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Learning From: To Sell is Human

By a Human but not a Salesman

These days with the rise of technology esp. e-Commerce we do not see salesman knocking on our door. Many argue that previously there was a need of salesman because there was information asymmetry i.e. buyers had very limited access to information and hence they wanted someone who could provide them with the information to help them buy the product. While this asymmetry was a salesman’s strength, unfortunately with most of them using it to deceit consumers and only sharing certain pieces of information which they thought would help them get the sale overtime lead to consumers looking at salesman as not someone who helped them buy but instead someone who pushed products at them with repeated calls and someone who always try to up-sell at every juncture possible, its these folks who put the job of a salesman in bad light and removed all genuine salesmen out of business with only clowns continuing to fool the consumers even more. However, these days with all the information being just a few clicks away with the help of Google & Youtube there is an information symmetry with both the parties having access to tons of information about the product that they want to buy. Which might make us assume that like so many other jobs, even the job of salesman has fallen prey to the charms of technology, but this book helps bring multiple perspectives into place to show us that technology, on the contrary, has made the job of salesman all the more important.

In fact while most of us would view job of a salesman as a tough job, but we don’t realise that we are indeed a salesman in different facets of our life when we try to convince our kid to have his or her dinner, or try to convince our wife how there is no need for shopping for a new footwear as there are already 17 pairs lying inside the cupboard or for that matter when we are presenting our report to our boss or asking for a leave of 2 weeks.

Having said that, the books tell us that one of the fundamental ways to sharpen your sales skill is to start thinking from a consumers’ point of view and see if you would have bought that product or service if you were to hear your own pitch. One of the examples given in the book is how Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) started this concept of ‘empty chair - invisible man’ in his meetings; wherein he use to always keep an empty chair representing a consumer in general who is invisible but an important person and asked his employees to think of ideas from a consumer point of view.

Another example of how we can sharpen the sales skill is by thinking as if you are supposed to explain something to a time traveler, example: imagine you have to explain about some of the today's basic day to day item like computers, refrigerator or cars to someone who time travelled to present day from say the year 1500 and is not aware of any technological advances of present day. You will try to be very simple and make sure you don’t use high-fi methods that's how your presentation of your idea should be, stick to being simple and to the point.

Another emotional aspect to keep in mind is that people buy from those whom they like and they like the ones who remind them of themselves and therefore commonality helps in driving sales, now for that while the book asks us to imitate the buyer or the person to whom we are presenting; another way I see it personally is that the more we keep reading and exploring ideas we would have more things to talk about and thereby strike conversation on some of the other common topics and thereby build familiarity.

Further, don’t rely on fake self-motivation statements like repeating 10 times ‘I can do it’ which were the concepts coined by the salesman of past about whom we mentioned at the beginning of this article the ones who tend to get the sale by deceiving consumers. Instead, ask some interrogative questions such as “Can we fix it?”, with such questions, you tend to come up with few answers around how you gonna fix it and if you consciously list these answers it will help you strategise your presentation and also prepare yourself on any questions that might pop up during the presentation.

Further, brainstorm on reasons why you think the person to whom you are presenting will reject you and once you have a list of reasons go through them one by one these points will help you identify loopholes from your presentation and believe it or not its always recommended to have rather less but explainable points in powerpoint, rather than showing it to be very comprehensive and are unable to talk on certain point.

While we all talk about our product features in detail in our presentations, but the deal breaker page for the buyer is to see how your product or service going to solve his or her problem and that's where the importance of identifying the correct problems comes into the picture.

