Africa the Spectator

As the famous saying goes “No hurry in Africa”, indeed it’s the same thing that’s happening in the continent. A continent with its richness in natural resources is turned out to be a spectator as the titans, US and China clash for their dominance.

As the Chinese make deep inroads into Africa, America is counting on soft power-and the continent’s young people-to stay on top. With the recent explorations of crude oil in Tanzania and other Africa countries, each of the titans are having their own strategy to extract as much as possible before the rest of the economies open their eyes. The best strategy followed by china so far is funding infrastructure development in Africa and extracting valuable minerals.

If we go into statistics, America’s trade with Africa rose from about $30billion in 2001 to just over $100billion 10 yrs later, while china’s grew more dramatically, from $10billion to $130billion over the same period, according to the collated figures from the UN. In reality, there is very little direct competition between Chinese and American firms in Africa. Most of the US firms are involved in the higher end of the market, such as renewable energy, computer software and medical equipment, while Chinese firms dominate the lower, consumer goods category.

The point of confluence is oil, but both the US and China dominate the trade in Africa’s natural resources. A lot of the growth in trade over the past decade has been fuelled by an increase in exports of crude oil from Africa to the two powers. The difference is that China has diversified its appetite for other natural resources and grown its exports to Africa much faster, overtaking the US in this area a decade ago in 2003. Both china and the US are playing a long term game.

Ultimately, however, the battle for Africa is not one for present resources but future potential. The real contest is between China’s hard power and America’s soft power and the real tragedy is that Africans and their governments are largely spectators, rather than contestants, in the battle for the future of the continent.

Far from arguing about which of the two giants is better, it’s time for Africans to get busy and figure out how they can benefit from the “clash of the Titans”.

Man & Woman

While reading the famous book “Men are from Mars & Women are from Venus” by John Gray, got this idea of posting something interesting on Man & Woman.

Before going into the actual gist of this topic let me keep something funny, sometimes true & indeed one can argue about the same. A humble request for the woman who reads this post (it’s just not true, read it and forget)

Let us now see how a newly married couple gets into a serious discussion which started from a small thing called shopping...

Wife asks his Husband early morning at 8.30am while the husband is having breakfast, “darling in the next week Valentine’s Day is coming , hope you remembered that” ..

Husband thinks for a couple of seconds and says “Ya dear I do remember it” …Wife says

“I should do a bit of shopping for that memorable day, so it will be great if you come a bit early today”…

Husband cleverly replies “Valentine’s day is for lovers, not for couples….and it’s great to celebrate our marriage day rather than valentine’s day..”” Now wife gets angry and says “You don’t love me anymore the way you used to love me before…..anyway for small thing called shopping you denied me…its ok...”

Husband immediately replies “Shopping is not a small thing, you woman are still struck there, if you want to get it more clear please read this message giving his mobile to her”...The message is

Man discovered COLORS and invented PAINT;

Woman discovered PAINT and invented MAKEUP.

Man discovered the WORD and invented CONVERSATION;

Woman discovered CONVERSATION and invented GOSSIP.

Man discovered AGRICULTURE and invented FOOD;

Woman discovered FOOD and invented DIET.

Man discovered FRIENDSHIP and invented LOVE;

Woman discovered LOVE and invented LOVE TRIANGLES.

Man discovered TRADING and invented MONEY;

Woman discovered MONEY and invented SHOPPING.

That’s it!!!

Thereafter man has discovered and invented a lot of things... While women are still STUCK with shopping.............. . !!!

Now coming to the gist of the topic, John gray in the book imagines that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.

He successfully explains with practical insight and logical touch how difficult it is for

both the sexes to maintain an everlasting relationship after marriage. This insightful book gives really some amazing facts to understand both the sexes in a more amicable way.

I am here underlying some key words and sentences from the book where in John gray has elaborated the context exceptionally well.

1) Mr. Fix-It!!!!! (This is what men feels about themselves)

2) Women Talk while Men go to their Caves

3) Communication is the Key.(Different Languages, since Venus has different Language and Mars has its own Language)

4) Avoiding Arguments( Very Critical)

5) Men are like Rubber Bands

6) Women are like Waves

7) Scoring Points from the opposite sex is the Key

8) Communicating the tough feelings(It’s really tough)

9)Keeping the Magic of Love Alive

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!!

