What do B-schools across the world fail to communicate?

Let us consider (at the outset), that the applicant whom B-schools would want to admit in their program is a Buyer2.0 persona. That should define the way the applicant would search for information, make proper networks within the community, and look at specific communications to arrive at a conclusion (to apply for a certain program).

The trouble for b-schools can be represented in a dichotomy:
1) They don't understand the Buyer2.0 persona
2) They allocate too much "Air-time" for the kind of info that can be considered Junk

The first issue can probably be solved by the Admission teams by reading more literature and fine-tuning a pretty well integrated marketing strategy, but the core problem will lie in allocating space to the kind of content that will go out to these applicants.

According to formula based on user engagement, I find the following to be true:

User Acquisition = i x n x D x M

Wherein, "i" is the intention of the applicant, "n" is the urgent need, both being variables. The constants D and M are Demographics and Money respectively.

So for a larger user acquisition, one needs to improve the combination score of "i x n" at all times.
Let us see how we can Map the "intentions" with "needs" (of applicants) through the following strategy matrix:

Reference:
A = Low need, and low intent
B = High need, and low intent
C = Low need, and high intent
D = High need, high intent

There might be a factor of "time" (as a part of the communication process) to be considered by the b-school while allocating space for communication, but the deviation will be minimal.

Some examples of the categories for a b-school are:
A = LN+LI = Founding members; Board members; Infrastructure
B = HN+LI = Faculty profile; Accreditation; Pedagogy; Syllabus; Culture
C = LN+HI = Placements; Location;
D = HN+HI = Eligibility; Admit results; Batch profile; Alumni network

One can always look up the kind of communication space provided to the above factors in a b-school brochure. I went through some, and this is what I found (just going by the number of pages the content got in the brochure):
A = 20%
B = 40%
C = 25%
D = 15%

So for a novice, the user acquisition (for a b-school) would look something like:
UA = fn{20a,40b,25c,15d} x D x M

I believe that b-schools could do much better if they changed the way applicants (the Buyer2.0 persona) engaged with the info/content and then shared it with other like-minded people over the internet. At present the amount of content on most of the unnecessary stuff is a pile-on for all such applicants. The info worth going after is mostly 15%-40% of the overall communication. the irony is that most of the questions (~80%) that applicants have over the internet communities (for MBA) are related to a combination of C and D categories (ones that have high intent).

Now imagine a larger integrated & multi-channel marketing program of the b-schools with the right ingredients mixed in the right type of content (story, video, contests, etc) that will have the potential for better engagement and conversion of people from across the applicants population in the country. Such a program will allow for measuring the effectiveness of quality of communications rather than the channel they are using (since we know that for integrated systems, all systems will have to perform and one can't ever credit a single window to do the trick).

Defining the canvas for your b-school

Over the past 5-7 years, Indian b-schools have been in the roller-coaster ride dealing with changing profiles of applicants, whimsical regulatory bodies, micro-economic factors, dynamic growth in standard of higher education along with the rising expectations from people taking up higher-ed for getting access to excellent careers through these b-schools.

A lot has happened and all of these need to be classified for these b-schools to understand their current situation (vis-a-vis a certain standard of reference), and figure out the steps to be taken in the coming years.

Similar to other industries, b-schools too are fragmented into various sections/segments. There isn't a single point of differentiation that can be considered while grouping these b-schools. Doing such a thing will lead to incorrect modelling of the entire story and incorrect forecasting.

I have chosen to use the overall profiles of b-schools and map them on a graph with time on X-axis, and density of applications in the Y-axis. I have then chosen to use multiple factors that are common amongst most of these b-schools to provide them a particular band. These bands then can be named as B-school 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 respectively. The area of the band will also give an idea of the number of b-schools that are present in that particular band (as on this year). The growth of a b-school across the last decade had clearly been the path that leads it through 2.0, 3.0 and puts it currently into a 4.0 band.
The following is the visual representation of the same:

Are MBA applicants already a Buyer2.0 Generation?

For most B-schools, the biggest puzzle that remains unsolved for many years is the way to engage applicants with their institute's brand and other important factors - leading to Admits of some of the best applicants available in the current pool.

Considering Indian B-schools' plights, this problem takes a much larger shape and at most times even the surface of the issue isn't addressed by the staff of these seemingly floating entities.

There have been many ways that I have tried explaining the micro factors that need to be considered by the majority of b-schools in India, in order to top-grade their intakes, brand recognition, and overall development of the institution. I have explained to them how the applicants base in India is polarized in their decision making (70% of all MBA applicants wish to apply to not more than 15% of available b-schools in India). I have also pointed out the ways they can actually identify the position of their b-school from the "Perceptual Barrier" and then close in with some measurable steps to be considered as a top rank institution in India.

