If you, and indeed your workforce, are productive then you know that you’ll be able to serve far more customers and deliver everything from a higher standard of service to more sales. Attaining productivity can be pretty difficult depending on what you do and which industry you’re in. On top of that, every single business owner runs their business in a different way. This means that you can't look at what others are doing, because doing so yourself may not quite work. Here are some tips to help get you thinking about how you can really drive productivity to gain ground in business.
Use The Latest Tools
Being tech savvy and future forward can lead your team to being more productive in a couple of different ways. For a start, you can ensure that you can cast your key presentations to a large screen so that your team can properly see what you’re doing and talking about. A fire tv can do this for you or something like a Google chrome cast. Make sure you have the right software in place so that you can properly move through work. If you’re expecting your staff to be able to push through work items they need to have the right software. Set them up to succeed. Think about your competitors and what they’re using. It might be giving your staff faster laptops, or setting up a fast internet connection. The options are myriad, just be sure to do your research beforehand.
Training which lasts is pretty important. If you can get brilliant training for your staff then you know you’re on to a winner. It can be in all manner of things. Maybe they need help in selling your products on amazon or perhaps you’ve bought a nice shiny new bit of software that you’re not getting the best out of. You need to really concentrate on getting the best out of your staff and investing in real, solid training is one way to do it. But how? There are people who offer training out there, or you can do it yourself if you’ve got the time and inclination. The point is that you don’t want to invest in cheap training materials which doesn’t have much impact on your staff or worse, gives them the wrong information.
Lead By Example
It's really important that you act right because people will automatically look to you for leadership. What you do, will be followed. If it looks like you don’t care that much, then they aren’t going to either. You need to lead by example. Put the work in that you want them to do. If you don’t, then you’re going to end up causing a negative culture. Especially if you lambast people for doing things that you do all the time. Simply doing them because you can isn’t a good argument in this day and age. Whether you’re worried about financial aid for your business or simply looking at clients, you need to be doing it with verve and energy. Be infectious. Create excitement about your business and brand and others will follow. It’ll rub off on them, and from them, it’ll rub off on customers.
While running and growing your business sounds pleasant, it shouldn’t distract you from securing your finances. As a business owner, you’re likely to face certain risk levels that employees don’t experience, some of which include bankruptcy and unexpected situations. Unpreparedness for these risks can put a lot of strain on you and affect your business in the long run. If you’re wondering how to protect your finances, here are some tips to help.
It helps when you draw the line between your personal and business finances. Aside from enabling you to calculate your taxes and get tax deductions, it also prevents you from getting a tax audit for your personal and business financial records. Additionally, it makes it less stressful to get loans and sell your business as an asset. You can start by registering your business as a separate legal entity and get yourself an Employer Identification Number (EIN). It will also help if you open a different business account and a business credit card. You should also pay yourself a rigid salary to avoid using business finances for personal use.
Settle your debt
Debts can prove helpful for your business, especially when you need capital to start or expand it. It also helps to increase your business cash flow. However, there are always two sides to the coin, and the debt that was beneficial to you might become a snare if you can't pay it back in due time. For this reason, you should avoid debt if you can or map out a working payment strategy should you need a loan. You should also create a debt list to determine your creditors, how much you owe, interest rates, and the due payment date. Doing this will help you settle them on time.
Create an emergency fund
An emergency fund is instrumental in protecting your finances and helps you to deal with unexpected situations while keeping your business account safe. Besides, you don’t have to upset your savings when you’re having a financially tight period in your business. To build a feasible emergency fund, you should determine how much you want to save and where to source the money from. It’s prudent to commit a portion of your revenue or any cash you have to spare. For your emergency fund to serve its purpose, you must discipline yourself not to touch it until there’s a valid emergency.
Your employees are an important part of your business and in order to help protect your finances, you want to ensure your employees are doing everything possible to bring in sales. So the quality of training you provide to them is important. From call center training software to courses in digital marketing and sales, it can be very helpful in boosting your finances as a company.