Believe it or not, it is often the discovery of problem rather than the technical skill that differentiates a creative person from the rest. Finding the right problem is a very difficult but a very important job. Given the information symmetry in the present world, the job of a salesman is no more about simply answering to buyers questions, instead they want to understand why should they buy from you instead of from others for which you as a salesman needs to be a curator of information and identify a problem which your buyer might not have thought of and thereby present that to him or her and then use the information you have to show it as a solution to that problem. (For example the Concept Board Testing, wherein the Insight gives the problem statement followed by the introduction of the product then by RTB (Reason-To-Believe) tells how this product is good to solve that problem and then present the end benefit which is like a short answer to the problem in the insight). The creativity of your presentation will, for the most part, depend on how you present the problem in an interesting way.

Further, once you have identified the right problem while presenting the solution try to connect your solution to an emotional output alongside a functional solution. Selling an experience is better than a tangible item, frame a sale as an experience which has higher potential to bring a repeat business. For example - Instead of simply saying “if you buy my software this will help you save XYZ man hours”, consider putting “if you buy my software this will help you save some man hours and thereby help you provide work-life balance to your employees and they will be able to spend more time with their families with the same amount of work done by them thereby improve the employee retention rate within the organisation”. One interesting example of how an emotional aspect influences people’s behaviour we can see in Rooser Reeves vs. Blind Man Example - Here Mr Reeves changes the wording in a blind mans placard from “I am Blind” to “It is Springtime and.. I am Blind” which brings an emotional connection to the messaging with people able to understand what the blind man is missing and thereby helped blind man get far more alms than usual. Emotional Messaging is Important.

Now that you have understood what is good to be shown in your sales presentation, do not fall into the trap of giving too many benefits in your presentations or in your product/service. Too many options are bad both for you and your purchaser (as proven in the research conducted by Sheena Iyengar & Mark Lepper). Adding an inexpensive item to a product can lead to decline in consumer willingness to pay for that products original value as consumers would start looking at the original product as of inferior quality (For Example: Having too many ice cream flavours won’t lead to higher sales, instead research says that there will be fewer sticks sold than if there were fewer options available). The number of options also influences consumers satisfaction level, selecting one out of the 20 options will make the consumer less satisfied as there will be a feeling of missing 95% of choice.

Further while summarising the benefits of your presentation, do keep in mind that an “A weak negative information shared along with positive points can be useful sometimes”. This trick can be used when the buyer is in a low effort zone i.e. he is not in an extreme need of your product or service. Try to put a negative point which might not really be negative for buyer hence while he/she would ignore that negative point but at the same time, the sharing of that point might help improve your credibility and make the buyer think that that's the only negative point you possess.

Lastly, while you would confidently put your strengths throughout the presentation; if there are other miscellaneous skills you have, which matches buyers requirements, don’t shy away from putting those points thinking that you don’t know the concept deeply. Consider putting that as “potential to be good at XXX”. Uncertainty can make people think more deeply about the person, hence putting your miscellaneous skills as potential to do will not only help you give that necessary cover if there happen to be too many questions on that topic but can also help you to be seen as someone highly potential of that skill.

Other Learnings from Book:

One Word Pitch

Question Pitch

Rhyming Pitch

Subject Line Pitch

Twitter Pitch

Pixar Pitch

Record your presentation and listen to your own pitch and see if it sounds saleable and would you consider that if you are the decision maker.

Experiment the pecha-kucha presentation style i.e. 20X20, your presentation should be of 20 slides with you spending not more than 20 seconds in each one of the slides.

Listen Well, Listen Fully and make sure you take a pause before responding.

Use “Yes and…” instead of “Yes but…” the former gives a picture of you building on to something rather than complaining.

Consider your pitch as a Win-Win situation, i.e. there should be something beneficial coming out of your presentation for both you and the buyer / your client.

Make your client/buyer feel good. Never Argue, To win an argument means to lose a sale.

Answer this two questions about your service after your presentation:

If someone buys your service, will his or her life will improve?

When you are done delivering the service, will the world be a better place for the person who bought the service?

If the answer to any one of the above question is NO, then you are doing something wrong in your service.

Other Books Mentioned in the Book:

Impro: Improvisation by and the Theatre by Keith Johnson.

