Tune Money Hari Raya Pot Luck Lunch
16
By Zafrul | October 16, 2008
Badrul, me and Winnie talking about work while eating
Badrul, Nazri, Shahrin and Rajiv at work after a satisfying meal
Jia Wei dominating the whole container of keropok ikan
Hard working ladies of Tune Money enjoying their meal
Nik, what did Nadia do to you
Pot luck gathering at Tune Money’s office
The delicious satay
The ever popular satay cooked by me
The spirit of Raya in Tune Money
Tune folks from the IT, Card and Call Centre division
Topics: Tune Money | 16 Comments »
Bullseye : Hitting the Right Target Market
07
By Zafrul | October 7, 2008
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thank you for inviting me to speak here today. I have been asked to speak on a topic that is really close to my heart, one that I think is the most fundamental to our business today. And that is, hitting the right target market.
Once upon a time, you came up with a product and then tried to figure out how to market it. Today, marketing comes into play right at inception. Before you’ve even developed your product, you need to know – who am I going to sell this to? In other words, define your target market.
What do I mean by “define your target market”? Well, what would a typical customer have for breakfast? Breakfast cereal? Toast? Nasi lemak? Roti Canai? Just a cup of coffee? And if they have coffee, would it be fair-trade coffee? Made with fair-trade sugar?
Where does she shop for her goods? The corner shop? The 7-eleven across the street? The large sprawling hypermarket in the middle of town? The wet market? The Internet?
Where does he shop for his clothes? The night market? Boutiques? Departmental stores?
Where does she hang out? At the mamak stall with her friends? At premium coffee boutiques where she is linked to her friends via a wi-fi connection and Facebook?
You may think that all this is irrelevant, but what you are doing is building a profile of your customer. How much is too much? Pretend you are writing a novel. What kind of information would you need about your characters before you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard to start writing? How do you make them come alive on the page?
It is not enough for you to market your product to your customers. You need to be able to relate to them on a very human level. What do they worry about? What do they dream about? What keeps them up at night? Today, I notice that most advertisements focus on ways of overcoming the hike in petrol prices. Isn’t there a more positive, creative way to reach out to your customers?
You need to do that to figure out how to relate to her. Because today, it is not enough for companies to provide a product or service. You need to know what matters to your customers. Your message should not only be about what you are selling. Put yourself out there. Touch a nerve. You need to become a part of their lifestyle. Which doesn’t necessarily mean doing more of the same. While it has been said that there is nothing new under the sun, new things seem to become part of our lives very quickly. Look at Facebook. A year ago, most people I knew hadn’t heard of it. Now, nearly everyone has a Facebook profile up. And if they don’t it’s not because they haven’t heard of it. It’s because they are choosing to go against the norm.
Once you have gathered all this information, and believe me, you don’t want to shortcut this process, you need to start developing your product. If it’s something that needs to be manufactured and your target customer is a socially and environmentally-aware urbanite, you would probably take this into account when choosing what technology to employ. The fact that you employ the latest green technology or purchase your products through fair-trade deals from farmers in less developed countries would probably be a point of interest to them, and something you would want to add into your marketing literature.
What kind of people would you employ to work for you? Here too, you need to get people who are similar to your target customer, or who can actually relate to them. This would probably save time and frustration when it comes to handling complaints at the call centre. How do you retain these staff? Even that should be a part of your marketing strategy. Your people are the public face of the company. They say it all.
I guess in the good old days, companies could count on simple things like brand loyalty. And employees could count on things like a gold watch on retirement. I guess I don’t have to tell you that those days are gone. Customers today are more like Samantha in Sex in the City. Smart and resourceful enough to get what they want, but so fickle, that catching their attention for five minutes, doesn’t ensure that you have their attention for the next five. And needless to say, your customers, especially the youth market, are easily influenced by the peers. If you manage to catch the attention of the natural leaders, the rest are a shoo-in.
So how do you catch and keep your customers in a time like this? Firstly, you should come up with a set of values that your target customer would most identify with – prudence in spending or being environmentally aware or being the coolest product on the block. When you do this, remember that your customers’ attitudes may change and you need to be aware of these changes so you can turn on a dime and reinvent yourself if need be.
