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This photo shoot was done by iLeadFarmers Team.

But no one was bothered to know – “What will happen to me when I reach at 10 yrs of experience level?”

I think this is not that important question, the main question is why people cannot learn new things when they get more experience. I know that one ready made answers to such questions are always applicable and available – “Its Human Nature”. I do agree but should not we need to do something about it, because if your expertise is restricting you to learn new things I wont consider it a Good.

The solution to this problem is – Unlearning. Yes, we need to learn the art of unlearning. This will raise one more question – how to unlearn something. The answer to this question may sound like another diplomatic one but the fact is – You cannot unlearn anything. I am neither trying to be funny here nor trying to confuse you.

If you have noticed I used the word ‘Art’ of unlearning not the ‘Science’ of unlearning. The maximum one can do is keep a control on whatever you learn, so that when needed you can just trigger the unlearn button. At this very point of time reading this blog if another question has already hit your brain, I assure you that you are going in right direction. How to control the learning part? By Asking question and trying to find out reason/logic for whatever you learn. Accept the logic but do not accept the tradition of acceptance.

If you have not understood completely, this means you have deeply learnt the process of learning through examples and now you cannot learn things without examples.

If you use – “Check please” instead of “Bill Please” at any restaurant without knowing the difference. You are experienced enough to unlearn. Most of us give tips to the waiter at restaurants (knowing that the service tax is already included) but do not pay tip to any other service provider like auto wala, any cinema multiplexes. Have you ever noticed to any Indian restaurants (even the branded ones) they put the plate for roti to the left side while we eat roti from right hand? Why a salesman wears a neck tie even in dead hot summer. It means we are just following the tradition without knowing why we are doing this. Everyone follows everyone, majority wins.

This is the reason why more than 90% of students run for MBA schools without knowing what expertise will help them in future. This is the reason why students blame their MBA schools for not getting placed but do not blame their high school when they get second division. This is the reason why people think only their food/culture/religion is good. This is the reason why companies find it difficult in hiring and firing people. This is reason why the ratio of innovative solution provider to existing solution provider is less. This is the reason why there is a commission model only for sales and marketing professional but not for developers. And this is the reason why companies fail to sell.

And this is the reason why people fail to unlearn and learn.

Confused???   Write to me shashi@ileadfarmers.com

Shashi Sudhanshu, CEO, iLeadFarmers

Shashi has worked in the Business Development and Project & Product Management profiles in organizations such as P&O Nedloyd (now Maersk), EDS and Morgan Stanley. You can view his profile athttp://in.linkedin.com/in/shashisudhanshu

What sets him apart is his ability to think clearly and his earnest approach towards whatever he does. He still retains a child’s ability to think unadulterated & uncomplicated which makes him provide solutions for seemingly impossible problems.

He is a powerhouse of positive energy and brings direction and motivation to this young & dynamic organization- ILEADFARMERS (www.ileadfarmers.com)

While I was compiling all these raw data into some piece of information I realized that now I am getting answers to all those questions which used to keep jumping on some wires of my mind all the time few years back. And I believe you might not have realized it but these are your questions as well:

How does a startup start

You wont believe but the answer to this question is a huge list. Falling in love with the word entrepreneur, searching for better career option after 10 years of experience, doing something of my own, giving a shape to my brainchild, wanted to launch my killer concept, what about my business management degree, wanted to add a new line of business to my father’s group of companies, when funding is there ideas come along, the only option left to leverage my expertise in the domain, my 20 years of experience, it was high time, I am born creative, take risk and make money was principle and it worked, wanted to change the world, Its big contribution to society, I have great business connections, The trio worked –three of us are best combination, have a state-of art solution, best alternative to my stupid boss, its all about money, well it started from freelancing………and list goes on. One thing I realized is that it doesn’t matter what made you start your company, but what matters is what plan of action you have and how great your idea of implementation is. Does it need a lot of money to start a business…and the answer is ‘No’ then what it takes – passion, courage and a vision. Getting funds is not an issue , the issue is how much. If you can sort out his issue you are done.

