Shifting from Consulting to Execution

This is our blog’s first post and like everything, we want it be good! We delved a lot on what our topic should be but couldn’t come up with a path-breaking one. So we decided to start somewhere and let us evolve in the world of blogging.

So the topic that we chose had a reason. We both come from a background where our jobs involved either consulting for preparing marketing plans or recommend stuff to our clients on modifications to their marketing plans. Both used to be pleasurable jobs – you talk futuristic stuff and attempt to make your clients believe in what we have thought! It works most of the times because you always have fancy powerpoint presentations to back your stuff up with.

We recently shifted to different profiles from consulting – to real world of marketing! While the way of approaching things have remained intact; one can’t afford to wrong in basics! The world changes when you as a person in-charge take decisions or are required to take decisions. I guess every management graduate worth his/her salt wants to make his/her decisions when it comes to work; but its always easier said than done.

Working as a consultant, you recommend a set of things that should be done. But, the client can’t always work or implement all the recommendations.

Both of us used to fight it out with our respective set of clients that how & why we need all this, however, because of the REAL world business constraints (read, budgets), he/she used to pick ONE or a sub-SET from stuff presented. Now that’s the difficult task – choosing ONE from the set of OPTIONS.

I recently found myself in such a situation, where I needed to pick ONE of the 3 options that I short-listed for achieving my immediate marketing objective. The constraints – BUDGET! I wanted to do all – to make a BIG impact on the brand. But the budgets forced me to pick ONLY ONE! Poor ME! (Or my COMPANY!)

But I must say it was a real good experience. I learnt that I need to be extremely result oriented. After all every buck counts (more so, in a start-up).

The way I went on making my decision was – by asking questions!

• Which among these gives me HIGHEST reach?
• No..no…which among these gives me BETTER (i.e. EFFECTIVE) reach?
• Nahin yaar….It should be – Which among these gives me better chances of conversion?
• Oh…did I miss this – Which amongst this should involve minimum logistics (physical efforts) and least wastage?
• What about measurability? Which ONE I can monitor easily and say that IT is the THING which is actually helping us get traction? (So that we can divert more of our marketing dollars there)

Though after listing all these questions, it wasn’t difficult to choose the ONE from the 3 options I had. I still feel, it was an experience worth sharing.

One thing we would like to clarify here is that we both loved our previous jobs and respect whatever we had done in the assignments that we got to work on.

But the decision making task, when the buck stops at you, is a difficult situation to be in. Because you always want to get the maximum out of the resources at hand, you try to think a lot. However, the process is really enjoyable.

I arrived at a decision – should see the outcome soon after the campaign is over and share what I learnt from the process. (Also I will come to know whether the ONE I choose worked or not!)

Do any of you have any similar experiences to share? Thoughts, opinions?