Posts Tagged ‘offer’

We all have opportunities knock on our doors every now and then. Some might feel they have fewer than others and that might be true to some extent; but I’ll go out on an arm and a leg and claim that we all have our fair share of opportunities in our lives. The differentiating factor is how many do we make the most of. The genesis of this post was from a discussion I was having the other day with my fellow co-founder (Active Garage), Deepika Bajaj. We were talking about a dear friend of mine who is interested in investing in one of my ventures. My perspective in the conversation was that one of the key factors of my friend’s willingness to invest was the fact that it was ME who was involved and not entirely the venture. Put another way, what I was saying was simply that “People Invest in People”!

Although Deepika agreed with me on that, she offered another perspective that resounded with me at a level that compelled me to write this post! This is what she said to me:

“Yes. I agree. Your friend is investing in you but this opportunity would not have come about had you not taken the step to get out of your comfort zone and started your venture. Your friend has been your friend for a long time, and probably has had the resources to invest for a while now. However, what was missing was that you did not have an Offer in which he could consider investing in, until now. And once the offer showed up in your life, so did your opportunity!”

The not-so-obviousness of the above dialogue got me! We go about in life without realizing the number of opportunities we have in our lives, around us, all the time. We go about saying to friends, family and countless people that this is not for us and that we are happy wherever we are. What we do not pay attention to, or notice, is that even within this close network, we have opportunities that have the ability to lift the entire community (family, friends, all of it) with us! Yes, opportunities do have a strange way of showing up in our lives. They show up (or manifest themselves) through our offers. It follows that though we (and this is the obvious part, now) do not have control over the opportunities that will come our way, we do have absolute control over the number of offers we have – which (if I look at the flip side of the coin) are really opportunities for others!

The Question to ask

Suddenly, the question to ask transforms from an elusive “How to avail opportunities that you cannot see?” to a more fathomable “How do you become an opportunity for others?”

Here are the top 3 answers:

• Feel good factor: Are you in relationships that only make you feel good OR is there a real value in the way you mutually help each other?
• Be a student: Learn something new, today. Everyday. If you do not have enough offers then the place to look is lack of education.
• Build capacity: By building powerful relationships you essentially build capacity to do more.

… and last but not the least, while you go about doing all this, don’t forget to have loads of FUN along the way!

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Tagged as: active garage, complacency, deepika bajaj, himanshu jhamb, learn, offer, offers, opportunity, reflect, student, teacher, time

As an entrepreneur, whatever product or service that you sell, it is critical to look at not only how it helps your customers; but also to look at how it might hurt your customers. Most of the offers that exist in the marketplace end up being ordinary and have little value associated with them, because they end up “hurting” customers at places which have serious consequences for them. The “hurt” can be of different types (and depending on what the level is, it hurts the marketability of the product or service) and you want to stay as far away as possible from the one that comes with the serious consequences for your customers.

Here’s a little personal story of mine: I recently bought a new bed frame from one of the discounted retail stores. It was a beautiful wooden (brownish) frame; both my wife and I loved it. While my wife strolled around to the other parts of the store, I walked around the bed inspecting it and marveled to myself how it’d look in the room we were thinking of putting it in. While I was mentally playing taking this beautiful piece of furniture home, I heard my wife call me from the other aisle. As I started walking towards her casually; I felt a sharp pain under my kneecap and immediately sat down. That’s when I noticed that the bed had a protruding part on the corners of it (the corners where the legs would go) which could easily go unnoticed (Hello?) and “hurt” people. Suddenly, the beauty, the wooden frame and the comfort vanished from my mind and all I could remember was the “hurt” that I felt from my little accident with the bed frame and how “dangerous” it could be for people in the house. The product (or service) called “The bed” immediately lost its marketability with me, its customer.