For how long one can be called as startup

The biggest irony of Indian Software and IT business is that if you ask the CEO what’s your company’s mission and vision – he will say ‘well that was drafted by my web development team and you can read it on ‘About Us’ page on our website. If your mission and vision are copied pasted from some good website and just lying on your Aboutus.html I am sorry to say but you will remain a start-up for lifetime. If survival  is more important than expansion you are still a startup my friend. I have also seen people love to call themselves a startup even after being in market for 3 years just to negotiate on price with their vendors. The answer to this question is most commonly used diplomatic and vague one  – ‘ well it depends’.  Have you ever heard of terms like – mid stage startup or final stage startup..NO because if you go by literal meaning of this its just the early stage of your business where you are drafting a plan to align your vision/ mission with implementation. As soon as you start implementation phase you cross your startup stage. One more thing I have noticed is that people do not call themselves as a startup as a matter of pride instead they use this word just to grant an excuse for themselves.

What’s Next?

More than 90% of my prospects are fighting this battle of life to find out the answer to this question. Most of business starts with their personal connection, they get business from them, get moral support, get their energy boosted up, everything is fine, some get business from connection’s connection, but what’s next. Either you are finished with your personal contacts to get enough business or being lucky you get a long term AMC type contracts but the main questions still hold the root in ground – what’s next?

Last month I was attending a live press conference of Steve Jobs where he was talking about signal drop issue with iPhone 4. He accepted that there is a minor issue with iPhone 4 but Apple is such an established brand where consumer expects miracles and there expectations are right. By this statement of Steve Jobs I realized that the challenge everywhere, in fact it keeps increasing as you grow and probably that’s the main reason why most of the CEOs are not able to handle these challenges. Keeping the graph up in first quadrant  on your report card is the real challenge. The vision needs to be segregated for each phase of your business then only one can keep moving as there is absolute no end of success. Everyone is creative in India, but  keeping a continuity in creativity is something rare and that’s what the key is. I wish my India should not just become a junk box of Big Fat Startups but its should be a house of Big Fat Economy Leaders.

Shashi Sudhanshu

CEO, iLeadFarmers

This was so important, I was so consumed with running the company operations that I forgot to dream…to think……..there was no time…………….or did I just get complacent?

Your company is now set, client have rolled in, money is rolling in……………..its happy time…………and for every entrepreneur it’s a joyous moment. As an entrepreneur myself I recognize this feeling of content and satisfaction…………….gives you a warm feeling inside your tummy, makes you feel like thanking God, Parents and all entities that blessed you and contributed to this wonderful period and then eventually curling up and fall asleep.

It’s a phase, a phase of self satisfaction and complacency after which there are 2 directions that every entrepreneur must choose- one is to remain complacent and just sustain the current operation OR grow & expand….and get ambitious.

It is hard to start a company, it is hard to become successful as an entrepreneur and after the enormous struggle it usually feels good to take a break and relax. But, how do we decide when to take a break.

My struggle point would come to a complacency phase when my company achieves a brand name in the industry and Pulls projects automatically through it. I have put a huge amount of effort in branding for my company. My zero budget branding strategies have worked well and have created a good buzz about iLeadFarmers. Probably, this contributed to the stability of this company in a very short time. But, we still have a very long way to go.

Nevertheless, I feel that reaching the complacency phase is a very individualistic for every entrepreneur and is totally dependent on personal thinking, drive and motivation. For me my company is a very personal thing and its success/failure has its strings attached to my life’s objective, dream, principle, self-image…………rather than just earning bread & butter. So, probably the complacency phase may not even happen in this lifetime.