In mishaps, good insurance coverage helps buffer the economic effect and keep you from going completely bankrupt. It’s also an effective risk management strategy that protects your finances in the event of lawsuits and claims, which can be costly. While business-related insurance coverage protects your business, health, auto, and life insurance are also important. Although there are many insurance brokers out there, you should research to determine your business’s best option. Better still, you can check out some PHP Agency reviews to make an informed decision on which insurance broker to partner with.
Taking steps to protect your finances will not only keep you financially stable but will also encourage your business expansion. While these tips are not all there is, they’ll help you secure your personal and business revenue.
One of the biggest challenges for any small business owner is raising awareness of your brand. No matter how good your product or service may be, if you don’t have the customer base then you will struggle to succeed in your endeavors.
There are so many different ways of promoting a business, from social media to word-of-mouth marketing. But one of the methods that tends to be overlooked is radio advertising.
Promoting your business across different radio stations has the potential to reach a huge audience. You can craft your audio advert and target it to your ideal audience to make the desired impact. Unlike many other free forms of marketing, radio advertising does come at a cost. This will vary depending on the radio station used and the length or nature of your advert, but if you do it right, you will see an excellent return on your investment.
To get you started in the world of radio advertising, here are three tips to promote your business from station to station.
Find your demographic
One of the fundamental steps in any marketing strategy is to define your audience. What does your ideal customer look like? Take some time to craft a detailed picture of your target buyer persona, thinking about factors such as age, background, occupation, income, interests, buying habits, goals, and pain points. Using this information, you can then pick the most appropriate radio station to target them. There are countless stations out there with a range of different content from music to news to light entertainment. Each station has a target demographic and you will need to make sure you pick the one that will allow you to reach as many of your target audience as possible.
Reach out to the radio station
The next step in launching a radio advertising campaign is to reach out to the station or stations you have chosen. They will usually be able to provide you with a media package outlining the advertising guidelines, their demographics, and the expected costs for your advert. This will help you craft the perfect advert and finalize your long-term strategy.
Create an advert
Radio adverts are short and to the point, and you will need to get as much information across in as short a time as possible while being entertaining and engaging too. It could be a promotion for a new product or service, or a press release announcing a recent piece of news. One extremely effective way of using radio is to launch a giveaway or competition to win a special prize. Listeners will need to engage with your brand to be in with a chance of winning, either by visiting your website or phoning in. This will get more eyes on your company and potentially a whole host of new customers.
There isn’t a more common problem in the world of business. Entrepreneurs have ideas, they launch startups and soon run out of money. If you’re in this boat, you should take solace from the fact that you’re not alone!
Still, that doesn’t mean you can afford to indulge in self-pity and rest on your laurels. For any chance to recover the situation, you must find more cash. It sounds like the simplest thing ever on paper, but it’s probably the hardest. Not many people will give up their resources readily.
So, what can you do to grease the wheels and get the ball rolling?
Covid Grants & Bursaries
Part of the reason businesses are struggling is the outbreak of a global pandemic. Normally, failure is down to owner error, yet this isn’t the case in 2021. The fact that the world’s economy has shutdown is an indicator of the pressure. Governments know they can’t sit back and do nothing, which is why grants and bursaries are available in their droves at the minute. Any company that can prove they have been impacted by the pandemic can apply for state and federal loans. They might not help you make a profit, but they should take care of most overheads.
0% Credit Cards
The next port of call is a credit card company. The term makes entrepreneurs break into cold sweats as there are lots of horror stories regarding mounting debts. And, even though pieces of plastic are risky, they are also advantageous when used correctly. A 0% card, for instance, won’t charge you anything for anywhere between six months and two years. That means you can use the funding without having to worry about the APR. You only need to cover the minimum monthly payment. In the short-term, this could be a suitable strategy.