Improvisation for the Theatre by Viola Spolin

Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher

Improv Wisdom: Don't prepare, just show up by Patricia Ryan Madson

The Second City Almanac of Improvisation by Anne Libera

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Learnings From: Marketing as Strategy Book that helps you see marketing beyond 4P’s

Markets always change faster than marketing. Hence, what top management seek from marketers is to have a real differentiation in products versus competition than just a difference of a couple of basic benefits. Because in today's world one company spends billions of dollars to come up with a new product or technology and then within a couple of months a local giant simply copies it thereby calling for a need of real differentiation, not just in branding but a differentiation that consumers value.

Unfortunately, Marketers tend to think about differentiation as simply new product development or they start with consumer research with the hope that they will get the next breakthrough idea. However, this approach usually results in an incremental product innovation instead of a breakthrough innovation; because as Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” indicating that a formal consumer research wouldn’t help us get the breakthrough innovative idea.

Marketing’s basic mission is to create a difference between a company’s offerings and its competitors on an attribute important to customers. Having said that, marketing mix of 4P’s has limited ability to create such differentiation like for example take Price — we wouldn’t be able to price our products too far away from where the category average price is or for that matter even if we take one of the most important P i.e. Place (apart from Product of course) here too we might invest in getting the best shelf space, but then, in the end, we are put next to our competition thereby forcing our product to be seen in comparison to the competition whereas the ultimate dream of any marketer would be to make their product beyond comparison and to position it as the best one in the market in that category such as Apple in Personal Computers.

Therefore, it’s high time we start viewing marketing beyond 4P’s and that's where Dr Kumar’s book Marketing as Strategy comes to our rescue, the book introduces us to what we call the 3V’s which are:

Valued Customer —Who to Serve?

Value Proposition — What to Offer?

Value Network — How to Deliver?

Valued Customer —Who to Serve: Here the book tells us that instead of finding our target segment of consumers using the age old method of splitting the population in terms of age, gender or any other demographics, we should split the population in terms of what consumers are looking for or as per the type of consumers (Example: If we are looking for a valued customer for a shampoo category, then we view consumers in terms of what type of benefits they are trying to get out of the shampoo i.e consumers looking for dandruff free benefit, or silky smooth hair and so on irrespective of their age or gender)

Value Proposition —What to offer: Here we try to see what are the different attributes that are driving perceptions of consumers in different valued customer segment and it is here we try to make the differences between the above-identified segments as stark as possible. The book has an amazing framework to come up with a value proposition, it is a set of 4 questions i.e.

Which attributes that our industry takes for granted should be eliminated? For example - the free meals in flights were something which was not super important.

Which attributes should be or can be reduced to below industry standards? For example - Need to have a business class, flexibility to change flights or global network are more of luxury benefits, which majority of consumers are ready to do away for cheaper flights.

Which attributes should be increased to above industry standards?     For example - Having a lower fare for flight is something of the greatest importance. Here we can think of what goes through our mind when we are booking flight, most of us would be ready to compromise on flight duration, meal or any other flexibility if we are getting a cheaper flight. We can think in similar lines for our business to see what would be an important attribute.

Which new attributes should be created that the industry has never offered? For example - Giving refunds to consumers in case there is a delay in flight. This was a new concept which not only made certain airlines top brand in the consumers mind, it also helped make things flow faster internally for the airlines.

While most of the companies these days have started following the first V of identifying the valued customer; however, they then go back and rely on the 4P’s to drive differentiation. While 4P’s are indeed a very important aspect of any marketing mix, but we need to go beyond them and create a Value Curve i.e. a Line graph plotting the attributes (listed out of the 4 questions above) and its respective scores for our product and competition to see where we stand out versus the competition and is that attribute the most important one.

Value Network—How to Deliver: This is one of the most ignored V’s in today’s business, most top management believe that getting more customers or retaining more customers is only marketing’s responsibility. But once we have our Value Curve in place, you will see that there are attributes which play an important role in driving differentiation or innovation in the market which falls beyond the realm of marketing (For Example - The way a motor cycle’s service station deals with its customers makes a big aspect for a consumers while selecting which bike brand he or she purchases). In fact, its the value network which helps bring the true differentiation, it can be in terms of service or reducing the cost.

There are 5 broad aspects which we can consider while reinventing the value network, they are:

Avoid Fixed costs as much as possible. (like business class seats, food etc)

If there is still any fixed costs then make it work harder than the rest of the industry. (like departing from a runway asap after landing and make a time commitment, thereby reducing the fixed cost of parking cost of aircraft which is one of the biggest in the aviation industry)

Avoid generally accepted variable costs (like agent cost to book flight tickets)

Keep variable costs to the bare minimum (like parking cost for flights in an airport)

See if the unavoidable variable costs can be turned into revenue (like the meal in flights).

Replicating a value network is more difficult than copying the marketing mix and since value network runs within the company than being out there in market, it will take a lot of time for competitors to copy value network and should be the way forward for companies looking to drive true differentiation & to start off companies can consider driving marketing innovation using the below 3 questions.

Are there customers who are either unhappy with all of the industry offerings or are not being served at all?

Can we offer a value proposition that delivers dramatically higher benefits at lower prices compared with others in Industry?

Can we radically redefine the value network for the industry with much lower costs?

Once we have a broad answer to the above questions they should be able to develop a strategic growth map for their brand/company using the 3V framework.

Other Learnings:

Solution selling firms have to confront the reality that impartially serving customers needs may sometimes demand to incorporate competitors products & services into the solution.

There is a need for portfolio rationalisation instead of brand acquisition since distributors & retailers excel at playing weak variants/brands against each other and holding manufacturers hostage.

Which would effect coco-cola more, a loss of all its factories overnight or erasure of its brand name from human memory - obviously the latter. That is why we say branding/ positioning is so important, it helps you have a sustainable business.

Positioning is about developing a USP for the target segment. Positioning should be why consumers would miss the company. Take a statement for example “You should buy my service / product because ______________” This blank is your positioning statement. The fill in the blank should have customer benefits and not product features. The inability to have a good clear positioning is what leads to price negotiation or loss of sale.

Market segments differ from strategic segments such that the former only requires marketing mix change whereas the latter requires distinct value network.

Quotes:

Only while sleeping one makes no mistakes. The fear of making mistakes is the root of bureaucracy and the enemy of all evolution.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself. It is more dangerous than copying others. It leads to sterility.

CEO’s marketing manifesto is to pass 3 test i.e to understand if the project is Strategic, Cross Functional & Bottom Line Oriented.

In today's organisation, what gets measured gets done.

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The Sabrimala Pilgrimage

Written by a Kanni for a Kanni’s

For many years, it had been a wish of mine to go on the Sabrimala pilgrimage and in November 2017, I finally managed to make this wish come true. For the past couple of years, I was always late in finding a group that I could join. Usually, by the time I decided that I wanted to take the pilgrimage, all the groups I came across had already booked their tickets and had started their vratam (the 41 day practice). Hence, this time I began my quest to find a group from the months of July-August. This is my first tip for any first timers who wish to embark on this meaningful pilgrimage. With god’s grace and with the connection that a friend’s mother had, my friend, who also joined the pilgrimage for the first time, and I met an welcoming group of people who not only accepted us graciously into their group but also guided us in understanding the meaning of certain practices that are carried out during the 41 days of vratam. This is the main motivation behind this sharing.  Before I came across this group and learned about this pilgrimage, I was clueless on many things surrounding the pilgrimage and its practices. Instead, I relied on information provided by my distant relatives and at times, information available on the internet. Personally though, I felt that those pieces of information presented the 41 days practice as a set of rules & regulation meant to be followed unquestioningly. However, I believe the new millennial generation prefers to understand the rationale behind these practices. I am certain most would follow through with the practices for a longer duration and with conviction if they are explained the logic behind the practices as opposed to merely following them without a clear understanding of the reasons behind these practices.

In the subsequent paragraphs I will try to put it across the way I was taught by our Guruswamy. The Guruswamy is the one who guides a group of people right from start of the pilgrimage till the end.He is the one who has been to the pilgrimage multiple times and possess knowhow of the pilgrimage both practically (such that he is able to guide the group on understanding the things to do during the 41 day vratam)  & also technically (such that he is able to guide the group logistically).

Understanding the Practices Better

“When the five senses and the mind are stilled, when the reasoning intellect rests in silence, then begins the highest path” - The Katha Upanishad

The basic objective of the 41 day practice is to try and develop a control on one’s senses, because as mentioned in most of the ancient scriptures, the person who has control over his senses lives a very contented life. However we have to also keep in mind that in the past those who were able to achieve  control over his/her senses went through a lot of hard work and dedication and spent a great deal of time to achieve it. Hence as beginner, we should not start expecting to achieve nirvana within initial 41 days. The 41 day practice is just a way to help us experience how life would be if we did things differently from the way that we usually do.

About the Sabrimala pilgrimage, it is necessary to talk about some of the very common rules or practices that are associated with the 41 day practices. These include living a celibate life, taking a cold water shower early in the morning, praying regularly and abstaining from alcohol, cigarettes. Moreover about avoiding consumption of non-vegetarian food and sometimes food with onion or garlic are also highly discouraged.  Let’s examine each of these practices and understand the reasons behind these practices.

Why 41 Days, why it is not 10 days or 1 months ?: When we donate blood the new blood is produced in our body in 21 days, our body is inherently used to the 21 day cycle, and it is exactly for this reason why we see self help books asks us to follow a new habitfor 21 days for it to get ingrained in our system. Now, the 41 day practice can be looked at as two cycles of 21 days wherein the person would practice and thereby have himself well engrossed with good habits and visit the temple on the 42nd day. The other way to look is wherein the person tries to understand which habits can he can practice and try them out in the first 21 days and then try to build that set of chosen practices into his habit regime in the second set of 21 days thereby he  the end of 41/42 days he/she would have not only developed a good new habit but would also have a clarity on ones strengths and limitations when it comes to developing habits.

Waking up before Sunrise: We can all agree this is a good habit with no need for any explanation. But at times, the execution falls short. Time travel seems to be a concept that occurs when that additional 2 mins that we want to sleep in somehow miraculously extends and we find ourselves waking up two hours later. The ancient learnings have taught us that the hour before sunrise is the best time of the day, in terms of having the least bacteria in the environment. Especially for the ones who are living in the city – at this hour, there is less external noise, less pollution & weather is cooler and as you progress through the hour looking at the yellowish tinge in the sky with the rising sun, you are filled with an empowering feeling. The feeling of knowing that we have a head-start on the day versus rest of the crowd is just amazing. This is also a good time for starting a new habit, because at this hour mind is fresh out of sleep and tends to do things with more focus . Last but not the least, doing things with utmost focus before distractions begin is the best plan. (https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/4-am-morning-most-productive-time-of-day.html)

Cold Water Shower: This rule becomes a more heated (no pun intended) topic of contention as we progress towards the more wintery months of November, December. Nevertheless, suffice to say, there are two key reasons a cold water shower is recommended. Firstly, if you are taking the longer trekking route during your trip to Sannidhanam then there are no hot water facilities and hence to make our body get used to the cold water shower, it is recommended to start getting accustomed to cold water during the 41 days. An even more convincing reason that motivated me to continue to take cold water shower is that it helped me wake up completely instead of still being drowsy. A cold water shower energises the body and is more refreshing. Usually, experts says that it is recommended to take a cold water shower in the morning and a hot water shower in the evening as the latter helps relaxes the body from the pains of the entire day’s work. More benefits of taking a cold shower here (https://www.menprovement.com/benefits-of-cold-showers/)

