Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we host Anaggh Desai. Anaggh is a business veteran with over 25 years of experience across industries ranging from hospitality, logistics, travel, e-commerce and retail.

Why is he on the show

In his 25-year career span, there is little Anaggh has not seen or experienced. He describes himself as a mindcaster and a people watcher. He has a cult like following on twitter which he uses to observe trends and patterns and engage with his followers.

What are we talking about

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we have Neil Patel. Neil is a serial entrepreneur & co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue.

Why is he on the show

He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama.

The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world

What are we talking about

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we have Aaron Anderson. He is currently, Director of Strategic Organizational Initiatives at San Francisco State University, College of Business.

Why is he on the show

Aaron has been a consistent contributor to the Managament Innovation Exchange and won a MIX Prize for an experiment that he has been running in how he works. 

His entry titled: “Working in Plain View: Using a Wiki & Social Media to broadcast as you work” won the prize in the “Digital Freedom Challenge”.

He has been working in plain view of all his organization by using a wiki and other open tools that allows him to work in ways that we have not seen yet.

Lessons from his experiment:

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we have Dave Kahle. He is also known as the Growth Coach.

Why is he on the show

Dave Kahle is one of the world’s leading sales authorities. He’s the author of 12 books, including 11 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople, and How to Sell Anything to Anyone Anytime.

He writes a weekly Ezine for salespeople; and has presented in 47 states and ten countries.

As a salesperson, he was the number one salesperson in the country for two different companies in two totally distinct industries.

For over 20 years, he’s been President of Kahle Way(r) Sales Systems, a sales training/consulting company. In that capacity, he’s trained tens of thousands of salespeople and sales managers.

What are we talking about

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we have Karin Hurt. Her award-winning blog, Let’s Grow Leaders, has grown into a highly interactive, International community. Her book, Overcoming An Imperfect Boss is available on Amazon.

Why is she on the show

She has a diverse background of executive leadership experience in sales, customer service, call centers, human resources, merger integration, training and leadership development – the last 20 years of which have been with Verizon.

Most recently, she served as Executive Director of the Strategic Partnership Channel at Verizon Wireless where she transformed customer service outsourcing, working with companies and call centers to build strong cultures that deliver positive customer experiences.

Her high-trust, high-collaboration approach drove substantial improvement across the portfolio, with centers performing at parity or above internal centers.

Prior to that she led a Verizon Wireless sales team, leading the nation in store sales to the small and medium business space. Karin’s consulting takes a comprehensive approach to developing confident, competent, and creative front-line teams.

She has also co-authored “Parents Guide to Leadership”, which is a book about teaching children to be leaders. You can download the book here.

What are we talking about

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we have Porus Munshi, author of the best selling book “Making Breakthrough Innovations Happen”.

Why is he on the show

I have worked with Porus on an innovation project and from experience know that he is a great coach and has the uncanny ability to guide the teams to achieve their goals without any compromises. His understanding of the breakthrough or leapfrog innovation process is very deep and I have learnt a lot in every conversation that i have had with him over the past few years. .

What are we talking about

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we have Dr. Dean Shroeder & Dr. Alan G Robinson, authors of the best selling book “Ideas Driven Organization”.

Why are they on the show

Dr. Alan G. Robinson, is an award-winning author, educator, researcher and consultant. He has co-authored six books, which have been translated into more than 20 languages. His specialties include managing continuous improvement, creativity, ideas and innovation lean production. He has advised more than 200 organizations in 25 countries. He is also  Professor at the Isenberg School of Management of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Dean M Schroeder, PhD, knows management matters. It matters to people, and it matters to performance. His mission is to help organizations by leading them to experience the positive changes that happen through improving their management systems and techniques. He is also an award-winning author, consultant and scholar. He is the Herbert and Agnes Schulz Professor of Management at Valparaiso University in Indiana.

The best-selling book, Ideas Are Free, which they co-authored was voted the Reader’s Choice by Fast Company magazine and selected as one of the 30 Best Business Books of the Year by Soundview Executive Books.