Take Infosys for example, it was a very long struggle for Mr. Narayan Murthy. If you read his biography or Ms. Sudha Murthy’s writings you will understand  the feelings & objective of Narayan Murthy as an entrepreneur and his feelings behind starting Infosys. For him the complacency phase did not come even when the company became one of the top IT providers in the world. This case is certainly not of bread & butter but of an extraordinary entrepreneur who made “establishing this company”  a purpose of his life. This is a quote by Mr. Narayan Murthy- “I want Infosys to be a place where people of different genders, nationalities, races and religious beliefs work together in an environment of intense competition but utmost harmony, courtesy and dignity to add more and more value to our customers day after day.”

Maybe, this is the reason why all companies do not become Infosys, probably they do not have wilful entrepreneurs to parent them.

So, what are we exploring in this blog, I am trying to understand the mind of an entrepreneur and the point of complacency……….at what point does one stop struggling, at what point does one stop pushing the company and why?

May be you will have to fix an appointment with yourself ……….yeah go ahead, go to Outlook and send yourself a meeting request and explore this viewpoint OR just fall sick for a few days like me and think about it

Cheers!

Pranali Vichare

Founder

iLeadFarmers

As I loitered around in the light rain poking at muddy puddle to find if anything is teeming with life, I felt relaxed and could go back memories when I just started iLeadFarmers.

It has been so much fun, just like loitering around in the rain poking at puddles & turning stones to find business for my company until finally I was able to find the right path and thread it to success.

It been 6 months I officially started iLeadFarmers, 2 months prior to that went in thinking & building courage to leave my job & take the jump into entrepreneurship. 8 months of concentration, deep thinking, focused effort, learning rapidly and coping with change which has finally translated towards something positive & concrete.

iLeadFarmers officially started in its own office on  Jan 2010 and is founded by Pranali Vichare & Shashi Sudhanshu (CEO, iLeadFarmers), both pass outs from MBA-IT Symbiosis.

After working in the Marketing & Business Development domain in the Software & IT industry we decided to do something worthwhile and find purpose & meaning to our lives. We took a break, went to the Himalayas (we really went) realized what we should do, came back to leave our highly paid jobs to get into entrepreneurship and started iLeadFarmers.

The USP of our company is that we started it on a “zero budget”. We do not have any funding, Venture Capital support, loans. We started this company from a small corner of our home, acquired clients invested the money back in the company.

We as founders have personally gone to the furniture walla, signage walla, bargained (a lot), we have personally handpicked the carpets mats and everything else you will find in our office.

But, this was the fun part; the hard part was working on our value proposition, our service offerings and leveraging it at the right target audience.

Today we are providing end to end Business Development services for companies across the globe. We have 8 offshore clients working with us on a long term partnership. Our clients are from India, USA, Canada, Middle East, Europe & Australia.

The hardest part was getting the right resources, training them and setting a vision for them in iLeadFarmers. We started as 2 people and today have expanded to a 10 people fast & focused team who are enthusiastic, intelligent, refined and out there in the field battling for results (for our clients & iLeadFarmers).

We have a 460 sq feet office, completely wireless, with wifi connectivity and the office is paperless (everything goes into the laptop).

In the past 6 months we have shown a 60% organic growth. With no loans to pay we are reaping what we sowed and investing it back in the company.

We are happy and feel fulfilled and proud to start a venture that provides income to the youth of this country. We feel satisfied when we work with companies’ especially small companies & start-ups and contribute in their growth & business.

It has been a penance so far and it continues as a more aggressive effort to crack into more geographies, verticals and technologies to empower businesses all over the globe.

Cheers!

Pranali Vichare

Founder, iLeadFarmers

“Why?”- I asked

“We can poach on their clients, prospects, leads and get some deals quickly” – enthusiastic team member replied, this time with a cautious tone due to my rather blunt question.

“Vinashkari Viparita Buddhi” – perverted intellect (Viparita Buddhi) is a great hindrance, was my feedback to my team mate.

My industry observation is that a lot of time & energy is spent on Competitor Analysis & Intelligence tapping.