Celibacy: Although sex or masturbation is pleasurable, it is also very distracting and expends a lot of our body’s energy. After sex or masturbation, our body tends to feel very tired and we don’t feel like doing anything. On the other hand, not engaging in sexual activities for few days will make you experience having a treasure of energy throughout the day and we are also able to get up early in the morning feeling very fresh. The idea here is to not waste the most powerful form of energy in the world (i.e. an energy that can produce a another human being, or you can say another Einstein or Tesla) for a few mins of pleasure and instead direct towards producing something more impactful or for being more aware of our surroundings than being lethargic and miss out on the beauty of being alive. Here are some well researched benefits of not masturbating (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvxak8/things-i-learned-while-not-wanking-336).

No Meat, Alchohol or No Onion or Garlic : It is documented that the food we consume has a very high impact on the kind of life we are living, if both are not aligned then our mind will be very disturbed. This is very much related to the above point, onions and garlic contains high sex stimulating effect, hence consuming them will make it difficult for us to practice celibacy or abstain from sexual thoughts and activities. Unlike the West who categorises food based on its nutritional values like high calories, high carbohydrates or high protein values; in the ancient Hindu tradition the foods were classified according to their intrinsic impact it has on the body and mind. Food is divided into three categories - Sattvic, Rajasic and Tamasic.  Sattvic foods means pure food which has the qualities of universe such as fruits and vegetables which helps in maintaining a clear mind and body. Rajasic is cooked food which is neither good nor harmful to the body but are required to give enough energy to our body to carry out daily functional activities. However, too much of rajasic food,  such as too spicy food, too salty, is bad for health. Lastly tamasic refers to food which has negative impact on our body such that it dulls our mind (like meat, alcohol, tobacco) or those which overstimulate our body (onion, garlic and alcohol) and hence make our mind uncontrollable and distracted and thereby making us too excited mentally and not letting us be ourselves. Hence, abstaining from tamasic food will help one in following other practices of controlling our sexual desires, meditating or being aware of ourselves in a better way. Other way to look at this is, consuming Tamasic food would be like we creating a war like situation by ourselves such that in one hand we are training our mind to be under control and then feeding our body with the things which doesn’t let mind to be under control.

Walking barefoot: This again is recommended so that when you are eventually required to walk barefoot through the jungles during the trek to Sabrimala you don’t end up in a very difficult situation by ending up with a very painful foot and thereby being unable to walk anymore and thereby ending up putting the burden on others in the group. Now, there might be a lingering question in your mind as to why should you walk barefoot during the trek. The way I understood it is, once you start doing the 41 day practice you are in a spiritual journey and you try to see god within you which is why you will notice that people around you tend to address you as swamy and then once you have tied the irimudi (two coconuts, one filled with ghee and few other offerings to god) to your head you are like carrying god in your head and hence while doing that you you would want to be closer to the nature than wearing a layer of flesh or plastic between you and the nature (earth) to get some physical comfort in the midst of such high spiritual journey.

Why wear a Mala (a tulsi or rudraksh): The idea of having a Mala around one’s neck is to have it as a reminder of the oath we are under and are supposed to be doing couple of things differently than usually. It is inevitable that with the hustle and bustle of our daily responsibilities, we forget simple but important actions like drinking enough water, or taking our medicine or sometimes even calling our loved ones. It is thus not inconceivable that we might forget about some of these practices especially in the early days. Thus the mala acts as a visible reminder of the need to pursue these good habits.