Reinvestment
Are you losing money because you’re not making enough of it? In this case, it’s time to tweak your strategy. Rather than spending money on areas that aren’t lucrative, you should focus on profitable parts of the company. For example, the more you put into an effective marketing plan, the greater the ROI. By learning how to invest your content marketing budget in the right ways, you could take the small amount you have and transform it into something special. Never underestimate reinvestment.
Equity
Lastly, use what you have at your disposal - your business. No entrepreneur wants to sell shares in their company because it means less control. But, you can get the cash injection you need without ceding 50% of the company. You can float 10% to 15% instead. This compromise brings in investors who want the equity and are willing to pay for the privilege. Angel investors are also alternatives, yet they are harder to come by. It’s essential to advertise what your business can do for investors to ensure they understand what they will get from the deal.
What can businesses do when the money starts to dry up? The main thing is not to quit. When you give in, you automatically lose.
Due to the accelerated shift in working patterns one year ago in March 2020, many working-age people with ideas have decided to leave behind the limiting world of the 9-5 in favor of something with more flexibility and more scope to earn money based on doing thing things they love the best.
However, many of these grassroots start-up companies that began in people’s kitchens could be considered to be MLM, also known as multilevel marketing, or network marketing. MLM has been popular for quite some time as an easy way for people to start home businesses both quickly and affordably. However, there are some MLM schemes that may not be as good a deal as they make out to be in the long run. The website ibuyireview.com works to expose some of the small businesses that could fall into the rocky territory of multilevel marketing schemes disguised as work from home jobs.
If you are considering a work-from-home opportunity, it is your responsibility to investigate the viability of the opportunity before it’s too late.
But how can you know for sure the difference between a genuine employment opportunity and an MLM scheme? This blog post will investigate.
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Firstly, What is MLM?
Sometimes known as ‘pyramid selling’ or ‘pyramid schemes’, multilevel marketing is a strategy for marketing products or services where a workforce of people work, unsalaried, to provide the revenue for the company by selling goods and services. However, unlike some similar sounding opportunities (catalog sales, for example), these products are presented to customers as a ‘business opportunity’ where purchasers would then take the products to sell on to a different group of people. The idea would be for them to once again sell these products as a business opportunity to a new group and so on. The key to a successful and lucrative business opportunity in MLM is through referrals and word of mouth. So, in essence, the more popular a person is, the more likely they are to succeed at MLM in the longer term.
Before you go through the process of signing a contract with any direct sales work from home opportunity, make sure to do what you can to understand the difference between a genuine opportunity and a scam.
Here are some of the signs that a ‘Small Business’ opportunity may well be a MLM scheme.
They Have Little to No Quality Products or Services
One of the biggest ‘red flags’ that you should look out for when presented with an opportunity is a lack of physical product to show. ‘Opportunities’ that focus on recruitment over actual sales of the product you’re recruiting to sell are the sign of a pyramid scheme.
Any good work from home sales opportunity should focus on selling the products themselves and getting them to happy customers. Building a team may well be a part of that, but it shouldn’t be seen as the main focus of the opportunity. Your income should come from the commission built from selling the product and not the recruitment of more team members.
The Products Claim to be More Than They Are
Wellness is one of the industries most commonly targeted by MLM businesses. Companies will claim the have ‘the answer’ to many of people’s most common complaints. However, many of these claims are unfounded. Remember, if something appears to be too good to be true, then it often is. Hype about any product without evidence backing it up is problematic in any industry, especially when the claims are not backed.
If a company has strange or unusual products, then you should be careful about joining. For your own integrity and reputation, you don’t want your name to be associated with a product that doesn’t work.
They Pile on The Pressure
In direct sales, any good opportunity is a good opportunity, regardless of when you start working there. MLM schemes will typically pile on the pressure for potential representatives to join. They will often use tactics to manipulate such as offering limited time opportunities to just join the scheme.
Similarly, once people become involved, the pressure to invest in buying the initial products to sell increases, too. Here, you’ll need to look out for fee based programs that ask for additional investment.
While it is beneficial to have some popular products on hand, don’t ever feel the pressure to stock up your home with products that will difficult to sell- particularly if you have to spend all of your time recruiting to build your team!
