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Neeru Sood is a thorough Delhiite, a doting mother, and a bundle of energy and positivity packed into one. Neeru is strong, focused, and powerful! A B. Pharma & MBA degree holder she worked in various corporates before calling it quits pursuing her dreams. Currently, Strategic Partner & Associate – Grecor, and a Brand & Business Consultant . Her strategies, real-time solutions, and marketing efforts ensure effective BAU management, successful business continuity, addition to existing businesses, and transformation for continuous improvement.  

From assisting organizations to conceptualizing their digital image to strategizing their digital efforts and finally translating it to successful digital implementations across social media channels, websites and online forums. Towards success is where she leads businesses. Neeru Sood is also the founder of Prep4Success where she shares her tips and mantras for success. We got lucky to interview her for our WinningStree of the Week feature and here’s what Neeru Sood had to say. Keep reading as Neeru Sood’s powerful story unfolds here!

Who are you and how are you into what you do?

I am Neeru Sood; 42 years of age, close to 18 + years of working experience behind me. (9 years Corporate + 9 years as an Entrepreneur).

Business Description: 

I am a Management Consultant and Digital Marketing Strategist with a team of subject matter experts, working towards several upcoming and established startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and assisting them with their marketing (brand building and management) efforts. 

Also as a Strategic Partner & Associate for Grecor, I envision to influence the way we think about urban living towards an evolved mindset where exterior and interiors merge seamlessly in unified settings for maximum wellbeing. 

The Core Competency of my Business is Identifying the Business Lifecycle Stage of the client company and analyzing key growth drivers through market research and thorough analysis. Thereafter suggesting the Solution Proposal to the client – listing down time-bound and measurable business outcomes.

Tell us about your journey…

Educational Qualification:

I have throughout been a Delhihite and studied in South Delhi schools, I did my senior secondary from Birla Vidya Niketan which I have to say is one of the best schools in Delhi. Then I opted for a Science stream in Senior Secondary classes and topped my school in CBSE 1995 Examination (Medical Stream).

I did my graduation in B’Pharma from DIPSAR, Delhi University & MBA from LBSIM, Accredited by AICTE, Delhi University. During my MBA, I specialized in Marketing and Finance was my minor during PGDBM. After this, I entered the Professional World in 2001.

Even before I completed my MBA, I got placed in Janssen Cilag, Johnson & Johnson as a Product Specialist. After having worked the first few months in Pharmaceutical Sales, I got suitable opportunities in Pharmaceutical Brand Management across different reputed pharmaceutical companies and I then progressed as a Product Executive and then Product Manager to Sr. Product Manager and later on became a Group Manager. Through all these years of corporate exposure, I kept growing and getting groomed as a professional.

(In a Nutshell)

CORPORATE EXPERIENCE: 9 YEARS

I quit my corporate job in September 2009. I decided to give vent to my entrepreneurial talent and in 2009 October, I restarted my professional life, this time as an entrepreneur. Starting as a ‘Single Woman Army‘, I believed in my prowess to understand the changing marketing dynamics and adapting the marketing initiatives to the same, gradually helped me climb the success ladder. 

Today, Neeru Sood successfully run a team of around 20 like-minded and skilled professionals. Looked up to by my peers, clients, and team members as a diligent professional with a razor-sharp eye for details. I have been instrumental in strategizing, initiating, and implementing digital marketing plans and transforming them into measurable business outcomes, through my intuitiveness and sea of experience in digital marketing, across domains and industries.

Neeru Sood is a part of leading platforms and forums including key women groups, online communities, and Organization Panels and a known face of an emergent woman entrepreneur in the circuit. I inspire many like me to come forth and prove themselves, overcoming life’s challenges. I indeed have come a long way when I look back.

How has your corporate journey helped shape your entrepreneurial journey?

My corporate journey helped me shape my entrepreneurial journey as it prepared me in all possible ways. My skills got developed and bettered in areas like Project Management, Team Handling, and People Management!

Project Management

• Encompassing project planning, execution, and final reporting based on onshore team requirements/ expectations
• Productivity, Quality and conflict management during the project until it is finally accomplished
• Active liasioning with the client, client executive, team members, and other internal stakeholders to meet the project end to end objectives
• Rigorous involvement in project studies based on Competitive Intelligence (tracking Competitors, Industry, Disease Areas), Trackers (Clinical Trial Trackers & Comparators), Company & Competitor Profiling, Therapy Reports, Market Studies, Pipeline Analysis Trackers, Pricing & Reimbursement Studies, etc.

