Office Design for Optimum Productivity

In this post we take a look at office design and how it can influence productivity. We look at a few core principles in interior design including colour, ergonomics, clutter and light.

It’s all about the Colour

Some studies have shown that the colour of an office can have a direct impact on employees. To understand the science of colour, here are a few hues to consider, and the effect that they’ll have.

Blue:

Blue is a very stabilising colour, and encourages a calm environment, full of productivity and focus.

Green:

Green is great for people who work long hours, keeping them on-task and invigorated.

Yellow:

Yellow boosts creativity and optimism in the office. If you want a cheery and productive environment, this is a great option.

Red:

For physical jobs, the colour red has been shown to increase the heart rate, as well as emotions like passion.

Depending on what you need for your office, just changing the colour of your walls could lead to fantastic results. If you don’t want the hassle of deciding the décor for yourself, you can enlist the services of an office planner, such as Opus 4, or you can specifically hire a designer for your rebrand.

Ergonomics

It doesn’t get simpler than this: if your wrists or your shoulders are in pain, due to poor ergonomics, you’re not going to be a very productive employee – you might even have to take time off work to rest your injuries. Ergonomics are so important. All offices should be set out with them in mind. That means investing in equipment that will stop employees from feeling as if a demon has been stomping on their spine all day. Make your workers as comfortable as possible.

Get Rid Of Clutter

Clutter is distracting. There is a reason why many people choose to tidy up before they do anything practical. A clean office makes space for new ideas and fresh minds. Clutter everywhere can get oppressive and bring people down.

Bring Nature Indoors

Some offices don’t really come with window views, or if they do, they’re not always pleasantly green. Bring nature into the office by investing in plants that are hard to kill, such as succulents. Plants help to filter toxins out of the air and keep employees productive.

Let In Light

Nobody wants to live in a dungeon. Letting in lots of light helps to create a spacious feeling, and it’s often uplifting for employees to have a lot of natural rays coming through the windows. It will boost energy and creativity throughout the office. Darkness is often depressing and slows people down.

Get Rid Of Open Plan

Although an open plan office seems to be preferred these days (as people believe that the pressure of being looked at all day will make employees work harder) but really it’s just heavily distracting. With people talking and moving around members of staff all day, you need the concentration of a saint to keep your mind on your work. Give people the peace that they need to crack on.

Movement

Some employees will just sit at their desk all day. This lack of movement is bad for their bodies, but also bad for their productivity. Everyone needs to move around and take short breaks. Encourage movement throughout working hours, even if that’s a klaxon that goes off every two hours, signalling that employees should do some stretches or jump around!

What’s your office set-up like? Is there a specific structure of colour that increases your production levels? Comment below if you’ve got any helpful office interior tips!

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PR Metrics You Need to Share with your Team

The PR metrics that you should consider sharing with your team are based on the objectives of your business. PR is a tool for communication designed to help you meet your business objectives. Within PR, spending a significant amount of time on tracking metrics is necessary in order to communicate the value of this function.

Determining Metrics

Revenue is among the top metrics that require close monitoring along with others that can help you reach your full potential. When you measure PR efforts in an accurate and efficient manner, you are in a better position to link them directly to how your customers behave.
Technological advancements have made it easier for PR professionals to capture PR metrics that add value.
When considering which PR metrics to share, it is important to understand why PR is taking place. PR is an investment typically made to address the need to make your audience do something or react in a certain way.
Desired actions from customers range from making purchases to filling out forms. You may also want them to distribute your content or go to your site for information. Such activities will help you determine which PR metrics will be most valuable for you and your team. The metrics should have poor definition in order for you to be able to gauge the success of your business.

Revenue

Revenue is a value and data driven metric that needs to be visible. It is important for you to determine how you can stimulate growth that will lead to an increase in revenue. For businesses that engage in ecommerce, various campaigns can be useful to drive sales.
If you operate an online business, aspects such as content, social media and emails are essential. These efforts need measuring to find out the number of leads and conversions generated.
Online resources are available to help you know where your traffic is coming from as well as the likelihood of conversions. Invest in the resources that you need to monitor your public relations efforts and note how much revenue the business earns.