While you are designing your product or service for providing the fantastic help that it’ll provide your customer, be sure you give a thought to how it might “hurt” your customers. While one can argue that it’s impossible to come up with a product/service that is “Perfect” in all aspects and causes no “hurt”, one can surely design it in a way so that the “hurt” is kept to a minimum. Here are a couple of levels of hurt to consider while you think of the design of your offer:
1. Fundamental Hurt – This is what I call the “Deal Breaker”. This is the hurt that will instantly kill any marketability of your product or service. It wouldn’t matter how aesthetically tasteful your product is; it wouldn’t matter how practical it is or how valuable it is. If your product or service hurts a fundamental concern; it will, in all likelihood, not be very marketable. My example, above fits the bill for “fundamental hurt”. The bed, regardless of how comfortable and elegant it was, was dangerous to the fundamental concern of my body. The moment that dawned upon me; the offer was outta-the-door for me.

2. Derivative Hurt – This is something that the customer sees as not impacting his or her core concerns and thus, is open to a cost-benefit analysis of whatever product or service it is that he or she is considering buying. It’s like your offer gets a Second-chance-at-least kind of hurt. This is where most of the “good” products or services fall in. They all “Cost” something (which obviously hurts the customer in a way since it eats into his or her resources) but if the Return is good, the Cost is viewed as more of an investment and the conversation suddenly centralizes around the ROI, and not just the “Hurt”. As an example, offers such as entertainment magazines and Television fall in this category. They provide customers with a sensation called “Relaxation” and “Fun” in return for the money and time they cost the customers.

When you are designing your products and services; look closely for what kind of “Hurt” they might cause your customers… and stay away from the “Fundamental Hurt” as much as possible!

Tagged as: active garage, business, cost, derivative, design, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, fundamental, help, himanshu jhamb, hurt, investment, offer, offering, product, Return on Investment, ROI, sales, service

In my earlier post on June 10, 2009 I shared an example of what ROI looks like. In this post, I am writing about if ROI is not seen as ROI, how your possibilities get killed even before you start to act on them. This happens when customers confuse the ROI (Return on Investment) with the ROC (Return on Cost).

ROI is a constitutive component of how we measure Value; so needless to say, it is a critical part of how we choose to transact (or not), in any situation. Then there is the Investment which is a critical part of the ROI. The biggest pitfall is how this shows up for your customers. Consider this example:

You are at the crossroads of your career. You work very hard at your job, day in day out… day in day out… day in day out… you get the picture. The more hard work you put in, the more of the same results are being produced (e.g. getting only a 2-5% raise year after year after year… ). There is no certainty of the promotion you’d hoped you’d get in your upcoming review. You met your goals, you fulfilled your promises and all that happens at the time of review cycle is you’re told the company did not meet its numbers so you’ll just get a 2% raise or worse, nothing at all.

At this point, you say “This is not working”. I need to go learn some new things. I need to look for where I can get more education… different education and with that you set out looking for it. Then you come across two choices; one education costs $20,000/year and the other $2,000/year. This is the crossroads at which you make a choice and the importance of this choice is huge because it will have an impact on perhaps your entire life.

The choice is made in how you think about this. Before I go further lets clearly distinguish that the “I=Investment” IS NOT “C=Cost”. Cost is usually thought of as something you have to pay in order to get something else RIGHT NOW. Investment is thought in the context of something you have to pay in order to get something bigger (than what you paid) in the future .

Most people look at the ROI as the ROC and that conversation closes the opportunity there and then. So, when you are talking to your customers about the value of what you are offering, make sure you CLEARLY bring forth that the price tag associated with your offer, is not a COST to them, it is, in fact an INVESTMENT, that they are making into a future possibility that will MORE THAN cover the investment they are making at that point.

If they still insist on looking at the “I” as the “C” ask them a simple question: “It is clear that you have considered the Cost of doing this. Have you considered the cost of NOT DOING IT!”

Try this in your next conversation. It works in bringing forth the ROI very clearly… and the results will show for themselves.

Tagged as: active garage, business, Compensation, cost, himanshu jhamb, investment, Money, offer, raise, Return on Investment, Transaction, value