Success mantras for marketing professionals

No task is too challenging for the young and ambitious, especially when it comes to furthering your career. You also need to concentrate on cultivating additional work skills such as entrepreneurship and networking abilities.

Know your target consumer segment prospective customers who will use your product/ service.

Pay attention to consumer insights & information related on how your customer is actually using your product / service.

You must have entrepreneurial skills.

You must seek opportunity and be fast in converting opportunity to reality.

You must learn from consumer insights.

Networking abilities: Look beyond different functional areas from different companies and build relationships for the future.

You must take the one that offers a greater job challenge, which may not necessarily be the one with the higher compensation.

Factors that should drive you:

A sense of challenge
Your ambition to succeed

Tips for managing people:

Foster the right culture in your organization by giving people the opportunity to grow. You must take risks. You must build values.

11 ways to be a happy employee

[Even though I fancy that we are students, the following “way of life” or simply ways/habits would definitely help you, in being a better student as well as a team player.]

Can you recollect a day where you woke up at 5:00 am, got ready quickly & waited to do something exciting? Was it your college annual day function? Or a competitive exam? Or maybe a first date? Maybe it was your wedding day(I doubt it In a hopeful way; for the present time being). OR Is it Monday morning to work? If the answer is the last, surely you are a happy employee.

Though the above occasions may not have a lot in common, excitement & motivation can be attributed to almost all of them. However, at the workplace, it is almost impossible to find both or any one of these attributes daily. But, being happy or unhappy is always in our hands. That's the choice we make & we are the creators of the outcome by our actions.

1. Plan your week on Sunday night

Look at your work calendar & plan your week on Sunday night or Monday morning. This would include important meetings, deliverables, a brief summary of things that are pending from last week & any tasks to be achieved during the week. Though this might look like a time management tip, at the end of the week, on Friday night when you re-visit what you have achieved over the last five days, the satisfaction is immense.

2. Undertake activities that you are passionate about even though it might not be in your job profile

Start an initiative that you would love to do irrespective of whether it is required for you to do or not.
Send a daily newsletter to your team on the topics that most of them will be interested.
Do a presentation on the topic that you are passionate about.
Organize a small sports event for your team.
Call everyone in your team for a team coffee, breakfast or lunch break
Appreciate colleagues in your team or in a cross-functional team who did a great job
Write a poem on your team's achievements
Arrange a potluck lunch

3. Do not indulge in the blame game

If something goes wrong do not blame others blindly. If you commit a mistake, do not hesitate to accept it. As Gauthama Buddha said, there are three things we can't hide for long: the sun, earth and the truth. Accepting your mistake gracefully will only make you look like a true professional and also give you the satisfaction of not cheating.

4. Communicate more often in person

Utilize all the opportunities where you can speak to an individual in person rather than e-mail or phone. But be aware of the other person's time & availability. Listening to a positive answer from a person will give you more happiness than if it is done over the phone or via e-mail.

5. Know what is happening at your workplace

Will this make a person happy? Truly, yes! Imagine a cricket team that doesn't know how many runs to score to win a match? More than losing the game, the player will never be interested or motivated to play well.
You will also get an extra edge if you are in a position to answer queries raised by your peers or juniors. This is not just for the good reasons, but bad reasons as well. You do not want to be the last employee to know if your company is laying off employees (in the worst case, if you are the one who is on that list).

6. Participate in organization-level activities

This could be as simple as spending one weekend for a corporate social responsibility activity or attending a recruitment drive to help your HR team or arranging a technical/sports event at the organizational level. Most of these events will be successful as people do come on their own to contribute.

7. Have a hobby that keeps you busy & happy

Many people say their hobby is watching TV or listening to music or reading the newspaper. These aren't hobbies; they are just ways of passing the time. [No offence from my side; its what the writer of this article wrote!] Some hobbies are evergreen and will keep you evergreen as well: dancing, painting, writing short stories, poems, blogs and sharing your experiences.

8. Take up a sport

Physical activity keeps a person healthy & happy. If you pick up one sport well, you can represent your organization in corporate sports event too.
[ For all football fans in the class; assemble in the football ground, every Tuesdays & Thursdays, playing a sport does help.]

9. Keep yourself away from office politics

Politics, as a practice, whatever its profession, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. -- Henry Brooks Adams
Politics is everywhere & the office is no exception. Playing politics might be beneficial but only for the short term. So the best thing to do is play fair.

10. Wish & smile

More often than not, there are fair chances that the other person will smile back. This could be your security guard at the gate, your receptionist, your office boy, your CEO or your manager -- never forget to wish them & smile.

11. Volunteer for some activity

"The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving." Albert Einstein
Do at least one activity without expecting anything in return. There is no set frequency for this. This could be once in a day or once in a week or thrice in a week. It could be as simple as making tea at the office for your colleague, helping a colleague who is working in another department by using your skills, dropping your colleague at his door step in your car, going to your manager or colleague to ask if there is any help you can extend, contributing to technical or knowledge management communities in your organization etc.

Resource material taken from:
http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2006/feb/23success.htm