Ashwini Dubey's Site

Get the sale as soon as you can. Don’t wait. STRIKE NOW! If there is a customer who fits directly into your target customer segment, do not linger around haggling too much over price and discounting. Go all out and get them unless the demands are extraordinary. Increasing your customer base in the target segment (core target segment) builds a sectoral supremacy for the organization. Not only that, it gives the sales team confidence that the organization is willing to go all out and support them to acquire customers. It gives customers in the segment confidence that this organization is the best option as it is being used my a majority of players in their segment. It is willing to go the extra mile. I have been in negotiations which spanned 6-8 months while haggling over 5% of the initial investment amount. In a particular case, negotiations spanned 8 months and neither we nor the customer was willing to budge as it had become an ego issue for both parties. A sort of ‘who blinks fir

Revisiting Kotler in COVID times!  Since I had more time than usual over the past 2 months, I thought of re-reading Kotler's Marketing Management, the Holy Grail of marketing for B-School students of my generation. This one belongs to my wife of when she did her MBA from IIFT in 2015. Reading this book today when I have almost 10 years of work experience, it gave me a whole new perspective. I felt I am in a better position today than I was over a decade ago in B-School to understand and make use of the strategies and concepts mentioned in the book. Back then, I was oblivious of t he market realities and organizational constraints which every marketer has to navigate. Today with 10 years of market experience in sales & marketing, I feel more comfortable in picking and choosing what I can effect and what I can't effect thereby deciding my strategy. It also gave me a fresh perspective on actions to be taken in times of economic hardships. I came across a few tit bits an

What is satisfaction? How do you define it? How do you quantify it? And perhaps more importantly, how do you ensure it? I am currently with my 3rd organization with whom I have worked. Every one of these 3 are Indian organizations, I promised myself that I will work only with Indian firms. My belief was that Indian firms are not able to scale up and get to the level of other MNCs because all the best managers choose to work in Global MNCs (read companies headquartered abroad). Hence truly Indian firms are left behind with a choice of second rung talent. I vowed to change that. We all seem to speak of 'ensuring satisfaction' - of customers and employees - as Business leaders without really knowing how to quantify it. I have worked with leaders who quantify it in their own way - some with money earned, some with time spent 'at office', some with simply the amount the employee groans. Companies employ their own ways of gauging customer satisfaction and keep changing

He woke up to feel the warm morning sun filtering through the curtains on a bright May morning. The woman was still sleeping, he crawled out of bed, stretched himself and wondered around the room ambling and soaking in the morning. A whiff caught his nose and he ventured in that direction. "Good Morning Casper...." came a sweet serenading sound from the direction of the bed. He looked up to see the Woman awake, still laying in bed and looking lovingly at him with all the lover a Mother could have in her eyes. She was watching him rummage around the felled laundry basket sniffing at clothes and burying himself in them. As she called out his name, he felt something rise in him. In that moment, that very moment he knew, this is Mummy. He leapt up from the pile of clothes and rushed to her, she came to meet him at his side of the bed. As he reached, he put all his might, raised in front 2 paws and put them on the side of the bed and yelped at her, eyes wide and twinkling,

questions, questions, questions! and answers that never seem to come.... Women, to me are the perfect examples of the Chaos Theory - one thing you do wrong now will end up having severe repurcussions later, much later and over and over again. Experience, it seems doesn't teach the Men too much in this case. Maybe we're bound by our actions and limitations. Maybe that girlfriend of yours who remembers what color of shirt you wore on the 17th date and how it wasn't ironed and eas an embarresment is just bat crap crazy. Maybe the boyfriend who kept you waiting on New Year's is an undeserving idiot. Or maybe it isn't so, we don't see it so, the World's a funny place and the people in it are funnier still. Relationship trouble seems to be the biggest trouble for people today. Not the stupid dead end job they're in or the wonders that the burgers, pizzas and aerated drinks are doing to their bodies. Elation, Anxiety, Happiness, Dreaminess and much more in

Its 3 years now! 3 years! That's when I moved out of B-school and into life after. Moving from there to my first job in rural Karnataka, to a bad job and many mistakes made in Hyderabad and to my current situation at home in Delhi. From being physically fit and fine to over 20 kgs overweight. Travelling around to Mumbai, Lucknow, Vishakhapatnam,  Hampi, Goa, Kashmir, Bikaner. The emotional tussles of family, love, hate, break-ups, friendship, lies. And then the unexpected turn of events leading to my house burning down, a car accident and police trouble that wasn't. But yes, I have learnt a lot, about life, about people, about me. I am definitely not the only one who had an eventful life. People I know, people close to me went through a lot. Fell in love, were betrayed in love, lost jobs, got new jobs, lost close family members - a loss nothing can ever make up for, old friends were lost, new ones made, got married, had that one unforgettable incident. A lot happened. The