Sales, Sales & Sales......

A guy walks up to a woman. She is lounging under a tree, obviously taking great pleasure in the fruit she nibbles at provocatively. "You won't believe how good this tastes," she smiles and wipes a succulent dribble from her chin, offering the piece of fruit to him.

"Yeah, but isn't that…?" the guy looks about uncertainly.

"How could anything this good be bad?" She winks at him. "Go on, try it. Just one bite and you'll see what I mean."

“But, I don’t know if I should…what if…?” he says with great unease.

“Come on. Trust me. I would never steer you wrong. Try it. You’ll see.” She replies enthusiastically.

The guy is intrigued. The fruit is delightfully red, sounds crispy every time she bites into it, and if her reactions are any indication, the thing must be really great.
"Oh, all right." He lounges beside her, reaches for the fruit and sinks his teeth into it. She made the pitch, he bought it, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Welcome to the exciting world of Sales, this might be the first recorded sale in the history of humankind: the moment Eve sold Adam on eating the forbidden fruit.

Sales! It’s a great stuff, a big mover and shaker in the human equation.

If you closely observe the development of the art and science of sales from early barter economies through the invention of currency, from the nomadic markets of retail stores and then to hyper malls, from road shows and to door-to-door to telemarketing and TV shopping. In every single case the medium was new, and sometimes amazing because of the exciting stuff used, but the message, the systematic process of getting a customer to buy, has been the same.

Let’s look at overview of sales, industry wise

Finance Industry:
The main Strength of this industry is the sales force with services as an add-on. What are generally sold here?
 Current Accounts and Savings accounts (so called CASA)
 DMAT accounts for trading in the share market
 PMS (Portfolio management services) there will be relationship manager so called RM, from a bank who will be guiding you in investing in the share market.

Now coming to one of the toughest and exciting sales which generally most of the sales professional feel. It has been considered as a separate industry even though it falls under finance, because of the potential it carries.
 What ,if you die tommorow?this is the first question that should be raised to customer while selling an insurance policy, but the way to put forward it ,is the trick of the trade.

Today more than 70% of my business school batch mates are selling either of the above services... Guys keep going...

Education Industry:
The main strength for this industry may not be the Sales, but the importance of sales professionals in this industry also is increasing day by day..

The classic example is the business school from which I passed out, ICFAI business school. The name may not be that popular, but we guys who passed out making it ...lolssss
Key features of the University:
 The turnover of the University is more than 4500cr.
 It’s purely a sales driven organization.
 They sell both full time and part time educational courses.
 The target audiences are middle class, upper middle class and the higher class. If you closely observe, India’s more than 40% population lies in either of the classes.

By now your mind might be asking you a serious question...What is generally sold in this industry??

The answer is Dreams…..

Selling educational courses is nothing but selling dreams to either the student or the parents...Unfortunately in India parents fall for the sales professionals who sell the educational courses rather than the student because in India mostly parents take a decision of the child’s education course.
Going deep into this industry, now the trend is for online education which is doing exceptionally well.

Media Industry:
The so called happening industry in the world. Totally dependent on the sales force, and require very energetic smart sales professionals.
This Industry broadly divided into
 Print
 Television
 Radio
 Online

Now what exactly is sold in this industry?
• In print they sell the newspapers space.
• In Television they sell the time.
• In radio also they sell the time and
• In online media they sell the space on the web page.

Overall if we see the main source of revenue for this industry is sales.

Information Technology Industry:
The buzz word for more than 2 decades, a small machine called Computer which changed the entire world. Thanks to Charles Babbage, the father of computer.

Overall if we see services are sold in this industry with Infrastructure and Software as the main driving factors.

Before it used to be totally a service driven industry, with less involvement of sales force. But gradually even in this industry also sales started playing a major role and fortunately I am also a part of this industry successfully selling both infrastructure and software.

The other important industries like Telecom, Automobile & Pharmaceuticals all are driven majorly by the sales force.

This is an exciting field for the guys who are interested, wherein sky is the limit .

