Rohit Prabhakar

I build agentic revenue systems for Fortune 50 companies

Hope over fear

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In this time of fear and chaos, I have a choice just like everyone else, every day, every minute and for almost everything. The choice is to choose hope over fear or fear over hope.

I have a choice to choose hope that me, family, friends, and community will stay safe or fear and worry about who in my circle may be infected with Coronavirus

I have a choice to choose hope that there were will enough groceries for my family or fear that there will be no supply left and I must hoard.

I will take this as a great opportunity for my family to be together all the time for the next few weeks or worry that WFH and kids Learning from home (LFH) will create chaos at my home.

I will take this as an opportunity to serve my circle in need instead of fear and worries on Coronavirus that pushes me hard to just think about me and my family. I have the choice to act one way or another both offline and online.

I choose hope over fear!

Times of change

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The major issue with what we are facing in the moment of change is that we see it as a problem! Perhaps, we probably have dealt with these particular circumstances that appear perplexed and more we think about it more challenging it seems.

However, in the truest sense, it isn’t a headache. This is just a transformation of the way something used to be and this is definitely a thing that we can adjust to. Ultimately we will find how to address it successfully or live with it peacefully.

Once we have this attitude, now we are self-advised to perceive this experience more about adapting to new than fixing certain problems. Once we start seeing it that way; Observe! the whole situation is getting to look much simpler and brighter.

Modern CMO – Leading Growth Marketing

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Today’s CMO is just not responsible for the brand, PR, and communications. Two most important goals for modern CMO are responsible for growth marketing with sales and customer experience (CX). In the last few years, you must have seen the rise of demand centers and CX responsibilities in CMO organization. This is the reality of modern CMO who is leading growth marketing.

Three key enablers for every modern CMO leading growth marketing are:

  • Customer Focus
  • Marketing Technology
  • Agility
Lead Modern Marketing with customer focus, martech and agility
Lead Modern Marketing

Customer Focus

The customer is now in control of when, where and how they engage. More complexity arises as a customer uses many devices, apps, channels to engage. Modern CMO wants their team to increase engagement and reduc churn rates. This is not possible without knowing your customer well.

You may be able to get high traffic using good content strategies and investing in paid media. That traffic many times doesn’t convert into meaningful traffic that your marketing and sales team can act on. Once you understand customer needs and mindset you can improve engagement and task completion rates. This will lead to more quality marketing qualified and eventually sales qualified leads.

Customer focus also builds a culture that focuses on improving CX and not just campaigns. This enables your team to think beyond lead generation and focus on customer lifecycle. A great customer experience again leads to business growth. Studies from various groups have proven the impact of improvement in CX to growth in many industries. This also leads to big-time improvement in customer retention. Every customer churn eliminated is more powerful then a new customer created.

Marketing Technology (MarTech)

The secret to effective marketing is good data, meaningful insights and ability to execute and optimize. Right marketing technology stack will enables that vision. A right MarTech stack enables your teams with the power of data, ability to know your customer and automate marketing processes so that your teams can focus on right tasks. Here is a very good graphic on how marketers use Marketing Technology.

Reasons to use MarTech - Know your customer using power of data and automate marketing
Reasons for Use of Marketing Technologies


CMO must think like a CIO and hire leaders that can get the best ROI from their MarTech investments.

The goal of MarTech is enabling the marketer to run their campaigns in the shortest possible time. That means as less development and releases as possible. A right MarTech stack should enable the goal of zero development platform.

Side note: I firmly believe that marketing teams should not have development responsibilities in their teams. In industry terms, this is called shadow IT. All CMOS should have strong relationships with their CIOs and use their teams when it comes to architecture, development, security, and support. Another very good topic to consider in your discussions with CIO is DevOps for Marketing.

Agility

Improving marketing efficiency and effectiveness is every CMO’s goal. No longer we can afford programs that run for months and years. Imagine you are investing millions of dollars on ad spend and end of the year you find that there was only 5-15% ROI.

It is important to change campaigns on short timelines based on the results they are driving. MarTech alone cannot be effective until both your people and processes are agile. Agility will enable your teams to track, analyze and optimize those programs. This will create a culture in your team to plan and adjust all campaigns on a bi-weekly basis. Imagine the cost savings and high ROI that you can achieve with this ability.

Agility is not just forming agile teams, kanban boards, backlogs, and bi-weekly releases. The most important part of agility is to enable your teams with decision-making rights. The biggest killer of speed is organizational hierarchies.

This is nothing new as your product and tech teams have been agile for years. A modern CMO leading growth marketing must connect and learn how their CIO and product team who has already adopted agility.

Enabling Intelligent Marketing

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My Keynote presentation from NASSCOM MARTECH Confluence 2017 on the topic of Digital Transformation: Enabling Intelligent Marketing.

[slideshare id=79364410&doc=enablingintelligentmarketingnasscom-170902011822]

Drawing the Technology Landscape for Intelligent Marketing

A hype-free overview of intelligent technologies for marketing. This session will also cover the uses, ROI and challenges of these technologies.

 

Leader, take your vitamins first!

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Today morning life gave me an opportunity to be a better leader. I learnt a lesson from my son that I will always apply to become a better leader. My 7 yr old son has been a very healthy eater since he started eating.  Lately he turned into being a picky eater, not interested in eating kids vitamins and no more love for protein shakes ( being vegetarian, shakes are the biggest source of protein for us).

Something has definitely changed! He used to love taking protein shake for lunch with his food, take his vitamins without being asked and eat almost everything that was cooked in home. Me and my wife had many conversations with him and we used many techniques to put him back into his healthy habits. All convincing has not been working since last 1 year.