Just hold on to a couple of items that you know for sure will sell.
Company Communication is Poor
When you start with a new company, it is common to want to ask questions about the company and the role. If questions fall flat then you should consider it a red flag.
To be successful in any new role, you need to feel supported and have adequate training. Even MLM companies are required to share certain pieces of information such as the average income of reps and pension plans. You should study the information you are given and prepare some questions. Consider the answers you are given, remembering that any legitimate company wants to keep you informed and in the know, whereas you don’t want to consider working for a company that ignores your concerns or is hesitant to answer your questions.
They Have Poor Ratings on Better Business Bureau
Well this may be a difficult marker, because the Better Business Bureau will regularly mark down small home business opportunities due to the fact that they’re hard to investigate. But using this tall, you can search to see if there are any complaints filed against the company and how, if at all, the company have dealt with them.
You will be able to see if companies are responding to and fixing problems. If you see that they are, this this is a good sign. If they are not responding at all, or responding poorly, then this is a bad sign for the company. Businesses can typically be rated on the level of customer service that they offer. If I work from home opportunity is showing to offer bad customer service to both representatives and customers, then it should be avoided at all costs.
They are Deceptive in Their Advertising
Multi level marketing schemes are often promoted as a job in order to law jobseekers and prospective partners into the trap. However, MLM isn’t a job – it’s a business opportunity. Any MLM representative that is promoting the business as a job is being deceptive.
You should also look out for representatives making guarantees about how much income you generate if you work for them, which suggest to make money from not doing very much at all. These claims are illegal.
They Use Cryptic ‘Interview’ Techniques
MLM representatives will often find ways to meet with people to talk to them about how they can invest a little time in order to generate a bigger award. They would have been trained to deal with people who have, overtime, become even more wary of MLM schemes. Using deception, they are then able to use these ‘interviews’ as a sales opportunity—to attempt to establish trust.
There are some brands with Paul reputations, who train their representatives to not use the name of the company while they’re making their sales bitches. Repps will have to find a way to encourage others to learn about the company and all it has to offer them without using the name. This may seem suspicious, and rightfully so. If you get a bad feeling about something, then it is best to follow your instincts.
Human instinct will often tell us when something isn’t quite right. You may feel unsettled or anxious about something right away. These feelings shouldn’t be dismissed--regargless fo the opportunity. If an opportunity comes with a range of added pressures the make you feel as though you could be being conned, then the opportunity may not be for you.
How Do You Know if Work From Home Business Opportunities are For You?
There are many things in life that can make us feel nervous, but once you step out, that feeling will go and you will be able to thrive. Some of the things outlined above can indicate that there are certain schemes that you should not consider being any part of. However, feelings of overwhelming uncertainty should be one of the biggest signs to avoid them.
Many mistakes can be avoided when attempting to build a sales portfolio in any work from home sales opportunity. As with any opportunity in either an employed or self-employed basis, it’s important to investigate the company you’re considering working with and check some things off your mental checklist that you curated. If a company has clear indications that they they have similar ethics and principles to you, they have genuine reviews online, and it feels good to partner with them, then that in itself is a good indication that you should.
If you take the time to observe your use of laptops, tablets, and mobile over the years, you will find that the marketing arena is undergoing significant transformation. Even as more and more people use various technological devices, it can be challenging for you to make a fruitful connection with your customers via such devices in real-time.
Modern marketing is changing, giving you new approaches to interact with your customers and prospects in real-time over mobile apps and websites. Combining the creative aspect of marketing with the technical element of data can significantly improve your marketing outcomes.
So, how is technology changing modern marketing, and what can you do about it?
Read on to learn more.
Ways Technology is Changing Marketing and Sales
The marketing and sales fields have changed significantly in recent years following the adoption and advancement of technology. With technology, you can transform various aspects of your marketing and improve your performance.
However, not every aspect of technology will be useful to your business. So, before you adopt any technology, ensure that it can help you achieve your organizational goals.