What are we talking about

PS: The posts that i speak about in the conversation are:

• Building Sustainable Competitive advantage in a networked economy
• Org structures – Moving from Pyramid to concentric circles

Shashank P S, an investor with BVP India in Bangalore, joined in 2012. He focuses on investments in internet and mobile.

Most recently, Shashank was co-founder of Atticous, a platform to power the online identity of businesses, where he handled strategy and business development. Shashank has also served as a senior consultant at Zinnov Management Consulting. He worked with several technology majors looking to make a foray or expand their presence in India. 

In this episode, we talk to Shashank, an investor with Bessemer Venture Parters. He shares his journey of how he became a VC at the age of 25, his thoughts on the start-up eco-system in India.

In this episode, we host Matt Heinz. Matt is President at Heinz Marketing and brings more than 15 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations, vertical industries and company sizes. His career has focused on delivering measurable results for his employers and clients in the way of greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty.

In 2007, Matt began Heinz Marketing to help clients focus their business on market and customer opportunities, then execute a plan to scale revenue and customer growth. 

This episode in a way is very useful for sales leaders and aspiring sales leaders. We cover some very important topics like: 

1. What are some of the most common mistakes sales leaders commit
2. What can sales managers do to help their teams to become more productive?
3. How should sales managers should be measured on (Getting it done and doing it right)
4. Social Selling in a B2B context & what can sales organizations do to benefit from the social selling processes..
5. Relevance of marketing and their role in the new world & how can marketing help make the sales teams more effective
6. How should Sales & marketing teams could work together better
7. Marketing folks who understand technology or techies who understand marketing?
8. What role does the CEO play in the overall sales success?
9. How do you look for when you hire your sales reps?
10. One mistake that sales managers commit which is so obvious to others but could be difficult for themselves to realize? 

Join us and listen in for a very interesting conversation. 

In this episode, we host Paul Castain, who is the Vice President of Rock Star Development for Castain Training Systems,  where he works with organizations and individuals who want to sell more and sell better. He is also the founder of the LinkedIn group "Sales Playbook", a group with more than 40000 members and one that is totally spam free.

In this conversation, we talk about a lot of important topics for the sales executive and sales leaders:

We talk about how taking action (starting Sales Playbook group on LinkedIn) has been one of the most important decisions that he ever made in his business.

We also talk about some tips to transform yourself into a sales rockstar:

• The importance of developing different styles of selling and the ability to switch styles (some call it adapting to your customer) based on the feedback you get as you go along.
• The importance of Empathy (to your customers, to your sales leaders, to your other colleagues) in selling successfully
• 3 of the most frequent mistakes that sales executives and leaders do and how to avoid them
• The power of uninterrupted time at the start of the day to do your most important tasks
• How micro-managing managers destroy the productivity of sales reps & what can they do to get out of this habit
• The importance of having an always up-to-date CRM system
• Some of the common traits in highly successful sales leaders
• Some common mistakes that sales leaders do and how to avoid them
• Paul's thoughts on the Sales vs Marketing debate
• Social selling - what it really is and some tips for the sales reps to excel at it
• The importance of investing in training

I strongly recommend that you join the Sales Playbook community and start engaging with the great folks there. You can also reach out to Paul on twitter @PaulCastain. 

You can join the Summer Sales Camp here.

In this episide, we host Lakshman, who heads the innovation practice for the consulting division of SAP, based in India and also a visiting faculty at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany. 

In this conversation, we talk about the importance of defining the right problem to solve, as the first step in any innovation practice. 

Lucky also shares his views on how to build a practice capable of being able to innovate on a consistent basis.

We also talk about Design Thinking, its history, the key components of this philosophy and how we can use this to solve complex problems.

He also shares information about the lense from which one could look at ideas to develop further in the innovation cycle.

If you are in the process of solving a complex problem or part of an innovation project, I would like to invite you to join the conversation to gain a different perspective.  