Team Management

• Managing the media monitoring and newsletter team which is primarily involved in developing media monitors targeted at different therapeutic areas in general medicine and the creation of customized daily newsletter to be distributed to strategic decision-makers of big pharmaceutical giants
• Ongoing training and mentoring of team members by encouraging constructive feedback mechanism

People Development

• Interview, hiring, and building teams
• Take timely decisions concerning their staffing on different projects after matching their skill sets with respective project needs

Other Responsibilities

• Knowledge sharing and dissemination: Seminars on Indian Pharmaceutical Industry, Core team member of internal pharma knowledge dissemination group
• Business Development by working in close association with Marketing & Sales operations teams
• Assisting a client desk on the brand building of an organization arm in front of internal and external stakeholders.

Do you constantly keep upgrading and enhancing your skill sets as a marketing strategist and brand consultant?

Of course, I do. Ongoing learning is my passion. Self – learning/training modules/online learning modules/ research sources have always been a means to upgrade my skills for knowledge acquisition and thence up-gradation as well.

Whenever I take up any project /assignment, I always prepare methodology to accomplish the project objectives in a thoroughly planned and articulated manner. This I do by involving myself at every micro-level of the project and thus I constantly upgrade my skills /skill-set with every possible assignment /project that I pick up as a professional. This was a practice even while I was in the Corporate World or as an Entrepreneur now. 

What are the pros and cons of being a brand and marketing consultant?

I do not believe in pros and cons. I only believe in adapting myself as a professional to meet all business challenges and accomplish the targeted objectives in a result-oriented manner and also in a time-bound manner. So, I target the achievement of success and achieve the same in planning multiple milestones towards it.

Having talked about milestones…what are the milestones that you have attained so far?

I have attained many milestones and still many more to be achieved!

Milestone 1: Single Woman Army – Working on Limited Projects

Milestone 2: Stepped up to Adhoc + retainership projects – still managing single-handedly

Milestone 3: Stepped up to a team of 3 personnel – started adding projects from Pharmaceutical + Healthcare

Milestone 4: Stepped up to a team of 8 personnel – started adding projects from Pharmaceutical, Healthcare & Wellness

Milestone 5: Stepped up to a team of 12 personnel – started adding projects from Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, Wellness & Lifestyle

Milestone 6: Stepped up to a team of 15 personnel – Successful execution of projects from Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, Wellness & Lifestyle, and also closely networking with Women Empowerment Communities, Organizations + Entrepreneurship Groups. Public Showcasing of Profile Started. Earlier all projects were primarily coming through recommendations largely and previous contacts.

What are the challenges that you have to deal with in your profession?

The core idea to start my business was to use my learning from the corporate world in brand management and experience in healthcare and pharmaceuticals and integrating it with KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) experience into doing something of my own. This wide exposure that I had was then used in helping offshore/onshore clients with specific business growth and business development objectives.

The core objective was to grow as a small business first, financial risks were thus, really not faced. I grew month after month and then started adding team members to my set up. The prime reason for the same was that infrastructural costs were primarily linked to communication and operational working and executing initially.

The initial difficulties that I faced were to step up from a single woman army to a team and scale it up. This was the first one. The second one was accounting/keeping track of financial growth. The third was amalgamating the use of technology and also gaining newer skills in parallel related to digital marketing to best integrate the same in my project executions to the best of client satisfaction.

The most crucial one of all was, keeping my team always motivated whom I have never seen in person (most of them) as I recruit and staff them on different projects and they are associated with me on a project to project basis.  Keeping them motivated and upbeat was the most important task which I feel still completely keeps me on my toes.

How important are marketing campaigns for a business? 

Marketing campaigns are the perfect way to reach your customers, clients, and leads. They can be the game-changing move that secures meetings with customers or prospects. Producing campaigns with a series of touchpoints will grab someone’s attention better than a single advertisement. You need to break through the clutter when promoting yourself, and marketing campaigns with incentives can do that for you.

