I am sure that there will be more such articles on “what you can learn from the BJP campaign” but let me write one today.

I just finished speaking for a long time with a BJP worker, and he said “we were told by our bosses that we will get 303 seats”. I would not have believed it…but for Piyush Goyal’s interview in ETNow when the spelt out ‘297 to 303’ in Sep 2018.

Clear lesson no. 1: BE FOCUSED ON YOUR GOAL. First of all you should have such a clear and focused goal. Almost all of BJP knew this goal. Well articulated, simple goal, easy to communicate, and OBVIOUSLY very clear. Take the case of sub goals like Smriti Irani’s goal of defeating Pappu. It would have taken a lot of effort over the past 5 years to go to Amethi and work on the focused areas. Each subgoal must have been created and well articulated to each BJP worker.

As an IFA you too should have such a goal for your own practise. Either number of clients met, or presentations made, meetings held….all of those sub targets will fall in place if you say “I must add 100 new clients to my portfolio this year”. Each one of you will have a different number, but make that choice.

2. EAR TO THE GROUND: I was stunned when he told me that “ghar ghar mein BJP” was a campaign where a flag was to be reached to every house in every constituency. THEY RAN OUT OF FLAGS in many places. This is amazing hard work, and it means you try to meet the whole population of the country. I do not think this kind of effort has been put into any election, ever by any party. Across the country. Yes it helped that there was a full time Prime Minister and a full time Party President. Amazing ear to the ground and know what the people want. MEET every client and potential client (do not tell me you can’t this BJP RSS team has tried to meet the whole population). When you meet so many people chances are that they tell you what they want. It is up to you to hear, listen, process, and deliver what you hear. I am not saying that it is easy, but imagine for Amit Shah and team it must have been so difficult too. Big Hairy Goals are not achieved by small weak people. It takes garagantuan efforts. They had a goal, and they went after it. So should you.

Lesson 3.  Relentless hard work – and separation of COO and CEO. Again not every IFA realizes the advantage of having a good team/ COO / partner for dividing the work. Amit Shah did all the party work and NaMo did all the government work in his capacity as a PM. Then look at the campaign. Awesome, amazing campaign with a clear clear focus. When the South was voting, they did not talk about Rajiv Gandhi’s corrupt practices – the south eulogises white skin! Knowing which lever works where – and triggering exactly those points in each – location wise – was brilliant strategy, and well executed. Go to the BJP website and see how many meetings, gathering, etc. were addressed by the biggies. No doubt about the amount of hard work that went into it.

Having said that I will restrict myself to 3 lessons, I agonised over which 3 were important. There are various other lessons – like communication – ie. knowing whom to tell something and how to tell it. Focus. Focus. They were also busy learning – Congress had done its home work to come out with “NYAY”. The day Namo feels it is a good product, they are happy to take it, adapt, and use it. I am sure a different version of NYAY – called “Pradhan Mantri Saral Vikaas” or something like that will be delivered soon.

Just 3 words? Focus, Listen to the customer, Hard work to deliver what the client wants.