And remember to keep your ear to the ground for the latest technologies as these will impact everything from your production processes to how you deliver your product. People want more access, more convenience, more choice. And they want something value-added. The value-add doesn’t even have to be in the product itself, but in the quality of service you render. Personalised service always gets you good word-of-mouth, which we all know is the most effective marketing tool there is.
Nearly everything I talked about so far feeds into your marketing and communication strategy. Once you’ve done your homework about the kind of person you’d like as a customer, created a product that will suit this person and decided on how you want to deliver the product, your communication strategy will be a synch.
You have already connected with your target market. You speak in their language to communicate with them. And you talk about what’s important to them. In short, you create a relationship.
And remember, the most important thing in any relationship is that you tell the truth. Do not overhype your product, do not misrepresent it to the public, do not promise what you can’t deliver. If you’re in the wrong, apologise to your customers humbly and sincerely and do your best to make things better. A little accountability goes a long way.
In impersonal times like these it helps to have brand ambassadors who actually stand for something. I don’t mean sports heroes or superstars. I mean using the CEOs themselves, turning them into recognisable faces, bringing them into your customers’ living rooms.
Why? If anyone is going to endorse your product, shouldn’t it be you? And aren’t you the one with the most to lose if something goes wrong? It makes for a personal touch at a time when personal touches are few and far between.
Lastly, what medium do you use to communicate with your customers? You can go through the usual – TV, print, radio. You can also get your message out there through non-traditional means such as on the Internet, popular blogs, paid posts or through social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.
You would probably need to experiment with what is the right media mix for your company as it varies depending on your customer profile. What gives you the most hits? What gives you the most buy-ins? It’s not really rocket science.
The thing to remember in all this is that it’s not just a matter of hitting the right target market. It’s a matter of what values you espouse and how you ensure that it filters through every level of your company. It’s a matter of engaging with your customers and creating long-term relationships with them.
At the end of the day, even with the most careful planning, you’re not going to hit the bull’s eye. As Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz pointed out, life is a series of near misses. And as author and futurist Gary Hamel points out that what counts most is not hitting the bull’s eye the first time but how quickly you can improve your aim and get another arrow on the target. I can promise you that there are no easy solutions. No matter how many management books you’ve read or how smart you think you are, this will be a long and tortuous process, and I am experiencing it right now.
Do you have the stomach for it?
Thank you.
This speech was delivered on 6th October at the Payment Innovations Asia-Pacific 2008 in Singapore.
Topics: Speeches | 11 Comments »
It’s time for some of us to apologise, some to forgive–and all to grow up
28
By Zafrul | September 28, 2008
THIS Raya, like the ones before it, I will put on my old baju Melayu (I didn’t have time to make a new one this year) and join my family at the mosque for prayers.
We will visit the graves of loved ones where we will pray once more for their souls, asking God to forgive them as well as us and letting them know that even in a time of celebration, they are not forgotten.
Then I will make a beeline for my grandparents’ house where there will be even more family members congregating as we do every year. I can’t wait to sample the ketupat, dodol, lemang and other delicacies that make up such a large part of this day and are perhaps the biggest incentive to wake up early on a public holiday.
And as I move about my day – eating, visiting loved ones, exchanging news and good wishes with friends – I will be reminded once again of how lucky I am to live in this country.
And how I have come to take these little things – waking up to the sounds of traffic rather than bombs or gunfire, going to work, standing in line to buy groceries, meeting up with friends for dinner – for granted.
Even with the “noises” in the last few months, life as we know it goes on. Everyone tells me that Malaysia is a country blessed with abundance and natural resources. We continue to be blessed.
This Raya, as we greet each other with “Selamat Hari Raya” and “maaf zahir batin” (loosely translated this means forgive my physical and spiritual transgressions) we remember that Raya is not only a time to party and gorge ourselves at open houses.
It is also a time of cleansing and renewal. It is a time to strengthen our ties with those who mean the most to us, be they family or friends.
Maaf Zahir Batin. It takes a great person to apologise. And an equally great person to accept an apology.
We have to remember there are two sides to a story and no one person is completely in the wrong. All religions preach forgiveness. And there is a wonderful koan (public statement) in the “I Ching” (the ancient Chinese “Book of Changes”) that simply says: “No blame.”
I remember reading recently that the only acceptable response to someone spilling something is: “Where’s the mop?”
In this way, you drop the blame in favour of solving the problem. And that is the only way we can move forward.
If everyone were to nurse and cherish their grudges, it might feel satisfying, but it would effectively block us from moving forward. Progress would shudder to a halt. And we would stagnate.
You know from all this that I am alluding to the recent fracas where racist statements were bandied about and built upon. The funny thing is, whenever I encounter racism or racist statements abroad I usually feel sorry for the persons making them.
They live in an outdated world and are obviously not with the programme. I know they have said it to hurt me or make me feel unwelcome. But what they have effectively done is demonstrate their ignorance in a public setting.
I used to get riled up about these things, but I have found that if you change your lens and view it differently, it ceases to bother you.
I went to school with Chinese and Indians. Some of us have maintained our friendship through all these long years.
When you get to know a person, they become people to you, with their virtues and flaws, and you are able to move away from those demeaning generalisations you may have unconsciously picked up from the people around you.
If we teach our children to mistrust people of other creeds or colours, we are effectively shooting ourselves in the foot as this intolerance will come back to haunt us. Ignorance has been the basis of the most horrific of human tragedies in history.
If we are to become a mature democracy, we will have to improve our level of discourse. Rather than reacting emotionally to everything we read (most of it from unreliable sources), we need to reflect and internalise the information before coming out with an opinion. This would allow for an informed and educated response. And it would mean that we are finally growing up.
Raya is about open houses and celebration and reconnecting with people you have lost touch with. It is about asking forgiveness and forgiving in turn.
So the question I would like to ask, and I hope it is echoed by my fellow Malaysians everywhere is: “Where’s the mop?”
Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri.
Topics: NST Articles | 7 Comments »
Towards A Positive Corporate Culture
25
By Zafrul | September 25, 2008
Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to speak here today. I gave it some thought and although I don’t like phrases like “corporate culture”, to say nothing of “paradigm shift” or “change management”, I will try to look beyond the cliché and get to the soul of these words and give you something to think about.
What is corporate culture? Some people think it is about what you wear to work, and the rules that govern your day. Do you have your own office? Or are you assigned to a cubicle? Can you shout across to a colleague? Or do you choose to send them an email when they are not 10 feet away from you?
Does everyone simply put in the hours, watching the clock furtively until it is time to go home? Or do they resemble a corporate version of the Stepford Wives – with all those happy little robots singing, good, better, best, let that be your quest, make your good be better, and your better best! (In case you’re wondering, that was a popular ditty from our respected neighbour across the Causeway, featured in productivity advertisements in the 1980s).
I used to think about corporate culture in this way too. Now I realize that is a very superficial way of looking at it. I am indebted to Grameen Bank founder Dr Muhamed Yunus, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Nucor Steel CEO Ken Iverson, Air Asia CEO Tony Fernandes and many others who have dared to go against the norm and think outside the box, for much of my new understanding of what corporate culture is all about. And how to set about creating a positive one for your company.
Newtonian physics would have us belief that we are all separate entities with hard boundaries, billiard balls if you will. When two billiard balls collide, they are knocked in different directions, but they don’t change each other. If corporate culture is defined by Newtonian physics, then people act against each other. There’s a lot of conflict, competition, jealousy and anger. Everyone looks out for number one and pulls in different directions. It does not make for a positive working environment.
Quantum systems, on the other hand, are a totally different, pardon the pun, ballgame. When two quantum systems meet, they overlap and combine their total identity, leading to the emergence of a whole new thing that is greater than the sum of its parts.
This, my friends, is what happens in all social or corporate organizations. People come together, affect each other, and create what is known as the corporate culture – something intangible, something for the most part undefinable, and something which would change subtly if even one of the people were removed from the equation.
So how do you go about creating a positive corporate culture? Let’s start with the basics. In other words, the people who make up the corporation. The first thing to remember is that they are human. I know this seems like a self-evident proposition but our system has evolved, or more accurately regressed, to measure human beings merely by their thirst for profit and capacity to consume. Employees are measured by their capacity to produce what others can consume.
I don’t know about you, but this seems to be a very narrow way of defining people, staff or otherwise. If you look at your employee as merely a cog in your corporate wheel, even before we’ve started, I’d have to say, Houston (perhaps Putrajaya), I think we have a problem.
If you think about it logically, you would see that most people feel the need to be part of something meaningful. What gets them out of bed everyday is the belief that they are engaged in an enterprise that affects the lives of their surrounding community in a positive way. You don’t believe me? Well, neuroscientists have found that the part of the brain linked to altruism is a more primitive part than originally suspected. In fact, it is in the same part that is associated with our cravings for food and sex. Which goes to show that as I’ve said elsewhere before, contributing to our communities is more than just a matter of politics and CSR. It’s a simple human need. Our brains have been hardwired that way.
Instead of considering our staff as either robots set to crank out profit or self-interested economic beings, we can see them as essentially creative individuals, who when they come together, work off each other’s energy to create masterpieces. I remember reading Ken Iverson’s excellent memoir Plain Talk about how he turned around loss-making Nucor Steel. One of the first principles he instilled in the company was simple for the individual, whatever their place on the hierarchy.
He listened to all ideas and suggestions, even ones from the humble intern and one such intern’s ideas went on to shave a few million dollars off the production process. So while Nucor Steel paid their staff the highest wage in the industry, because of the innovations largely brought about by the employees, their cost of production per tone was the lowest. Which just goes to show what can be done if you are willing to expand your narrow view of what the person standing right next to you is capable of.
So, once the company has changed its lens with regards to its staff, the next thing, which many would think should come first, is effective leadership. By this, I don’t mean some autocrat sitting in his glass tower, shouting out orders. Today what you need is someone who is able to get everyone on the same page – to buy into the vision of the company.
When coming up with the vision, you have to take the trouble to consider factors that cannot be measured on a chart. What do the individuals in your company believe in? What do they value? What motivates them to get out of bed every day? When you first ask these questions, the answers may be obvious. But scratch a little deeper. There is more to even the most mundane-seeming person, than is obvious at first.
Why go to all this trouble? Well, apart from the obvious answer, it would be because if everyone buys into a vision, you create a wholly different type of corporate entity where people are working towards a common goal. You don’t get the same conflicts, grudges and anger, in short, there is a sweet absence of that horror known as corporate politics. And we all know that corporate politics often spells the death of any corporate culture.
Thirdly, to create a positive corporate culture, you need to have a values-based company. The days of unethical ruthless corporate, popularly depicted in movies like Wall Street in the 1980s, are numbered. If you want your company to continue to be around, you will have to take into account the welfare of your employees and surrounding community rather than just the stakeholders. This will include how environmentally and resource-friendly your policies are and in what ways you give back to the community. Remember that your corporate culture is more than a notion on paper but an actual energy and if what you are channelling through your corporate policies are unlimited greed, your company will not be around for long. Trust me on this.
So there you have it. You create a corporate culture by treating employees as human beings, providing a vision and getting their buy-in and ensuring that your business impacts your community in positive ways on all levels. I know I’ve just skimmed the surface, but I think if you’ve got these covered, you’re on the right track. And the synergy created by all that positive energy in your company will help take it to the next level.
It will be a challenge, no doubt. Because as simple as these principles are, they are far from easy to implement. Much of what I have said here would go against the corporate grain. But the rules of the game are changing and you either adapt to create something sustainable or get out of the way.
Good luck.
Topics: Speeches | 3 Comments »
Now you can buy insurance in just ten minutes!
06
By Zafrul | September 6, 2008
We recently launched our latest initiative. Now all our customers can buy all our insurance products not just on-line but also through our call centre - for the same price!
Topics: Tune Money | 15 Comments »
« Previous Entries
Loading ...