Here are various ways changes in technology can help you grow your business:
Decreased the Obstacle of Distance
Traditionally, it would be challenging to your sales and marketing process. However, with the growth in technology, distance is now an irrelevant aspect. The introduction of online conference programs, smartphone applications, and remote work tools has eased how brands communicate with customers and prospects worldwide.
With the right technology tools, you reduce your traveling for sales and marketing meetings since you can have successful virtual meetings nowadays. Your team can work remotely easily across different regions and still be efficient and productive. Additionally, customer interaction platforms such as click4assistance.co.uk allow you to engage with your customers easily and effectively.
Personalized, Accurate, and Faster Customer Service
The introduction of modern CRM applications will help you access different customer information for better marketing decisions. For instance, with such technology, you can understand the customers' needs, products they frequently order, and the frequency of purchase. Your team can offer an effective and personalized response to customer needs, orders, questions, and requests in real-time.
With big data applications and data mining technologies, you will process and even make use of huge data amounts to acquire new customers, prospect effectively, and improve your lead generation for better outcomes.
Better and Improved Skills
As technology advances, the need and demand for advanced skills in your company will increase. You need the right individuals to spearhead your company’s growth in the phase of digital adoption. Technology comes with better approaches and skills to address diverse issues within the workplace.
Embracing technology in your business gives you the chance to employ effective skills to make your company's operations effective and the employees more productive. However, it would help if you analyzed your customers' needs, business goals, and industry needs and demands so you can choose technology platforms and tools to help you address such needs.
If you want to save a lot of money on your marketing, you had better adopt the technology. For instance, with technology, you don't have to print marketing materials such as brochures because you can create and share them electronically.
Additionally, you can include audio and video files in your marketing. Such an approach increases your level of engagement with customers. Besides, the cost of distributing and engaging with the customers electronically is low compared to traditional physical strategies.
Ease of Making Decisions
Making decisions about your company's marketing strategies and growth is easy with technology. Electronic communication in the workplace has made it easy to reach key decision-makers in any organization. Additionally, the decision-making process is easy and fast, allowing you to reduce the time it would take for approvals.
Even when executive managers are in different areas, holding meetings and making approvals is easy and effective because there are tools and applications to making signing easy, fast, and effective. However, it is advisable to ensure that you have the right technology and tools to make such tasks quite effective.
Improved Interactions with Customers
How easy you interact with your customers influences the success of your marketing efforts. With the introduction of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, you can improve your engagement level. Maintaining direct contact with your prospects and customers is important for the success of your marketing and the growth of your business.
Other technological platforms and applications such as webinars and online presentations will allow you to interact with your target audience in real-time. Usually, such interaction is critical for any company's success because it gives you the chance to immediately understand and respond to your customers' needs, guaranteeing better conversion rates.
Reduction in Operational Costs
Adopting new technology may attract a significantly high initial cost. However, advanced technology can help you reduce your operational costs to a great extent. For instance, embracing automation in your business does away with repetitive tasks that are both time-consuming and costly.
You have a higher chance to lower your marketing and sales budget if you have the right technological infrastructure in place. For instance, with better remote-working tools, you can do away with the need for a physical office, saving you a significant amount of money in terms of office rent and travel.
However, to enjoy the reduction in your business; s operational costs, it is advisable to invest in technology wisely. Anything you get for the business should align with the need to achieve the set business goals and objectives.
Final Thoughts
There you have it – a brief overview of how technology is changing modern marketing. As the technology and marketing platforms change, it is advisable to have the appropriate platforms, applications, tools, and skills to make technology relevant in your business. However, you cannot reap the benefits of technology overnight – it takes some time and proper coordination with existing infrastructure to make this happen.
Start by evaluating your business, marketing, customers, and business needs. This way, you will know what technology you need in your company. Ensure that you avoid spending huge amounts of money on unnecessary technology that does not propel you towards achieving your business goals and addressing your customers' needs.
