The business should always be in a sequence, which is the 7P’s sequence and the 8th P is the Purpose. The purpose is the ultimate P that binds all the other 7P’s together. **_Who am I?_** _I am the thread that binds all the pearls together._ Similarly, Purpose is the thread that binds all the pearls, i.e. prospect, people, product, pricing& positioning process& performance, and profit, together. Most of the businessmen come with the following problems: - I am doing this business. How should I sell? - I am doing this business. I need to give discounts. - I need to give goods on credit. - I am not getting new customers. All the above problems are related to the 5th P, i.e. Pricing and Positioning. Some businessmen have a problem that they are not able to retain their human resources. This is 3rd P, i.e. People. Most of the questions and problems of business people are related to 3rd P (People), 5th P (Pricing and Positioning), and 6th P (Process and Performance) and the result of these Ps is the 7th P, i.e. Profit. However, a business person should move in the sequence. Let us discuss the 8P’s in detail. # **#1 Problem** - Identify the customer’s burning problem. - Till you have identified the burning problem of the customer, you will not get any advantage of starting a business. - You need to identify the answers to the following two questions: - What is the burning problem of your customer? - How do you solve in such a manner that the customer himself cannot solve it without you? - Only after getting the answers to the above questions, you will be able to evaluate the market. It also helps you in determining whether you need to bring radical innovation or incremental innovation, which completely depends on the customer’s burning problem and can be determined through customer-centricity. - Innovation and automation largely depend on which problem of customer you are solving. - You might have missed the innovation that can impact the money-making model of the customer. Money making model is the model that shows how your customer is earning money and from where he/she is earning it. - You need to identify how your customer can grow and how your customer’s customers will grow. - So, you have to find out the need, urgency, or the problem of your customer that you are going to solve because customer’s needs give you leads. **_For Example:_** **1. Baba Ramdev** Baba Ramdev identified the need of the customers, i.e. healthy products. Therefore, he first established himself as a health ambassador or Yoga Guru. He focused on health and work on the problem of health. **2.  Steve Jobs** According to Steve Jobs: **_Technology comes Later;_****_Resources come Later;_****_Customer needs come First._** So: **Reverse Production is Real Innovation.** Thus, your business model will come out from the customer. The customer will tell you what his/her problem is and how you should solve it so that the customer cannot leave you and always come back to you. So, you should: - Always start with the perfect problem. - Identify the perfect problem. - Do not search the customer first; identify the customer’s problem first. - Do not decide the price or profit first; identify the customer’s problem first. - Do reverse innovation and manufacturing like Steve Jobs - Spend 80°/o of your lifetime in identifying the problem in the initial days of your business Today, if you have stuck somewhere in your business, it is because your first P, i.e. Problem, is not correct. # **#2 Prospect** Now, you have to find out who your customer. For this, you need to determine: - What is the age of your customer? - What is the educational qualification of your customer? - What is the religion of your customer? - What are the values of your customer? - What is the lifestyle followed by our customer? - What is the income bracket of your customer? - What is the location of your customer? What is the occupation of your customer? - What is the social class of your customer? - What are the interests of your customer? - What is the gender of your customer? - What is the race of your customer? - What type of company or association does your customer prefer? - What is the personality of your customer? - What is the culture of your customer? - What is the mindset of your customer – bargainer or buyer? - What is the marital status of your customer? - What is the ethnicity of your customer? - What are the aspirations of your customer? You need to understand your prospect. Only after that, you will be able to hire people in your company, make the product, decide the price and positioning, and then, sell the product. However, people in the business focus on the sale of the product first and decide everything else later. So, you should first understand your prospect and plan his/her: - Psychographic - Geographic - Demographic # **#3 People** After identifying the burning problem and customers, now, you need to identify which type of people are required to solve which type of customers problems. These people will also make the product. You cannot hire every type of person. **For Example:** In organised Business, the human resources consist of expensive, creamy leadership, example: - The COO of current Business was the Group Managing Director of Gionee and Karbonn mobile company. - The Chief