Success mantras for marketing professionals

No task is too challenging for the young and ambitious, especially when it comes to furthering your career. You also need to concentrate on cultivating additional work skills such as entrepreneurship and networking abilities.

Know your target consumer segment prospective customers who will use your product/ service.

Pay attention to consumer insights & information related on how your customer is actually using your product / service.

You must have entrepreneurial skills.

You must seek opportunity and be fast in converting opportunity to reality.

You must learn from consumer insights.

Networking abilities: Look beyond different functional areas from different companies and build relationships for the future.

You must take the one that offers a greater job challenge, which may not necessarily be the one with the higher compensation.

Factors that should drive you:

A sense of challenge
Your ambition to succeed

Tips for managing people:

Foster the right culture in your organization by giving people the opportunity to grow.
You must take risks.
You must build values.

11 ways to be a happy employee

[Even though I fancy that we are students, the following “way of life” or simply ways/habits would definitely help you, in being a better student as well as a team player.]

Can you recollect a day where you woke up at 5:00 am, got ready quickly & waited to do something exciting? Was it your college annual day function? Or a competitive exam? Or maybe a first date? Maybe it was your wedding day(I doubt it In a hopeful way; for the present time being). OR Is it Monday morning to work? If the answer is the last, surely you are a happy employee.

Though the above occasions may not have a lot in common, excitement & motivation can be attributed to almost all of them. However, at the workplace, it is almost impossible to find both or any one of these attributes daily. But, being happy or unhappy is always in our hands. That's the choice we make & we are the creators of the outcome by our actions.

1. Plan your week on Sunday night

Look at your work calendar & plan your week on Sunday night or Monday morning. This would include important meetings, deliverables, a brief summary of things that are pending from last week & any tasks to be achieved during the week. Though this might look like a time management tip, at the end of the week, on Friday night when you re-visit what you have achieved over the last five days, the satisfaction is immense.

2. Undertake activities that you are passionate about even though it might not be in your job profile

Start an initiative that you would love to do irrespective of whether it is required for you to do or not.Send a daily newsletter to your team on the topics that most of them will be interested.Do a presentation on the topic that you are passionate about.Organize a small sports event for your team.Call everyone in your team for a team coffee, breakfast or lunch breakAppreciate colleagues in your team or in a cross-functional team who did a great jobWrite a poem on your team's achievementsArrange a potluck lunch

3. Do not indulge in the blame game

If something goes wrong do not blame others blindly. If you commit a mistake, do not hesitate to accept it. As Gauthama Buddha said, there are three things we can't hide for long: the sun, earth and the truth. Accepting your mistake gracefully will only make you look like a true professional and also give you the satisfaction of not cheating.

4. Communicate more often in person

Utilize all the opportunities where you can speak to an individual in person rather than e-mail or phone. But be aware of the other person's time & availability. Listening to a positive answer from a person will give you more happiness than if it is done over the phone or via e-mail.

5. Know what is happening at your workplace

Will this make a person happy? Truly, yes! Imagine a cricket team that doesn't know how many runs to score to win a match? More than losing the game, the player will never be interested or motivated to play well.You will also get an extra edge if you are in a position to answer queries raised by your peers or juniors. This is not just for the good reasons, but bad reasons as well. You do not want to be the last employee to know if your company is laying off employees (in the worst case, if you are the one who is on that list).

6. Participate in organization-level activities

This could be as simple as spending one weekend for a corporate social responsibility activity or attending a recruitment drive to help your HR team or arranging a technical/sports event at the organizational level. Most of these events will be successful as people do come on their own to contribute.

7. Have a hobby that keeps you busy & happy

Many people say their hobby is watching TV or listening to music or reading the newspaper. These aren't hobbies; they are just ways of passing the time. [No offence from my side; its what the writer of this article wrote!] Some hobbies are evergreen and will keep you evergreen as well: dancing, painting, writing short stories, poems, blogs and sharing your experiences.

8. Take up a sport

Physical activity keeps a person healthy & happy. If you pick up one sport well, you can represent your organization in corporate sports event too.[ For all football fans in the class; assemble in the football ground, every Tuesdays & Thursdays, playing a sport does help.]

9. Keep yourself away from office politics

Politics, as a practice, whatever its profession, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. -- Henry Brooks Adams

Politics is everywhere & the office is no exception. Playing politics might be beneficial but only for the short term. So the best thing to do is play fair.

10. Wish & smile

More often than not, there are fair chances that the other person will smile back. This could be your security guard at the gate, your receptionist, your office boy, your CEO or your manager -- never forget to wish them & smile.