In all my cases to these b-schools, one important factor has always remained common - that of the new and dynamic persona of their MBA applicant - who is now a graduated Buyer2.0 persona.

Now what is so very important about people with such personas (Buyer2.0)?
Ans: The following diagram will provide some idea about the attributes of Buyer2.0:

The buyer (in this case the MBA applicant) has gone through a fundamental shift in behavior and consumption of communications. This is a fact that has been ignored over the last 5 years and I fear that it may still not be dissected and perused by our b-schools in the near future.

Some of the important Characteristics that this Buyer2.0 might have are:

1) He will be "high" on net savvy scores, and knows about social media tools & their usage
2) He contributes (via comments, feedback, curation, etc) across the important platform in the world-wide-web that matter to similar Personas of buyers
3) He networks with other buyers2.0 through various platforms and collectively can generate content that will influence the early and late followers of these platforms
4) He will not be waiting for Advertisements and emailers to reach him for making decisions. He will search and engage with forums and communities across the internet to figure out the buying-choices
5) He is not an impulsive shopper. He will not probably follow the Click-See-Buy process at one-go. He understands the rules of engagement by marketers and therefore will have a longer buying cycle
6) He will not think twice about providing negative feedback and then scout for support within the community for more negative inputs on the brand. He will have the power to bring down the brand-scores to NIL
7) He hates SPAM, cold calls, and would want to control conversations. They have "preferences" on the time of meetings, communications and would dislike any push communications thrown at them my marketers

The important question now is - Are the top-teams at our Indian B-schools even aware and sensitized about this very important fact??

I can safely bet (from the travails in meeting most of the b-schools in India), that they are not even bothered about the existence of such a thing, and I guess it will need probably an agency or some announcement of a new Ad-Format from Google/FB that mentioned Buyer2.0, to get to the hard-rock-brains of our b-schools owners.

This challenge is a current one and needs an excellent team to identify and then design marketing communications based on the same. All new Ad formats and other marketing logic (like Click-to-action, etc) can be referred to this phenomenon and I certainly believe that most of what I have written before this can be explained in a better way if I start with this challenge.

It can also lead to a wild rat-race, wherein by the time our b-schools get to understand this factor and catch-up, we might be looking at a Buyer3.0 Personas making the buy decisions.

How can a person be creative when he has to pay his Edu Loan?

The past few years have witnessed a combination of factors that have made it difficult for MBA passouts from some of the most sought after Universities to make any impact in their jobs in some of the best organizations (in terms of present growth trajectories) across world.

Factors, including - overall economic crisis, macro economic volatility affecting businesses with international exposure, exponential improvement in technology leading to irreversible job-losses, education-inflation, higher cost for higher-ed across the world, inflated interest rates from banks, etc - all leading to a crisis that has the foundations of taking human potential and shoving it into a blast furnace and burn for ages.

We are already seeing trends across the US on student loan defaults. Are we not privy to the reasons behind such situations and what it means for companies who are to have excellent future talent bases who have strong cognitive and creative capacities to succeed?

I know for a fact that if there is a huge financial burden on someone, they will take most of the choices based on a safe financial passage for the initial phase of their lives. Which means that the most important part of their lives when they could have done quality work and could have contributed with their creativity and cognitive prowess, are now being wasted taking up jobs that are supposed to pay for their loans; and NO, the ideal combination of getting a job that one loves and also pays the loan are not out there for everyone. Such things are getting rarer by the day.

We need such youngsters to come and take up responsibilities of quality work and large businesses from Day 1 and we need them to be creative enough to solve larger problems. At most times, we are ending up people who will conform to almost anything since that will save their jobs. That will help them to not lose the race (the rat race), a tunnel that end into Suicides.

Are we, as organizations putting things in the right perspectives for people to falsely understand that a professional degree like MBA is the only answer to things that are considered best and successful in lives of common people? Who are responsible to inflate fees of Universities in ways that has absolutely no correlation in the way salaries are growing for such people passing out of these institutions?

It's scary and not at all a sustainable model. We have pushed the envelope so far to get to the solution of manpower woes that we cannot even take things back. Imagine Universities cutting down on their fees - not going to happen anytime in the future. Such strategies set on wrong premises defined by a very old traditional thinking has been ticking like a time bomb. Its devouring good minds into submission and taking its full toll on people whose dreams and aspirations have become defined by a closed set of achievements - which is becoming distant every passing day.

Saving Indian B-schools from extinction

I have written in the past about how b-schools in India are on the verge of closing down (about 2 years back), and then I had predicted that there is a probability of a second wave of growth in the domain to allow some of the borderline players to actually top-grade and survive.

In the past 1 year, a lot of things have changed (for bad) primarily based on certain decisions made by regulatory bodies in the MBA domain that were backed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (that oversees and kind of controls regulatory bodies like AICTE, UGC, etc).

To begin with, the AICTE introduced a common test (the CMAT) to replace most of the state run entrance test (like the Maharashtra CET, GCET, amongst others). The idea seemed to be providing a common platform and standardized testing for students who would now be seeking admissions into bschools that were under the purview of AICTE (which is almost everyone actually). The perceived objective (as mentioned by AICTE during their concerns over standard of education in MBA colleges, while representing themselves in front of the Supreme Court of India), was to provide some semblance in the selection process to allow colleges under AICTE to get access to good quality students. Therefore other tests (like the MAT) were taken out from 2012.

I have my own reservations on how CMAT will really solve the problem and I have written against the same before. I still stand by my observations that this test will produce no measurable results and good quality improvements across AICTE regulated bschools.

I am worried on the flip-side of the whole exercise - that which takes into account the number of bschools across many states (those that were til date getting students through State_CET and common counseling process) who are going to find themselves with empty classrooms even in this year (this has already happened last year).

The real problem is the perceived lack of quality in these bschools along with structural issues that do not allow such bschools to be a part of the mainstream action. This kind of mainstream action is enjoyed by the top100 bschools in any rankings and these bodies are now expanding their reach even outside India with their international campuses.

Out of the 2000 odd bschools in India, probably not more than 15% are above the perceptual barrier of applicants looking at MBA (that number amounts to about 70% of all MBA applicants in India who are looking at applying to only 15% of the bschools)

The solution is not another test, and it never was.

To my mind, the process should have some reflection of the points suggested below:
- Make a list and then a category of bschools under AICTE that have everything else (infra mostly, and are not insolvent) other than the students

- Once the bschools are categorized, include them into a 7-year plan of improving these bschools into seats of excellence

- Introduce a bill or special conditions in the existing bills of higher education investments/funding,
wherein International Universities and b-schools can only tie-up with the shortlisted bschools (from the above point) in India

- Make this compulsory and provide excellent sops to these international Universities who will associate with these existing bschools. The Univs get to access the infra and land through these existing bschools, and in return they make the Indian institute their partner in this venture. All faculty, books, collaborations, etc can be renewed under the new umbrella brand and therefore a leash of life will be given to the Indian bschool

- Allow 7 years for the new JV to flourish with Govt funding, relaxed norms, and other advantages that will allow the International University to make this concern grow and be one of most sought after destinations in India

- Regulate the admission process, but allow autonomy in terms of the curriculum etc so that such things can become the USP of most of these revamped colleges

- Go for a Round 2 with the next category of bschools in India

I am looking at saving about 1000 more bschools in India that will DIE if the right set of measures are not taken. Students just don't choose these bschools due to reasons other than ease of application. A Student would want to associate with a good brand and the Min of HRD will do good work if they allow these bschools to flourish as brands rather than solve the gateway problems.

Some critics might say that we cannot depend on foreign Universities solving our problems. To them I want to say that our problem at most times is the lack of vision and unavailability or no-access to quality courseware and talent. In a country where the high watermark of MBA education in an IIM, then we ought to do something improves the quality of talent available for our future managers.
I hope something like this can be done as soon as possible and then AICTE allows the autonomy to these institutions to become excellent examples/models for other to follow.

Else we might witness more bschools closing down in the coming years.

Are we still producing "Glorified Clerks"?