Sales Conversions and Leads

Some PR strategies focus on converting site visits into sales opportunities. PR campaigns have the potential to create an increase in sales conversions and leads. PR aim at showcasing brands positively and conveying the company’s area of expertise. Measuring leads is a good metric for PR efforts.

Mentions

Mentions indicate how many times your brand has had a referral it within a specified period. While some PR professionals may be skeptical about the value of mentions, the reality is that the number of mentions helps you know how effective your communication has been among influencers.

The impact of your activities on how often your brand gets a mention or trends is a useful way to track your PR results. It helps you understand how successful your messages are in comparison to your competitors.

Audience

Audience is an important metric that shows you how many people link to your brand. People such as visitors to your site, followers on social media platforms and subscribers to your blog let you know if you are on the right track. Monitoring the growth of your audience enables you to know if you are using the right strategies.

ROI

Return on investment or ROI is a valuable metric when determining PR success. It can often be challenging to calculate but it is necessary for establishing how PR benefits translate into business profits. Analytics software is usually the best way to keep track of ROI related metrics and measure PR effectiveness. Some PR platforms have built in reporting or analytics sections where data for such ROI calculations can be extracted. Other standalone analytics platforms such as PanXpan have specific modules that allow for ROI and PR effectiveness to be tracked. ROI can be tracked through measures such as CPM (cost per thousand reached), cost per conversion or the cost to generate a dollar in revenue.

Impressions

Impressions on social media are readily quantifiable when measuring how successful a PR campaign is. Links to websites and social media pages make it possible for users to interact regularly. This type of interaction provides PR professionals with the chance to measure their efforts in a timely and precise manner.

Impressions give insight into the number of times users view a particular message. They are important because they can create awareness.

Remember to Share

After defining your metrics and investing in the tools you need to measure them, it is important to share them with your team. Make sure that the set metrics are manageable and will add value to your organization. Metrics are a useful component of the learning process within an organization.

Communicate with other members of the team about the progress made. Progress should undergo regular review while sharing different experiences and challenges along the way.

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3 Golden Rules of Developing Customer Loyalty on a Tight Budget

Every company clearly benefits from customer loyalty. However, your business may not have the millions of dollars that the leaders in your industry have to put towards endless layers of advertising to attract those customers. Fortunately, there are many ways that you can develop customer loyalty on a tight budget. Here are some of the top ways.

1 – Respond more quickly to customer queries than anyone in your industry

Social media, citation aggregation software and customer management software give you the ability to access everything that your customers say about you almost in real time. Never before have businesses been blessed with the ability to not only sell across oceans, but provide customer service across those same oceans without spending a great deal of money.

Nine out of every 10 people believe that companies have a responsibility to answer queries on Facebook. However, only one in four businesses actually does this. Is it any wonder that customer loyalty has dropped in the past 20 years? Use all of the information that have on your customers to create a great customer experience for each of them. From this kind of service, your business will certainly build and maintain more customer loyalty.

2 – Get to know your best customers

The Pareto rule, or the 80/20 rule of buying and selling, says that 80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your customers. These 20 percent of customers are the ones who are most likely to become loyal if given the chance. However, you should know never to take anything for granted in the modern business landscape.

In order to convert the customers who are supposed to become loyal to your company, you need a consistent and wide-open two-way line of communication. This can be created through social media very easily; however, there is another level to this endeavor. Your loyal customers deserve personalized service, and no matter how small your budget may be, you can definitely afford to give it to them. Maintaining a customer costs a business around 15 percent of what it takes to build a relationship with a brand-new customer.

Hold events and contests for your best customers. If you are having a sale, incorporate location-based technology and opt in demographic lists so that your best customers truly have the first opportunity to take you up on your offers.

3 – Create programs that naturally develop customer loyalty

The first program that you can incorporate into your business is a product that requires customer loyalty. If you constantly have iterations and improvements on your product, then people will be inclined to come back for more. This is one of the basic tenants of the automobile industry – the best brands are the ones that are always announcing new features for next year’s model. For instance, if you have a product that requires listening, incorporating closed captioning services into the product is a great way to engender customer loyalty.

