who are not involved in the nuts and bolts of engineering the product, basically any one who was not an engineer and a co-worker: describe the product in terms of benefits to the target audience, not features. No matter how cool, or gee-whiz-bang the feature is, save it for fellow geeks who actually get the"it's not a bug, it's a feature!" joke.
- First and foremost, confidence in my product and sales skills. It was uncanny how people I was making my sales pitch to could instantly pick up when I was less than completely confident.
- Characterizing and selling my product as meeting an unmet need, as opposed to a "want". Sounds simple enough, but it took me a couple of failed pitches to figure this out.
- This one took me completely by surprise, but in hindsight make sense: having a competitor is VERY important on a couple of levels. Potential customers get uneasy when they think they're guinea pigs for a new technology or a new product. The more adventurous will try to use that to their negotiating advantage. Plus, it's really hard to make a case that you're fulfilling a need and not a frivolous want when you claim there's no other company in the world that does what you do!
- Fairly basic lesson learned during my days in corporate America trying to communicate with people who are not involved in the nuts and bolts of engineering the product, basically any one who was not an engineer and a co-worker: describe the product in terms of benefits to the target audience, not features. No matter how cool, or gee-whiz-bang the feature is, save it for fellow geeks who actually get the"it's not a bug, it's a feature!" joke.
Monday, March 10, 2008
A key ingredient for a successful start-up...
...is its people. From my personal experience, hiring part-timers does not work for multiple reasons. It's easy to lump all the reasons under "lack commitment" but that would be an unfair generalization. Part-time employees have a commitment to their other job that cannot be discounted or shrugged off (particularly when I expect the same commitment to the position I hired them for!), a bigger juggling challenge to achieve work-life balance and often, conflicting priorities which are equally important. I believe happy people make better employees and consequently, no surprise when I found myself in full agreement with this blogger and his post. With that said, no part time employees for me at my next start-up unless faced with a dearth of options. Perhaps I should look at contracting out positions. What do my readers think? Either post a comment below, or send me personal email. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Once a geek, forever a geek
An ambulance siren and an innocent observation triggered my train of thought this morning about the Doppler effect. It eventually got to the point where the geek in me HAD to know the Doppler formula, and the keyboard being more convenient and handy than pen and paper, I went online to find it. Which is when I stumbled across this totally cool, awesome website.
Bernoulli's equation and the Venturi Flowmeter were the next perfectly logical stops to my mind, and to my delight, found those too! The geek in me totally revels in the content on this website, and wishes it had been there when I was swotting for yet another final exam. It would've been a great entrepreneurial idea back then.
Bernoulli's equation and the Venturi Flowmeter were the next perfectly logical stops to my mind, and to my delight, found those too! The geek in me totally revels in the content on this website, and wishes it had been there when I was swotting for yet another final exam. It would've been a great entrepreneurial idea back then.
Travel's more convenient these days, with Virgin leading the way
I came across an announcement about Virgin's new charter service on Techcrunch. I also learned this factoid:
"Twenty-five years ago, stuck in Puerto Rico after a canceled flight to the Virgin Islands, Branson found a charter plane and went around the airport with a blackboard that advertised a charter flight for $39 per person. He filled all 50 seats, and that is how he started Virgin Atlantic."
Pretty cool! Now there's a website that connects the consumer with charter flight operators, and importantly, allows leverage of this information by offering "Hot Deals". "Hot Deals" are basically flights that were chartered for one way trips and will be flying back empty to their home base, therefore any revenue generating passenger is better than none.
I was even more encouraged when I came across this operator. I would definitely consider flying from Dubai to NYC on a private charter aircraft, with all business class seats and fully flat beds, checking in 30 minutes before the flight at a private terminal with no serpentine security check lines for less than 4200 USD, round trip.
Now, I am looking for a company that will let me combine different modes of travel to optimize my travel by time or cost or convenience (child friendly would be great!). For instance, instead of flying San Francisco to London Heathrow and connecting at Heathrow to Rome like we did recently, a more sensible itinerary would've been to fly non-stop from San Francisco to London, and connect by train/chunnel to mainland Europe and onwards by Eurail to Italy. I even explored booking this itinerary but was put off by the complexity of figuring out flight/train/shuttle departures, connecting logistics across foreign geographies and the realization that I will be completely on my own trying to figure out Plan B in a foreign country with linguistic barriers, if my Plan A doesn't execute perfectly. Perhaps it's time to build another start-up....
