Pabrai Talk on Sales & Marketing

[Parsad]

Mohnish did a talk for the Southern California chapter of TIE on sales and marketing.  Cheers!

 

http://vimeo.com/89140080

[oddballstocks]

Sanjeev,

 

Thanks for posting this, excellent video and great thoughts.  A business without sales isn't in business.  Marketing works to drive sales.  Mohnish really breaks this down.

 

His advice is great, if an entrepreneur builds a product that isn't compelling to themselves then they have no business selling it.

 

This video will probably be buried on this board, but I'd say it's one of the more important videos.  I'd watch this a few times over watching Buffett and Munger repeat the same tired old sayings.

 

Thanks!

Nate

[dcollon]

That was a fantastic presentation. 

 

Thanks for sharing it. 

[Guest longinvestor]

Sanjeev,

 

Thanks for posting this, excellent video and great thoughts.  A business without sales isn't in business.  Marketing works to drive sales.  Mohnish really breaks this down.

 

His advice is great, if an entrepreneur builds a product that isn't compelling to themselves then they have no business selling it.

 

This video will probably be buried on this board, but I'd say it's one of the more important videos.  I'd watch this a few times over watching Buffett and Munger repeat the same tired old sayings.

Thanks!

Nate

 

I watched the video, yes it was a good talk, Mohnish presents well etc. But I'm on the other side of Buffett/Munger repeating themselves. I find that to be refreshingly and arguably more intellectually honest and appealing. I've developed useful convictions about value investing and business/economic principles as well as human behaviors  through the same old tired sayings of WEB/CM. In a sense, a flurry of "new" insights is not necessarily more useful than repeated ones of a few core principles. In fact, too much of the "new stuff" gets my Bull shit antenna up and I tune out. The annual trip to Omaha serves up the tired old stuff to reinforce my investing mindset and also as an annual cleansing ritual to rid myself of the clutter of new stuff I get through the media, internet etc.

 

[oddballstocks]

Sanjeev,

 

Thanks for posting this, excellent video and great thoughts.  A business without sales isn't in business.  Marketing works to drive sales.  Mohnish really breaks this down.

 

His advice is great, if an entrepreneur builds a product that isn't compelling to themselves then they have no business selling it.

 

This video will probably be buried on this board, but I'd say it's one of the more important videos.  I'd watch this a few times over watching Buffett and Munger repeat the same tired old sayings.

Thanks!

Nate

 

I watched the video, yes it was a good talk, Mohnish presents well etc. But I'm on the other side of Buffett/Munger repeating themselves. I find that to be refreshingly and arguably more intellectually honest and appealing. I've developed useful convictions about value investing and business/economic principles as well as human behaviors  through the same old tired sayings of WEB/CM. In a sense, a flurry of "new" insights is not necessarily more useful than repeated ones of a few core principles. In fact, too much of the "new stuff" gets my Bull shit antenna up and I tune out. The annual trip to Omaha serves up the tired old stuff to reinforce my investing mindset and also as an annual cleansing ritual to rid myself of the clutter of new stuff I get through the media, internet etc.

 

My guess is that you don't run a business either.  Monish's talk was really aimed at business owners.  A point and click online investor doesn't need to know or care about sales and marketing and how marketing increases sales. 

 

This talk had some great actionable items in it, but it also closed the gap on cloning.  I understand it better, and after hearing about it in a non copy Buffett sense I can relate.  I have cloned others shamelessly, and I have told others exact things I've done and they've been ignored like he said.

 

Buffett's sayings are too abstract, sure they make people feel good, but what is a "good" business and what is a "great" price?  A lot of what he talks about are like horoscopes.  They can be applied to any and all situations.

 

Maybe take my thoughts with a grain of salt, I don't have WEB stars in my eyes like most on this board do.  I'm not star-struck by any 'guru' investors.  They're just people who do their job well and have been compensated for it.  Look at a guy like Tim Berners-Lee, he invented HTML.  Without his invention we wouldn't be able to talk like this, he's well off but I don't see anyone singing his praises.

[yadayada]

yeah i think buffett just targets a wide group with not a deep level of understanding yet. He could probably tell you alot more interesting details, but he just focusses on educating the largest group of people.

 

I really liked that new agy idea of his. From experience, very true.

 

Except when he says P&G cannot put lipstick on a pig. Don't they sell toothpaste that claims to whiten teeth? I might be wrong about this. But basicly that is complete bs and proven wrong already, it doesnt whiten teeth, and doesn't really offer that much more compared to what you pay for.

 

And like NIKE. Everybody believes you need expensive running shoes, but in the end once you get used to it, minimalist running shoes are waay better. Speaking from experience here  :) . Even the guy who made the first running shoe for Nike quickly came around on this. Yet it was wildly succesfull.

 

So I am not sure if it really applies to companies and products. Since subconsciously, if the person who sells it to you, really believes his own lie, then you wont pick up any bullshit signals in body lanuage or facial ticks? Or maybe the connection between subconscious and conscious is just way too clogged for most people?

[Parsad]

From Mohnish, for you guys wanting the list:

 

 

Sales/Marketing Reading Materials Referenced in Mohnish’s Presentation

 

1. Marketing High Technology by William Davidow

 

2. Power vs. Force by David Hawkins

 

3. Strategic Selling by Miller/Heiman

 

4. Conceptual Selling by Miller/Heiman

 

5. Successful Large Account Management by Miller/Heiman

 

6. The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses by Amar Bhide

 

7. Inc. Magazine Subscription

 

8. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

 

9. In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters

 

 

Cheers!

 

[LC]

Thank you Sanjeev (and Mohnish!)  8)

[Liberty]

Thanks for the list Sanjeev!

[Guest deepValue]

Wow. That was a fantastic talk. Almost all of it aligns with what Paul Graham says. Basic message: sell something people want and copy what works for other businesses.

 

The one part that made me wince was when he sided with the Steve Jobs method of waiting for the perfect product before going to market, as opposed to the Bill Gates/Larry Ellison method of going to market with a minimum viable product and iterating based on customer feedback. It seems like a lot of what Pabrai said about getting customer feedback would work better with the Gates method (and, as he said at the beginning of the talk, few people will ever invent a 'perfect' product like the iPhone).

 

Like Oddball said, there were actionable ideas for business owners. Most entrepreneurs fail because they simply don't execute. They don't listen to their customers closely enough or they don't try to implement enough new ideas; the throw-everything-on-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks method seems to work for a lot of businesses, you just never see this part of the process because it usually happens in the early stages of a venture -- before they know what works!

 

If nothing else, I'm now a lot more interested in learning about Pabrai. I skimmed the table of contents of The Dhando Investor several years ago and passed on it. That was a mistake; this guy clearly knows a thing or two about how the world works.

[Liberty]

The one part that made me wince was when he sided with the Steve Jobs method of waiting for the perfect product before going to market, as opposed to the Bill Gates/Larry Ellison method of going to market with a minimum viable product and iterating based on customer feedback. It seems like a lot of what Pabrai said about getting customer feedback would work better with the Gates method (and, as he said at the beginning of the talk, few people will ever invent a 'perfect' product like the iPhone).

 

I think it depends on what your product is.

 

Both methods work best with different things. Releasing early and often and correcting bugs and adding features on the go works great for software and services, even better if ad-supported and people. But when you're selling hardware, it better be great because you can't easily go back to fix it and people paid you good money, so once you've delivered crap to your customers, they stuck with it and won't forget it for a while... Since Apple builds the whole thing (hardware-software-services), they can't afford to be in perpetual beta like Google.