Aside from having products that are consistently being improved, you can also create programs that will help to engage your customer base. For instance, getting involved in the communities of your good customers is a great way to keep them engaged with your business. This does not have to be a physical location; it can very easily be an online community as well. This is why message boards and niche forums are actually more important for a small business than the major three search engines.

If your business gets involved with a charity, this is another way to ensure that you will always have customers will rally to your cause. Even if you end up giving a great deal of money away, you must consider that you would not have brought in this money if you did not have the offer in the first place. In many cases, doing business with a charity ends up being more profitable for both ends. Never mistake the nonprofit industry for an unprofitable industry – there is definitely a great deal of money being made that you can pick up on.

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5 Tips for Managing Small Business Finances

Professional financial management is essential for the success of any business that is just getting on its feet. Money matters are very crucial since the entire basis of the business is to generate an income. Many small business owners often fail to invest in this crucial part of their business and tend to make losses or end up shutting down altogether. The following are some of the essentials of money management in business:

Open a commercial bank account

Every business should have recognition as an entity on its own. Therefore, you need to open a commercial bank account with the registered name of your business. Do not mix business money with personal money. Choose a small business friendly bank to bank with. You should deposit all the money from the business to this account. This creates a line of credit whereby you can use this bank account to get loans and other forms of financing if need be.

Bookkeeping

Proper bookkeeping is also very essential. You can either do the bookkeeping or hire an accountant. Even if you choose to do the book keeping by yourself, you still need professional help- when it comes to making tax forms and end year financial statements. You can keep your own books using convenient computer software that makes your work much easier, simply filling in the figures and letting the software do the rest. You can use this software to create invoices, keep track of payable and receivable accounts and track spending as well.

Create and track different payment options

Nowadays, customers can pay for goods and services through so many different ways. They can use checks, debit cards, credit cards or even electronic cash transfer. As a matter of convenience to your clients, you need to avail these different means of payment and track these payments as well. Cash payments are easy because there is no processing time, but when it comes to cards and electronic transfer methods, you need to develop a working system that enables continuous flow of business considering the processing time.

Establish payment terms

You need to have a clear payment terms policy that all your customers and adhere to. One of the crippling challenges that most small businesses face is the friendliness that comes from dealing with a small market and this leads to extending credit to customers who are not worth it. You need to standardize the way customers pay while still offering some form of flexibility to customers who cannot front the full payment. Have written payment terms describing deposits, instalment payments and credit extensions.

Debt collection

One of the necessary evils of running a business is debt collection. When you extend lines of credit to customers, there is always the risk that you will receive late payment or not receive any at all. It is essential to chase these payments because they are a part of the business cash flow. Debt collection is a legal process and you can hire a debt collection professional to help you collect payments from delinquent clients. It is advisable to keep the lines of communication with the customer open. Have a specific set of days after which to call a debt collector. For most businesses, 90 days is an acceptable grace period.

To know more about small business finances, visit – http://leasequit.com/.

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How to Create Quality SEO Friendly Content

Content marketing is an invaluable tool to any business with an online presence, thanks to its cost-effectiveness, wide potential reach and long-term benefits. When it comes to search engine optimisation, the focus is on creating content that is highly visible on websites like Google, in order to generate traffic and leads.

In terms of creating solid, SEO friendly content, you need to consider the way search engine algorithms work, as well as the target audience of your content, and then balance these two aspects. This article presents some useful tips to make sure you strike that balance and create quality content, which works for your company.

Use SEO Tools to Steer Content

A business or SEO company has a range of tools available to them, which can steer them in the right direction when it comes to creating highly visible content. Sites like Soovle will help you to pinpoint popular search terms, while Portent’s Content Idea Generator can help you to think of interesting subjects. Then, of course, search engines like Google have a number of their own tools to make use of.

“We have used Google’s Keyword Planner to identify a list of valuable terms and phrases,” says Graham Charlton from Econsultancy. “Having identified these terms, our content team then brainstormed article ideas to target [them]. This kind of planning exercise ensures that the content we create does as much work for us as possible.”

Make Content Evergreen

An experienced search agency will often reference the importance of evergreen content – that is, content which retains its relevance for a long period of time. For example, news pieces may not be ideal for SEO, because they can become dated quickly, but advice pieces stay useful for months or even years.

In relation to search engine optimisation, the primary benefits of evergreen content are its ability to continue to generate traffic, leads and shares on social media sites long after its publication date. As a result, this enables content to occupy valuable positions in search results for much longer than current affairs articles.

Take Care With Keywords

Once you have decided upon the content you want to produce and the keywords you want to include within it, you need to consider how they are used. Many readers are familiar with the concept of SEO and while that can be a positive, it means that any jarring use of keywords will stand out like a sore thumb. For this reason, keywords need to make sense within the context of the sentences and paragraphs they are in, and relate to the heading.

In addition to context of keywords, it is also crucial to think about placement. It can be beneficial, for instance, to include popular SEO keywords in the title itself, but it can be counter-productive to place your keywords in close proximity of one another.

Remember to Include Images

Finally, it is worth remembering that graphics can also play a valuable role in your SEO strategy, helping your content to show up in image searches, like Google Images. The most important steps are to include an alt tag (the ‘label’ of your image) so that search engine crawlers know what it is about and are able to index it. Also ensure the file name is descriptive and appropriate for the image.

“If you spend hours crafting the perfect post, don’t miss out on the chance to optimise your images for maximum search engine benefit,” says Derek Halpern, a marketing expert and the founder of Social Triggers. As a further tip, due to the fact that page load times can impact SEO, smaller images are generally better, where possible.

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7 Must Have Online Tools for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, maintaining a smooth communication and boosting employee performance are your primary goals. Most companies today, rely on a variety of online applications and utilities that help them manage their day to day activities. But for small businesses, it is often the question of where to start from. To solve this confusion, listed below are some of the best applications that small businesses must use.

1. Google Business Apps

Google Business Apps

Google Business Apps is a combined bundle of various must haves for your small business that includes important utilities such as Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google Drive, Google calendar and Google Docs. According to Google Inc., the business apps are being used by a large no. of companies (upto 5 million), which also include a majority of fortune 500 companies. The Gmail feature also allows you to set up your personalized domain (@yourwebsitename.com) and offers various plans for storage space on Google drive. The Google docs are a convenient web version of Microsoft office utilities and allow you to create and edit documents, spreadsheets and slideshows online. With Google business apps, you are sure to form a congestion free network between the employees, management and the clients.

2. Google Drive

Google Drive App is a cloud sync service, which allows the users to upload all type of files on the Google servers. Google drive app is available for a variety of platforms such as Windows (XP and higher), Windows Phones, Android and iOS. Once you install the app, it creates a separate folder on your system where you can simply drop the files that you wish you upload to the Cloud. It includes an office suite and allows editing and creation of spreadsheets, documents and presentations. The integration with Gmail also allows a variety of functions while using the office suite. Launched in 2012, Google Drive is said to be used by more than 200 million active users in the world. Truly, Google drive is one of the best free pro business tools for business owners.

3. Skype Chat

Despite of its criticism due to its slow performance, Skype is one of the best free chat servers you can use for office communication. The application is available for free and can be installed on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, iOS, Blackberry, Android and Windows Phone etc. While the application is mainly used to make free voice calls, its chat server also allows you to share a variety of files online with ease. With more than 600 million users online, Skype is one of the best chat and video calling apps in the world.

4. Wave Accounting

Wave Accounting

As a small business owner, hiring a personalized accountant is something that you cannot afford. To make things easier, you can use a variety of accounting apps available for PCs and smartphones. Launched in 2010, Wave provides a double entry accounting utility, which is able to directly import data from the bank accounts, track expenses and also generate invoices. Upon registration, you also get a card swiping tool and a receipt scanning tool, which can be integrated with your Smartphone. The utilities are entirely free of charge and the organization generates its revenues through the card processing fees when the card swiping tool is used.

