A client I hadn’t worked with for years, called out of the blue yesterday and asked me, “Do you still do interventions, or are you only saving River Cauvery?” I laughed and disabused him of the notion.
The issue is that in my line of work, most of the projects are confidential with high stakes, and so I tend to remain quiet about what I’m doing at any given point in time.
Here’s how I will share though, what’s happened and why it is satisfying, because all of it has happened in a relatively short period of a week:
From Client 1: A Category Head: Worked with in Mid 2018: “Hi Devika, hope you are doing great. Just wanted to tell you that x is now the leader in y market beating the global market leader. We are doing 50% more than what was happening the previous year. We have extended to yet another market and have seen a good response so far and it is picking up pace. Fingers crossed. Success in this market means we’ll have the entire region in our pocket and that is good. We are aiming at reaching zzz (three digit) crores in 2020. You have been a critical part of the journey and I had to thank you for everything. Will keep you posted.”
From Client 2: A COO and Business Head: Worked with in Mid 2018: “You can believe it or not…for all the time and energy we spent understanding the market and how it works, you left us with one very powerful thought : xxx ( Anarva’s aside: this is a key concept which we’ll be writing about shortly, hence is currently confidential). We are now pivoting everything around this idea. It is brilliant!”
These two client notes demonstrate a fundamental philosophy to me: There is nothing more satisfying than a job well done, which emerges not with a ‘rah-rah feel good’ at the end of a strategy or innovation intervention, but rather with a client voluntarily writing back to you 6-12 months after the event with feedback of actual market benefit and execution.
In the meanwhile, 3 clients from the past, the distant past reconnected. One after our engagement ended 7 years ago, another after 5 years and the last one after 4 years. They’ve held on over time, to the sense of an intervention going well and when the need emerged, they’ve reached out. I’ve always believed deeply: Do your work so well, that you don’t need to sell. Your clients will never forget and will always return. In our 4 years of existence, Anarva has yet to make a single sales call. I was both amused and grateful at the co-incidental way in which all of this happened in a short span of time. In fact, two calls happened on the same day.
It’s fulfilling to start 2019 on this note. I wish you deeper insights, greater success, lesser conforming to rules and more reading. This year, I’ve enjoyed Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene and would also recommend, for inspiration (with a conspiratorial chuckle, because this is exactly what the author rails against) Leadership BS by Jeffrey Pfeffer. A mind that is not challenged is a mind that is decaying.
**************
We’d love to hear your views. Connect with us on @thinkanarva on twitter https://twitter.com/ThinkAnarva or on our FaceBook page. https://www.facebook.com/thinkanarva/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel