MBA - An Investment into Future

My personal story proves how a MBA program has inculcated in me the key skills to deal with difficult customers, to make sound business decisions and to create long lasting customer relationships. It is the best investment I made in my career, the results of which I am enjoying in my day to day work and will continue to enjoy them in my future.

My story is of year 2013, during my early days at Swasthya Consulting LLP. when I was assigned to convert one of the most reputed institute “RV College of Engineering, Bangalore”, into buying our pedagogy training program. The institute had set high standards for their teachers training program. The project required great deal of coordination and right communication between the institute and the customer relationship team. I approached the Training and Placement officer of the institute and presented him our product. He asked me to give a demo to the Deans within 10 minutes, for which I was not prepared. I used the crisis management and stress management skills from my MBA program to swiftly come up with a short demo and impressed the team of Deans.

In another instance, when I went to Shree Vidhya Niketan Engineering College, Tirupati for a 6 days pedagogy program, wherein due to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh disputes we were asked to reduce our 6 days program to 2 days program without reducing the topics. It required us to work overnight, reconfigure the whole presentation and start seminar early in the morning. I used the skills of working as a team which I learnt during my MBA, and was able to finish the job successfully. Knowing qualities of my team, I knew there were some who liked to get up early and some who liked to work till late at night, accordingly I assigned work to all. We were very well prepared and delivered excellent training on time. The resource management skills I learnt during my MBA came in very handy during this hour of crisis.

By using another skill of Market Segmentation (Niche Marketing), I first approached colleges having TEQIP II, as they had brand name and funds to invest for trainings. So, we started marketing aggressively these 190 colleges across India and even took appointment for our field team to visit the colleges. By following this approach, we got excellent responses from numerous colleges.

In Swaasthya and MVJ college of Engineering, one common assignment was lead generation and I had to handle a team in both organizations for the same. I learned during my MBA marketing classes that “Every No gets us closer to a yes ”. By this I mean that “No” is not a defeat, and if we work hard, it is an opportunity which gets us closer to “Yes”. With this thought we were able to successfully invite recruiters like Brillio, Saint Gobain, Bloomberg for the first time in college history.

In yet another instance, I was main coordinator to conduct bulk, marriage like campus drive of TCS with 40 recruiters and 2000 students appearing in a written test. I planned to decentralize the work at various levels between placement department, faculty placement coordinators, student placement coordinators and bright student from junior batch for assisting us. The skills I learnt during team based approach in a MBA program in a real life work environment helped me conduct this big task very successfully.

MBA, because of its versatility and practicality in business environment is the ultimate tool, a person can invest in. One of the most crucial skill that MBA students learn over the course of their studies is how to manage people. MBA students learn about how to manage conflict between individuals and organizations. I continue to use and further hone my management skills, which I learnt during my MBA and if anyone asks me, what is my most valuable asset, I proudly say “My two year skill development program – MBA”.

Thanks !!!