Keep on sharing your million dollar experiences..

A thought provoking / inspiring post. I am not an entrepreneur but I agree with the general idea. I have seen this work in a lot of different cultures & environments.

As you mentioned, I think sometimes we don’t even realize who the beholder is for a very long time.

Thanks for sharing.

Overtime i have also learnt that your toughest clients are the ones who teach you the most and at times force you to be at your best

this is a wonderful piece and quite insightful. You are absolutely right that the value creation happens even without the knowlege of the creator.
We created lokmat Community Initiative an offline community platform in three verticals. We could realise its value only when we got a client telling us why don’t you guys price it separately rather bundling it just as an add on for your print brands. LCI is a separate profit centre now.

I agree with Prashant that if something has been created by the best efforts it will be valued always.

Thanks for sharing nice information. It was really inspiring.

Also,
Thanks Prashant to you too!

That is indeed an interesting experience. I too had another similar experience and the lesson we learnt was slightly different.

Around the same time (1998-99), I was the Regional Head of an exhibition & promotions company in Delhi and we got a brief for the promotion of Satyam Online (SIFY).

My team invested a lot of efforts in creating a plan for that… numerous brain-storming sessions, sleepless nights, design options etc. The entire team got involved in that one project so much the we almost had a feeling that we were employees of Satyam. It took us a whole one week to put things together (concept, designs, event-flow, budget, ROI Analysis etc etc.) and we were proud of the outcome. The client even mentioned that he had never seen an elaborate plan like ours and that he can clearly visualize what happens when, where and how. But, we lost the deal for reasons that were never disclosed to us and we felt shattered.

It was a friday evening and I took my team out for a drink at TGI Fridays because they had put their best in it. We had another discussion on why did we lose the deal. People suggested various reasons but I was not convinced.

I looked around while I was having my drink and I saw the captain taking an order from another guest. He said “What would you like to have?” The guest replied “Whiskey”. The captain said “Would you like to try a new Scotch brand”? The guest said no and the Captain went ahead asking others if they wanted to try.

And that’s it. We made a list of all possible clients right there at TGIF who would want to “Try” our plan.

By noon on monday, the sales team was ready with the contact details of many of the clients we had listed. By the next friday we had presented the same plan to some who seemed interested and within a week thereafter we sold it to Mantra Online. We did promotions for them in Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow and Chandigarh and the campaign was much appreciated.

So, if you have created something with your best efforts, the world will value your work and it would be a pleasantl surprise for sure!!!