Welcome to episode number 4 of “Pushing Beyond the Obvious”. In this episode, we have with us Bob Thompson, CEO & editor of www.customerThink.com, the biggest online community about customers and customer centricity.

Bob has recently released his book #HookedOnCustomers. We shall talk to him today about what does customer centricity mean and everything that goes along with it.

We talk about

• The fact that most customer centric organizations are such, because their operational fabric is such that they do listen to their customers and act upon it and this is not part of a special program or a project.
• CRM, Customer Experience Management, social businesses & big data have become buzz words and without the right culture behind the efforts, they do more harm to the business. 
• The role of Chief Customer Officers & how it is critical to have the CEO assume that role.
• Some of the mistakes that firms do in their journey towards becoming customer centric and how they can avoid them.
• What role can the sales, marketing and customer service teams play in the journey
• When is it not a good idea to listen to your customers (with a good example).
• The steps that he outlines in his book, Hooked on Customer (which by the way is a great book & you should pick it up): Listen, Think, Empower, Create & Delight.

This chat provides some very good insights if you want to or already are on your journey to becoming customer centric.

Hope you enjoy the chat.

You can connect with Bob on www.hookedoncustomers.com or www.customerthink.com.

In this episode, we host Meron Bareket, the host of  “Inspiring Innovation Podcast” and the person behind the Inspiring Innovation Podcast Incubator, where he walks through all the steps that one needs to go through to set-up and start a podcast of their own. I am bringing this podcast to you by following his instructions as well.

We had a very interesting conversation about entrepreneurship, his journey from making software to how he got a job at the local Israeli radio, his iPad only magazine –“Inspiring Innovation” and his current role as the host of "Inspiring Innovation" podcast.

He also talks about the pivots that he has had to make from being an editor for the online magazine to being a podcaster.

We also talk about entrepreneurship, the challenges of being an online entrepreneur and how he addresses them. We also talk about Mastermind groups and their significance in the life of an online entrepreneur.

He also shares his secret of getting interesting guests for the podcasts.

You can find more about Meron and connect with him @ http://www.meronbareket.com/.

The inspiring innovation podcast is at https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/inspiring-innovation-podcast/id638774259.

The inspiring innovation podcast incubator to learn podcasting @ http://inspiring-innovation.com/

Other Podcasts that were mentioned in the podcast:

• The James Altucher Show
• Unmistakable Creative by Srini Rao
• Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income: 
• John Lee Dumas's Entrepreneurs on Fire: 

Hope you enjoy the show. Please do share your love by giving us a rating or leave us a review on iTunes.  

This is episode No 2 of “Pushing Beyond the Obvious”.

Today, we host Sunder Madakshira, who heads marketing & communications at SAP in India. He was recognized as “The Marketing Thought Leader” by Stars of the Industry Awards, constituted by the ABP group in Feb 2014. 

We had a very interesting conversation about the role that marketing can and should play, both internally and externally.

He also shares a lot of interesting insights about the importance of building a personal brand; some do’s and don’ts about how you go about building your personal brand.

He also shares some insights on leadership and the role of leaders.  

You can find more about Sunder and connect with him @ http://www.madakshira.com/

This is the 1st episode of "Pushing Beyond the Obvious" podcast.

In this episode, I talk about what this podcast is about and whom is it relevant for.

This podcast is relevant to you if:

• You are an entreprenuer or a CEO
• You are a manager responsible for the sales, marketing, innovation or strategy functions in your organization.    

The podcast will be about getting insights on how to push the boundaries of the following functions:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Innovation
• Leadership
• Entreprenuership
• Strategy

The format of the show will be a combination of solo episodes where I share my experience and thoughts and interviews where I host successful practitioners and thought leaders in these fields and learn gain insights from them. 

I am extremely excited about the journey and I hope you shall join me in the ride.

I also believe that the podcast shall play a small but an important role in your success, whatever it is that you set out to do.

If you like the episodes, please share your love by rating the podcast, writing reviews and sharing this with your friends and colleagues. 

You can provide your feedback or questions by writing to me at mgr@rmukeshgupta.com