Today morning, I was shocked! My son was almost ready to eat his favorite cereal and then he gets up to grab his vitamins without being asked. Day before he asked for a protein shake/smoothie when he returned from school. Since last few days he is no more a picky eater to a good extent. I have been trying to understand what is making him change especially when neither me or my wife have convinced him in last few weeks.

Actually it is me who has changed!

My son has been watching and being influenced by the change I have brought in my life. Since last few weeks I have started exercising daily, taking my vitamins and eating healthy food.  Actually I have been “Walking the walk” or “leading by example” or…… In last few weeks he has seen me drinking protein shakes. When he got up for taking his vitamins he saw me taking my vitamins with my breakfast. Finally I am practicing and not preaching and that is the change.

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.” – Mahatma Gandhi

This is how we really influence our teams/organizations/families/society. Knowingly or unknowingly everything we DO (and not say) is what is really replicated. One question that has not left my mind since then, do I lead my team/organization/family/… By walking the walk?

As leaders if we expect accountability we are the ones who should be accountable to our teams first. If we expect an extra effort from our team we are the ones who always have to go an extra mile. If we expect loyalty then we should be the most loyal to our teams, and the list goes on….

I hope you are a leader like that!

“Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others, as what he does from day to day to lead himself.” ~ Thomas J. Watson, Former Chairman of IBM

Thank you! Happy Thanksgiving 2015

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With a limited understanding of Thanksgiving, all I know it is about being Grateful and celebrating it with food (especially Turkey). Grateful to everybody who has contributed to your life in the preceding year. Being a vegetarian I am not going to eat Turkey but I can still be grateful to everyone who has helped me.

thank-you

From the day I started thinking about my career until today there are so many family members, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and unknowns who helped me become a better person.  Since last many years I wanted to write this post and show my gratitude to everyone who has helped me directly or indirectly. Finally here is my grateful list (besides my awesome family) with names of many who helped me this year and during many previous years:

  • Puneet Rampall for influencing and helping me learn computers. You are the reason why I am in technology today (all for good).
  • Sanjay Kohli for believing in me and getting me my big break.
  • Anoop Jain for teaching me technology properly and helping me become confident in Java.
  • Inder Pal Singh for being that awesome friend and colleague. I have always looked at you as a colleague who knows better than me but still willing to teach me.
  • Manish Verma for being my first career mentor. You always nurtured me and brought the best out of me. Even in the times when I deleted the entire demo code during the demo :) you still never lost confidence in me.
  • Dinesh Pandey for taking me to new levels of technology and always treating me first class.
  • Parveen Deswal for being an awesome friend in the new country. I remember the days when we all used to go out to see the fall colors in the tri-state area.
  • Gerry Glynn for teaching me Sales especially how to have a Customer-First mindset.
  • Michelle Bowen for believing in me.
  • Prakash Khatri for being a manager and a great friend especially during the toughest times of my life.
  • Sheryl Pattek for helping me understand why being obsessed about customer is most important.
  • Scott Brinker for being that indirect coach who helped me understand and navigate the world of Marketing Technology through your super active blog.
  • Saad Hameed for all the lunch, learn and walk meetings at LinkedIn on the topics of Marketing Technology
  • Tracy Thomsic for always pushing me hard and helping me get the best out of me
  • Nicole Vadas for helping me understand McKesson, always listening to me and guiding me properly.
  • Andy Burtis for always sharing your vision, believing in my vision and allowing me to work on it. Most importantly for mentoring me all these years!
  • Jeff Stalcup for helping me become better with communications and especially the presentations. I am a fan of your 5X5 rule.
  • Kris Fortner for always motivating and tips to handle organizational change.
  • Jennifer Otto for helping me understand the “Grand Mother Rule” in communication.
  • Michael Davis for being a firm supporter and a co-pilot for crazy digital ideas.
  • Charles Shimooka for always being honest with your feedback and help me understand different perspectives.
  • Omar Al-Sinjari for being my sounding board where I can test my ideas and get great feedback.
  • Ulli Muenker for all your help improving my presentations.
  • Andrew Hecht for helping me become better in pronouncing many words as per American English.
  • Drew Vecchione for supporting me on many tough decisions.
  • Mark Ryan for always helping me prove the case for Digital and continued support to keep the stakeholders engaged with awesome data.
  • To everyone else who I missed to mention. I apologize that I forgot to mention you here but you know I truly value your contribution.

 Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all with continue helping me become a better person next year too.

Social Business

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Social business represents a significant transformational opportunity for organizations. Many companies, after initial forays into external social media, are now realizing the value of applying social approaches, internally as well as externally. Social business can create valued customer experiences, increase workforce productivity and effectiveness and accelerate innovation. But many companies still wrestle with the
organizational and cultural challenges posed by these new ways of work. A new IBM Institute for Business Value study, based on responses from more than 1,100 individuals and interviews with more than two dozen executives from leading organizations, reveals how organizations can use social approaches to create meaningful business value.

-IBM Institute for Business Value

Getting your 100,000th “Like” on Facebook, or having your latest pearl of wisdom retweeted 200 times  is all well and good, but are these activities driving revenue? attracting talent and bridging the collaboration gaps in your organization? Is your use of social media allowing your organization to engage with the right customers, improve their online experience and tap into their latest insights and ideas? Does your social approach
provide your customer-facing representatives with the ability to search the globe for expertise or apply learnings?

These are some of the questions worth thinking.