Category: Sales & Marketing


I’m a cleanliness freak – to the extent of cleaning up my Facebook wall. Over the last week, there’s been a lot of spam with wall messages that read: “Hahaha! Mine is hilarious. Check out yours”? Familiar? Yes, that silly app which tells you how you would look in the future. I never tried it, but tired of the requests, I urged friends to avoid it via a FB update. 13 people liked it, but I only hope its the latter of these 2 messages it conveys: how awful I look, and how useless that app is. (I take everybody’s privacy too seriously, hence some masking)

My Status Update

Still wondering what 13 people really liked?

Publicity fail

That application – whatever its name is – is a complete fail in terms of its messaging. Understand the scenario: that app is sending me a persuading message to try it on a friend’s recommendation. The least I expect is View full article »

Jargon: Wedding test

In my reading I came across this funny thing called the wedding test. It involves checking for the male customer’s wedding ring when he’s shopping. The ring signals a very high likelihood that purchased goods will be returned on account of being dejected by the female partner. I’m not being a chauvinist or hinting how complicated & choosy women are, but its funny if this is now part of the sales curriculum. Sure that this makes Inside Sales far more challenging!

Were excited about our 100th post!

This is our 100th post!

It’s the 100th post on prasadgupte.com and it’s time to celebrate! For long, I envied the Americans for having Groupon until I realized that there are several deal of the day websites – in fact, with better business models – to serve us. I have been a regular user of these websites, having bought at least 15 deals totaling over INR 15,000 with overall savings of 69%.

5 reasons to save your riches with these shops

1. It saves money: What’s more important that saving some money?
2. It’s easy: There is no upfront payment to receive these deals – they’re delivered to your phone & mailbox for free.
3. It’s safe, either ways: I have always (knock on wood) had a good experience transacting on the internet, and these sites are safe to use as they transact over a trusted gateway. If you fear spending online, you can always have the coupons delivered to your doorstep – free of cost!* So its safe either ways.
4. Keeps you aware: One huge benefit I found out of following these deals (even if you don’t want to buy) is that it keeps you aware of the new places in town and the margins that you can possibly cut in when striking a deal.
5. It’s cool: There’s no reason to be shy – like my dad likes to make me feel. It’s any day cool to be spending smart!

I’ve put together a list of the creme-de-la-creme in the order of *my* choice:

1. DealsAndYou

DealsAndYou

DealsAndYou

I purchased deals worth Rs. 9100 for Rs. 2593. This is one of my favorites! The website is neat, and the deals are fabulous. They take the entire payment upfront – so its a deal in the real sense as against a discount coupon. It covers for roughly 60% of my deal spend and growing, ever my trust in the brand was bolstered by their quick justification email. View full article »

Jargon: Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovation describe innovations that tend to get competitors jump out of their seats. This is something – highly desirable – that the market has never seen before. Wikipedia gives the example of lowering price, but undercutting is a relatively common phenomenon. However, ‘designing for a different set of consumers’ is quite apt.

It is every product manager’s dream to conceptualize a product, or at least a feature that does creates such a wave in the market! And if you ever happen to be at the receiving end of a product demo – like the one that I usually deliver – this is the best compliment you would give. Cheers!

Jargon: RFx

RFx is a generic term used to refer to a ‘Request for’ some document. Most commonly, that document is a proposal, quote or information and in rare cases for the bid, thus the acronyms RFP, RFQ & RFI. These are used by companies to seek information from vendors in order to analyze their solutions and ability to meet the business needs.

View full article »

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