Differentiate or Die

Thanks to Philip Kotler (Marketing guru) .I have taken the title “Differentiate or Die” from his famous book “Principles of Marketing”. This is one of my catchy titles during my business school course.
Kotler in his book explains with real life business scenarios how multinational companies differentiated themselves from competitors and moved ahead with a winning string and at the same time the companies who failed are out of the race.

Here if you closely associate your day to day activities to the title, differentiation plays a revolutionary role for your life’s winning string and at the same time dying is more or less compromising or becoming stagnant in life( according to the present context)

Ideally speaking Differentiation requires some basic amenities like a
 bit of logical thinking
 quick at grasping
 swiftly response
 high level of common sense
 Out of the box thinking
 Seizing the opportunity
 Knowledge to some extent and so on …
This doesn’t mean that people who don’t have the above mentioned amenities are dead but in a way up to some extent they are in the process of dying.

I can’t end up this article without mentioning about one of the most differentiating personalities in the history of mankind. Some interesting differentiating facts before knowing the name of the giant
 Drop out of Harvard-shows how bored he is at studies (lolssss)
 Has spent more than 10,000 hours in front of PC at the age of seventeen-that to in mid of 1960’s (Cool).
 Timings for using the PC- mostly from 9pm to 4am and this happened for more than a year (Woooooooo at least it’s not possible with me)

I think by now you might have guessed the name of the giant. Yes you are true- “Microsoft’s Bill Gates”

All the above mentioned differentiating facts from Bill gates have some way or the other related to some of the basic amenities of the individual. Let’s see how it can be related

 Logical Thinking - Bill gates from childhood is very good at mathematics.
 Seizing the opportunity- He got the opportunity to use the PC’s at that odd time
 Quick at grasping and swiftly response – Grasped the subject and responded with real time programming
 Out of the box thinking and Common sense- Rather working under anybody, started his own company “Microsoft” and with common sense utilized his own friends.

There are so many other Differentiating personalities in the world and you can relate accordingly. But here the
Question to you and myself - Is differentiation really necessary??

Hmmmmmm my answer is obvious yes …

What about your Answer???

Post it now...

Change-Transformation-Paradigm Shift

The reason for me to start my blog with this post (in a way I am in this endless process)….hmmm sounding vague.

I strongly feel every individual undergoes this process (here not mentioning about the apathetic people) of Changing, then transforming and reaching the acme of paradigm shift. Here paradigm shift is nothing but creating a benchmark in that field or something like becoming an ideal. Even though very few people reach the last stage, it is all about people who started the process and who are already emotionally committed to the endless process.

Why I mention it as an endless process is because the wheel of Change moves on and on and on, those who were down…go up and those who were up…go down. We change, we transform and we may reach the paradigm shift in that particular domain or area or field whatever you feel is applicable for you and the process continues accordingly when we change…

The toughest part in life is change. It may happen according to time, situation, individual etc
Just think, what if situation immediately demands to
 Change Your Job
 Change your area of work
 Stop your present business or start a new venture
 Change according to your New boss
 Change your diet
 Change your life style
 Change your plan of action
These are just a few examples in day to day life where in these days most of the people are used to it, but the question here is how many are transforming and excelling in that field to reach the pinnacle of paradigm shift. The answer is an emphatic NO in most of the cases.

I have been continuously questioning myself…is change really that tough??

I found that Change is not really tough, it’s practically tough. If Change is practically tough,
How about the transformation which is a part of Change?
How about the Paradigm shift?
Are they really Impossible?? Not really, and even practically because impossible itself says “I’m possible”.
Then, why is it so that most of the people don’t want to change?

“It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not” – James Gordan.

The below mentioned are the periodical reasons why people find it difficult to change and the counter for the same is supported with the famous quotes from some renowned personalities.

 Comfort Level-
“A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar” Confucius

 Totally Different or a new Challenge.
“Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed” Irene Peter.

 To get accustomed to a new situation
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” – Commonly attributed to Charles Darwin

 Security“Our only security is our ability to change” John Lilly

 Getting through “When you are through changing, you are through” Bruce Barton

So Change is one of the toughest exercises, which every individual undergoes in his/her life. Optimistic view - Change and transformation are very essential for a human being to become successful. It depends on the given individual to take it forward.