B1 Integrated Marketing

Product Versus Services Selling – Part 2

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In Product Versus Services Selling – Part 1, I’d highlighted three differences between IT product and services selling. In this second part, I’ll cover two more differences and examine the implications of these five differences on the way forward for the Indian IT industry. #4. PROSPECTING V. CLOSING According to the popular narrative, it’s easier … Read more

Gartner Publishes Our Article About Hootsuite

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We’re happy to share with you that Gartner has accepted our recent article about Hootsuite for publication on its prestigious peerinsights review portal. As many of you would be aware, Hootsuite lets you view all your social network feeds on a single dashboard and cross-post updates to different social networks from a single screen. Hootsuite currently … Read more

Product Versus Services Selling – Part 1

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This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: At the highest level, “selling is selling is selling”. Sellers of both product and services need to convey the value of their offerings and get paid in return for the value. Because of this, many tech founders think that there’s no … Read more

Six Secrets Of Making Jargon Work For You

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jargon /ˈdʒɑːɡ(ə)n noun special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand. Many people go by the above dictionary meaning of the term jargon and rant against it. They forget that jargon is also an abbreviation. Click here to see examples of jargon from various fields. This is … Read more

Indian IT Industry Needs Better Quality Sellers & Marketers, Not Engineers – Part 2

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I’d concluded in Part 1 of this blog post that the Indian IT industry has the optimum quality of software engineers. My assertion was based on the work done by the industry so far since its inception in the early 1990s. In this second part, I’ll examine this topic from the perspective of the work likely … Read more

Indian IT Industry Needs Better Quality Sellers & Marketers, Not Engineers – Part 1

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This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: Short Answer: The Indian IT Services industry has optimum-quality software engineers, neither low- nor high-quality. Long Answer: Before I launch into my long answer, here are a few assumptions: “Software engineer” refers solely to coders employed by mainstream Indian IT Services … Read more

Why Do People Lie With Charts?

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In Three Ways To Lie With Charts, we saw the following tactics: Slippery Slope Slide Floating Origin Fraud Dual Axis Deception The most common reason for people to lie with charts is that they are shilling some product, service or ideology and run into facts that derail their pitch, so they need to lie to continue … Read more

Social Media Customer Service – Use It But Don’t Abuse It

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Frequent readers of this blog and people who otherwise know me would be aware that I’m a big fan of social media customer service. Many years ago, I wrote Customers Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But The Call Center Hold Music to explain why I found the channel very effective for reaching out … Read more

Five Ways To Stand Out In A Highly Competitive B2B Market

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This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: Given below are five things that you, as a seller of a B2B product or service, can do to stand out from your competition in a highly crowded B2B market. Respond to inbound leads received via your info@company.com email address. From personal experience … Read more