Creative business responses to the pandemic are causing some companies to reexamine the way they operate. Strategic and tactical changes they made to stay profitable are likely to have long-lasting impacts even after the pandemic is over. Under pressure to keep their companies viable, business leaders are asking tough questions: How do we cut expenses in the wake of an economy slowed by the pandemic? How do we strengthen our safety and sanitation processes at work to protect personnel and customers? How can we keep workers and managers connected when they live in cities and states where offices were ordered shut?
The challenges led some companies to introduce changes that turned out so successful that “temporary” solutions became part of long-term strategies. Many of those new business practices were uncovered by and supported with location intelligence—a deep analysis made possible by geographic information systems (GIS). Even a large real estate company—a major player in an industry long thought to be founded upon face-to-face interactions and in-person tours of properties—was forced to steer a new path. Cushman & Wakefield developed methods to conduct business via remote access and user-friendly apps that harness the power of location intelligence. 1. Virtual Workspaces Strengthen Client-Broker Relationships Cushman & Wakefield, one of the world’s largest commercial real estate firms, had to rethink methods of sales and eventually create virtual streets – one step short of selling in virtual reality. The firm’s brokers have provided market insight and local knowledge to clients and other possible buyers and sellers. Like many other companies, the pandemic left Cushman & Wakefield facing restrictions about opening many of their 400 offices, slowing down physical tours of properties. MORE FOR YOU
Fortunately, leadership at Cushman & Wakefield realized that if they digitalized their vast databases, they did not have to physically tour properties. Instead, a new app the firm developed allowed brokers to bring the sales properties and surrounding neighborhoods to the clients. With an app to tap into their vast storehouses of sales and demographic data, brokers could recreate in 3D nearly any geographic market. Using smart maps with scalable views, brokers and customers could click points on the smart maps or on individual buildings to find information on sales trends, tax districts, and descriptions of individual properties. Cushman & Wakefield can guide clients virtually around 3D structures, zoom out to look at city blocks in overview, or zoom in for detailed perspectives. Clients and brokers can even “walk” through buildings together to see actual layouts and amenities. During the pandemic, Cushman & Wakefield focused on a digital transformation that empowered the firm to become even more savvy market advisor and gave customers a contactless way to do business. Leadership has said the app, powered by GIS engines, is not only maintaining clients, it is bringing new business to the firm. 2. Reconfigured Workspaces Improve Health and the Bottom Line As the coronavirus spread through the US and around the world, many businesses tried to carry on with partial workforces and safe-distancing rules. It made some offices awkward places to try to conduct businesses, as managers experimented with different processes and human resources rearranged workspaces to meet standards of social distancing. Once again, digitalizing business information such as the layout of workspaces led to solutions. By mapping the inside workspace of buildings, information specialists were able to use location intelligence to analyze workspaces to find best arrangement of desks and cubicles that balances health safety with necessary cooperative efforts. Location technology also can keep track of foot traffic in the office and in the more public spaces of the building and then suggest ways to lower operating costs through automated systems that turn off lights and ease back on heating and AC in areas of low usage. Companies can take digitized maps of a building’s interior and add a system of sensors that detect foot traffic and maintenance needs. IT teams make it possible for automated systems to turn on lights and AC a little ahead of meetings to make sure attendees are comfortable without wasting energy. If sensors detect water leaks or other problems, the system can alert facilities managers and even request preapproved service providers. Giving service and repair personnel access to at least part of the internal mapping system also minimizes time lost when a provider can’t find the way to the area or equipment in question. Those same smart maps can guide visitors to their destinations, as well. 3. Manufacturing Companies Adapt to Safety Protocols Location intelligence supports manufacturing companies with social distancing and tracking the health status of employees. It helps managers understand how to add flexibility to manufacturing processes. Smart maps of manufacturing facilities can show the best possible arrangement of workers in offices and conference rooms to keep everyone at a safe distance without leaving some people in complete social isolation. For those on the manufacturing line, there may be less room for flexibility as many pieces of equipment and machinery is fixed in place. However, for example, if portions of the assembly or the packaging operations are moveable, then location intelligence can help find open rooms and areas where it may be possible to work with proper social distance and/or put up temporary walls or plexiglass boundaries to protect workers. Location intelligence also can keep track of workers health status in real time and monitor data streams that show how COVID is affecting areas near the manufacturing plant or in neighborhoods where employees live. With advance warning, personnel managers may be able to block or limit the spread among coworkers. 4. Balancing the Need for Corporate Offices with Home-based Workers Who are Happy and Efficient What started as an adjustment to the workflow during the pandemic can wind up as an investment in corporate social responsibility, supported by location intelligence and managers alert to a new normal. Take for example, the people prompted to work from home during lockdowns who find less time spent in commutes and fewer dollars going to daycare. In other words, some employees have become more efficient and happier with the new way of working. Of course, smart companies also realize that national headquarters and regional and local offices have fueled corporate success for reasons that still apply to today’s markets. Those offices form centers of concentrated talent where great ideas can emerge among colleagues working in the same space. Then, too, many customers feel a sense of comfort and security knowing they are doing business with a place they can visit – an office where they can see a vibrant business in motion. At the same time, new studies reveal that people working at home are between 15% and 45% more productive than when in the office. That raises the question of how many people are needed at the office because rent and facilities management are typically large expenses, second only to personnel. The smaller the floor plan, the lower the cost. To accommodate fewer workers or those who only come into the office occasionally, companies are creating shared desks that employees can reserve online for the days when they must come in. One current idea is to allow employees to spend less time in the office but to plan more office events that strengthen personal bonds and keep employees in touch with the corporate culture. 5. Supply Lines Move with New Resiliency The pandemic created immediate stress on many supply chains, as illness and lockdowns hindered production and shipping. Businesses learned quickly that it was no longer enough to simply have a tightly maintained ordering schedule and expected delivery dates. That might make sense during normal times, but once a link in the chain breaks, the whole operation was at risk of failing. Instead, businesses learned to search for backup sources of raw materials and products to create resiliency as well as learn to manage and monitor it through GIS. Building that new resiliency makes it necessary to create more complex tracking systems that not only note locations of shipments, but also show availability of raw materials and manufactured parts from other sources and alternative routes. That led again to digitalizing more information and connecting data to GIS dashboards that show how fast supplies are being depleted and replenished at their sources and how fast they are moving off retail shelves. An easy-to-use dashboard can send alerts when materials or transport slips below a certain rate. 6. Innovation Thrives to Keep Business Alive One lesson learned by business this summer is that innovation may not cure the next crisis, but it can help ease the pain, so expect work processes to change. Responses to COVID-19 have taken many forms from GIS-powered dashboards that track incidence of disease and where it spreads to an app that let business spark to life again in the midst of widespread summertime lockdowns. The app, known as Open Restaurants, is powered by GIS and managed by New York City. It was made available to interested diners in June after the city allowed restaurants to have outdoor seating. The app, which now includes nearly 10,500 restaurants, allows users to search by zip code and whether the establishment serves alcohol. The app also has a link to forms that a restaurant can fill out to register to be included in the program. The idea behind the open restaurants initiative was to allow bistros and cafes to provide outdoors dining, which is considered a safer alternative than eating inside a restaurant during the pandemic. At the same time, the easing of lockdown restrictions helped stimulate badly needed business. By late September, the city estimated that the open restaurant program, aided by the popularity of the app, had drawn enough business to save 90,000 jobs in the city. And it was working so well that the city decided to make the program permanent and year-round. Cities and counties across the US employed the same GIS technology to survey local businesses and present online dashboards guiding residents to resources and helping keep restaurant and grocery stores afloat. Location intelligence does not claim to be a cure-all, but its vast capacity, analytic power and endless variety of uses mean that it, no doubt, will be relied upon throughout recovery and should new economic crises arise. For more on location intelligence, visit esri.com/location-intelligence. Read more from Forbes How the Founder of Dave's Killer Bread Went From Jail to Selling His Business for $275 Million12/18/2020 Five things that helped an ex-convict build and sell his company in 14 years. Image credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images As an entrepreneur, you are used to juggling multiple tasks and navigating choppy waters. Eventually, you grow accustomed to surviving in a world of organized chaos. To you, setbacks are just part of the process, but what if one of those setbacks happened to be a 15-year stint in a penitentiary? Would you be able to maintain that same enthusiasm that keeps you going right now?
Meet Dave Dahl, founder of Dave’s Killer Bread. By his own admission, Dahl will tell you that he suffered from low self-esteem, and up until 2001, made a series of poor life choices. After serving a decade-and-a-half sentence for possession of drugs, robbery, burglary and assault, he returned home in 2001 to the family bakery business, which was built by his father and run by his brother. Together, he and his brother sought out to develop a better bread in hopes of changing lives, one loaf at a time. Fast forward to 2015, and Flowers Foods agreed to purchase “Dave’s Killer Bread” for $275 million. Let’s review the five things Dahl did to take his bread company from local farmers markets to the global market. Related: A Family Business With an Open-Minded Hiring Policy 1. Self-forgiveness Dave’s story is one of second chances. Actually, it's one of multiple chances. Prior to reuniting with his brother and joining the family business, he had been incarcerated four times. The moral of the story is that it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve screwed; there’s always an opportunity to start anew. You may have failed yesterday, but that doesn’t mean you have to carry that burden today. Take solace in knowing that most people won’t remember your missteps. Want to know why? They’re too busy worrying about their own. 2. Never coasting One of the biggest reasons Dave's Killer Bread was such a hit was because other breadmakers simply hadn’t been as innovative. You can argue that his non-GMO ingredients are better, but on the surface, all Dahl did was add more whole grains and unique toppings to the exterior than other manufacturers were offering. The big dogs stopped being creative. The biggest mistake you can make as an entrepreneur is to coast. Related: Five Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Need To Think Out of the Box 3. Remaining driven Great ideas come as you work on something you're passionate about. There is a saying by Gabby Bernstein: "Allow your passion to become your purpose, and one day it will become your profession." Dahl's passion helps him fill that hole in his life. He wanted to bake a loaf of bread with rich texture and natural whole grain that people would love Passion gives you motivation, direction and purpose in life. 4. Taking a leap of faith One of the biggest challenges Dave’s company faced was moving into a facility that cost his brother Glenn $1.5 million. It was a huge risk for them to take, knowing that they had no cash flow support to sustain such a purchase, and it was all based on future expectations. Eventually, they did see significant growth in the business, even expanding and hiring more employees. Dave's hard work, dedication, perseverance and continued focus on his purpose helped him take this risk. There will be moments in your own entrepreneurial endeavour where you will be forced to operate outside of your comfort zone. Eventually, you learn how to operate with butterflies in your stomach, and it becomes business as usual. Related: Why You Need to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone 5. Being a mad scientist Dave experimented with different types of bread and countless ingredients. He researched what was trending and what was not. He wasn’t afraid of letting his product out in the market to receive feedback. He knew that some of his ideas would fail. He also knew that some of his ideas would hit, and when they did, they were home runs. Customers were repeatedly asked for his bread, and word got out so fast that it became famous in the community. Your business ideas won't work if you sit and think about them all day. You have to go out, experiment and execute your ideas, no matter just how crazy they may sound. Dave Dahl wasn’t born an entrepreneur. His early life was a struggle, and he long clung to a victim mentality. But Dave’s Killer Bread is a perfect example of how you can turn tragedy into triumph. It wasn’t too late for Dahl, even after 15 years behind bars, and it isn’t too late for you. Apply these same five strategies that he used, and go build your own multi-million dollar empire. Read more from Entrepreneur When you strengthen your relationships with existing clients, it increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals, which sets you and your business up for long-lasting success.  Image credit: JohnnyGreig | Getty Images This article was written by Alex Fluegel, a member of the Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble content team. Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble is a freelance-matching platform leading the future of work. If you’re struggling to find, vet, and hire the right freelancers for your business, Entrepreneur NEXT will help you hire the freelancers you need, exactly when you need them. From business to marketing, sales, design, finance, and technology, we have the top 3 percent of freelance experts ready to work for you.
Client relationships are like any other relationship. They require effort, time, and attention to improve and maintain their quality. When you consistently invest in relationship building, you should see a clear return, not only in the form of business growth but in how fulfilling the work is. When you strengthen relationships with existing clients, it increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals, which sets you and your business up for long-lasting success. So, where do you start? Here are five tips for cultivating strong, sustainable, and more fulfilling relationships with your clients. 1. Really get to know your client. Any healthy relationship requires consistent effort, and this is true for clients as well. In the beginning, doing your research is key to understanding their industry, goals and preferred methods of getting work done, but it doesn’t end there. Really getting to know your clients strengthens your bond and makes working together a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved. An easy way to keep up with what’s going on with clients is through social media. By now, most brands use at least one major platform, and by following your clients’ businesses or organizations, you create an opportunity to talk about their latest news, products or success in a way that shows you’re paying attention. If your client sends email newsletters or uses a blog for company updates, these can also be great tools for digging deeper into their business. But what about who they are as people? Yes, social media can also be helpful in learning personal details, but it comes with great risk and responsibility. Balancing the boundaries of professional and personal social media is challenging, and there are many different things to consider. However, a standard rule of thumb is to avoid personal social media connections with clients and focus your energy on learning who they are through the organic conversations you have while working together. Once rapport is established — for example, your client has shared details about their family or hobbies — and if you feel comfortable with it, asking about a vacation or their child’s lead role in the school play can deepen your relationship and help you see the person beyond the project. Just remember, this is a client relationship, not a friendship, and creating firm boundaries for yourself will help you avoid messy conflicts. 2. Be yourself. As you’re getting to know your clients, they’re getting to know you too, and it’s important they get to know the real you. It’s tempting to try and fit what you think a client wants, but if that’s not what you authentically bring to the table, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment in the long run. You want your clients to feel confident in their hiring decision, which is just as often based on how well they feel you’ll work together personality-wise as your resume stats. Being yourself and sharing your experiences also gives clients the chance to resonate with your story and feel more confident trusting you to help them. When they get to know you as a person, not just a service provider, it strengthens your bond and can show you aren’t just phoning it in for a paycheck. Bottom line: don’t be afraid to be yourself — and if you are, that’s a red flag that this client might not be quite right for you. The number one problem shared among entrepreneurs today is finding, vetting, hiring, and retaining expertise. 3. Embrace feedback. Asking for feedback can seem scary at first, but it’s crucial to improving relationships with clients. Eighty-five percent of small- and mid-size enterprises say client feedback has been beneficial to their businesses, and this is especially true for service providers and anyone whose business depends on having clients. Getting feedback not only shows that you’re committed to delivering the best possible work, but that you value the client’s needs and desires enough to listen. A 2011 Gallup poll showed that companies that employ regular feedback practices have a nearly 15 percent lower turnover rate than companies who don’t, and this applies to client relationships as well. The poll might be nearly a decade old but the lesson holds true: When you create the opportunity for regular feedback, you decrease the likelihood of losing that client. But feedback practices don’t just happen, so planning is key. During onboarding, discuss whether your client prefers formal satisfaction surveys, regular status updates or informal conversations. This will help you understand your client and makes it easy for them to tell you what’s working well, and more importantly, what isn’t. And with, The most important thing to remember about client feedback is that it means nothing without concrete actions. Having a plan in place to address concerns or criticisms shows you’re committed to improving your business processes and shows clients you listen and value what they share. And feedback doesn’t just help with current clients. When you solicit feedback on completed projects, you make it possible to make changes that will improve your performance for future clients. Not only that, but when you take the time to truly listen to clients, you may even increase the possibility of referrals 4. Build trust by exceeding expectations. One of top ways to improve client relationships is to deliver results that exceed your client’s expectations. You may have heard the catchphrase ‘under-promise and over-deliver,’ but your true aim should be to ‘have clear-cut expectations and consistently achieve them.’ This builds trust with your clients and is more sustainable than trying to beat every deadline or exceed every sales goal. You can also exceed expectations by finding ways to make life easier for your clients. When you send a video call link, prepare a meeting agenda or include a summary at the end of a detailed email, it shows you value your client’s time and are someone who helps lighten their load. While high-quality work should always be your goal, these small stress-relievers are a great way to set yourself apart and build a reputation as someone who goes above and beyond. 5. Remember that the tiny, noticeable things matter. Going above and beyond for your clients is a staple of building good relationships, and tiny, noticeable things are the best way to achieve it. Sure, you could tell your client you’re grateful for their feedback in an email, but sending them a handwritten card is ever better. It makes the client feel special, but more importantly, it adds that personal touch that’s so often missing in today’s increasingly digital world. Other small things that can make a big difference are: sending your client an article you think they’ll enjoy, shouting out their successes or public thank-yous on social media, adding a personal note to invoices, and sending small, thoughtful gifts just because. Read more from Entrepreneur Your business can be a driving force to help the local economy thrive during tough times. Image credit: South_agency | Getty Images The current health and economic crisis has impacted both life and work in many ways. Chief among those impacts has been the stunning amount of business closures.
Any crisis can potentially tank a local economy, causing serious financial and social distress for the members of that community. The ripple effects can impact consumers, other businesses and even local officials, causing even greater damage to the community. Fortunately, that community also has an unparalleled opportunity to help shore up struggling businesses and provide a safety net for employees, business owners and consumers alike. Try the following suggestions to shore up your local business community and economy both during the holidays and beyond. Related: How to Reward Employees in Uncertain Times 1. Decorate the workplace Is your office, outside storefront, outdoor restaurant seating or other workplace in need of sprucing up fast? Look for affordable and stylish decor options at local businesses. Seek out new plants from local nurseries and gardening centers. Buy art for your offices from local artists, artisans and crafts businesses, instead of shopping on Etsy or Amazon. Lastly, shop at local, independently-owned hardware stores for paint touch-ups, storage solutions and lighting fixtures instead of heading to big name home improvement chain stores. 2. Order takeout for the team One of the hardest hit segments of the business community is the food and beverage service sector. Your local bars and restaurants may have been forced to close altogether, or simply to in-person dining. But, however they’ve been impacted, they’ve definitely lost a substantial percentage of their usual business. Why not help them out and reward your team at the same time? Treat your staff to lunch from a local restaurant using either curbside pickup or delivery. It should be no problem to send several individual meal deliveries to your team members at their home offices. Related: If Running Your Business Feels Hard, You're Doing it Right. Here's Why 3. Subscribe to your local papers The news and media industries had already taken a series of body blows even before the crisis struck. Support local journalism and your local news outlets by purchasing digital subscriptions to a local paper for employees. If it’s doable, make physical newspapers available in a break room or lobby for your workers and team members, as well as for any customers, clients or others who might pay a visit. 4. Hire locally You may still employ a full staff, but if you’re looking for additional hands, expertise or specialized skills for a specific project, your local area might have just what you need. Lots of folks lost their jobs earlier this spring and are now turning to freelancing and self-employment to survive. Outsource as much work as you can to area freelancers whenever possible. When you patronize their new businesses, you’re putting more cash into circulation in your local community as well. Related: 4 Ways to Determine If Now Is the Right Time to Launch Your Business 5. Network locally With marketing budgets being stretched thin or even being axed altogether, many of your area’s local businesses are being forced to get creative in the hunt for new prospects and customers. Word of mouth, which is always a powerful organic form of marketing, can help keep struggling businesses alive. You can help this process and gain benefits for your own business by joining local community-based networking sites like Alignable. Get active in those groups or sites by participating in discussions, answering questions, and recommending businesses you’re familiar with to people who are looking for specific services or goods. 6. Hire teachers as tutors Are your schools still meeting in-person? As the crisis continues, many school districts have opted to forego in-person learning. Some teachers have also been forced to resign from their positions due to family and health concerns. Consider hiring one or more of these professional educators to help your company create a tutoring or school pod for your employees’ kids. 7. Buy gifts The holiday season is the perfect time to visit local stores for unique and meaningful gifts for everyone on your list. Even if your favorite stores are closed to foot traffic, call and ask about purchasing gift cards for holiday gifts. Give them to employees and others, and encourage them to shop when it’s safe to do so. 8. Support local charitable initiatives As the economy has struggled to regain its footing, charitable donations have also taken a hit. That means your local foundations and community service groups may be struggling to fulfill their missions. Donate as much as your business can manage, especially for groups that are offering critical services for people who have lost jobs or housing. Consider making donations in the names of colleagues and loved ones for the holidays, then encourage them to support the organization as well. 9. Leave positive reviews Finally, don’t forget to leave a great review wherever you can. Most consumers want to see independent reviews for small and mid-sized businesses they haven’t visited before. Many business websites will happily accept and display testimonials directly. You can also leave positive reviews on sites like Yelp. Be as specific as possible in your praise of any local business you patronize, and encourage others to do the same. Read more from Entrepreneur How to survive and come out stronger on the other side of this pandemic.Jairek Robbins ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK CONTRIBUTOR Chairman and CEO of High Performance Ventures, LLC  Image credit: Viktoryia Vinnikava/EyeEm | Getty Images As the Covid-19 lockdowns went into effect, I immediately started receiving calls, text messages, and emails from clients, friends, and family members worldwide.
The texts included questions, fears, and a consistent theme of not knowing how their business would survive the lockdown. They were stuck trying to figure out how they would pay their team, pay their vendors, and pay the rent with the business shut down. Many small businesses in the US have already closed permanently, with an estimated 55% of businesses closed since March predicted not to reopen again. Related: 4 Ways Brands Can Be Activists for School Safety Right Now I sat down with my team and spent a few days brainstorming some actions business owners could take to give them the ability first to survive the lockdown and second rebuild a more substantial business than they had before all the chaos started. 1. Protect your operating cash To make this easy to understand and relatable, let us look at how humans handle a lack of resources. Humans can survive 30 days without food, 3-4 days without water, but only 3-5 minutes without oxygen. Operating cash is oxygen in your business. When you run out of operating cash your business chokes to death very quickly, if you want to keep your business healthy and alive, you need to make sure you protect your operating cash. We use a very easy to understand exercise that can help you discover considerable savings in just a few hours. Since the global lockdown started, we have been teaching this to business owners worldwide, and we were able to help:
Our team named it the stoplight exercise. Imagine a stoplight in the United States; it consists of red, yellow, and green colors. Red means stop; Yellow means slow or caution. Green means go. Related: 4 Ways 2020 Has Changed Company Culture Forever Part 1 is to print out your itemized P&L or your credit card receipts for your business. Part 2 is to comb through all of the expenses and color, each with red, yellow, or green. Red is for any expenses that you need to cut out immediately, yellow is for the expenses that you might need to keep or might need to cut out if your business starts to slow down. Green is the expense you must maintain for your business to stay alive. Part 3 is to eliminate the expenses in red immediately. Put a plan together for the expenses in yellow (the question below can help), and you will keep the expenses in green since they are necessary for your business to stay alive. Question: What specific results do we need to maintain or achieve to keep the yellow expenses? If we drop below these results, we will need to eliminate these expenses immediately. 2. Protect your core clients A core client is a client that you do business with regularly and consistently. They depend on your product or service to meet their own needs, and your business depends on their business to keep the door open. According to Harvard Business Review, Acquiring a new customer costs 5–25 times more than keeping an existing customer. And in Salesforce's annual State of Sales Report, it reveals 79% of business buyers agree, it's easier than ever to take my business elsewhere. Related: 6 Keys for Getting Temporarily Remote Teams Back Together A few years ago, I was working closely with one of my favorite business mentors Keith Cunningham. He proposed a question that reshaped the way I think of working with my core clients. He asked, "What would you have to offer your core clients so that it would be INSANE for them ever to consider going anywhere else for this type of product or service?" To figure this out, we must take time to get to know our core clients' needs, wants, and desires. A need is something that we cannot live without. If this need were not to be met, the business relationship would end immediately. A want is something that we can certainly live without, but we might not want to. An example of this would be the fact we need a safe place to live, but most of us want a ______ (lake house, fancy home, one with a great view, etc.) place to live. A desire, these are the things that call to us as we drive around town or flip through a magazine, but we could never actually justify investing the capital in getting. Take time to sit with your core clients and learn about their needs, wants, and desires. Once you have done your research answer these two questions:
Here are some helpful tips from experts on what to add to your sales strategy in 2021. Image credit: Teera Konakan | Getty Images This year has been the year of adjustments. COVID has taught us that nothing is for certain, and if we want our businesses to thrive (or survive), we need to be one step ahead of what’s to come.
Obviously, we have no crystal ball, and we aren’t able to see into the future. So, how do we know what’s to come in 2021 now that COVID has changed the selling landscape for the foreseeable future? How do we determine what sales tactics we should use in this COVID reality while still putting our customers first? Here are some important selling tips from the experts to keep in mind as you prepare for next year. Hopefully, these insights can help you as you embark into uncharted territory. Related: 5 Lessons That Will Help Your Business Get Through a Crisis 1. Automate wherever you can "Investing in software can be quite the headache, but the end result can also save the day. If you automate mundane sales processes, it creates more time for reps to focus on what’s important: building a relationship with the customer." — Mary Clare Novak, Sales Content Writer at G2 2. Sales reps will thrive with empathy and understanding “Sales reps, like BDRs and AEs, have always had a difficult job, but the pandemic’s impact on the pipeline also hurt morale. The most successful sales leaders have embraced empathy and provided personalized, detailed coaching techniques to help get teams back on track and confident. While team-building and management may have been isolated to the sales floor, the future is understanding all of the conversations sales reps have each day, remotely and at scale. By navigating both the 10,000 ft. overview and small details of the sales team, we’re able to build confidence, pipeline, and revenue together.” — Jim Benton, CEO, Chorus.ai Related: 3 Reasons Empathy is Good for Business 3. Converting on camera will be EVERYTHING in 2021 “The basic principles of sales will never change. However, with the various ways COVID continues to affect our economy, businesses in every industry will need to learn several new skills. First, they will need to effectively identify and connect with ideal clients using social media. The nuances of nurturing and qualifying leads will no longer take place door to door, or phone to phone, but in DM's and PM's across a variety of social media platforms, so understanding how to do that will be increasingly important over the next 12-18 months. Lastly, it will be important for businesses to master live video and sales conversations online. Whether selling to thousands of people in a Facebook group during a launch or one-on-one over Zoom, having mastery over the skills required to convert on camera will be absolutely critical if you want to thrive during 2021!” — Kelly Roach, Kelly Roach Coaching 4. Make sure your email messages are deep and provide value “The pandemic has slashed traditional sales channels in half, meaning it’s harder to connect with prospects when an in-person meeting, coffee, or dinner is off the table — a huge problem for sales teams across the world as we go into next year. Pre-pandemic, casting a wide net has never worked, and it certainly doesn’t work now. Don't succumb to sending 1,000 emails, but instead, send a few emails per week with very specific and powerful solutions to get the attention of your best prospects. In an era where people are begrudgingly more connected to their devices than ever, it’s easy to ignore an irrelevant or vague email, whereas solution-oriented ideas tend to stick.” — Chris Dessi, VP Americas & Australia, Products up 5. Integrate sales and marketing teams “For sales, the need for collaboration has gone from lax to necessary overnight, with distance selling necessitated by COVID-19 becoming the new normal and revenue-centric strategies taking center stage. Marketing and sales teams have historically worked independently to drive revenue. During a global pandemic, however, it’s critical these two departments function as one to create a plan that works toward overall business goals. Mere alignment isn’t sufficient anymore – the two teams need to be fully integrated in order to succeed. To integrate these two teams, businesses need to view and structure them as one revenue organization. While individuals are still focused on sales tasks or marketing tasks, it’s important that they exist under the same umbrella. Being under this same umbrella fosters true collaboration – which will be essential for success in 2021 – and unites sales and marketing as one functional team.” — Mike Dickerson, CEO, Click Dimensions Related: 3 Reasons Marketing Is The New Sales 6. Interactivity is the New Necessity “As virtual and hybrid meetings and events are quickly replacing the in-person sales experience, leading companies must pivot to engage prospects online effectively. If you are planning to highlight key information via PDFs, product sheets, and slides, instead, try swapping out static data dumps for a relevant question regarding the customer’s business in order to engage the audience right from the start. Keep decision-makers focused on a topic that requires them to continue thinking, creating a spotlight of attention. Then, engage customers with something interactive that they can control themselves, for instance, have them actually drive an application or a game-like experience in your next virtual meeting. Lastly, tie these activities into their world rather than your products – allow them to uncover for themselves how they can solve specific business challenges. This will increase knowledge retention and enthusiasm.” — Gavin Finn, President & CEO, Kaon Interactive 7. Ask your customers how the pandemic has affected them “The pandemic has obviously affected every industry in a variety of different ways. So, ask your customer probing questions about how the pandemic has affected their specific business. You can use this information to craft custom-tailored solutions to their specific challenges. For example, if your business manages a clothing store’s website and social media, you’ll need to help expand its e-commerce options, as well as their search and social ads. People are online more than ever now. Sales organizations need to be experts in helping their clients leverage online outreach to support their customers, gain referrals, and, ultimately, increase revenue in an unprecedented time.” — Jessica Pingrey, Senior Sales Analyst, FitSmallBusiness 8. Any outbound sales strategy requires multiple channels "Up until recently, all you had to do was build an outreach cadence that systematically connected with prospects on multiple channels to help you stand out from the crowd. No more. Connecting with your prospects on multiple channels will no longer be a differentiator, it is now a requirement and will become table stakes for even smaller-ticket sales. You can't get away with just relying on cold email or paid ads; you’ll have to be doing it all. The easiest way to do that is to use a sales engagement platform. These platforms are user-friendly and contain a lot of robust personalization features." — Sujan Patel, Co-founder, Mailshake 9. Create your own 'Virtual Bullpen' “In a normal office setting, many salespeople occupy the same area of the office, which offers the opportunity to organically learn from each other. This could be listening to or shadowing each other's calls, sharing successful techniques, brainstorming new campaigns, or even just blowing off steam. You can take time to organize group video calls, to take turns shadowing calls, and connecting with your fellow salespeople, and share what's been working for you lately. Sales can be isolating on its own so take time to connect with your fellow salespeople to uplift each other morally and share successes with each other.” — Laith Masri, Customer Experience Analyst, Clutch I know it can be scary heading into a new year with a pandemic sitting on our shoulders. Don’t expect your sales numbers to bounce back so quickly. Just take things in stride and try new approaches. Consider some of the tips offered from the experts above and remember to always put your customers first. Read more from Entrepreneur In today's new normal, shifting strategy and leveraging technology are key to achieving a sustainable path to profitability BY BOB HOUSE, PRESIDENT, BIZBUYSELL @BIZBUYSELL  Getty Images The coronavirus pandemic will leave a lasting impression across the small business landscape. We're a long way away, it seems, from lunch buffets, self-serve yogurt and tester samples at the cosmetic counter, at least in their pre-pandemic form. We've shifted to a contact-free society where curbside pick-up and virtual office visits are the new norm.
For some business owners, this can mean either the threat of becoming obsolete or the opportunity of a lifetime. Yet, most fall somewhere in between, and have discovered they must pivot their business model, leverage technology and be creative to achieve a sustainable path to profitability. The following are five ways small businesses can effectively pivot to a new strategy which preserves long-term resilience and growth:
Overall, small businesses must look ahead at how their pivots can further extend their capabilities, increase cash flow and profitability. The pandemic will someday be behind us, but many of the ways in which we do business are here to stay. Inc. helps entrepreneurs change the world. Get the advice you need to start, grow, and lead your business today. Subscribe here for unlimited access. Read more from INC. Want to make more money? These strategies will help you exceed your revenue goals. Image credit: Ezra Bailey | Getty Images Having your business turn into a success is hard work, and you need to adapt to the times while organizing things as you go. There are several actions you can do to help your business increase its revenue. Making sure each area of your company gets attention is crucial to ensure small things don't fall by the wayside.
Related: 7 Growth-Mindset Principles As a business owner, you may feel as though you're juggling a hundred things at once. This is because you have to wear a lot of different hats when managing their company. They need to check possible ways of improving their daily operations. 1. Build your website Having a user-friendly site that's up to date is a vital part of growing your company. A website design that's modern and functional will keep your enterprise moving forward. In today’s competitive market, having a presence is not enough. An optimized and well-designed site can help your business generate new leads and provide a 30% or greater increase in your overall conversion rate. Reward customers for visiting your online space through promotional offers and discount deals. 2. Know your competition Knowing what your competitors are doing is a great way to improve how you’re operating. You might be able to learn something from them. Strategies they’ve been using for years will be new to you and may offer a great payoff. Related: Why Being Resilient Is the First Step to Growth 3. Value creativity Standing out from your competitors is an essential step in growing any enterprise. Be open to any new ideas and remember that creative solutions can come from a lot of places. You can do innovative things like hosting events to promote new products you have. 4. Provide great service Customer service is something that can either make or break a business. If a client feels heard and acknowledged, chances are they'll stay loyal. You need to make a point of going the extra mile, increasing the likelihood that clients will refer you. 5. Understand your customer Your consumers are the core of your company. They're the lifeblood of any industry, and that's why you need to make sure you know what they want and need. Make use of consumer feedback to improve how you deal with your client base. 6. Get a grip on social media Promoting your business using social media platforms can increase your customer reach and allow you to gain information from them. Tracking what consumers are saying about your company online gives you an invaluable insight into their experience. It also provides you with a great place to advertise to potential clients. 7. Develop an email list A quick and effective way to reach a vast amount of clients is through an email list. This requires you to have a funnel through which to generate leads. Ensure that your sales department understands the importance of sourcing these and turning them into active clients. Related: Easy Tips for Building a Powerful Email List 8. Expand your network We all know the phrase "it’s not what you know, but rather who you know." Networking is a great way to expand your professional relationships and gain insight into how others in the market are coping. It will also allow you to potentially meet investors that can improve the health of your enterprise. 9. Amp up your exposure No one will work with you if they don't know your company exists, so increasing your visibility is crucial. Optimizing your SEOs will increase the likelihood that you'll show up on one of the first pages of an internet search. If you're operating from a physical location, make sure it's visible on apps like Google Maps so consumers can find you. 10. Nurture supplier relationships Your suppliers are an essential part of your enterprise. If you maintain a good relationship with them, they'll be more likely to help you out if problems arise in the future. Try to make sure the exchanges are mutually beneficial and don't be late with your payments. 11. Focus on training your staff Having a competent team in place will help you delegate responsibilities and build your enterprise into a success. Improving your employee's sense of importance within the company will give them more incentive to work hard and do their best. Provide them with opportunities to get training and improve their knowledge base for a more rounded experience 12. Know your finances Understanding the financial health of your company is essential to have a healthier bottom line. It's good to keep track of the business's debt so that you know what choices you can make for your company's future. Keeping your enterprise going through tough times can be difficult, but it can be done if you're willing to put in the work. Your company can always stand to adapt to innovations in the market. Ensure you have a website and are present on social media, create email lists to generate leads. Check out what your competition is doing, learn from them, but stand out. Nurture your relationships with your suppliers, employees, and clients. Putting in the extra time now will help you reap the rewards in the future Read more from Entrepreneur B2B and B2C customers are very different, and selling to them must take those differences into consideration. Image credit: sorbetto | Getty Images Many businesses in the B2B space make the mistake of approaching their marketing in the same way that they would approach B2C marketing, and then they wonder why they aren’t getting results. The reason is simple: B2B and B2C customers are very different in the way they make choices on what products and services to buy. Hence, the approach of selling to them must take those differences into consideration in order to be effective. Here are some strategies that you can apply today to boost your B2B conversions.
1. Use personalized email marketing Although it is true that B2B purchasers prioritize rational, fact-based information it's still the case that the people making buying decisions on behalf of your target businesses are just that: people. Many businesses go to the extreme end of writing B2B marketing emails that are drab and filled with business jargon, in a bid to appear “professional.” But those emails usually fail to engage the recipient enough to make them dig deeper to see what you have to offer. Related: B2B Sales Strategies for the 'New Normal' of Covid-19 Personalization offers a better alternative. It helps to maintain the aura of professionalism while breaking the ice and making the email much more exciting. Most people just include a mail merge field with the recipient’s first name, but that’s not enough. It is crucial to ensure that the email is written to target that individual business. You can do this by including some information about the company in the introduction. For instance, merely adding a line with congratulations to a business that just got an award will immediately help you stand out. Although it might take some more research, the time and effort will be well worth creating a meaningful connection before you pitch your products or services, especially if you use email marketing automation to quicken the process. 2. Keep your cold-call lists updated This applies to all types of marketing outreach efforts, from email marketing and social media to cold calls. With calls though, the effects can be very damaging since there is little reaction time available while on a call, during which a salesperson will be able to quickly search and find the correct information. Several studies have shown that approaching a prospect with faulty information drastically reduces the chance of conversion, which is understandable. After all, if you can’t get your data right, why should the customer trust you to handle their business properly? According to Dennis Reachard, CEO of Caller Search, the solution is to keep your cold-call lists updated by having all the information reviewed on a regular basis. Apart from avoiding the loss of credibility, keeping the lists updated also helps to ensure that time and resources are not being spent chasing down prospects with little or no potential, such as a business that has relocated. Again, although it might take some more investment than usual to do this, the savings and potential benefits far outweigh the costs. 3. Follow up properly Timing is everything when it comes to converting B2B leads. You might send the best email, but the recipient might not open it simply because they were busy at the time and forgot afterward. That’s why follow-ups are important. They help you increase the chances of the prospect engaging with your email, message or call. The Harvard Business Review found that 26.1 % of inbound leads are followed up on with within five minutes, and 35-50% of sales are usually won by the vendor that responds first after a lead makes inquiries. Clearly, it’s important to have a system in place that allows you to respond to customers as quickly as possible, even if five minutes is not feasible every time. Related: 6 Skill Sets Every B2B Marketing Team Should Have On Its Roster After the initial contact, it’s also important to follow-up with an email sequence to stay top of mind for when the lead makes a buying decision. Surprisingly, most firms just make one contact and end it there. Studies have shown that increasing the number of touches with a lead to six increases the likelihood of making actual contact and closing a sale. The good thing is that there are a variety of software options with which you can automate your follow-ups to maximize efficiency at a minimal cost. Now go and make contact. Read more from Entrepreneur As WhatsApp continues to build on its eCommerce potential, it's continually adding more ways to facilitate business-to-consumer connection, and make it easier for users to buy items via the messaging app. Its latest addition on this front is 'Carts', which will enable WhatsApp users to add items as they engage with a business, then submit a larger order all at once via the app As explained by WhatsApp: "Starting today, we’re excited to bring carts to WhatsApp. Carts are great when messaging businesses that typically sell multiple items at once, like a local restaurant or clothing store. With carts, people can browse a catalog, select multiple products and send the order as one message to the business. This will make it simpler for businesses to keep track of order inquiries, manage requests from customers and close sales." The process is simple - as you can see in the above sequence, as users find the items they want when interacting with a business in the app, they'll now be able to tap “add to cart” as they go. Once you've finished shopping, you can then send your Cart as a message to the business to submit your full order. As noted, Carts is the latest in a range of eCommerce tools being added to WhatsApp as it looks to maximize its monetization potential. Ads in WhatsApp proved unwelcome, so parent company Facebook has now shifted its focus to building a digital marketplace within the messaging network, with growth in developing markets like India and Indonesia, where WhatsApp is already popular, set to lead the way in ushering in a new wave of digital transactions in the app. Indeed, just last month, the Indian Government granted approval for the expansion of WhatsApp Pay in the region, which opens up a range of new possibilities, while WhatsApp has also outlined a range of new business tools coming to the app to further expand its offerings. WhatsApp actually previewed the arrival of Carts back in October, as part of a broader showcase of coming commerce features for the app. This could be a major area of growth for Facebook. Again, with WhatsApp's established presence in India specifically, and the nation's growing digital economy, WhatsApp could become the essential app for millions of users in the region. And as the country looks to recover in the wake of COVID-19, WhatsApp commerce could provide a range of new opportunities for SMBs looking for new, cost-effective ways to connect with consumers.
