The Mandi Blog-Communication skills and creating a Personal brand

Business Communication and Creating a Personal Brand

An industry insight by Mr Nikhil Kulkarni co-founder of techdarwin.com

About the Speaker

Mr Nikhil Kulkarni is a NITIE alumnus with an experience of 10 years in the consulting industry with KPMG through campus placements of NITIE. He explained about the career insight into the consulting industry and the importance of creating a personal brand.

He went on to follow the path of becoming an entrepreneur and founded techdarwin. His company fills a unique gap in the market no company provides integrated planning and booking portal. His company was focussed on B2B and now is also in process of providing B2C.

His Journey started in 2004, he said he was an entrepreneur before starting his company but now he was doing it for his own firm. 

India need such entrepreneurs for its Aatmanirbhar Bharat Mission and Make in India mission. To be a Job provider and not a Jobseeker. NITIE MahaMandi 2020 in its first fully virtual event in its 16 years of service will go a long way to create entrepreneur of tomorrow.


Mr Nikil Discussed 3 Key Points:

  1. How important Business Communication is in Consulting
  2. Tips and tricks to create an impact 
  3. Creating a Personal Brand
    • Importance of Personal Brand
    • WHAT it is
    • How to create it
    • When to create it.

Business communication in Consulting.

  • Consulting is 80% Communications.
  • But with the time you need to grow personal relationships.
    • Why?
      • You want contracts and to be the most preferred consultant partner for the client. you need to build relationships.
      • Research is just 5% of Job. Effective communication is the most important.
  • Ms office will be your best buddy for your professional life.
    • Initially, you need to create proposals.
    • They need to be effective. He gave an example of his senior and how proficient he was in MS office and could do work in 15-20 min which took him nearly 2 hours.
  • Powerpoint is much better than MS Word
    • A client can go through your 25 slide PowerPoint but will find your 2-page word doc tedious.
  • Proposals to clients involve 
    • what did we do 
    • How did we do
  • Executive Reports
    • Presented in Powerpoints
    • Should be a summary of the proposal and not the proposal.
  • Detailed Project reports (DPR)
    • the government requires DPR to be submitted in MS word.
  • Working paper
    • Prepared in excel but seldom shared with the client. they are consultants intellectual property.
  • Excel is essential to succeed, Know Shortcuts.
    • More efficient you are 
    • More work will be done
    • More Growth for you in the company

Tips and Tricks to create impact

  1. Pyramid Principle

The objective of the document must be known:example
  • To provide a solution
  • To describe the problem and to seek feedback
  • To convince someone to buy the solution
  • Why my solution is better
We must identify the audience we will be addressing:
  • Who are they
  • What do they know'
  • What is their frame of reference
Generally 2 types of audience
  • People who will recommend the implementation: Concerned with cost-effectiveness, effort it will take
  • People who will be responsible to implement it: Concerned with how it will impact their job, will it improve their stature at the firm.
Context of info being consumed

To describe  a problem: MECE

Mutually
Exclusive
Collectively
Exhaustive

Mutually Exclusive: All the points should not overlap and you should not repeat content
Collectively Exhaustive: List All aspects of the problem

Hierarchical Structure: 

To organise and maintain floe of information:


MECE  should be used at two levels:
  • Supporting Arguments
  • Stating Ideas, Facts and data

Summarizing is very important

We should know what part to keep and what part to leave
 It Depends on 3 Factors
  1. What is the Context
  2. Who is the audience
  3. what is the objective

   Key Message

How to make an impact

A lot of people will have data and fact. To create an impact you need to be different:
  • Start with stating a startling Fact
  • Start with quotation
  • Start with a short video

Picture Effect 

What are some of the best dialogues and conversations in the movie ...
More they are More impact
Helps idea to stand out of crowd

Personal Brand

Why

Barcelona meltdown a reminder that Lionel Messi holds most power ...
Opportunities come waking  to you
  • Nikhil Sir got many opportunities offered to him by the personal brand he created
  • He suggests making yourself known in your sector without having direct relations   
  • Better personal brand better chance to rise
  • Your story will reverberate during the promotion 
  • Gives you a Confidence boost

How

  • Blogs
    • Preferably on medium.com
    • A lot of people approached him for opportunities as they have read his blogs.
    • English translation of Ekla Colo Re of Tagore has his blog as the top result

  • Youtube Channel
    • If writing does not come naturally to you.
    • Improves video making skills
    • It is more powerful than A blog
  • Twitter
    • You need good content
    • Regular postings
    • Eg. Vindhya C: tweets super focussed on production fields
      • Has 5091 FOLLOWERS
  • Instagram
  • Facebook



Special Thanks to Professor T. Prasad

For bringing insights from Industry Leader and entrepreneurs for us to learn from as a direct example.

It will have immeasurable impacts on the learning of students who will be future leaders.




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