5. Evernote

Evenote

Evernote is like a digital version of the post it notes, which allows note-taking and archiving of various files and folders. The notes can be either, text, webpage excerpts, photographs, images, voice reminders or an old fashioned handwritten note. The service is available for a freemium price that requires the user to pay a price to access features that are more advanced. Evernote is compatible with a variety of operating platforms such as Windows, Android, Blackberry and Windows phone etc.

6. HootSuite

HootSuite

Social media is no fun when you’re looking for an online presence for your organization. Especially when you have to manage several different social media platforms at once, making it difficult to maintain a presence everywhere. Launched in 2008, HootSuite integrates all the popular social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, YouTube and Tumbler. It provides a dashboard which is integrated in the web browsers and allows simultaneous sharing of messages across all networks. With more than 10 million users worldwide, HootSuite is indeed the solution for all your social media troubles.

7. UserTesting

For web developers, it is always a challenge to create websites that are highly user friendly and free from any performance lags and slowdowns. This is a must for e-commerce website owners who must keep on improving the quality of their website to ensure sales. UserTesting provides a free 3^rd party review of your website. The results are shown in a video, in which a person is shown browsing through your website and highlighting the grey areas in the website’s design and performance. Instead of simply gathering general opinions on how they feel about your website, it might be a good thing to know the anomalies in your website through a professional.

Small businesses are stepping stones that lead to the fortune-500 club. As the competition among businesses has moved to a digital environment, it has become essential for business owners to be ahead in the race. The above tools will certainly help you improve your productivity while providing that professional edge to your organization’s workflow.

Featured Image by denise carbonell, CC BY 2.0

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Seven Accounting Formulas Every Business Owner Should Know

In today’s highly competitive business world, not all math wizards have what it takes run an enterprise, Likewise, not all business owners can be expected to be accounting experts. However, quite a few entrepreneurs believe that their business efforts will be more productive if they are in control of their company’s accounting.

Business owners who have taken accounting courses, or who have some level of bookkeeping experience, will generally feel comfortable running their own books as long as their enterprise does not grow too fast. There may come a time when managing a business while also keeping its books may be too much for one person to handle, but being able to look at financial statements from an accounting point of view is something that all business owners should be able to do.

The following seven equations and formulas are essential knowledge for all business owners, not only those who want to be their own accountants. Versions of these calculations are usually found in business plans as forecasts and projections; in their most basic forms, these formulas can show just how viable a business is at any given time.

Seven Accounting Formulas

1 – Net Income

How much money does a company really make? A popular business adage is that it takes money to make money, which means that expenses must be subtracted from revenues for the purpose of calculating just how profitable a company is a at any given time. In other words, net income = revenue – expenses, and the result of this calculation must be positive in order to show profit.

2 – Cash Ratio

How much cash are is a business supposed to have in its register or operating account? This is a simple calculation: cash / liabilities = cash ratio. The cash part is easy to determine since it consists of the currency plus any investments that can be readily converted into cash. The liabilities are any debts currently in effect.

3 – Business Assets

Business ownership is typically expressed as a percentage of equity. When the general liability of a business is added to the equity that the owner holds, the result represents the assets of a business. Thus, equity held by owner + business liability = business assets. Please note that since liabilities are usually expressed as negatives, and thus this equation is actually a subtraction most of the time.

4 – Breakeven Point

How much does a business need to sell or produce in order to cover the costs of running the company? Basically, fixed costs / variable cost per unit = breakeven point. Fixed costs may range from employee salaries to lease payments, tolls, monthly loan obligations, etc. This is an equation that can be easily calculated with a Business Process Management Software (BPMS) solution, which is strongly recommended for company owners who wish to manage their businesses efficiently.

5 – Profit Margin

Calculating net income is only the beginning when trying to determine the viability of a business. The profit margin is a much better indicator of the health of an enterprise. Essentially, net income / sales = profit margin, but here’s a better example: Let’s say a restaurant holding company owns three pizzerias that together produced $1 million in sales and $100,000 in net income; this implies a 10 percent profit margin, which is low for the specific industry.

6 – Cost of Goods Sold

This formula does not apply too much to business owners that provide services; it is mostly for manufacturers, distributors and some retailers. Cost of materials – cost of outputs = cost of goods sold, which can illustrate if the materials acquired and the manufacturing or distribution efforts are in line with the revenue earned.

7 – Debt-to-Equity

This is a calculation that is used when commercial loans are sought by a business owner. Total liabilities / total equity = debt-to-equity. To obtain the ratio as a percentage, multiply by 100.

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Making Money is Killing Your Business

I am a huge fan of the German approach to business. The mittlestand, family businesses that are homegrown, anchored in the locality, with a long term multi generational perspective, focused on creating wealth. Particularly “Hidden champions” opened my eyes.

So I was very taken with “Making money is killing your business”.

Time to grow up

It is time for a lot of business owners to grow up. It is time for businesses to grow up. Chuck Blakeman has an interesting perspective on start ups and small business. Too many do not grow up and you have created your own job, not your own business.

The tyranny of the urgent

He refers to it as the tyranny of the urgent versus the priority of the important.

Urgent is reactive, short term and defensive and is the treadmill of making money. Important is proactive and long term. It is about making money versus building a business.

Wealth

It comes down to the definition of wealth, which is the ability to choose what do with your time and your money. Can you?

Are you the main producer/deliverer by choice or necessity?
Does the business make money when you are somewhere else?
Are you making decision based on where you are, or where you want to be?

Chuck blames the focus on exit and selling your business. In his view that is similar to selling your children. Why would you invest all that love, time and passion to sell it off, instead of creating an ongoing stream of long term wealth?

Time and money are at a premium

Gallup research tells that the average business owners work 52 hours a week (hose are the lazy or lucky ones). They work 6 days a week, some have zero vacation and when they do over 50% still answer work related e-mails and calls. Only 3% of business owners create 86% of the revenue in the USA. So time and money are at a premium. How can you earn more money in less time?

Are you on the treadmill?

According to Blakeman there are seven stages of business

Stage 1 Concept and start up
the trick here is to move as quick as possible from dreaming to doing. Dreaming includes thinking, researching and planning. The number one indication of success is the speed of execution.

Stage 2 Survival
you have burned a lot of fuel, time is grinding, sales are difficult and you are focused on making money. You are now on treadmill of urgent.

Stage 3 Subsistence
you can pay your bills and are making money. There is little time to relax and your focus is on keeping it going. If you don’t watch it you are back in stage 2.

Stage 4 Stability
you are making a net profit and you have freedom money to spend. You can choose what you can do with your money. Time is still a big issue. You have created yourself a well paid job. You are an employee of yourself. An hostage to your own business.

Stage 1 to 4 are treadmills. You focused on the wrong question, which is “How do I make money”. Making money is NOT an empowering vision.

You need to get off the business treadmill!

The basics of a mature business are that you are not the main producer and it makes money when you are not there. Which moves us to stage 5 to 7.

Stage 5 Success
you have shifted your mindset to building a business versus building a job. You are moving from production to process. This is where Chuck introduces “freedom mapping”, which is a version of process mapping that brings clarity to what people are supposed to do and how it fits into the overall customer delivery process. It makes things consistent, repeatable and replicable.

Stage 6 Significance
you role has shifted to becoming a leader and you are less and less involved in direct delivery and production. You business is starting to make an impact. You are free. However, leadership is in place, leadership is not in charge. It is vision and guidance, which means you still need to keep an eye on the business and guide management.

Which brings you to the last stage. Stage 7 Succession. This is where leadership is in charge and you have ingrained a culture that embraces you vision. Only vision. You are truly free.

The key question

What is stopping you to get to stage 7? Chuck thinks it is only one reason. You are not asking the right question. How do you build a mature business and when do I want to get there?

What do you need to do?

It is very simple. Intentionality. Make the decision, put a date on it and go public. Going public changes everything (the Hawthorne effect (also referred to as the observer effect) is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify or improve an aspect of their behaviour in response to their awareness of being observed).

As a business owner you owe to yourself to try. Why would you not? How could you not? Particularly if you know that retirement as we know it now is bankrupt. Create your own retirement on your own terms.