Key Aspects to be attended to:

• Determining the need for a product through consumer research and by observing and quantifying sales patterns of similar goods in the marketplace.
• Modifying existing products or creating new products to match consumer wants and needs
• Determining how best to reach potential customers to make them aware of your products and to persuade them to buy them
• Creating marketing campaigns based on your determinations of the most effective way of reaching customers
• Confirming customer relationships via follow-up sales campaigns and loyalty programs

How do you get innovative and out of the box ideas for marketing campaigns?

The core competency of my business lies in Identifying the Business Lifecycle Stage of the client company and analyzing key growth drivers through market research and thorough analysis. Thereafter suggesting the Solution Proposal to the client by listing down time-bound and measurable business outcomes. I keep the below three points always in mind while doing so.

1. Unlike various brand management agencies/digital marketing agencies, I try to become a solution provider for the client instead of offering what the client downloads to me as a business need.  This leads to a lot of credibilities that I gain from the client’s end and also RELIANCE is one thing that brings back clients to me whenever they have appropriate projects.
2. Commitment to deadlines based on the dynamism of the client and energy that a project /business needs at a particular stage are another core USP.
3. Integration of 3 aspects: Strategic Analysis + Brand Building Guidance + Digital Marketing Steering. This has helped me come up as a HOLISTIC SOLUTION for the clients as far as their business growth and measurable results are concerned. Also, gains me ACCOUNTABILITY FOR DRIVING RESULTS OF A PROJECT AS A TEAM.

What is your suggestion to female entrepreneurs who want to make it big in their entrepreneurial journeys?

“We have often heard that the journey is more important than the destination itself. Ever wondered why? I gave it a lot of thought and understand the perspective of this famous adage. Yes! The journey is more important because that defines the destination.

Similarly, if you have set your eyes on success, what is more, important is how well you prepare for success. If you want to win, to prepare and plan for that win is equally important to get where you want to be.”

As a professional consultant helping businesses and people reach their goals and excel, I Neeru Sood, have seen that the will to learn, improve, and adapt are the keys to success. Through my platform Prep4Success, I strive to help individuals and businesses seeking success to learn the art of succeeding through hand-holding and guiding them through these essential phases to success. 

LIKE, FOLLOW AND SHARE  Prep4Success

How do you manage your work from home so efficiently especially being a working mom?

I believe in 4 Ds of Time Management 

• Do
• Delegate
• Delay
• Dump

I prioritize my tasks accordingly and plan every day. I reallocate my tasks /calendarize effectively.

What other things are you passionate about?  

Love Singing, Adventure Sports, Travelling to unexplored places/cities, Shopping Clothes & Jewelry.

That Winningstree Moment for Neeru Sood…

Every small accomplishment that I target in my personal and my professional life is a “Winning Stree Moment for me” as it every time helps me setting new benchmarks for myself in every sphere of life. 

Three words you say to yourself while in front of the mirror!

“I Believe Myself”

What makes Neeru Sood extraordinary? 

My Mission, My Strengths, and My Values make me EXTRAORDINARY…

Mission: “Better than the Best in every walk of life.”

I am a hard and smart worker with a great sense of responsibility. And I am a highly enthusiastic, fast learner, and believe in quality work. I have been brought up with emphasis on all-round personality development, and a resourceful attitude towards work and management

Strengths: Analytical Skills, Excellent Communication Skills, and Time Management

Core Values: Commitment, Respect for individuals and Integrity

Winning Message of Neeru Sood to Other Strees…

To WinningStrees reading this I would like to appeal that while

“Growing As A Professional – Set SMART Goals !!“

Stay tuned on Prep4Success for more such tips. However, here are a few tips for my WinningStrees.

1. GOAL SETTING (Use SMART Approach: S – Specific Goals; M – Measurable Goals; A – Actionable Goals; R – Result Oriented Goals; T – Time-Bound Goals)
2. ORGANIZING THE GOALS
3. GOAL MAPPING (Prioritization)
4. GOAL OBJECTIVITY QUOTIENT

• Keep a Track of Wins
• Explore Losses
• Identify Gaps
• Expand Skill Sets
• Ongoing/Continual Learning
• Active Feedback Seeking
• Active Listening
• Networking

LIKE, FOLLOW AND SHARE Prep4Success

Where can you be reached?

Name of the Women Entrepreneur: NEERU SOOD

Designation: BUSINESS CONSULTANT (Brand Building & Digital Marketing)

Email: neerusood376@gmail.com

Mobile: +919810261356