Senna seated & KC seated just above

I have longed to see an Indian colors in the grid and last week was a ray of hope and yesterday I tweeted KC that I just cant wait to see the official confirmation. And lo, it did happen and am very happy for Karun.

The combination seems too good and it presents a good opportunity for Karun to develop and rise to the occasion. With Bruno Senna as team mate the expectations will be much more than usual. On the other hand Bruno himself will have to race under pressure which I presume will be a great help to Karun.

One more factor which works for Karun is that there will less of pressure from people back home since its not like how it was when Narain gate crashed the F1 circuit. I still have those memories when people thought he ought to have won all the races. Imagine Jordan beating the Ferrari would be straight out of comics or sometime the next film script might allow that.

The Indian F1 fan is much more matured and Karun is not the first driver to do the feat and then ofcourse we shall have comparisons. This time around the look of the grid is something pretty awesome what with Ring Master aka King being back. I am referring to Micheal Schumacher. He would be the most watched person.

I think KC’s presence in the grid is more than a reason that I will be regular. Wishing Karun all the very best and hoping that he will do well as much as possible in the given car and hope he beats his team-mate the first competition on the grid.

KC presence should boost a bit on the marketing front vis a vis selling F1 for the Indian audience for an Indian GP in 2011 hopefully.

This should get some relief for all Indian drivers especially after what Mr. Mallya had said. Well hope things will be better for sure. Now will wait to watch the qualifying to see if KC can spring a surprise, I would wait with my fingers crossed.

Indian F1 fan.

This was a blog post in yallaf1.blogspot.com

The one special reason that this man has made every one look up is his humility and dedication to the cause that he is playing for the country. Umpteen times we were led to making it believe that he could no more be looking at 200 as many more names thought that it would be their prerogative. Blasting all such notions and playing a game after 20 years in business with highs and lows, Sachin was his best yesterday, one of my friend commented looking at the wagon wheel, only one place he could not do it was over the wicket keeper head and all other places were absolutely filled with colourful lies representing massive strokes from his bat.

I do envy those who had the fortune of watching it live. Sachin after all these herculean efforts remains that boy next door for all his player team mates and he is one such guide that his presence in the dressing room makes such a difference to all these people.

Absolutely a terrific innings by any standard is this the best or are we yet to see the best?

R senthilkumar

A great narrative style made it such an easy read and we could easily find the analogies to our day to day working conditions. A must read for people who are looking to empower their people – employees and make the organisation a great one.

It does have a cover tag – How to improve quality, productivity, and employee satisfaction.

You will enjoy it for sure…

R Senthilkumar

1) Salespeople must become value creators Too many salespeople are “talking brochures”, trying to show customers how their products or services are better than competitors. This is traditional value communication selling and it no longer works. Salespeople today must move from value communication to value creation. The salesperson must add as much value as the product. This calls for creativity and problem solving. Selling is no longer about persuasion. In the past, the product generated all the value. Each company made a unique product. The job of the salesperson was to explain to the customer the product’s value. In other words, salespeople were value communicators. Today there are many competing products and they are not unique. So the product has not enough value for the customer to prefer it to a competitor. The job of the salesperson changes under these circumstances. Salespeople today must be value creators. They must be experts and they must be creative problem solvers.

2) Fewer accounts means more sales Salespeople love to have lots of opportunities. A salesperson who has ten customers to chase feels much safer than if they had only five. As a result, many salespeople are half chasing twice as many opportunities. They don’t sell deeply enough, they don’t plan adequately and they lose business to competitors who put more resources into the best opportunities. I often find that I can get a dramatic improvement in results by taking away 20 – 30% of a salesperson’s prospects. Salespeople hate this and they argue against it – but it works. In complex sales the best metrics are about effectiveness, not efficiency.

3) Sales supervisors are the key to success : I have played a part in the reorganization and performance improvement of over 100 large sales forces. It’s my experience that whether change succeeds – and whether results significantly improve – depends much more on sales supervisors than on salespeople. When I’m working to improve the performance of a sales force, I give most attention to building competent sales supervision. Secondly, Create a “high performance culture.” This means that you recruit only the best. When salespeople join your company, you tell them, “Only the top performers will stay. After a year, you must prove that you should stay – we don’t prove that you should go.” And get rid of poor performers quickly. Research shows that the number one reason why a salesperson doesn’t improve is that there is another person in the same team who is doing worse. Money is an important motivator but it is not everything. Money attracts and keeps high performers. It encourages people to sell harder. But paying people more doesn’t make them more smart.