One thing I never understood is What is competitor analysis? And Why is it important?

Is “competitor analysis and competitor intelligence tapping” really that important?

Is it just a buzz that is taught in MBA classes and is so deep rooted in our minds that we unnecessarily give it huge importance?

According to me Competitor analysis is now becoming an old concept. Companies today are striving to establish themselves as unique and different. To differentiate oneself as unique the last thing you want to know is what your competitor is doing. Instead, a company can focus on its own strengths, creative thinking and absolutely new concepts than obsess about competitor’s strategies.

A company I was consulting was so obsessed with its competitor that they had their HR resources keep a continuous watch on them. The result was that any new advancements & achievements, hiring at the competitors end used to draw tremendous attention and tension from the key management people. Likewise- competitor failures, attrition of resources was celebrated.

The company refused to publish its latest achievements & innovations with the fear that the competitors will copy.

The consequence was that though the company thought that it’s playing well with the competition actually the competition was getting to the company and in a negative way.

Herd mentality is another result of staying up with the competition-  mindlessly following industry trends, technology trends and just doing what the competitors are doing is commonly seen in most companies.

I have worked for quite some time in the Software & IT industry and during my tenure I never did any competitor analysis. This helped me focus on the service/product that I was selling and concentrate on inventing some different and unique ways of marketing the same.

“Ignorance is bliss”, yes sometimes it really is. You will have to figure out what is best for you and this can be brought about only through intuition or direct cognition.

For my company iLeadFarmers I have a simple strategy that is to believe I have no competitors. I believe in depending on Pure reason (Suddha Buddhi) the consequence of which is Self-realisation.

The other day, my good friend educated me, “Why don’t you target Europe especially UK?” It is the hottest market that is outsourcing today. Everybody is turning to Europe.

If all my competitors are turning in on Europe why should I go there, I would rather look into another geography that I reason out to be lucrative.

My latest marketing strategy is forget about your competitors, let them do what they want to do and you do what you think is best for your business. Be focussed, look ahead and rely on Pure reason. In short:

“Nitya, Buddha, Mukta Svabhava- eternally pure, wise and free.”

But it’s a simple theory and fact of economics that whatever happens the cycle of demand and supply will keep moving. As 2010 begins everyone is looking forward to an upward graph in their Q1 results.  There were several lessons learnt during the downtime and its time to apply those.

Coming back to the main point, 2010 is the year to act SMART. The lazy lousy unwanted huge management team is already kicked-out, the numbers of cabins have been reduced, pay slips have been tightened up, what next? Isn’t it difficult to crack a deal in this situation.

Software companies should understand that their business development team is going to have tough time in cracking a deal. You just cannot expect the result as you used to get till early 2007. But where there is a problem, there is a solution too. And the solution is a different sales strategy. Its really unfortunate that most of company leaders do not understand the difference between business development, sales and a marketing team.

The Ground work: Ensure your front end team have a combination of skills. Define the role of Sales team and Marketing team and align their efforts to support the business development. Set budget of each task separately.

The Research: You must anticipate the prospect’s reaction on your each action. Whatever channel you choose to start the communication, you must talk clear with your strong value proposition. And to do so you must understand your target prospect’s business model. Do strong research to find correct decision makers.

The Channel: When its comes to a customized sales approach, you must understand that cold calls are not going to work out. If you are Product based companies it will still work but for services companies it’s a big ‘NO’. If you are going global you must have a better internet presence, push your marketing team to go global through social media.

The Strategy: If you expect a quick requirement, you better target small projects through project bidding sites. If you really want to crack a deal with big companies, you must approach them with a strong research and streamlined sales strategy. Don’t just hit, you need to hit at right place. Narrow down your target audience with research. You must not ask for requirements, because if those companies would have any, they must have approached their previous vendor, even if they have not, why they would give it you. You must understand their current relationship with vendors and come up with a strong value proposition which interests the prospect.