Pick a date. You now have a clock ticking in your head. Define what does your business look like at maturity. Consider your lifetime goals (why, why, why, what is the transformative purpose). Consider the time and money required to create your ideal lifestyle.

More money, less time

Now back to basics I. More money in less time. How to increase revenue and continually reduce time to bring in that revenue.

The freedom questions

Is this (whatever you are doing right now), the best use of your time? If this is not the highest and best use of your time, how do you ensure you do it for the last time? Those two questions need to be asked constantly in all parts of the business. Parts such as leadership, business development, operation and delivery, financial management, customer and employee satisfaction and to community and family impact.

Systems and processes are the key. What is your yield per hour now? What should it be? Do the activities you are involved with now, warrant the yield per hour you want?

Back to basics II

Back to the big why. Why are doing this? Why do you matter? Why does your business matter? Why is it significant? What do you want to be remembered by? Purpose and passion. Using time, money and energy to create significance. Every book on strategy we covered on Bookbuzz always boils down to that question. See http://www.bookbuzz.biz/the-strategist/ for example.

You then need a strategic plan. You don’t need a business plan. Chuck is not a fan of business plans. Planning does not create, movement does. And the size of commitment to the intent. Straight from Do! by Kevin Kelly . Develop a two page strategic plan with key milestones and with an action plan attached. You review that strategic plan every day. You need to be able to recite that plan verbatim any time, any place within a maximum of 3 minutes. In the meantime the business maturity date is ticking in the background……

You need then set of outside eyes. A group of mentors. An advisory board. Make sure you are not alone.

In the book Chuck Blakeman gives a wide range of toolsets to figure out your lifetime goals, strategic plan, your leadership profile, etc. But the most important tool is the freedom mapping. Your franchise handbook. Your process descriptions. If you do one thing, do that. Map your overall business process and then break it down.

Stop playing office

Build a business engine. Create wealth, not money. Become a master of your own destiny. Become intentional, set the date, tell the world and move.

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The Business Achievers Awards 2015: Open For Entries

As many of you know we at Small Business Can are big supporters of business competitions: anything that gets you thinking about your business and working on your business rather than in it. And if you can generate publicity, link into a great business network and meet bankers, politicians, founders and journalists along the way, that’s even better.

Enter The Business Achievers Awards

The Business Achievers Awards competition is probably one of the biggest and most broadly based competitions on the island with categories to appeal to most businesses of all sizes across sectors. The application form is here and will take no more than 30 minutes to fill in. It could be 30 minutes well spent because there are great benefits to entering.

Here are some good reasons why you might want to consider adding ‘must enter business competition’ to your ‘business planning to do’ list!

The application process is an opportunity to reflect on what your business is all about and clearly articulate your USP.
It’s an opportunity to work on your business rather than in it by stepping back to look at achievements, challenges, market trends and areas for improvement.
It will give you time to reflect on new angles and perspectives to overcome obstacles or to plot new strategies for growth.
Competitions are also about PR, marketing, selling…spin. They’re an opportunity for you to raise the profile of the business for free. Entering the competition will get you into the local press. You could get your business national and even international profile.
By working the competition – filling in the forms correctly, engaging with local reps for the competition, turning up at the networking events, volunteering to give quotes and elbowing yourself into photos, you will get marketing material that’s ‘independent’ for your website and other marcomms.
If you progress through the competition there are some programs such as Ulster Bank’s Business Achievers Awards that produce corporate videos for all of the short listed companies. These are done by professional companies with editors and designers. You probably cannot afford to produce these yourself! They are given to you after the competition for your website and other marketing material, and they will impress!
Working the competition will also give you access to a big network of people that can help your business grow. The politicians always turn up. You’ll meet the local and national enterprise support agencies. Bankers, funders, journalists, other successful businesspeople…the big national Awards are a veritable who’s who of the great and the good in business. And you’ll be one of the stars of the show…just by entering. And if you win…!
When you sit down and take the time to apply to a competition, you’ll realize that you have a team supporting you. It illustrates the importance of the support of family and its role in moving your business forward. You’ll see the staff that have and are stepping up to the mark.
You’ll probably get your management involved. Sometimes just by reflecting and internally acknowledging what you’ve achieved together is a major win in its own right.
Even if you’re not short-listed you will benefit from working ‘on’ your business. You can use the knowledge to plan future strategies and identify weak areas. It’ll help you make your business stronger and better. And that’s what it all, eventually, boils down to!