4) Coaching brings results Every world-class sales force I’ve worked with puts great emphasis on coaching. They don’t just give lip service to coaching; they create systems and processes to make coaching happen. Yet few sales managers understand important coaching concepts, such as how skills coaching is different from strategy coaching. The best way to improve sales results is to make effective coaching happen. A great sales team starts with a manager who is a great coach. Next, the salespeople must have shared values. For example, they must care about their customers. They must be truthful and they must understand their products. Salespeople are very competitive and they are not good at helping each other. To create a “dream team” their manager must encourage cooperation and caring. The salespeople must learn to help each other.

5) Integrate sales and marketing I’ve been working closely with Philip Kotler, the marketing guru, to find ways to help sales and marketing work better together. When we published some of our thinking recently in Harvard Business Review, we were flooded with emails from CEO’s, Sales VP’s and Marketing VP’s from all over the world. So we know it’s an important topic and exciting new ideas are being tried out.

Would you like Neil Rackham’s help in building your world class sales force? If so, please contact Kavita Mistry at Knowledge Capital at (93200 48060. Neil is coming to India first time in February 18-19, 2010. We would be happy to work with you.

PS: This was an invite I thought this will be very useful and posted it here.

56 people died (or they say so) and many had their life taken out from limbs and other parts, the city was held to ransom for another two days to defuse another bomb. We had a hero in Sanjay Arora, if I remember right, he was a part of the defusing squad and the city tried to get back to normal. It never could come back to it ways.

Economically all the business moved to the periphery of the city. There wasn’t much left behind and it was going to be tough to rebuild lives. Amidst all this was the political tamasha for the trial that took place in the special court and the judgment lacked teeth and left the people in despair. The best part is that they could not do anything.

So many people had lost their kith and kin, friends and neighbors and to this day we don’t know their name nor faces.

When yesterday’s bomb blast took place at Pune, I started reliving those moments though I had not personally been through it. A stark reminder that for the general public getting back home could be as lucky as he or she could get.

The twitter world was for once doing so much and I should mention an important name here. Shekar Kapoor was the voice of sanity and good humanity and his tweets were retweeted n times across. In an another instance of public apathy Pune could not beat MNIK for being the trending topic though it came close to being third topic.

The best part is that the govt went on overdrive in its PR and I think whoever can see it strategic should learn form these people, be it the opposition party or the corporates. Our HM, P Chidambaram has become a goody goody HM getting accolades from everywhere in the media. He doesn’t change clothes often as Shivraj Patil.

So much has happened and we will be sitting across the table and chatting with them to cool tempers and many of the elist media consider that to be the sole alternative at this hour.

As such Common man has no idea what will happen nor is his idea put to vote. I dont know how long will we be like this being bombed and revel in state of fear.

Senthilkumar

Unleash the spiritual power that is your birthright – and let it bathe you in perfect health, total well-being, inner peace and a remarkable feeling of bliss and oneness.

If you look closely the Education ministers have a detailed plan in so much as to alter the way the generation thinks about our past and how it will be about our future.

It has happened in the past and will also be in the future. Nevertheless it is noteworthy to know what can happen during these times and how it will be leveraged on the history pages of the school books. We can even find some of the political leaders adorning the history books and non detail texts already.

The readin habit has been given a grand burial with the questions not being asked from general knowledge and the exam being from the cover to cover syllabus, so much so that if you ask in question in any different sense they would suggest that they are not willing to answer and mark it as “out-of-syllabus”.

Some thoughts this and then ofcourse English has to be taught so much that there should not be any discrimination for students coming from rural areas. Shoot all those English teachers who failed in their duty of teaching English.

Just some frivolous thoughts this…

R Senthilkumar

As much as we would like to free Higher education, there should also be a good part of administrative mechanism which does not have a fallout or gets entangled in red tape. The process of online and tranparent system had just been started and hopefully should lead us to greater supply chain management vis-a-vis education is concerned.

There was a call from a reputed university which said that there needs to be good ideal situation to make things happen for hose people who have managed it professionally.

On the other hand we have had Rich Dads as chancellors and sons as vice chancellors and pro chancellors… but we cannot argue when they suggest some people enjoy this at the cost of the ballot.

Lets see this should usher in good reforms….

Update: The partial list is in the news item which appeared in the Hindu and most of the them are in TamilNadu… (I was a student of a distance education Programme at Vinayaka Missions)

Education in India… a first look…by Pratham… read here

Looks like India’s boasting of English knowledge could be not a real issue.

Senthilkumar R