Demand Generation: If you want to increase your sales response rate, you must talk what your prospect wants to hear. And of course they don’t want to hear “what do you do” rather they would like to hear  “what you can do for them”. In your first level communication propose a solution, give stats like competitors analysis and generate the need for your solution.

Don’t: You must not copy the strategy of others. Keep your strategy flexible enough to be re-molded for each of your service offerings.

And most importantly trust your team.

A year that was exceptionally eventful……….events that were so extreme, very good events and very bad events.

And as the year ends, my life has changed so drastically.

At the banks of the Ganges, I participate in the Ganga Aarti furore. It feels good with so much of positive energy emanating from the holy Ganga and hundreds of devotees swaying to the “trance like” chanting of the Aarti.

Ganga Aarti

As the Aarti ends, a voice full of faith sings a devotional song. The song preaches a message, the message of “The Purpose”.

The Purpose? According to the Hindu philosophy, all beings are born with a Purpose. Each one of us has a purpose for our birth which ultimately forms the part of our destiny.

It not you who creates a Purpose, it is the Purpose for which you have been created. It is for us to realize our purpose in life and accomplish it.

This year was significant as it marked my transcendence from being just extra ordinary to entrepreneur.  I started my own company iLeadFarmers (www.ileadfarmers.com).

I realized the message at the banks of the Holy Ganga, maybe this is my Purpose, to start a company, to lead, to provide income to people, to contribute in any little way to the economy of this country.

As 2010 embraces me, I look back at 2009 with gratefulness for making me realize my Purpose and setting me on the right path for 2010.

Lesson learnt from 2009:

Attitude- it’s all about attitude

-          Build it, loads of it, believe in yourself…..learnt it in my MBA…..applying it now

If people don’t like you that means you are very good at your job

-          Just don’t let it get in your way, keep up the good work

Nobody really wants you to be successful…….. deep within they wish you failure

-          Remember your family, they pray & wish good for you everyday

You have to fight your own battles

-          Family again………will stand by you….always

Death is reality, can arrive without intimation

-          Don’t just exist………….LIVE

It is difficult to handle traitor friends than enemies

-          Teach them a befitting lesson, do not let them go easy.

What expectation do I have from 2010? NONE, because 2010 has a lot of expectations from me.

Will I be able to fulfil all the expectations that 2010 has from me? You will have to check this blog on Jan 1, 2011.

After Offshore Outsourcing of software development, sales support is the next big thing in the industry, arrived and here to stay.

What is this trend all about?

As the economy comes out of recession companies are now gearing up to churn business. The requirement now is to get on board ace sales and marketing professional who will facilitate the growth of a company in terms of revenue and business.

The challenge being faced by most companies is the lack of strong budget to hire highly experienced resources or an entire team.

Companies are turning to the Outsourcing of their Sales & Marketing function as a solution.

What do you get? A readymade  budget team that can generate business, take care of your marketing activities and do end to end sales for you.

This ready made team comes with many advantages too:

- You do not need to hire an inhouse team which is much expensive. You can outsource your Marketing and Sales effort at one fourth of the cost of your in-house team.

- You do not have to worry about hiring, attrition rate, employee dissatisfaction, reviews, promotions. With your outsourced function you just have to focus on Business.

- Rapid acceleration of your Sales & Marketing activities.

What does a Offshore Marketing & Sales Support Team do:

You can customize your team activities to your requiremnet which can be:

• Marketing Intelligence building
• Company profiling
• Industry profiling & fact sheet
• Database building
• Email campaigns
• Telecalling
• Followups & Deal closure
• Building marketing collaterals & presentations
• Marketing &  Branding
• End to end Sales

Some things to consider in this model:

- Strong reporting system

- Great planning

- Clear Terms & Conditions in the contract

- The team members that you will be working with

- The reputation of the company

A lot of companies will be considering this model in 2010. If you need further details you can write to me at pranali@ileadfarmers.com