Don’t miss your chance!

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Building a Loyal and Long Term Consumer Engagement

Satisfying your customers is key, and having a solid strategy about how you’re going to engage them is important. In order to establish a philosophy about how to best maintain a long term engagement with your customers, you need to take a few key ideas into account. Most of these core principles stem from high standards of communication utilizing the best tools available, and a solid understanding of your customers’ needs. Here are a few tips on how you can develop and maintain a loyal program of long term consumer engagement.

Communication Is Key to Long Term Consumer Engagement

Forbes pins communication as a top priority, advising businesses to routinely provide customers with updates that are both positive and negative. No news is not good news, whether you have to deliver a setback or an achievement. There are many reasons to stay in touch with customers. Not only is it a practical method of moving projects along and making sure everyone is on the same page, but it’s also an important part of presenting your business in a positive light. Trust is just as important as communication when you’re dealing with customers, and you can reaffirm that quality by never falling off the radar.

Beyond Your E-mail Inbox

The Marketing Donut recommends that for effective management of customer relationships, you should use every possible channel to communicate with your customers. E-mail alone isn’t good enough anymore, and utilizing other modes of interaction, such as video conferencing or even social media, makes them feel valued and in the know. This is essential to maintaining a positive feeling in your business dealings. Video conferencing in particular has become a very popular mode of business communications, with providers such as Bluejeans and others offering select services specifically designed with consumer engagement in mind. Blue Jeans for customer management offers many different options tailored specifically for customer communication. It’s essential to stay on the cutting edge of this type of technology, since it will push your customer relationships forward and into the 21st century.

Implement Your Game Plan Innovatively

John Tschohl, Desk.com blogger and self-described “guru of customer service,” is an expert in the consumer engagement and service industry. While developing an effective, long-term strategy, he recommends taking a three-pronged approach:

Product. View your service as a product, and realize that your customers have a choice in a competitive market.
The Boss. Your customer is really your boss. This is an essential part of the ideology behind customer service, and placing it at the center of your company’s core is extremely important since customers are what drive your business.
Reliability. Maintain consistent performance to meet and ideally exceed your customer’s expectations time after time.

These core principles are always good to keep in mind when you’re planning a longer term approach to your customer communication and engagement program. Always keep your eye on the prize when it comes to the product, since that’s ultimately the core of what the customer pays for. However, a huge part of maintaining business isn’t just a great product, but the package that comes with it. Customers don’t want to have to feel like they’re bothering you or that they have to hunt you down. They really are the boss, and when they snap their fingers, you should expect to jump. And last, but not least, reliability is also of equal importance. All of these elements can be better achieved using a technology like video conferencing due to the fact that it’s immediate, it’s user friendly given current advances with browser compatibility and other multi-platform availability, and it puts a face to the business.

Don’t Be Afraid of Feedback

It’s easy to send feedback that’s watered down in an e-mail, because no one likes confrontation. This includes your customers. However, although it might seem counterintuitive, you should encourage your customers to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly all at once. Using a video conference to get feedback can better facilitate this once you establish a rapport. It’s easier to rap with a colleague that you’ve worked on a project with if that’s the type of relationship you establish with customers. Don’t make them feel like you’re on opposing sides, just because they’re paying you for a product you provide. Sit down for a video meeting, armed with a pen and paper, and tell them you want the real feedback. It’ll help you in the long run and strengthen your other customer relationships.

In short, establishing an effective and functional consumer engagement policy requires a more proactive approach. Using tools like video conferencing and other types of communication methods that go beyond traditional e-mail correspondence not only facilitates a better relationship, but also helps to build trust and belief in your product. While many businesses are mostly focused on rolling out a great product, when you’re dealing with customers, you need to put a personality to the business as well as what you’re selling.

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