11. Volunteer for some activity

"The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving." Albert Einstein

Do at least one activity without expecting anything in return. There is no set frequency for this. This could be once in a day or once in a week or thrice in a week. It could be as simple as making tea at the office for your colleague, helping a colleague who is working in another department by using your skills, dropping your colleague at his door step in your car, going to your manager or colleague to ask if there is any help you can extend, contributing to technical or knowledge management communities in your organization etc.

Resource material taken from:
http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2006/feb/23success.htm

Reader’s Digest

Reading Material

Reader's Digest is a monthly general-interest family magazine. Reader's Digest is owned & published by The Reader's Digest Association, a privately-held company based in Chappaqua, New York. Co-founded in 1922 by Lila Bell Wallace & DeWitt Wallace; today it is the best-selling consumer magazine in the USA, with a circulation of over 10 million copies in the United States, & a readership of 38 million worldwide.

The magazine is compact, with its pages roughly half the size of most American magazines. Hence, in the summer of 2005, the U.S. edition adopted the slogan, "America in your pocket." In January 2008, it was changed to "Life well shared" owing to the huge international market.

Geodemographic Segmentation:In different regions, advertisement & placement in the local editions are entirely managed by the local staff & reflect local products. Local statistics may be added, currencies & measures will be adapted. Local names, quotes or pictures of local sights will sometimes replace the original ones on the articles composed in the USA. All those operations are called "adaptation" by the Digest editors: they are performed by the local editors & writers according to general central rules but without specific US control.Local editions also avoid reprinting articles which may touch on sensitive spots in the receiving culture. In general, the local editions will also avoid selecting texts which are too closely linked to very specific American (or too foreign) situations. The few articles written by local authors always deal with local topics.

Reader’s Digest divides its magazine into different “departments” from: Personal stories, Biographies to Cultural Appraisals; Facts & Health Care to Political scenarios, News & Reviews, Quotes to Answering day to day problems to Word Power, Environmental Issues, Economics & Laugh; It’s the best medicine e.t.c. It promotes culture’s & people. It involves people, from around the world.

It has every thing for every one, across cultures, nations, genders & ages. In Pakistan, it is available for around; Rs.150/- only. So order your copy today, & join one of the largest clan of the most read magazine.
Material taken from Wikipedia & rdasia.com

Ego & Let Go

By: Leon Menezes

We in the corporate world are obsessed with ranks & titles, perks & privileges & pomp & show. The amount of emotional attachments we have to our ideas & responsibilities means we are forever trying to control the outcomes to our advantage. This translates to much grief & sorrow &, worse, damages our families, colleagues & ourselves as well.

I have often said: “We believe in God but we don’t trust him”.

This is not to be taken as license to abdicate (abandon) our responsibilities; rather, we need to do whatever is in our control to ensure the desired outcome. Then leave the rest to “Divine intervention”. The major difficulty is in knowing where your sphere of influence ends & HIS starts.

The ego manifests itself in several ways but, seriously, what good is my rank & title if, for example, I were to be stuck in a lift or a traffic jam? And what good is it when I get home to family & friends? The positive about “ego” is that allows us to draw boundaries around our rank & position within the corporate context, ensuring the respect & dignity of our exalted positions. However, we need to be mindful of not carrying this to the extent that it comes in the way of our personal lives.

False humility may be the worst form of conceit while genuine humility means we are not “full of ourselves”.

Learn to let go & get more.

This article has been taken from The Dawn; Sunday edition; 2nd November 2008.

Helping Habits

Be Proactive: Being Proactive is one of the most important habit; as it motivates a person to accomplish all his tasks. It is all about increasing your circle of influence. In trying to be proactive one has to overcome lethargy & sometimes when one does not feel like working, a proactive mind pushes a person to be proactive as start working. A proactive person turns the words "I cant, I wish I could" into "I will, I can". Trying to be a proactive person has started to help me, as when I dont feel to study; especially on weekends, I try to be proactive & get my self to study.

Begin With the End in Mind: Begining with an end in mind is to have a clear cut goal of what is to be achieved. Everything is made twice, once in the mind & once when it is converted into reality. A traveller's journey is usless until he knows his destination; similarly one should have a goal in mind, & then work to achieve it.

Put First Things First: Putting first things first is to prioritize all the tasks we are to achieve, & then performing them firstly on the basis of their importance. Time management & managing oneself is the key. A person has to identify his roles. As for me; I have learnt that doing my assignments are more important than playing football, by putting first things first.