I am in Oslo, its snowing. I could see a white city through my Radisson window. I dared to walk in the snow, explored a bit and came back thinking I might not take prolonged cold weather.
I caught up reading a book, currently I am reading a book titled ‘How to become CEO’, I am liking it because it is full of practical examples and many a times questions normal wisdom of B-School teachings. I am also reading ‘Build to Last’; where the articulation is about how visionary companies are built and how they sustain themselves even after their charismatic leaders move on.
Also, my last night dinner with Chairman of IONNOR was full of business talks, about building the business, importance of mentors in life and all about importance of strategic thinking.
Week full of learning!!
But, sitting in front of fire place this morning made me to reflect about the journey called life, its surprises and its twists and turns. When you think you understood the puzzle of life, there comes a new twist, which makes you feel, life can’t be understood as a whole (Don’t worry, I am fit, fine and there is no change in job and life as usual :) ) I reflected about my goals and ways to achieve them; what it takes to reach there.
Want to come back home, I am missing India!!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Managing customer relationships
American and Indian companies signed deals worth $10 bn on the first day of US President’s visit to India, underlining the increasing role economic ties will play in relations between the two countries.
I was wondering, why such deals get announced when a high profile visits like this? Actually, I was trying to draw a parallel, not comparing apple to apple; however trying to reason out a pattern. Why visiting customers result in to business?
In my experience so far, whenever there is a business trip to customer site, there tends to be some activities happening and I ended up closing some business. Lets understand, from all practical purpose, why this is so?
In my opinion, it’s more of a relationship building and providing a face to the voice you have been hearing. You are working with a customer over years and you tend to build a strong relationship. And then your trip comes to meet the customer, and customer’s confidence in you greatly increases and this results in business. It is not just as simple as this, its complex but this is more of a high level explanation.
There is few fundamental things one need to do. We need to talk what customer wants to hear, rather than pushing my agenda. If you get down to a level where you try to understand the issues your customer is facing on an operational level, mapping those to requirements become very easy. Actually!!
The companies who do it quite effectively have managed to get more business from same customer and have developed them in to multi-million accounts through cross and up-selling. TCS and Cognizant have proved that with sheer focus towards customer relationship will result in to more loyal customers.
On the contrary some companies think its waste of time and money to spend towards customers. I failed to understand the thinking behind this.
Business is all about building stronger relationships.
I was wondering, why such deals get announced when a high profile visits like this? Actually, I was trying to draw a parallel, not comparing apple to apple; however trying to reason out a pattern. Why visiting customers result in to business?
In my experience so far, whenever there is a business trip to customer site, there tends to be some activities happening and I ended up closing some business. Lets understand, from all practical purpose, why this is so?
In my opinion, it’s more of a relationship building and providing a face to the voice you have been hearing. You are working with a customer over years and you tend to build a strong relationship. And then your trip comes to meet the customer, and customer’s confidence in you greatly increases and this results in business. It is not just as simple as this, its complex but this is more of a high level explanation.
There is few fundamental things one need to do. We need to talk what customer wants to hear, rather than pushing my agenda. If you get down to a level where you try to understand the issues your customer is facing on an operational level, mapping those to requirements become very easy. Actually!!
The companies who do it quite effectively have managed to get more business from same customer and have developed them in to multi-million accounts through cross and up-selling. TCS and Cognizant have proved that with sheer focus towards customer relationship will result in to more loyal customers.
On the contrary some companies think its waste of time and money to spend towards customers. I failed to understand the thinking behind this.
Business is all about building stronger relationships.
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