"Twenty-five years ago, stuck in Puerto Rico after a canceled flight to the Virgin Islands, Branson found a charter plane and went around the airport with a blackboard that advertised a charter flight for $39 per person. He filled all 50 seats, and that is how he started Virgin Atlantic."
Pretty cool! Now there's a website that connects the consumer with charter flight operators, and importantly, allows leverage of this information by offering "Hot Deals". "Hot Deals" are basically flights that were chartered for one way trips and will be flying back empty to their home base, therefore any revenue generating passenger is better than none.
I was even more encouraged when I came across this operator. I would definitely consider flying from Dubai to NYC on a private charter aircraft, with all business class seats and fully flat beds, checking in 30 minutes before the flight at a private terminal with no serpentine security check lines for less than 4200 USD, round trip.
Now, I am looking for a company that will let me combine different modes of travel to optimize my travel by time or cost or convenience (child friendly would be great!). For instance, instead of flying San Francisco to London Heathrow and connecting at Heathrow to Rome like we did recently, a more sensible itinerary would've been to fly non-stop from San Francisco to London, and connect by train/chunnel to mainland Europe and onwards by Eurail to Italy. I even explored booking this itinerary but was put off by the complexity of figuring out flight/train/shuttle departures, connecting logistics across foreign geographies and the realization that I will be completely on my own trying to figure out Plan B in a foreign country with linguistic barriers, if my Plan A doesn't execute perfectly. Perhaps it's time to build another start-up....
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Made in India - Software as a product company
It came as a breath of fresh air to read about an entrepreneur who has successfully built a software product out of India for the global market, and is competing with household names elsewhere. Even more impressive were the following facts:
- This is a 100% bootstrapped effort, with no outside funding.
- Some of the "engineers" who are coding this software are high school graduates with 9 months of training. Without this job, the prognosis for the future of these individuals is not particularly encouraging. I applaud this social element which Mr. Vembu has successfully combined with the financial success of his venture.
More about Mr. Vembu and his venture can be found here.
Ms. Mitra has published an interview with him on her blog.
I first stumbled across Zoho at the Web 2.0 expo held in San Francisco from April 15 through 18th last year. It piqued my curiosity since Google had not rolled out the spreadsheet functionality completely, whereas Zoho had a spreadsheet program I could use. I played with it for a while and though I liked it, found Google more convenient since I am already a Gmail user. I returned to their website recently after reading the Forbes article and found that they have introduced a whole slew of applications since. I am sufficiently intrigued to check out "Zoho show" and will post a review soon.
The one thing that struck me as unusual is that Zoho is competing purely on price. Few companies, if any, have managed to sustain growth and profitability with pricing as their sole competitive advantage. With software in particular, once the code is written, debugged and staff salaries paid, there are no limits as to how low the price can be slashed by a competitor. Even a penny per customer is a profit in this case, unlike physical commodities where rock bottom pricing will equal lowest manufacturing cost. It remains to be seen how Zoho fares and whether the Googles of the world will bankrupt the Zohos by offering the software free, since their revenue stems from elsewhere.
- This is a 100% bootstrapped effort, with no outside funding.
- Some of the "engineers" who are coding this software are high school graduates with 9 months of training. Without this job, the prognosis for the future of these individuals is not particularly encouraging. I applaud this social element which Mr. Vembu has successfully combined with the financial success of his venture.
More about Mr. Vembu and his venture can be found here.
Ms. Mitra has published an interview with him on her blog.
I first stumbled across Zoho at the Web 2.0 expo held in San Francisco from April 15 through 18th last year. It piqued my curiosity since Google had not rolled out the spreadsheet functionality completely, whereas Zoho had a spreadsheet program I could use. I played with it for a while and though I liked it, found Google more convenient since I am already a Gmail user. I returned to their website recently after reading the Forbes article and found that they have introduced a whole slew of applications since. I am sufficiently intrigued to check out "Zoho show" and will post a review soon.
The one thing that struck me as unusual is that Zoho is competing purely on price. Few companies, if any, have managed to sustain growth and profitability with pricing as their sole competitive advantage. With software in particular, once the code is written, debugged and staff salaries paid, there are no limits as to how low the price can be slashed by a competitor. Even a penny per customer is a profit in this case, unlike physical commodities where rock bottom pricing will equal lowest manufacturing cost. It remains to be seen how Zoho fares and whether the Googles of the world will bankrupt the Zohos by offering the software free, since their revenue stems from elsewhere.
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