It also provides additional considerations for all businesses on WhatsApp. If you haven't considered WhatsApp commerce as yet, or its potential place within your digital marketing effort, it could be worth looking into the app's evolving tools, and considering its reach to your target markets. You can find out more about WhatsApp's new Carts feature here. Read more from Social Media Today Times have changed, and your digital presence is arguably more important than your physical store these days. There aren’t the same limitations for online sales as there are with brick and mortar stores, and even small ecommerce businesses can quickly be catapulted to the international stage.  Aggregating Customer Reviews
Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center has found that aggregating customer reviews next to online product listings boosts sales conversion rates across the board. Interestingly, while products with lower prices saw a conversion rate boost of 190%, which is impressive enough, in the case of higher-priced items, researchers observed a jaw-dropping 380% conversion rate boost. There’s arguably no other aspect of ecommerce with such a direct positive correlation to customer sales conversion. The numbers speak plainly in that having both positive and numerous reviews is a boon for any business. Utilize the following strategies for positive review acquisition, and you’ll have a powerful marketing tool that is more valuable than any advertisement could ever hope to be. Fan Positive Flames An easy and quick method to build a positive review base is to simply capitalize on your successes. Train your customer service team to take note when you have an especially satisfied customer, and once the issue is fully resolved, reach out about leaving a review. If you grow your social media presence authentically, then in time you will likely gather what some call “superfans.” These customers strongly identify with your brand and are looking for an avenue to become more involved and deepen their connection. Capitalize on their interest by encouraging them to post online reviews. When reaching out about leaving a review, ensure your tone is personal and earnest. Insincerity reeks and could potentially flip a positive review to neutral — or worse. When you can identify customers who are already excited about your product and service, sometimes you just need to hold their hands a bit through the review process. By doing this, their positive energy expands beyond word of mouth into a concrete asset for your business. Engage via Email Review acquisition is an art in itself, and email outreach is by far the most effective channel, simply because by the time a customer is ready to leave a review, they’ve already grown used to seeing your brand’s emails in their inbox. Not that this means outreach is simple. It’s an important enough niche that entire agencies specialize in review acquisition experiments and analytics. Ryan Chaffin, founder of KAHA, breaks email-based review requests down into three types of methods. “An email blast is when you simply email your entire email list and ask for reviews,” he wrote in a recent blog post. “Personal emails are when you reach out to customers individually with a personalized email and ask for reviews. Automated email sequences are our favorite because you can reach out to your entire email list while making the emails feel personal, which increases the odds of getting more real reviews from happy customers.” It’s a deep game, and each of these methods can be fine-tuned over time to best fit your business’s needs. Once you have a winning formula, they require little in terms of time and upkeep. See Also: Why Positive Reviews are So Valuable to Small Businesses With an effective email workflow supplemented by outstanding customer service, your business has the necessary tools in its hands. From there, the only obstacle is time. Persist and Respond Sometimes the process is a bit like having to jiggle a key to unlock an old door. Apply too much force, and you might snap the key outright, but without enough pressure you’ll never move the deadbolt. It requires a little patience and a combination of techniques until you finally find that sweet spot to pop it open, and once you do, it all becomes more natural. Having a framework in place for your review acquisition experimentation processes can mean the difference between growth and stagnation. It helps avoid your outreach coming across as overbearing and gives you the time necessary to observe what’s working. Once you’ve identified your most effective tactics, the plan can then be further improved upon with new insights. One parameter worth experimenting with is the lag time between order fulfillment and outreach. “In most cases, it’s a good idea to ask for a review 3-5 days after the transaction has taken place,” suggests marketing thought leader Neil Patel “This will give them the chance to engage with your offering and come up with an honest opinion, in terms of how good it is and if they’d feel comfortable recommending it to other people.” Patel goes on to elaborate on how split testing different aspects of your emails, and tracking the different results, can ultimately lead to an overall more effective process. When a customer does leave a review, don’t leave them out in the cold. Respond to them warmly, so this kind of behavior is recognized and affirmed, increasing the likelihood they (and potentially others) will leave a review again. And replying to negative reviews can help protect your reputation, while also paving the way towards fixing a bad customer experience. As with so much else in the business world, persistence pays dividends. While these techniques can certainly work for you within weeks, the true rewards will be reaped in the many prosperous months to follow. Show Your Strength Once you have glowing reviews at an impressive and trusted industry level, don’t be shy with them. These are just as impactful as any photo could be, and they should be an integral part of everything from pitch emails to point of purchase displays. By showing that it’s not just you standing by your products, but your past customers as well, you exude confidence that all customers seek when considering their next purchase. Image: Depositphotos.com Read more from Small Biz Trends When you strengthen your relationships with existing clients, it increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals, which sets you and your business up for long-lasting success.  Image credit: JohnnyGreig | Getty Images This article was written by Alex Fluegel, a member of the Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble content team. Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble is a freelance-matching platform leading the future of work. If you’re struggling to find, vet, and hire the right freelancers for your business, Entrepreneur NEXT will help you hire the freelancers you need, exactly when you need them. From business to marketing, sales, design, finance, and technology, we have the top 3 percent of freelance experts ready to work for you.
Client relationships are like any other relationship. They require effort, time, and attention to improve and maintain their quality. When you consistently invest in relationship building, you should see a clear return, not only in the form of business growth but in how fulfilling the work is. When you strengthen relationships with existing clients, it increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals, which sets you and your business up for long-lasting success. So, where do you start? Here are five tips for cultivating strong, sustainable, and more fulfilling relationships with your clients. 1. Really get to know your client. Any healthy relationship requires consistent effort, and this is true for clients as well. In the beginning, doing your research is key to understanding their industry, goals and preferred methods of getting work done, but it doesn’t end there. Really getting to know your clients strengthens your bond and makes working together a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved. An easy way to keep up with what’s going on with clients is through social media. By now, most brands use at least one major platform, and by following your clients’ businesses or organizations, you create an opportunity to talk about their latest news, products or success in a way that shows you’re paying attention. If your client sends email newsletters or uses a blog for company updates, these can also be great tools for digging deeper into their business. But what about who they are as people? Yes, social media can also be helpful in learning personal details, but it comes with great risk and responsibility. Balancing the boundaries of professional and personal social media is challenging, and there are many different things to consider. However, a standard rule of thumb is to avoid personal social media connections with clients and focus your energy on learning who they are through the organic conversations you have while working together. Once rapport is established — for example, your client has shared details about their family or hobbies — and if you feel comfortable with it, asking about a vacation or their child’s lead role in the school play can deepen your relationship and help you see the person beyond the project. Just remember, this is a client relationship, not a friendship, and creating firm boundaries for yourself will help you avoid messy conflicts. 2. Be yourself. As you’re getting to know your clients, they’re getting to know you too, and it’s important they get to know the real you. It’s tempting to try and fit what you think a client wants, but if that’s not what you authentically bring to the table, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment in the long run. You want your clients to feel confident in their hiring decision, which is just as often based on how well they feel you’ll work together personality-wise as your resume stats. Being yourself and sharing your experiences also gives clients the chance to resonate with your story and feel more confident trusting you to help them. When they get to know you as a person, not just a service provider, it strengthens your bond and can show you aren’t just phoning it in for a paycheck. Bottom line: don’t be afraid to be yourself — and if you are, that’s a red flag that this client might not be quite right for you. The number one problem shared among entrepreneurs today is finding, vetting, hiring, and retaining expertise. 3. Embrace feedback. Asking for feedback can seem scary at first, but it’s crucial to improving relationships with clients. Eighty-five percent of small- and mid-size enterprises say client feedback has been beneficial to their businesses, and this is especially true for service providers and anyone whose business depends on having clients. Getting feedback not only shows that you’re committed to delivering the best possible work, but that you value the client’s needs and desires enough to listen. A 2011 Gallup poll showed that companies that employ regular feedback practices have a nearly 15 percent lower turnover rate than companies who don’t, and this applies to client relationships as well. The poll might be nearly a decade old but the lesson holds true: When you create the opportunity for regular feedback, you decrease the likelihood of losing that client. But feedback practices don’t just happen, so planning is key. During onboarding, discuss whether your client prefers formal satisfaction surveys, regular status updates or informal conversations. This will help you understand your client and makes it easy for them to tell you what’s working well, and more importantly, what isn’t. And with, The most important thing to remember about client feedback is that it means nothing without concrete actions. Having a plan in place to address concerns or criticisms shows you’re committed to improving your business processes and shows clients you listen and value what they share. And feedback doesn’t just help with current clients. When you solicit feedback on completed projects, you make it possible to make changes that will improve your performance for future clients. Not only that, but when you take the time to truly listen to clients, you may even increase the possibility of referrals 4. Build trust by exceeding expectations. One of top ways to improve client relationships is to deliver results that exceed your client’s expectations. You may have heard the catchphrase ‘under-promise and over-deliver,’ but your true aim should be to ‘have clear-cut expectations and consistently achieve them.’ This builds trust with your clients and is more sustainable than trying to beat every deadline or exceed every sales goal. You can also exceed expectations by finding ways to make life easier for your clients. When you send a video call link, prepare a meeting agenda or include a summary at the end of a detailed email, it shows you value your client’s time and are someone who helps lighten their load. While high-quality work should always be your goal, these small stress-relievers are a great way to set yourself apart and build a reputation as someone who goes above and beyond. 5. Remember that the tiny, noticeable things matter. Going above and beyond for your clients is a staple of building good relationships, and tiny, noticeable things are the best way to achieve it. Sure, you could tell your client you’re grateful for their feedback in an email, but sending them a handwritten card is ever better. It makes the client feel special, but more importantly, it adds that personal touch that’s so often missing in today’s increasingly digital world. Other small things that can make a big difference are: sending your client an article you think they’ll enjoy, shouting out their successes or public thank-yous on social media, adding a personal note to invoices, and sending small, thoughtful gifts just because. To hire the Experts you need, exactly when you need them, visit next.entrepreneur.com to schedule a meeting with our Expert solutions team. Read more from Entrepreneur If you want to keep your business growing and evolving, you must clean off the barnacles periodically. STEVE WASTERVAL Well, they’re not exactly barnacles, but my colleague James Heaton used this metaphor on a recent podcast, and it really stuck with me.
