Since the beginning of the pandemic when countries and individuals were pushed to seek virtual alternatives to doing business and life in general, the Marketing Forum of Sri Lanka Association for Software Services Companies (SLASSCOM) was proactive in engaging its members and the marketing fraternity at large to promoting knowledge sharing. The forum partnered with Pandemic Punditry a popular live video podcast series focussed on engaging with entrepreneurs, thought leaders, experts and newsmakers from across the world. The podcast is hosted and moderated by Lavindra de Silva and Karthiga Ratnam, Directors of The Content Experience Company.

“The Pandemic Punditry’s two 2-hour long Sales and Marketing Workshops have been well received and extremely useful to a wide cross-section of business leaders and entrepreneurs from different industries. Pandemic Punditry’s ability to attract key thought-leaders in the space as experts allowed participants to draw on their wealth of experience in solving challenges unique to them” says SLASSCOM Chairman Channa Manoharan.

The workshops were hosted exclusively for SLASSCOM members and PwC clients and were moderated by Karthiga Ratnam and Lavindra de Silva. The thought leaders of the two workshops included Sanjiv Goyal, Silicon Valley Futurist & Investor, Anubhav Ahuja, CEO of SalesZee, Colin Anderson, CEO of Brand Courage (Partner – The Content Experience Company) and Graham Hawkins, CEO of SalesTribe (Partner - The Content Experience Company). Graham Hawkins, is a best-selling author and a LinkedIn Top Voice and Colin Anderson was the former Managing Director of Ogilvy for Asia and Australia – both account for over 30 years of experience dealing with international clients.

The workshops were designed to address specific questions, concerns and challenges posed by participants related to positioning, brand-building, lead generation, targeting, marketing and sales technologies needed to effectively sell to the world from Sri Lanka. Some of the best practices shared by the panellists centred around the importance of leveraging networks such as LinkedIn for personal branding, understanding and discovering your compelling truth, defining and understanding your ICP and USP.

Graham shared some of his personal insights on how he established himself as a thought leader and touched on the importance of Content Marketing on LinkedIn, as your “Network is your Net Worth.” This was further complemented by Colin who spoke of the importance of having an impressive and relevant website when reaching customers overseas with subtle messaging and the right visual communications, he noted “to do more business, you must know your B2B partners, step out of the comfort zone and share things before you start selling something.” The moderators stressed the importance of creating thought-provoking and sense-making content that positively enhances the buying experience. They decried common tactics of “spray and pray” when it comes to selling.

Pandemic Punditry’s live video podcast has featured nearly 100 guests from all across the world since April. SLASSCOM and PwC is pleased to have partnered with Pandemic Punditry, and looks forward to continuing to provide its members and clients meaningful and transformative advice to help them during this pandemic and its aftermath. The Content Experience Company’s and its partners SalesTribe and Brand Courage along with other experts look forward to helping individuals, organizations and companies survive and thrive during these unprecedented times.

Sri Lanka Association for Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) is the national chamber for the knowledge and innovation industry in Sri Lanka. It acts as the catalyst of growth by facilitating trade and business, propagation of education and employment, encouraging research and innovation, and by supporting the creation of a forward thinking and progressive national policy framework. SLASSCOM has over 200 member companies accounting for approximately 90% of the IT-BPM industry export revenue and drives the Imagination Economy. SLASSCOM is also supported on this initiative by their Corporate sponsor Dialog.

Photo Captions: Graham Hawkins, CEO of SalesTribe, Lavindra de Silva- Director of  The Content Experience Company and Channa Manoharan - Chairman  of SLASSCOM.