Why wear a black: This can be viewed from two perspectives. The first one would be the same rationale as wearing the Mala i.e. it acts a reminder of the oath you have undertaken and in a way it also helps people around you to know that you are under an oath and thereby support in your journey towards developing the new habits. The other perspective is to enable us to use our mental capacities effectively. It is common knowledge that the brain has limited mental capability and hence it needs to be used judiciously to get the most out of the day. This is the reason why we see that people like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg prefer to wear same coloured clothes everyday so that they don’t spend such vital brain power in doing a menial job of selecting their attire. This is because it has been proven that the act of decision making erodes our think as the day progresses, this is what psychologists call ‘decision fatigue’ and this is why when theres too many decisions tend to be taken in a day we feel mentally tired at the later part of the day and thereby have less will power to do or follow something new like going for a run or being true to our low calorie dinner planned a day earlier. From the pilgrimage point of view, we can say that the idea is to do away with some trivial activities of selecting our attire when are practicing other good habits with a hope to get mental peace.

Overall, one suggestion which I kept getting from my Guruswamy is that when trying to bring the above habits into your daily regime do not be too harsh on yourself and be dejected when it gets too tough to follow through with certain practices. For the first timers its a big change and at the end of the day the idea is to calm our mind, try to control our senses and thereby focus on developing good habits and shed some old bad habits. There should never come a point wherein you end up frustrated for taking up the pilgrimage and thereby make the pilgrimage as a reason for your mental disturbance. Hence, you need to follow and practise each of the above said practices according to your own limits. Determine on your own how certain things are right or wrong for yourself and most importantly have an open mind so that you along with your Guruswamy can chat over these practices and get even more clarity and do share those learnings with us for an even better outlook moving forward.

Some tips for the Kanni’s

If you plan to take the long traditional route, start preparing yourself in terms of building stamina and building leg muscles to walk uphill by taking stairs instead of lift wherever possible during the 41 days.

You can consider taking more clothes with you for the trip, but do make sure you carry bare minimum when you start your trek from Erumeli to Sannidhanam. The things that I carried was - Two Dhotis, Two Top Dhoti (cloth to cover your upper body), 2-3 under garments, one light blanket & a sweater to be used during your one night stay on the hill and any emergency personal medicine.

Attend poojas organised by your group members. While in general it is always good to attend poojas; however first timers have a special regard in the Sabrimala pilgrimage. It is said that if ever a year comes when there is no first timer for the pilgrimage then Sabrimala pilgrimage would cease to exist. Therefore a first timer holds a special significance and is given given lot of importance. Hence, it is highly recommended to experience it, because you will be a Kanni only once in your lifetime.

Understanding why a women is abstained from coming to Sabrimala: Like I mentioned earlier masturbation/sex takes lot of energy out making one feel lethargic the same is true for most of the women during their menstrual cycle (MC) as given the loss of blood they feel tired and some of them also experience extreme pain in their abdomen and hence it was seen that it would be difficult for women to walk through the jungles (as in old times there was no other way) during MC, hence instead of keeping it as a rule I would imagine it was kept as a recommendation so that no one forces any women to go to the temple and perhaps I would see this is also the same reason why it was recommended that the one practicing Sabrimala pilgrimage should not eat food cooked by women experiencing MC, because the whole idea of the 41 day practice is that your practice should not bother any other human being and hence it would be wrong for a man to make a women work and cook food for him when she is experiencing pain or feeling tired. Therefore, please do make sure you are practical while following this step of the pilgrimage too.

I wish you all, all the very best on your journey towards developing new good habits and also towards your pilgrimage,

Swamyie Sharanam Ayappa

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Temple of Heaven - Beijing, China

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Devotees Offering Prayers - Lama Temple, Beijing, China

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Lama Temple - Beijing, China

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The Singapore Sun 22 Sept 2014

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Japanese Curry Rice - Bugis (Fortune Centre)

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Tsongo Lake Sikkim

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Ranka Monestry - Sikkim

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Hampi

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Virupaksh Temple Hampi Karnataka

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Virupaksh Temple : Hampi Karnataka

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Dal Lake