A long time before independance, Indians were a part of the workforce that was created by the East India Company (at first) and then the British Government. Some of those early sought-after jobs were the Writers (probably you will remember the Writers' building Kolkata) wherein Indians were hired and became the standard of the best job that a middle class or an aspiring Indian can find at that time. The job (people called them Babus, a word that probably originated from the then British Capital - Kolkata), gave these selected Indians an access to a better life and obviously the social status of something that wasn't replicable by anyone else.
So given that was probably the genesis of Corporate Life in India (since no other recorded organnization had any structure that reflects present day worklife before the Britishers brought that in), the very same premise has designed perceptions over the last 60-80 years about job, career, social status, etc into the lives of millions of Indians.
The British Education system took care of the rest - by defining that if you are educated in the english medium schools (then started by the Missionaries), you had a better chance to "good life". For us Indians, a good life obviously meant - owned property, good investments and bank balance, perks like cars and maids, and socially accepted aura that you are the one who "made it" amongst others.
This was also the reason why many of pre-independance rich families always wanted the British to rule since it meant acceptance from the very people who set those standards. If you can remember, some of the well known families sent their sons for learning Law at Oxford or Cambridge.
In the meanwhile, post independance the nearest and easiest way to map the standard of life which can be replicated across the population and available to the then aspiring middle class was - the remains of the British legacy. It defined the way their sons could actually become better in life. Everyone wanted a certain way of life defined by our Masters.
Tne trouble is that some of it still exits today and one can see the DNA of the aspiring classes of India still defining careers, success, ideologies, etc in the same vein. It is the reason we have glorified academic achievements and government jobs for more than 40 years post Independance, and very recently we Indians lived upto the fact that even the private sector is something that we need to now exploit.
So for the government jobs, we had standardized entrance tests (like the UPSC) and parents wanted their children to study on for that no matter what the sons or daughters wanted to do in life. Something similar happened for private jobs - we started producing Engineers for the first phase of companies that were doing good in India (namely Manufacturing, Oil, IT etc) and then resorted to producing MBAs for the remaining of the growing sectors.
So today we produce Engineers who are rushing to join a Business school with "passion" for finance or marketing or some wierd thing. They are "passionate" about "numbers" and have "analytical skills" and therefore they want to dedicate their lives for the MBA program.
It looks like there is no end for the aspiring population of India (mostly the middle class, who need a guarantee for even the Fan they purchase) to create the best clerks again for a companies that reflect almost the same class-structure that existed probably a hundred years back. The difference is that today, the divide is between the same countrymen who want to distinguish themselves by the kind of pedigree they have got (from a certain college), and then engage in creating no value for theselves of their company. It is all about - security, politics, better cars, better apartments, better food, etc.
When will the DNA change? Who will make that happen? What is the cost for making that change happen?
The Call-center industry showed that we can still be trusted to do the dirty work of others at a cheaper price. Are we still the unevolved "babu" inside? Is that the best that we can achieve?
Do we need someone else to tell us about our true worth?

The Risk of maintaining status-quo

In the recent times, most of my sales reps ave got stuck after brilliant interactions with the client-side teams and doing everything right as per the best B2B practices followed by every individual.

The troubles always crept up after the final meetings were held and somehow each deal went into a rotting period wherein nothing really came out of any followup call or mail or fax etc.

We were successful in convincing them on the solution and all the hard work that went behind getting them to understand the value of our solution was well accepted by each client-rep at the meeting. Everyone agreed that the proposed 360D approach on digital marketing suggested by us and the kind of inputs given by us were amazing.

As a part of new age consultative sales, we were successful in getting the facts and obvious benefits of associating with us, etc RIGHT and therefore it was difficult at first go to understand what caused such delays.

After some recent reading of articles related to sales, I have come to infer that what we missed in the whole picture was actually the center piece of the puzzle - that we didn't establish the fact of the degree of RISK involved in maintaining their current status-quo of not solving their problems TODAY. What's the risk of maintaining status-quo? What's the risk in terms of brand, revenues, future revenue losses, results, growth etc? Why should they be convinced that they need to do something and do it now? Why should they then look at solving that issue from the best solution-provider? What's the cost that they are then ready to pay?

I don't think I need a sales team that sells according to the whims and fancies of clients or customers. That's because if it will be always according to the timeline and needs of the customer, why should I have a field-sales team for B2B? I can suffice by hiring an inbound-sales team that will act more like a call center.

Without crossing this first level of prospecting objective - "to ensure they understand the cost and the risk of maintaining status-quo", I am sure my solution level selling will hit the bottlenecks that it is hitting right now. Given the profile of clients that are stalling such deals (bordering the limits of laziness in innovating and implementing new systems) such an added level of getting them to agree that they need to act and act fast to win the losing battle needs to be done by each sales rep.

One of the toughest questions to answer for any sales rep is - "What happened to this deal that you said will finalize in the next few days?? Its been more than a week now?"

For practitioners of consultative sales and mostly in B2B sales, one usually focuses more in getting the right kind of process flow, meeting the right people, convincing every person in the decision tree that the solution is the best, and then propose the best possible program for the client, following-through the commitments and creating an excellent premise for customer delight all the way. But as it is proving out to be, these are not completing the entire picture for a sales rep. They now need to also ensure that they get the client to agree that the organization needs to act and come out of status quo.

Is it a sales problem? I don't think so. Because if its attacked via sales, the problem and then the latter part of the solution selling will blow the sales cycle out of proportion. I will want to give the power of marketing to the sale rep and let the person design the marketing program effectively to specifically address this very problem.