Still Here!!!

I have been busy lately, with a lot of stuff going on at the same time. Since what i am doing right now involves with "Sales and Marketing" and I do not have enough time to write a new blog, so i decided to recycle one of the older ones. Moreover, I wanted to mention a blog written by ex-googles on their company, both at startup level and beyond.

As per my weekend schedule, and also keeping the mind school starts next week, I visited the Borders bookstore today for a couple of hours. I had been to the bookstore a couple of days ago in downtown, which is much bigger, and re-discovered the book, “The tipping point”. I had seen the book before in the bookshelf but never came around to reading it.

Anyways, I started reading it that day and I continued the book today. It starts out a little boring but picks up very quickly. The book flap reads, “The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social Behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” The book tries to look into the similarities and try to come up with generalizations based under the umbrella topic, “Behavioral sciences”. I have just read the first part of the book, where the author describes three fundamental type of people responsible for tipping point.

The first type of person is the connectors. These are people like our grandmothers; they know each and everybody in the neighborhood and won’t think twice before starting a conversation with the person sitting next to you on a bus journey. These people are socially very active and are the gurus of networking. Each and every one of us knows somebody who is a connector. The author asks the readers to name all their friends and think through whom or how did they meet. The author believes most of his friends become his friends since they were already known to his former roommate, who thus was the connector. I have found the same here also. Most of the friends I know came from one or two persons. I know at least two people, whom everybody seems to know and they know everybody. They are the connectors for the rest of the social circle. As the author says, networking is not like a circle but more like a pyramid.

The second type of person is the Marvels. The best description for these kinds of persons is the data banks. These people know the best deals in town know more facts than regular people and don’t hesitate to give you their opinion on different aspects. They are the ones who e-mail you about a discount sale at the nearby Ben and Jerry’s and also give out discount coupons. Mind you they don’t force their recommendations; they give out information voluntarily and kind of expect you to add some to their data bank.

The last job is the salesmen. These people are tactful in their ability to persuade the general public to act on their recommendations. Almost everybody knows who a salesperson is and what he or she does, so I need not expand on that.

The book goes on to site research on various interpersonal communication patterns and behaviors. I have only read the first part of the book and look forward to read the rest tomorrow or as soon as I can. Surely a must for any one doing market research at any level.