You see, when a boat is kept in the seawater for a period of time, barnacles form on the underside. If you want the boat to function properly, from time to time you have to take the boat out of the water, scrape off the barnacles, and refinish the bottom. But no matter how well you clean the boat, once it’s back in the water the barnacles will start to attach again, and eventually you’ll have to repeat the process. The same is true for your business. No matter how careful you are to keep your operation lean and tight, as your business grows it inevitably collects all kinds of barnacles along the way, including processes, clients, tools, contractors, employees, habits—and usually all of the above. These barnacles aren’t always negative, either. Sometimes they bring you more clients or streamline a process that makes your life easier. But as you continue to grow, inevitably you will have to abandon old processes and dead weight in order to take your business to the next level. Going From Good To Great - Example #1 Sometimes you need to get rid of barnacles because you no longer need them. MORE FOR YOUWhy Faking It Fails And How To Start Banking True ConfidenceTop Investors Advice To Prepare For The Next DecadeThe Ultimate Guide To Starting A Side Hustle Part 1: Passion Is Not The WayFor example, I once created a quiz to bring in leads to my email list. I signed up for a quiz software with a monthly fee and built the quiz. But the quiz didn’t connect to my email service (Infusionsoft), so I also signed up for Zapier to connect the two. I shared the quiz, people loved it, and I got a ton of leads. But two years later, only a handful of people were taking the quiz because I wasn't driving traffic to it. I actually completely forgot about it for awhile. When it was barnacle-scraping time, I looked at the monthly fee for the quiz software, plus the monthly fee for Zapier, and I realized I was shelling out $50 per month for something I didn't use anymore! Sure, it was a good idea when I built it. It added a decent number of people to my email list. But two years later it was clear I wasn't going to start making more quizzes anytime soon, nor was I going to focus on marketing the original quiz, so obviously it wasn't worth the $600 a year I was paying to add a handful of people to my email list. I had to scrape off those barnacles! They were doing nothing for me. It’s Not Always Obvious - Example #2 $600 for 10 email address is an obvious waste. But what about when those barnacles are aspects of your business that are actually working well for you? On another recent podcast episode, I spoke with Michelle Mercurio, brand strategist and co-founder of The Brand Scene, about her decision to get rid of good things to make room for great things. And when I say "good," I mean Michelle had to let go of a service that was bringing in $8,000 per client! But it wasn't just the money, she actually enjoyed delivering this service, and people were interested in buying it! But, like any service, it required time and energy. And when Michelle asked herself what kind of work motivated her most, it wasn’t that service. It was something much more comprehensive. And in order to prepare herself and her business to offer this new iteration (at more than three times the price,) she first needed to let go of the previous service. (Listen to the full episode here and get inspired to make room for something great in your business!) It was then that she learned, as all business owners will eventually, that it’s incredibly difficult to let go of something that is making you good money. But it can be necessary in order to free up time and energy to offer something better, bigger, and more aligned with what you want to offer. Time to Start Scraping! Cleaning off the barnacles is a big part of my job when I’m coaching entrepreneurs on building a profitable brand and business. And it’s often the hardest part for entrepreneurs growing their business because it can be downright painful to let go of things that make you money, or you think could make you money in the future. Yet that's often precisely what needs to be done if you want to find more ease in your business, while increasing your profits. You must scrape off the barnacles that are stealing your focus from what you actually need to work on to grow your business. But that can be extremely hard to see from the inside, and even harder to do. That’s why everyone (including me!) can benefit from working with a business coach. An outside perspective from someone who has been there and has also dealt with the struggle of leaving success behind for greater success in the future. In my experience that outside perspective can be the difference between continuing to struggle, and finally finding your flow in business. And isn’t that what we all want? If you're struggling to hit six-figures in your service business, and you want help cleaning off your barnacles so you can finally focus on what will actually get you there, shoot me an email at pia@piasilva.com with the subject line “six-figures in 2021” and let’s see how I can help you. Read more from Forbes Successful small businesses use marketing to attract and nurture customers. The Blueprint's guide to small business marketing provides strategies to help you achieve success.Robert Izquierdo Software Systems Expert  You launched your own business. Word of mouth can only get you so far. Now it’s time to accelerate growth by marketing your company. The goal of marketing is to find the right audience for your products or services and apply the appropriate marketing strategy to reach that audience. Fortunately, small businesses can choose from a plethora of marketing tactics to achieve their objective. This practical guide outlines seven strategies to successfully execute marketing for your small business. What to consider when selecting a small business marketing strategy Before jumping into the strategies, review these considerations affecting how to market your business. Marketing goals Building your marketing strategy starts with defining goals. Are you looking to acquire new customers, oversee your company’s reputation, referred to as reputation management, or other objectives like customer retention or increasing the average purchase amount per customer? Setting goals allows you to construct a marketing plan that aligns the limited time, resources, and budget at your disposal towards the local marketing strategies that achieve your business and marketing objectives. Customer and market insights Another consideration is understanding your target customers. What motivates them to seek a business like yours? Where do they spend time online? Insight into these kinds of attributes dictates the best ways to reach your customers. Along with this, learn your market dynamics. Who are your competitors and how do they market to customers? Which industry trends could change how customers engage with your business? Research is the means to acquire these insights. Look for industry info online, call competitors, and survey your customers. ROI Marketing for small business relies on limited resources and budgets. Hence, successful business marketing focuses efforts around the tactics that generate the best return on investment (ROI) for your marketing dollars. To identify which deliver compelling ROI, you must test different strategies, collect real world results, then evaluate if it’s worthwhile to invest more into the strategy or pursue others. 7 ways you can market your small business Many cost-effective marketing channels exist for small businesses. The following highlights impactful digital marketing tips to grow your company. Whether you’re looking to market a new business or perform B2B marketing, these strategies work for any type of organization. 1. Business website A business website provides the foundational marketing component to reach today’s digitally-driven consumer. A website serves as your company brochure, educating potential customers on what you offer, and why they should buy from you. In addition, your site serves as the destination consumers arrive at from online strategies such as a Google search or an email marketing campaign. You can choose from several options to set up a website without costing a fortune or requiring technical knowledge. Even a Facebook page can serve as a proxy for your website, albeit temporarily while you prepare a proper website. Tips for using a business website: Here are tips to help with using a website in your sales and marketing efforts.
 The Wix interface guides you through the website creation process. 2. Google’s marketing options We know Google as a search engine, but the company also offers many marketing options. You can reach a large audience at reasonable costs. Because of this, Google is a vital part of small business marketing strategies. Two areas lie at the heart of Google’s marketing options for small businesses: search engine marketing (SEM) and Google My Business. With SEM, businesses pay for text ads to appear above Google’s search results, but that payment occurs only when a consumer interested in your offerings clicks the ad to visit your website. Small businesses gravitate to SEM because of this model, and some use SEM as their only marketing strategy. With Google My Business, companies provide Google with business information which Google then uses across its products, including its popular search engine and Google Maps services. By supplying these details to Google My Business, your company receives exposure to Google’s tremendous base of users. Moreover, you can read and respond to customer reviews, and receive statistics such as how many customers Google sent to your business. Best of all, using Google My Business costs you nothing. Tips for using Google’s marketing options: Use these suggestions to get you started with Google’s vast marketing opportunities.
3. Social media engagement Social media has grown into an effective marketing strategy for small businesses. Social networks such as Facebook possess deep customer analytics and data insights to the point where you can easily find consumers fitting your ideal customer profile and target your advertising to this audience. Moreover, social media is key to reputation management. Anyone can post unfavorable comments and reviews online about your company. You can lose customers because of these negative posts. So you must be involved in social media. Because of this, its advertising effectiveness, and low cost, if your time and budget limitations require you to choose just one marketing strategy, social media should be your first choice. Tips for using social media: Here are some handy tips to integrate social media into your marketing strategy.
4. Email marketing Small businesses are most often associated with direct marketing. This strategy involves a business reaching out directly to a specific group of customers, such as delivering flyers to nearby residents. One of the most popular direct response marketing techniques is email marketing. It’s flexible enough to work for any type of company. A retailer can execute an e-commerce email marketing strategy while an insurance agency can send an email newsletter with insightful advice like home security. Another important benefit is the ability to tailor emails to different customer segments. For example, send a welcome email to new customers to strengthen that relationship. Meanwhile, repeat clients might get a follow-up email thanking them for their business with a coupon to incentivize additional purchases. This personalized messaging captures the attention of busy consumers far more effectively than a one-size-fits-all blanket email. As a result, personalized emails increase the likelihood of customer engagement and the ultimate purchase of your company’s goods and services. So how do you collect consumer email addresses to implement email marketing? This can be done through the purchase of an email list, or by taking the time to collect the emails yourself by asking customers to sign up as you build up your client base. Tips for using email marketing: Small business email marketing can seem intimidating, so here are suggestions to help you.
 Software such as Mailchimp walks users through the email marketing process. 5. Inbound marketing Inbound marketing deepens customer relationships over time by building trust and delivering value through a variety of digital tactics. These tactics attract customers to your business rather than you pushing outbound messages, like ads, to them, hence the name. An example is posting articles on your website about topics related to your business. Customers seeking information about these topics are incentivized to visit your website, and since they arrived of their own volition, they tend to think favorably of your business. In addition, inbound marketing strengthens your website’s SEO. Also, posting insightful content positions you as an expert in your industry. And because you’re delivering value to consumers even before they become customers, inbound marketing improves your business reputation as well. Tips for using inbound marketing: Follow these suggestions to put inbound marketing to use.
 HubSpot guides you through setting up an automated workflow to simplify lead nurturing. 6. Mobile marketing
Mobile marketing is a powerful strategy for small businesses. It lets you drill down to a specific customer, delivering your message in the most intimate setting available today, a customer’s mobile device. Mobile marketing offers many benefits. Nearly all consumers own mobile phones, so you can reach a large audience. Mobile use is also related to a sense of urgency. Consumers look for a business like yours on their mobile device because they possess an immediate need, for example, to find a highly-rated restaurant for lunch. Through mobile marketing, you raise customer awareness about your business right when they need you most. Tips for using mobile marketing: Follow these tips to reap the rewards of this underused marketing strategy.
7. Video marketing Video content consumption is at an all-time high, and consumers watch videos to make purchase decisions. This makes sense when you consider a research study that confirmed 65% of us are visual learners. A video displays detailed info of a product or service along with visuals to help viewers understand the value delivered by the offering. Video marketing provides a range of options to promote your business. If you offer a complex product, an educational or how-to video works best. A B2B service like an accounting firm or software company might seem stuffy, so humanize your organization with an emotional video explaining the personal story of your company’s history. Tips for using video marketing: Creating an online video no longer requires expensive equipment. Your mobile phone can do the trick. Here are additional tips to make video marketing work for you.
Marketing is a process of experimentation. Pick a strategy and test it. Measure the results using marketing metrics like ROI to see if that strategy achieves your goals. If not, don’t become discouraged. Simply experiment with a different strategy, and keep trying different ways to market your business until you strike gold. Read more from Fool https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/small-business-marketing/ A 19-year-old entrepreneur breaks down what it takes to find success. Image credit: ijeab | Getty Images I'm 19-years-old and I've built a £1m online business. I've learned that it is necessary to make some painful sacrifices in order to achieve what you what,. Here are 5 tips I'd like to share with any other young person dreaming of starting their own business or just starting on their entrepreneurial journey.
1. Less socializing with friends and family One of the biggest drawbacks to becoming a teen entrepreneur is that you lose your ability to socialize. It’s not that you no longer have the time (although that can be a factor.) It’s that your whole outlook on life and perspective changes. I used to hang out with school friends playing computer games and talking about pointless things, school gossip or girls but once I started my business, I gained new interests and was more aware of more meaningful issues like the ideas of the world, climate change, politics. I find it hard to relate to people my own age now and I find a lot of my friends are older, in their 30s. As an entrepreneur, your perspective changes and you think differently to other people. I’ve talked to other entrepreneurs about this and they say the same, about often feeling alienated within your own mind. You lose the ability to talk about everyday things and find yourself unable to relate to friends and family like they used to. It can be a lonely existence. Related: 32 Proven Ways to Make Money Fast 2. Not meeting dreams of parents I decided to follow my dream to become a teenage millionaire whilst I was still at school. I quit education at 17, leaving without any A-Levels. I was always a bright kid and my mum had aspirations for me to be the first one in our family to get a university degree. She always dreamed I’d graduate, get a fantastic job then settle down and start a family. By pursuing my entrepreneurial dream so early I’ve had to sacrifice my education, but I don’t regret this as school wasn’t teaching me what I needed to know to succeed in business. But I have sacrificed part of my mother’s dream - and that’s my only regret. 3. Your health and wellbeing This is the one thing that’s absolutely crucial to success and you can’t be a successful entrepreneur without a healthy mind and body. Unfortunately, it’s often the thing that’s put to one side or forgotten as things take over. For me when I was younger I spent a lot of time playing computer games, then when I started working on YouTube I still spent vast amounts of time each day sat in front of a screen to the detriment of my health. I was overweight and lacked confidence but as my business started to be successful I felt better so I exercised. As I got thinner and fitter I felt better, this reflected in my work and vice versa. I now know that health should be number one and having a healthy mind and body is imperative to succeeding in business regardless of the industry. Related: 3 Relationships That Will Build the Tribe Every Entrepreneur Deserves 4. Less mental freedom I’m sure this is true for many working people but it’s just exacerbated when you’re an entrepreneur. To be successful you have to put 100% into your business and this means the line between work and personal life are blurred or rarely exist. I’m constantly thinking about what I need to do or tasks that need to be completed or form that need filling in. All my time is spent thinking about work, sometimes to the detriment of my personal life, which could be particularly hard for a teenager. Related: 2 Ways to Make Money Online This Month 5. Less opportunities to be silly and have fun I miss the vibrant social life that other teenagers have as standard. I’m busy with my business and I think I’ve just grown up faster than other people my age. As well as a busy social life I’ve missed out on the silliness and making mistakes I’ve seen others make while they’re young. When you’re a teenager it’s meant to be a time to try new things and sometimes do stupid stuff. And while I don’t regret doing some of these things I know I’ve become more sensible than maybe I should be. I still have fun and I’ve done fun things that other teenagers can only dream about, like driving my Porsche through the Californian mountains. But as I now think differently to many people my own age I feel I can’t just join in with the silliness like I used to be able to. Read more from Entrepreneur It may feel awkward at first, but it could also lead to the essential connections you've been lacking. Image credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images It’s true: Sending cold solicitations can feel cringeworthy. We’re exposed to so many cold emails and messages a day that sending one of our own feels like a step backwards. And yet, more businesses than ever are crediting cold LinkedIn messages with massive success.
As long as the message is well-crafted, spelled right and positioned to hit home, LinkedIn messaging can have a much higher ROI than other traditional forms of marketing, such as running ads. And even better, those who are on LinkedIn likely have money to spend, as a recent report found that the average salary of a LinkedIn user is $75,000. If all that isn’t convincing enough, consider these four other reasons why LinkedIn direct messaging is an underutilized avenue for sales. Related: These 10 LinkedIn Tips Will Make You a Networking Master 1. It’s a direct line to business decision-makers. There’s nothing worse than investing time in a sale only to find out that the person you’ve been conversing with isn’t actually a decision-maker at their company. Sure, they may now be convinced of why the company needs your product or service, but that could easily get lost in translation when they communicate that to the real decision-makers. LinkedIn’s marketing blog states that 61 million LinkedIn users are Fortune 500 senior executives and another 40 million are decision-makers at their companies. That’s a big pool of big fish. 2. It starts a conversation with prospects in a casual way. Matt Young, the founder of Realply, which specializes in LinkedIn messaging, shares one of the most pertinent reasons that LinkedIn messaging is so effective: It’s casual. “We find that trust is established far quicker when the conversation feels light and casual, like you’re meeting at a happy hour rather than in a formal setting,” Young notes. “Plus, it’s attached to your profile, which humbly lists your qualifications and accomplishments. It creates the perfect balance of casual and credible.” 3. It’s quicker than a cold email. You have two messages waiting for a reply: One is a cold email sitting in your inbox, the other is a cold message waiting in your LinkedIn DMs. If you’re running out the door, which one are you more likely to reply to? Likely the latter, simply because it’s quicker. No need for formalities in this chat-like format. Response times continue to be quick, too, simply because of how frequently the average user is on LinkedIn. Recent statistics found that the average user spends between 10-20 minutes on the site daily. Related: Instagram Offers Access to DMs on the Web 4. It can be done at scale. Finally, many LinkedIn users find that the messages are far easier to manage and scale than other forms of cold outreach. Whereas 10 cold calls can take more than an hour, 10 LinkedIn messages (factoring in the time to personalize the message, of course) can take as little as 20 minutes. Not to mention it’s easy to flip back and forth between messages in LinkedIn’s DM portal, meaning you can have multiple sales conversations at once. So, if you haven’t yet tried LinkedIn messaging for your business, it’s high time you start. More and more business owners are tapping into the power of LinkedIn for sales and taking advantage of its impressive user statistics. Read more from Entrepreneur If committed to creativity and consistency, these three organic Instagram marketing strategies will help any business thrive during and beyond the pandemic. Image credit: SOPA Images | Getty Images 2020 has been a year full of surprises, with the biggest surprise casting a brighter spotlight on social media. That surprise — a pandemic that turned the year and the world upside down — has created newfound urgency for a strong online presence and monetization strategy.
Prior to the pandemic, for many established mid-sized and large businesses, an engaged social media audience was more so a “nice-to-have” rather than a “have-to-have.” Now, businesses that once relied almost exclusively on traditional marketing and in-person business have had to massively pivot to survive. If you are a business owner or marketer working with a business that is new to social media, one of the best platforms to focus on is Instagram. Why? When leveraged properly, it is one of the best social media platforms to grow organically. Related: Now Is the Ideal Time to Invest in Influencer Marketing The first key to success is creativity and consistency Creativity will always be the name of the game on any social media platform, but it's especially relevant Instagram. If you can’t think outside the box and take five minutes to do something different, you may as well forget about trying. That’s not to say that you have to resort to extreme measures like videoing your team members cartwheeling from a rooftop in your brand colors (although I think there’d be a lot of people who would love to view that), but there has to be more to it than posting a one-line statement about how great your business is followed by a litany of endless unrelated hashtags. On the other hand, consistency is crucial. Unless you’re established, posting once a week won’t cut it. Neither will posting three times a day for a month only to take a month off and jump back on once Christmas rolls around. If you can commit to applying creativity and consistency to your marketing, then these three organic strategies will bring you the visibility that will last beyond the pandemic: Story-driven content Stories are powerful, particularly stories that hit the key emotions that can drive buying decisions. Stories that are human, on-brand and connect to your customer’s journey will win,every time. On Instagram, this content can be both in-feed and in stories. If well-written, this type of content can attract visitors to your product or service, engage their emotions and get them doing exactly what you want — without being spammy. An example of a story-driven post is starting with the origin story of the company founder or talking about the company's growth and how the customers are chiefly responsible for that growth. An accompanied carousel image showing the growth journey will make the post pop and increase engagement. Without great stories, the next two strategies will fall flat. Related: How to Make Instagram Your Not-So-Secret Sales Weapon Video With Instagram Reels rolling out and giving TikTok some additional competition, the emphasis this year has been squarely on video. Short video, long video and live video, it’s all #winning in my book. Video, in general, engages at a higher rate, and for good reason. People like movement, and Instagram has become a new form of TV. Content creators and businesses often overthink how to approach video, but it all relates to storytelling. As long as there is a motive behind content and it’s creative, it will engage. Instagram Live can double as an influencer outreach platform Instagram Lives can be spontaneous and also planned. Ideally, you leverage both approaches, but if you're intimidated by the prospect of getting on camera, planning ahead is ideal. If you run a business that could benefit from influencer marketing, utilizing Lives to spearhead real, engaging conversations with Instagram influencers or thought leaders on planned topics will inspire your audience while also building authority. Instagram stories can give an inside look into your business Although your Instagram feed should ideally have a level of curation to maintain a brand aesthetic, stories can be more impromptu. Use stories as an opportunity to show off your company story and behind-the-scenes activity. Run a fashion line and just received a deluge of orders? Show off your team packing up the orders while sharing a bit about their day. During the pandemic, people seek more human contact and authenticity than ever before, so keep it real with your audience in stories. Related: How to Get Your Brand on Instagram's Explore Page Targeted hashtag engagement The pandemic has not curtailed marketers and businesses seeking to fast track their followings with spammy and unsafe growth methods. If you're running an actual business that requires your audience to convert into customers, buying followers is never the answer. Fake followers are merely a vanity plate, and the fake appeal will wear off in seconds when you see zero comments on your posts and four likes. Instead, focus on targeted hashtags, both in your posts and in your interactions, and you'll begin to see results. For example, imagine you’re a San Diego-based business like mine, and your business is a restaurant in the Hillcrest neighborhood. Assume people, both locals and visitors alike, want to find a restaurant like yours in San Diego, and specifically in this neighborhood. Utilize hashtags that serve as indicators of your location, i.e, #hillcrestcoffee and #sandiegocoffeeshop. This sounds obvious, but there are many businesses that default to generic, un-targeted hashtags thinking they will get discovered by their ideal customer. Likewise, begin tapping into hashtags by searching for people using hashtags that may connect to your ideal customer. For example, #sandiegofoodie. People using this hashtag likely live in San Diego and love eating out. Begin engaging with their posts, leaving comments and asking questions. Even choose to follow certain accounts. This is a form of “targeted engagement” and does not constitute a “mass follow unfollow action.” Organic engagement is a strategy that won’t ever die, as it requires actually talking to people that fit your customer avatar versus resorting to desperate methods like buying followers. The pandemic and its aftereffects are not going away before the end of this year. Likely the issues that businesses are experiencing now will continue. By adopting strategies that work and maintaining creativity and consistency, however, you can set yourself up for long term success that will last even beyond 2021. Related: Why You Actually Should Share Your Instagram Post on Your Instagram Story Read more from Entrepreneur It’s not just fines that can hurt in the wake of a data breach – your reputation can take a hit, too Backstock Image - IT PRO There’s a lot to be said for reputation. Like trust, it’s hard to build but once you’ve gained it, it will see you through some tougher times. Jaguar, for example, lost some of its lustre as a luxury brand when it found itself in Ford’s hands, but its reputation saw it through the tough times to its return to status as part of Jaguar Land Rover.
Similarly, Apple went from playing second fiddle to Microsoft and near bankruptcy through to the powerhouse it is today. Sometimes, however, the damage is irreparable. Most people would surely think twice before taking a transatlantic cruise on a ship called the Titanic, for example, or boarding a hydrogen-floated zeppelin. With the advent of GDPR in Europe, and similar legislation emerging elsewhere across the globe, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the monetary cost of a data breach, whether that's through fines or compensation. But there’s also the question of reputational damage, which can prove costly in other ways. In the media glareIn the immediate wake of a data breach, there’s a lot to take in. What was lost? Was it an attack or an accident? Has the breach been closed? If you’re a household name, such as TalkTalk, Equifax or Yahoo – or involved in something salacious like Ashley Madison – you will likely find yourself in the unenviable position of doing these initial investigations in the full glare of the media spotlight. For such businesses, especially nowadays, the reputational impact will be immediate. Depending on the size of the data breach and how it happened, big businesses are likely to find themselves on the front pages of the papers and in the broadcast headlines too. In this kind of situation, the axiom that “all publicity is good publicity” falls very flat. Even if your own organisation’s data breach doesn’t warrant a spot on the evening news, that doesn’t mean you will have escaped public condemnation: Disgruntled customers – or now former customers – will be disavowing you on social media for having shown little care for their personal information, potentially for years to come. It’s not just the act of losing control over customers’ personal data that can harm a business’ reputation, either. Speaking as a guest on the IT Pro Podcast, Dr Rois Ni Thuama, head of cyber governance at Red Sift, pointed to the fallout of the 2014 Sony Pictures hack as one example. “You had large dumps of Sony data … you’ll remember there was a lot of stuff on actor compensation, there [were] embarrassing email exchanges. One of the key players (co-chairperson, Amy Pascal) sent something that was racially insensitive,” said Ni Thuama. “People lost their jobs… their careers and their professional lives were damaged, particularly the woman (Pascal) who sent the charged emails, and then there was definitely a loss of reputation over the actors’ compensation,” she added. The importance of accountability Away from the data breach itself, how the organisation acts once the incident can have a major impact on the depth and permanence of the damage an organisation faces. Gabriel Friedlander, the founder of security awareness training firm Wizer, tells IT Pro: “Yahoo, Uber and Anthem are three data breaches that stand out in the US because of the lack of accountability, lack of transparency, and length of time between a breach happening and the truth coming out.” “Companies also invest a lot in ‘values’, so when companies lie or try to hide a breach, it ruins the trust and goodwill that has been built up over years with many of their customers, some of whom will quickly look to the competition for a more safe and secure alternative,” he adds. Simon Smith, a specialist in cybercrime and computer forensics, feels similarly. “Trust is the driver for any business success. If trust is lost then some businesses may never recover,” Smith tells IT Pro. “It can depend a lot on the nature of the breach and how the company reaches and remedies the breach. Dishonesty or non-disclosure can cause a great loss of trust that could easily destroy any business after only one incident. Customers, the authorities and society will be concerned about a company's security and ability to protect data if systems are not in place to handle and mitigate the problem.” Small business, big problems Sadly, when it comes to reputational damage, SMBs often fare worse than larger ones. “We see a 60% failure rate among the SMB market after a company discloses a breach within 6-12 months,” says Friedlander. “This partly due to confidence issues, partly due to recovery challenges, etc. “The SMB market is crowded. Think about a restaurant, if it gets breached people have many options for going to eat somewhere else, and if your accountant got breached, you will probably leave and find someone else.” Bigger businesses, on the other hand, may be harder to move away from. It’s also likely they have greater resources to put towards crisis management, as well as to pay any regulatory fines and settle lawsuits. Smith adds that SMBs can suffer worse damage to their reputation as they may not realise their responsibilities or act appropriately. “Small businesses make up the majority of all business, but as many are not publicly listed, they feel they do not have to disclose every event. This in itself causes a major problem as it is now considered a regulatory issue across the world where businesses of all sizes can be fined for breaching the obligation to secure personal records,” he says. “Any size business is equally at risk because somewhere along the way, they got the attitude that ‘it can’t happen to us’, or, ‘it can’t happen to us again’. Without proper process, project, policy and infrastructure governance in place to protect their systems, it is always going to be a ticking time bomb,” he adds. If you survive the initial damage, the lasting impact may not be quite as catastrophic as one would imagine, though – as they say, time heals all wounds. “Long term, there is an argument that there’s little consequence as humans have short memories,” says Friedlander. “There’s a plethora of breaches and companies get lost in the mix.” Nevertheless, while there are methods to mitigate reputational damage in the wake of a data breach – including the passage of time – it pays to put as much effort into preventing one happening in the first place. Not only do you reduce the risk of harm, but if a breach does happen the reaction will likely be more sympathetic if it can be shown it happened despite you having ample defences and procedures in place. Read more from IT PRO What does the future of entrepreneurship look like? To build a future-proof business, the key lies in your business purpose.Sara Caroline Sabin ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK CONTRIBUTOR Transformational Leadership & Business Coach  Image credit: 10'000 Hours | Getty Images Most entrepreneurs enter that space because they want to create a positive impact on the world. They have a purpose and a mission. They see a problem; they find a way to solve it. The reasons why we do the things that we do are everything.
However, it can be all too easy to lose sight of this as we go further down the road. As investors demand returns, or as revenue demands become more pressing. As we start to work longer hours, and as our own ego starts to get in the way. However, purpose and profit are delicately intertwined. Perhaps, you can have one without the other, but as we move forward into a more millennial- and Generation Z-led workforce (those born between 1983 and 2003), the case for having both becomes far more compelling. And yes, profitable. Related Link: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Combine Purpose and Profit 1. It acts as a North Star When you are clear on your own and your business’s purpose and what you stand for (and don’t stand for), it's easier to make decisions and assess opportunities. This could range from the employees that you bring into your team, to the partners you collaborate with, to the clients that you are trying to attract. As a startup or small business, you cannot afford to explore every opportunity that presents itself and constantly after the shiny and new. Focusing your efforts on the right activities translates to streamlined costs and produces better results that are more aligned with the direction of the company. Obviously you might not always get it right, but you will have a focus for your decision-making. Then, it’s about trial and error to truly be innovative. Having that compass to guide you towards suitable opportunities you want to explore means that you have liberty to experiment, and through doing so find out what "dead avenues" to cut quickly and what core areas to focus on. Focusing on a few core areas impacts the bottom line. Related Link: How 80% of Purpose-Led Brands Out-Perform the Market 2. More motivated employees What employee is really drawn in and emotionally engaged by spreadsheets, data and KPIs? And what about money? Time and time again over the last decade, we see research that suggests money is not the main motivator for many people – in a meta analysis study by Tim Judge, “The authors reviewed 120 years of research to synthesize the findings from 92 quantitative studies. The combined dataset included over 15,000 individuals and 115 correlation coefficients. The results indicate that the association between salary and job satisfaction is very weak. The reported correlation (r = .14) indicates that there is less than 2% overlap between pay and job satisfaction levels. Furthermore, the correlation between pay and pay satisfaction was only marginally higher (r = .22 or 4.8% overlap), indicating that people’s satisfaction with their salary is mostly independent of their actual salary.” Although some might love data and some might love money, what really engages and motivates people is a story, a mission and a purpose. Purpose trumps motivation. Having a strong company purpose — and clearly communicating that to your employees — creates a shared philosophy and culture. Everyone has a part to play in that culture and makes an impact in their individual and unique way. We become an impactful part of something bigger than ourselves. Imperative, a U.S. consultancy firm, surveyed 2,000 LinkedIn employees and found 41 percent could be categorized as "purpose-oriented." Why should LinkedIn care? “According to Imperative’s research, purpose-oriented employees are 54 percent more likely to stay at a company for five-plus years and 30 percent more likely to be high performers.” Low staff turnover and productive employees equals bottom line impact. Related link: Communicating Purpose Can Create a Boom in Business 3. Customers love a purposeful company Think of Airbnb, Nike or Apple. What do all of these companies share? Apart from being hugely successful, they all share a strong purpose. They all have a narrative that is used to great effect in their marketing and branding. They all have created an emotional connection with their audience. In these times of crisis, people instinctively want to be a part of companies that promise to change things for the better and have a positive impact on them and the world around them, but the reality is that many companies are falling short. In the Deloitte Millennial Survey 2018, 40 percent of respondents believed that the goal of businesses should be to "improve society." In the Deloitte Millennial Survey 2020, barely half of millennials felt that business was a force for good. That, of course, means that there is a real opportunity for businesses to appeal to this younger, purpose-driven generation by actively showing their commitment to purpose. Doing so gives companies who do it well a competitive edge. Data actually shows that customers are more loyal to purpose-driven brands. An example of purpose’s increasing importance is the B-Corporation, started 14 years ago in the United States. B-corps are companies committed to balancing profit with purpose and considering all stakeholders in the business, including employees and the environment. According to Reuters, there was a 25 percent increase in the number of businesses applying for B-corp status in 2019. Although companies that classify as B-Corps make up a very small portion of businesses overall, do B-corps represent the wave of the future? As business owners and entrepreneurs, it’s time that we stop seeing purpose as a "soft" concept with no impact on the bottom line and look at the pitfalls of not entrenching a strong purpose within our organizations. Having a purpose by itself is not enough; it needs to be entrenched into the culture and processes of the company. Taking the effort to do this is a long-term play. However, to not do so would be to ignore the signs that this is the direction business is moving. Read more from Entrepreneur As an entrepreneur, you have to get really good at coping mentally with the lows of your business. THE FOUNDER'S VISION CEO SHANNON THRELFALL. You have to learn pretty fast that things don’t always go the way you want them to and if you are really serious about your vision, you must find a way through those tough times that will ensure you don’t just completely give up. And while the lows are often more prevalent than the highs, most people don’t talk about them all that much. We always see the end result. The seemingly ‘overnight success stories’ about how these amazing entrepreneurs just used this one strategy and their business exploded. But I think you and I both know that is not the whole story. If you are an entrepreneur who is in it for the long haul, you realise that it takes a certain something to get out of bed each day and keep going. You will fail, you will make mistakes, and you will waste time and money. Your success is simply highly unlikely to happen overnight. What will help you during these low periods and what will ultimately help you achieve your vision are the mental shifts you must make. People who are truly successful know that mindset is the key above everything else. They know that the way they run their business and overcome failures actually comes down to the way they think and how they perceive the world. Here are three mindset shifts you can make that will change the way you do business and help you achieve your ultimate vision. 1. Define your own version of success This may not seem like a mindset shift, but most people get caught up in striving for success that is defined by society. If you take a second to just picture in your mind what a successful person looks like, you probably see the same types of images: the clothes, the cars, the money. But what you really need to do is be specific about what success looks like for you. And that means really taking the time to think about your own values and what is important to you in your life, based on where you are right now. What you determine as success will change at various stages of your life. For example, when you have young kids, success to you might mean that you only work 20 hours a week so you can spend more time with them.
And, as an added bonus, when you shift your mindset from looking out into society to define success to looking within yourself and at your own circumstances, you will also find that your overall happiness and satisfaction with your work will also increase. 2. Learn to let it go To really achieve your vision, you need to be willing to let go of anything from the past that doesn’t serve you anymore. That means you need to let go of any failures or mistakes that you have made along the way so far. This mindset shift means that you need to totally reframe how you think about mistakes and failures. If you want to get past them, you need to think of them as learning opportunities. Take what you can from them in order to do better in the future, but leave the rest behind. Don’t sit there beating yourself up about them, otherwise, they will hold you back from trying new things and taking risks in your business as it grows. If you really get stuck on this, look up your favourite entrepreneurs. I guarantee that they all have at least one story of where something didn’t work out for them. 3. Work within your own season This one has been particularly hard for me to overcome. Since having kids (who are still very young and are at home with me most of the time), I have really struggled to accept the fact I simply do not have the time, energy or mental capacity that I once had. Or that other entrepreneurs might have. I have had to spend a lot of time coming to terms with this, and then figuring out how I can work in a way that ensures I achieve my goals, get my work done and still look after myself. The key to this mindset shift was just acceptance. Which is not so simple. But the more I fought against my circumstances or compared myself to other entrepreneurs (who either had no children or at best, they were much older), the less I got done and the worse I felt. But once I just accepted that this is a season of my life and that every day is changing, I started feeling less constricted by what I ‘should’ be doing. I started working in a way that suited my own unique circumstances and actually getting more done. Mindset shifts are not always easy. But the main thing is that you are aware of what you need to work on and you work on it every single day. These three are a great start and they really will change the way you do business and make your journey to your unique vision much easier and more enjoyable. Read more from Smart Company Artificial Intelligence, once a buzzword in the digital world, has become a part of our everyday life. From Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa to Uber and Ola, several AI-enabled services are available today that make our lives easier. The ongoing pandemic has undoubtedly impacted business models but it didn’t wane the impact AI has on our lives and businesses. On the contrary, it has become evident that Artificial Intelligence, with its self-teaching and learning algorithms, will play an essential role in transforming businesses in 2021.Gaurav Vohra Community  Image Inc42
Companies have swiftly started leveraging the potential of AI. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have grown immensely due to the incorporation of AI for forecasting, adapting to changing market conditions and generating profit. Several companies are already reaping the benefits of their early investment in Artificial Intelligence. Many have started incorporating AI to utilise the huge amount of data generated each day. But how is AI bringing revolutionary changes across industries? Let’s take a look.
Chatbots For Better Customer Support In today’s digitally driven world, many organisations use AI-powered chatbots in business communication, primarily for customer support and sales. Chatbots effectively increase customer engagements, help collect data, and drive business revenues; they effectively bring down operational costs as well. AI-powered chatbots decrease the need for human intervention and enable businesses to engage and interact with customers during non-working hours. This also brings down the need for floor space and conventional customer support equipment. According to a report by Juniper Research, ecommerce transactions via chatbots are predicted to grow up to $112 Bn by 2023. AI-Powered Chips To Boost Performance AI-powered chips will enable applications that run on AI algorithms like object detection, computer vision, facial recognition, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to perform much faster. These chips boost the performance of applications used in gaming, healthcare, banking & finance, and manufacturing industries. Qualcomm recently launched its new AI-enabled Snapdragon 732G to enhance the high-tier mobile gaming experience. Another popular example of the implementation of AI in an industrial and commercial environment is the AI-powered BMW factory in Germany. The automobile factory uses AI-based software to check auto parts and perform a complete inspection in milliseconds. The AI-powered chips are predicted to reach a revenue of $91,185 Mn in 2025. Evolution Of Data Highways For Startup Sustainability Data is the new currency in today’s digitally driven world. The generation of data is growing by leaps and bounds with each passing day. For startups to stay ahead in the competitive business world, it has become imperative to adopt advanced analytics and AI for creating dynamic business models. AI-based systems and solutions will help start-ups with data mining, analysis of business data, and implementing predictive analytics to determine strategic marketing based on customer insights. AI In Cyber Security With data becoming more accessible, there has been a massive rise in cyberattacks. Companies are investing more in improving their organisation’s cybersecurity infrastructure. AI, with its advanced predictive algorithms, will play a crucial role in facilitating cybersecurity in organisations. By incorporating AI in cybersecurity, companies will be able to reduce the response time to threats as well as the expense of preventing breaches. AI will also help in preventing cybercrimes by enhancing the organisation’s cybersecurity measures. Increase In Preference Of Voice-Based Searches One of the most common examples of AI-powered applications in our daily life is voice-based searches. AI-powered voice-based applications like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa have set the benchmark high on how people will look for anything online. In the future, people will use voice commands more often rather than type it. According to Statista, globally, around 8 Bn digital voice assistants will be in use by 2023. Innovations in Artificial Intelligence, with its huge potential, is transforming businesses by boosting work efficiency, enhancing productivity, and elevating an organisation’s profitability, and will continue to do so in the future. AI-powered applications and services provide solutions for every industry, starting from IT, retail, banking, and healthcare to eCommerce. Read more from INC42 It takes more than just a great idea to succeed in business. BY MARTIN ZWILLING, FOUNDER AND CEO, STARTUP PROFESSIONALS @STARTUPPRO  Getty Images Everyone who starts or owns a business expects to be the best of breed, but only a few achieve that status. As a startup mentor and adviser, I often contemplate what makes the difference between winners and losers.
I'm convinced that it's a lot more than the foibles of any specific market, availability of funding, and just luck of the draw. I believe the best make their own luck. I've noticed that the top performers in business, as in most other professions, have a common set of traits in the way they think, as well as act. So if you aspire to be the next Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates in business, you might want to compare the following traits with your own, and focus on adopting the ones you don't have, as much as you focus on your next idea to change the world: 1. Figure out first what you most want to achieve in life. I find business people all around me who are working hard to make more money, when what they really want is a work-life balance that allows them to enjoy family and help others. I advise them to find their personal passion, rather than trying to achieve someone else's view of success. 2. Stop dreaming about your passion and start acting on it. Too many aspiring entrepreneurs I know are very quick to come up with new ideas, but are not so quick on the execution side. To be successful in business, you need a high focus on results, as well as thinking. Business implementation requires determination and never giving up. 3. Constantly strive to learn new things and do things better. The best of you see yourselves as lifelong learners, and able to adapt to change, no matter what your age or level of experience. Always keep looking for ways to improve and grow, rather than ways to slow down and let the business run itself. In other words, stay hungry and humble. 4. Face and conquer your fear of a step into the unknown. Average business people push their fears ahead of them, and never make the next big step. We all have fears of the unknown, but the best of you will document the challenges ahead of you, and tackle them one by one with a plan, getting the help and learning from each success and failure. 5. Build relationships to complement your strengths. We all have strengths and weaknesses, so don't be fooled by your ego. Starting and running a business is not a solo operation, so building the right relationships is key. Capitalize on these relationships by listening well and delegating well. Tap into the strengths of others to fill your gaps. The relationship between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett is a prime example. While they have always been in totally different businesses, both still give much credit to the other for their own success. They have long been good friends and learned from each other. 6. Grow yourself by growing the people around you. The best business people are also the best mentors and coaches. They are not afraid of giving someone a lead or inspiring them to move on to bigger and better things. By helping others, you become stronger in your eyes as well as theirs. They may someday be able to come back and pull you along. Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and the Virgin Group, now controls more than 400 companies in various fields. He attributes much of his success to his focus on growing the best people, and giving them the opportunity to run his new companies. 7. Strive to build a legacy as well as a business. Leaving a legacy larger than your business requires that you keep a focus on the bigger picture. The best business people not only build a successful business, they change the world--perhaps by improving the environment, helping the less fortunate, or fostering a disruptive technology. According to many people who know him, Elon Musk has always put a higher purpose above making money. His focus on SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, and other initiatives all have a large component of "shaping the future," as well as meeting business objectives. I believe these traits of proven top performers in business, as well as other professions, are the keys to success that you must emulate, even more than finding that unique innovation or huge untapped market opportunity. Above all, it's important to move quickly from thinking to doing, learn from your mistakes, and recognize when it's time to pivot as the world changes around you. Read more from INC. COVID-19 made what was once optional into a mandatory part of business strategy, and 2021 will only move the needle further to the digital side, Forrester predicts. Image: Olivier Le Moal, Getty Images/iStockphoto Forrester has released its predictions for digital business in 2021, and it sees big changes coming as the post-pandemic era continues to rapidly transform the business landscape. "What many considered optional became imperative overnight," Forrester said of digital business, citing that one retailer saw five years' worth of digital adoption happen in only five months due to COVID-19 lockdowns. 2021 is the year, Forrester predicts, the majority of businesses will invest in having a full-fledged digital presence. Like other reports comprising Forrester's larger portfolio of 2021 predictions, this one on digital business breaks down into five key points.
1. 20% of worldwide businesses will create digital divisions Digital engagement will become the number one driver of customer value in 2021, Forrester predicts, and many global organizations will join organizations like BP, John Deere, and Siemens in launching data, artificial intelligence (AI), and software-driven divisions. SEE: TechRepublic Premium editorial calendar: IT policies, checklists, toolkits, and research for download (TechRepublic Premium) "By the end of 2021, we expect 30% of $1 billion-plus firms to have a significant digital product portfolio and 20% to stand up digital divisions dedicated to launching disruptive products," Forrester said. 2. Cloud-first strategies will dominate digital growth "Every new digital division will embrace innovation through ecosystems, and we expect a further 50% of enterprises to make cloud-centric transformation a priority, moving business-critical operational apps and all experience apps into the cloud," Forrester predicts. A key part of this strategy will be aligning internal and external resources, which Forrester said organizations should do with a specific strategy in mind, like a customer or business outcome. 3. "Buy" buttons will be everywhere 2021 will be a year in which businesses will toss a variety of sales channels at the wall to see which ones stick. "It won't just be a decision between Shopify+ versus custom-coding a headless commerce solution—or Facebook Shops versus Amazon Business. It will be about experimenting with all these channels to build new types of direct customer relationships," Forrester said. A desire to stand out among the competition will further drive adoption of deep personalization, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) sales, and other content-first strategies, Forrester predicts. 4. DOP will further replace ERP, leading to more platform innovation Digital operations platforms (DOP), which combine back-office business tools into a single product, were hot in 2020, and they'll continue to grow as a replacement for legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Greater DOP adoption will push vendors to differentiate their products, which is a good thing for their clients. "New DOP offerings will become AI-based and ecosystem-oriented, tailored to industry and even micro-vertical use cases and requirements. The payoff is digital bedrock for operations and insights—and surfacing the competitive core of your business to new products and experiences," Forrester said. 5. Outcomes-based pricing will grow for digital transformation services Businesses looking to embrace digital business strategies will be looking to lots of outside vendors, and Forrester said that 50% of new transformation services contracts will include a pay structure based on meeting particular outcomes. SEE: Chatbot trends: How organizations are leveraging AI chatbots (free PDF) (TechRepublic) "Buyers of transformation services will expect providers to bring alliances, end-to-end expertise, and software and data assets to accelerate time-to-value," Forrester said. Consultants, tech service providers, and other agencies will need to be aware of this potential and plan budgets accordingly. Read more from TechRepublic Follow these four principles to transform from a great company to the benchmark in the industry. Image credit: nd3000 | Getty Images "If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations." —Bill Gates
Every year, millions of startups are launched across the world, each with its own unique selling point, each with a new solution. We hear about some of them, but some we never find out about. These startups use all the latest technology, understand the basic business principles and spend months, if not years, perfecting their services or product. Many of these businesses show early-stage promise. They have customers, their technology works or their service is being bought. Where they lack or get stuck is scaling that initial success and interest from their target audience. Translating that potential into a successful and established business is where most entrepreneurs struggle. This is where PR comes into play, and every entrepreneur should invest in it. Here’s why. Related: 10 Ways to Get Global PR Exposure 1. Build confidence in your brand For entrepreneurs, it is important to understand what the target audience reads, what it watches and which digital platforms it uses. It is also crucial to understand where consumers get their information. For example, if you’re a business that targets entrepreneurs, you know that most aspiring entrepreneurs read publications such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inc., and Business.com. If you own a restaurant, you want to make sure your restaurant is listed on platforms such as Yelp (and has positive reviews), because that’s where people go to assess whether a restaurant is worth going to. Two aspects of PR come into play here: thought leadership and profile listing. With thought leadership, you can build your own persona and following as an entrepreneur. This gives you an edge when you talk to potential clients who are choosing between you and one of your competitors. Potential clients look at your brand on the internet, and when they do, they should be able to see you as an entrepreneur and your brand listed on reputable platforms. This creates the perception that you are trustworthy, an industry leader and an expert. This gives you a competitive edge, increases your conversion potential, and boosts your revenue, active user count and the number of clients you have. With profile listing, it's essentially the same, except instead of positioning yourself as the entrepreneur on an entrepreneurial platform, you directly position your business on a more business-oriented platform. At the end of the day, the benefits are the same. Related: How to Do PR When You're Bootstrapped and Don't Have Connections 2. Establish yourself as an industry leader PR isn’t just about writing fancy articles. As an entrepreneur, one of the best things you can do is to leverage opportunities to become a guest on a podcast or get interviewed by a reputable network or organization. Here, you first have to identify the mediums your audience is most active on. As the co-founder of an app-development company, I am always looking to leverage opportunities to appear as a guest on podcasts that most aspiring entrepreneurs or small business owners listen to (for example, Mixergy). Similarly, someone who owns a design or an animation studio would leverage platforms such as 99designs or Design Rush. This tells your target audience that the platforms they consider trustworthy consider you trustworthy, establishing your business and brand as an industry leader. Related: Using PR to Generate New Leads Is More Important Than Ever 3. Become a part of the conversation If you look toward the more retail, digital products, or ecommerce side of the world, you will see another trend. If your product has good quality and you’re an industry leader, you’re more likely to be part of conversations between friends and family. When a few people in the circle of a potential customer talk positively about your brand, there’s pressure on that potential customer to join in on the conversation, be it about one of Nike’s most famous football shoes series, the Hypervenom, or about the new collection that H&M recently launched. If your brand is part of conversations, your target audience is psychology pressured to engage with you simply because all of their friends and family are doing the same. Facebook wasn’t always the tech giant it is today; neither was its tech as exquisite as it is today. Yet, because some people were on Facebook, and Facebook was able to create a digital lifestyle unlike any other platform, two people using Facebook meant that their friends felt that they were missing out on that lifestyle or experience. Thus they joined Facebook, then their friends joined Facebook, and then theirs joined Facebook. This is a cycle that PR helps to create. Another example is Apple. Apple’s PR team has successfully created the narrative that the Apple experience is like none other. That’s why everywhere you see, Apple products are seen as the standard and their experience as unique. This is because Apple’s communication in establishing itself as the ultimate benchmark matched their incredible technology. Their identity and positioning became viral and their users reverberated and validated their claim of producing superior consumer tech, helping the company scale rapidly from its initial potential. Related: Less Selling, More Storytelling: 5 Expert Tips on Doing Low-Cost PR for Your New Business 4. Create a narrative Your communication and PR activities aren’t a substitute for great tech, products or services, but they are essential for you to transform from a great company to the benchmark in the industry. Your product quality can convince people to engage with you, but it is your PR that compels them to become ambassadors for your brand. Once you invest in your communication and PR, you are able to convince people that their positive opinion of your brand isn’t just an opinion, it is a fact. Once people within your target audience understand what makes you the best and are willing to spread the narrative, you can successfully take that initial potential and use it to scale rapidly within your niche. Read more from Entrepreneur Want to make more money? These strategies will help you exceed your revenue goals. Image credit: Ezra Bailey | Getty Images Having your business turn into a success is hard work, and you need to adapt to the times while organizing things as you go. There are several actions you can do to help your business increase its revenue. Making sure each area of your company gets attention is crucial to ensure small things don't fall by the wayside.
Related: 7 Growth-Mindset Principles As a business owner, you may feel as though you're juggling a hundred things at once. This is because you have to wear a lot of different hats when managing their company. They need to check possible ways of improving their daily operations. 1. Build your website Having a user-friendly site that's up to date is a vital part of growing your company. A website design that's modern and functional will keep your enterprise moving forward. In today’s competitive market, having a presence is not enough. An optimized and well-designed site can help your business generate new leads and provide a 30% or greater increase in your overall conversion rate. Reward customers for visiting your online space through promotional offers and discount deals. 2. Know your competition Knowing what your competitors are doing is a great way to improve how you’re operating. You might be able to learn something from them. Strategies they’ve been using for years will be new to you and may offer a great payoff. Related: Why Being Resilient Is the First Step to Growth 3. Value creativity Standing out from your competitors is an essential step in growing any enterprise. Be open to any new ideas and remember that creative solutions can come from a lot of places. You can do innovative things like hosting events to promote new products you have. 4. Provide great service Customer service is something that can either make or break a business. If a client feels heard and acknowledged, chances are they'll stay loyal. You need to make a point of going the extra mile, increasing the likelihood that clients will refer you. 5. Understand your customer Your consumers are the core of your company. They're the lifeblood of any industry, and that's why you need to make sure you know what they want and need. Make use of consumer feedback to improve how you deal with your client base. 6. Get a grip on social media Promoting your business using social media platforms can increase your customer reach and allow you to gain information from them. Tracking what consumers are saying about your company online gives you an invaluable insight into their experience. It also provides you with a great place to advertise to potential clients. 7. Develop an email list A quick and effective way to reach a vast amount of clients is through an email list. This requires you to have a funnel through which to generate leads. Ensure that your sales department understands the importance of sourcing these and turning them into active clients. Related: Easy Tips for Building a Powerful Email List 8. Expand your network We all know the phrase "it’s not what you know, but rather who you know." Networking is a great way to expand your professional relationships and gain insight into how others in the market are coping. It will also allow you to potentially meet investors that can improve the health of your enterprise. 9. Amp up your exposure No one will work with you if they don't know your company exists, so increasing your visibility is crucial. Optimizing your SEOs will increase the likelihood that you'll show up on one of the first pages of an internet search. If you're operating from a physical location, make sure it's visible on apps like Google Maps so consumers can find you. 10. Nurture supplier relationships Your suppliers are an essential part of your enterprise. If you maintain a good relationship with them, they'll be more likely to help you out if problems arise in the future. Try to make sure the exchanges are mutually beneficial and don't be late with your payments. 11. Focus on training your staff Having a competent team in place will help you delegate responsibilities and build your enterprise into a success. Improving your employee's sense of importance within the company will give them more incentive to work hard and do their best. Provide them with opportunities to get training and improve their knowledge base for a more rounded experience 12. Know your finances Understanding the financial health of your company is essential to have a healthier bottom line. It's good to keep track of the business's debt so that you know what choices you can make for your company's future. Keeping your enterprise going through tough times can be difficult, but it can be done if you're willing to put in the work. Your company can always stand to adapt to innovations in the market. Ensure you have a website and are present on social media, create email lists to generate leads. Check out what your competition is doing, learn from them, but stand out. Nurture your relationships with your suppliers, employees, and clients. Putting in the extra time now will help you reap the rewards in the future Read more from Entrepreneur |
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