Learning Officer of current Business used to handle a team of 12,000 people in Airtel and Lava mobile company. - The Chief Strategy Officer of current Business was the strategic head of the top real estate companies. Current Business has a creamy and expensive leadership team because their product is not a manufacturing product; it is a service. They know their customers well. They know that their customers are intelligent and want to grow ahead in life. So, the current Business has progressive employees. Thus, you should hire a talented workforce by planning the: - Hiring - People skill - Performance management - Motivation & Retention - Critical role - Capable workforce - Change management - Amalgamation of professionals - Communication style - Listening skills Once human resources are built, you can build a pipeline of positive ideas with your employees. For this, you need to: - Sit with the team - Tell them who are your customers and what their problems are - Ask your team how they will solve these problems. In this way, you have given the goal statement around the needs of the customers. After that: - You should brainstorm along with your team. - Instead of giving ideas, ask your team to give you game-changing ideas and take out promising ideas from the ideas of your team. This will help you to get your team involved with the ideas. - Once they are involved, they will make the product. # **#4 Product** Make a product that helps the business to survive and sustain in the long run. You need to determine how you will: - Build technology in this product - Add a Chatbot and Mobile App in this product. - Make it a platform, which can be of the following types: - C2C (Customer-to-Customer) - B2C (Business-to-Customer) - B2B (Business-to-Business) - B2G (Business-to-Government) - B282C (Business-to-Business-to-Customer) - Build a product that provides you passive income - Make a qualitative improvement through the quantified form. - Reduce product costing You are developing a product with people who have understood what the problem of our customer is. So, while developing the product, you have: - Controlled the cost - Tried to build an Asset light model in your product - Implemented BCG Matrix to do a market analysis to determine where the market is going and where you are going - Build an ecosystem - Implemented J curve strategies - Build economies of scale - Implemented ERP in the technology After developing the product, you conduct a pilot experiment to take the product to the market. You will do pilot experimentation and validation with your best promising ideas in a small region and not all over the country. This is called a pilot experiment and done in a small region because if you launch this product in the entire country instead of a small region and you commit a mistake, then you will be finished just like Doodhwaala.com. Many large organisations come to an end because they commit mistakes after scaling up. For example, if a car is running very fast and its steering wheel is moved wrongly, then the car will turn at a very high speed and leads to an accident. On the other hand, if the car is moving slowly if you move its steering slightly, it will not affect the car movement. Therefore, whatever mistakes you want to commit, you can do them initially till the 4th P. You should collect the following information from the market: - Collect the response from the market. - Collect feedback from the market. - Check which are the fast-moving products, slow-moving products, and non-moving product in the market. - Determine whether the product will give you negative cash flows. - Check whether the product can create a strong entry barrier for you in the market. - Check whether you have made the same product as others are making. If this is so, then you need to sell your product on a discount. So, you should try to create an ecosystem and an entry barrier for your product because the main mistake that most of the businessmen commit is that they bring the product at last in the market like a laggard. They think that as everyone else is earning from that product, so, they will also be able to earn money from this product. However, till the time, they enter the market, it becomes saturated. As a result, they have: - High investment - High marketing cost - High credit You have to create a fly- light model and your upfront investment should not be high. After you have developed the product and completed all the tests, now, you should move to the 5th P. # **#5 Pricing & Positioning** Now, you have to rightly position your product. For this, you have to: - Make your marketing campaign - Decide your hook - Make your Jingle - Make your call to action - Build your turnover strategy and revenue strategy - Decide how will you create lifetime value of customer - Decide how will you position your product - Decide whether you will sell your product on Freemium - Determine how will you do the penetration - Decide how will you bring the brand promise - Determine how will you do upsell and cross-sell - Decide how will you create brand loyalty in your customers - Determine how will you increase brand equity - Determine how will you do cross-promotion - Determine how will you do the Guerrilla marketing All these things come under marketing and positioning. You will sell your product in the 5th P. If you sell a product that everyone is selling in the market, then the customer will create problems for you as he has choices and options. On the other hand, if you made a unique product, then you will not face problems in selling it, and you will get the following benefits: - Low Cost Of Customer Acquisition (COCA) - Get recurring revenue - Easy up-sell/cross-sell - Create differentiation You will be able to differentiate yourself and whether you are differentiating factor is that you are the newest, niche, most needed, best, expert, most convenient, coolest, best quality, aspiring, precise problem solver, unique, adventurous, cheapest, innovative, maximum features, or genuine. Based on your product, determine in which market you will go: - Opportunist market - Premium market - Value for money - Chinese goods Based on the above, you have made your pricing and positioning strategy, and you started selling. Now, you will check whether you are making any mistake and determine whether the customer feedback is good or bad. If the customer feedback is negative, then you should go back and start checking from the 1st P to 2nd P to 3rd P to 4th P. You should check whether you have solved the problem properly or not. Also, you should start again from 1st P, if you are facing the following problems: - Why my product is not selling? - Why I am not getting the customer? - Why I have to invest so much money to bring new customers? You should move to 6th P only when your 5th P is working properly. Only after that, you should go for expansion. **_Scale kills; you should not make your business big forcefully._****_Never make your business big at an immature stage._** For example: Mr X did not start a TV advertisement initially. He spent much time in establishing the following: - Channel - Product - Pricing - Customer’s   problem Now, they are slowly moving towards Ads because process and performance mean the expansion, and you do expansion when all the other things are in place. # **#6 Process & Performance** Once you are getting the right feedback till 5th P, then you will: - Increase productivity - Increase human resources - Open new branches - Open new departments - Bring new distributors - Bring new retailers - Convert something from loss-making to profit-making - Become fast-mover from first-mover - Become scalable from regional - Increase the execution speed - Maximise your 8 am – 8 pm - Implement TRA /TRS execution frameworks When all these things are perfect, then only you can do commercialisation launch and ramp-up in the 6th P. Now, you can scale up your distributor, channel partners, and supply chain easily because you are doing something big with them. When all this becomes big successfully, then you get profit. # **#7 Profit** In profit, you need to see some basic thing, which are: - Look everything in terms of Cost-benefit analysis - Create a CEO’s office - Build budgeting and - Build a financial planning and analysis team that include financial experts who will make projections for you like: - Which sales model I need to be corrected? - Which tenders should you take? - With which distribution networks you should work? - What should be your market incentives? - How to control your cost? - How to increase off-season sales? - How does the franchisee method model will work? - How should you do the listing of your company? - Should you go for the BSE listing? - Should you go for the BSE listing? Now, you will: - Take all the feedbacks to feed-forward - Bring new improvement cycle, which is the final improvement cycles - Improve all the pending mistakes - Make strong accountability structure Now, you are not doing business maintenance; you are doing business expansion, where profits will increase. 7th P is the outcome. If your 6Ps are not working properly, then your 7th P can never work properly. # **#8 Purpose** - Now, you will have to establish the purpose of your business which is organisational belief. - All the famous personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi, Adolf Hitler, Jack ma, Baba Ram dev, Bhagat Singh, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Baba Ram Rahim, and Swami Srila Pranbhupada had established some purpose. Some of them had a wrong purpose, while others had the right purpose. - Even big dons and terrorists established purpose. - The purpose will be everywhere. > _Repetition is necessary to drive the point back home._ > _Repetition is the mother of skilling._ The main point is about the sequence. If you are making any mistake, it means you are out of the sequence. You need to identify where you are lacking. Question yourself which P you are weak. Do not change your selling methods, again and again, identify the problem, and change your product accordingly. If you do so, you will never face any problem. All the businesses that have become big can do so by following the sequence of 8Ps. All the businesses that have collapsed are because they have not followed the sequence. This is the 7Ps framework whose essence is the 8th P, i.e. Purpose. Whenever you are facing challenges, go back to the sequence and rectify the missing P of the framework and come back while following the same sequence, if you do so, you will definitely grow your business.