Three Reliable Strategies to Help Your Growing Business Up Its Game

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Growing your Business|Three Reliable Strategies to Help Your Growing Business Up Its GameOnce you’ve got your startup off the ground, your next exciting phase is all about growth and development. And it can be a steep learning curve! To establish your company as a leader in your field and beyond, you need to be able to stay stable through periods of explosive growth, even if your resources are stretched. Many companies hit a speed-wobble once the demand gets too high. Unless you can keep calm and carry on, your growing business may never reach its full potential.

So how do you ensure sure that your startup takes growth—and the many challenges that growth brings—in its stride? Putting into place these strategies could help you keep up with demand without sacrificing quality… or sanity!

Get Your IT Sorted Once And For All

One of the top challenges for emerging companies is trying to meet higher demand with limited IT capability. Once your business is on its way, it makes sense to use your incoming capital to iron out all the hitches in your IT department once and for all. Purchase specialized or purpose-built programs to make your life easier. Everything from HR to payroll can be greatly simplified with the right software for the job. Likewise, where hardware is concerned, now is the time to invest in optimizing things like your Cabling System and building access system.

As is often the case in life, you get what you pay for when it comes to IT services. Expensive custom-builds can be hard to justify before your business has peaked, but paying a little extra now is likely to pay off down the line, as you’ll end up with the perfect software solution, not just for the present moment, but to meet the additional demand as your business grows.

Take The Lead in Customer Service

Maintaining top standards in terms of service is essential to your ability to keep attracting and retaining new customers as demand goes up. Whether it’s through intensive training or technological enhancements, delivering an unmatched customer experience at every step of your customer journey will make it more likely that your business customer base will not only continue to expand, but also grow more loyal. Repeat business is the bread-and-butter of many businesses in the small to medium-sized bracket, so treating your customers like royalty is a sure-fire way to keep your ship stable when the storm clouds gather and the waves get a little choppy.

Nail Down Your Brand Voice

Once your company starts to grow and your brand gets more exposure, this is a crucial time to invest in the voice of your brand. You can do this in-house, but you may get a better result if you get professional help. Find a copywriter who can demonstrate that they ‘get’ what your brand is all about, and get them to help you distill and clarify what your business sounds like—how you talk to your customers, pitch your ideas, and even speak amongst yourselves within your organization. A skilled copywriter will produce a “Brand Bible” for you to distribute among your team, ensuring that all internal and external communications (from website copy to client emails and social media posts) are in line with your brand values, and how you see yourselves as an organization. Having a cohesive brand voice is crucial to building rapport with your audience and fostering trust in your brand.

Whether you employ two people or two hundred, dealing with growth can be a huge challenge. These tips will help you embrace change and deal with whatever the market throws at you.

4 Simple Ideas To Market Your Restaurant Business

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Restaurant Business|4 Simple Ideas To Market Your Restaurant BusinessMarketing continues to be of primary concern for restaurateurs. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, drawing in the consumer is more important than ever before. Restaurants continue to be a favourite pastime when it comes to socializing with family and friends. There’s a huge scope to increase your profits if your marketing is done just right. If you’re looking for some simple and effective ideas to market your restaurant, you’ll want to take a look right here.

Video marketing

The modern consumer often prefers to view content as opposed to reading it. According to statistics via Insivia, viewers only retain 10% of a message from reading and a huge 95% when watching a video. These days it’s simple to create your own video marketing content. You can use sites like YouTube to upload content, share on socials or embed in your website. Consumers love behind the scenes footage and getting to know the faces behind a brand. Food content can be really fun with how-to videos or recipe tips. Video content gets shared online more than any other type; so it’s a surefire way to improve your marketing and get noticed.

Loyalty Programs

If your restaurant doesn’t already have a loyalty program, it’s a great idea to create one. Offering your customers rewards for returning is an excellent way to strengthen your customer base. To save the paper, consider digital loyalty cards offered via apps. Consumers have come to prefer accessing their services digitally. If your restaurant provides an easy to use app and loyalty card, you could be gaining an edge over your competitors. You can use your email marketing to provide friendly reminders to encourage the use loyalty programmes.

Use influencers

Influencer marketing has surged in the last few years, and the restaurant industry can easily tap into the benefits. Hubspot reports that as many as 82% of consumers are likely to follow an influencer recommendation. The concept of influencer marketing is all about trust. Often, people tend to trust other individuals over brands. Micro-influencers have smaller but very active followings of people who trust them. They tend to theme their content in a specific niche. You’ll need to find the right influencers with food-related content and get them on board with your campaign. From here, you’ll gain lots of new business. Ensure that you also have a great blog with strong SEO. When people are searching to, ‘find the Best Restaurants near me,’ for example, great SEO could lead them right to your website.

Special events

Marketing is often about standing out from the crowd and offering something special. As a restaurant, you could collaborate with some local musicians and offer some live music nights. Giving something a little extra can work wonders for drawing in new crowds. If you can theme the music with the kind of food that you offer- all the better! Creativity is the foundation of all the best marketing strategies. Always think back to your branding when you are designing your special nights, offers and creative web content. Succeeding in the restaurant industry relies much upon stand-out marketing.

Ways That You Can Improve Your Customer Care With Technology

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Care|Ways That You Can Improve Your Customer Care With TechnologyWhen it comes to technology, there are a number of ways that it can benefit your company. You can use less paper – good for the environment and also for the state of your office! – and you can make a lot of processes within your office run a whole lot more efficiently. But it can also benefit your customers, thereby raising your standard of customer care. Here are a few tips on how you can do that…

You Can Provide Information Easily

Thankfully, technology has made it super easy to provide information to your customers. Your website is supposed to be your first online port of call, so make it a good one. It should be instantly clear what your product is and what it should be used for: don’t provide too much information on the first page, because people will zone out, but go into a more in depth explanation on your ‘About Us’ page. You should also make sure that you should use your site to show customers how they can easily get in contact with you through phone, email, and social media. You could also consider providing a postal address on there, although remember that if you don’t have a physical premises yet, a PO box is just fine.

You Can Give Them What They Actually Want

Using analytics software, it’s extremely easy to see what your customers want. You can see how they interact with your company through emails and newsletters that you send out, through your social media feeds, through your app, through your website, through your blog… the list is endless. You can use the data that you collect to analyse what your customers prefer, meaning that you can provide more of that to them instead of irrelevant and boring information that will annoy and frustrate them. Figuring out what the customers want means that you can provide this information to your sales team, who will be able to target them and provide them with the exact services and products that they actually desire.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Care|Ways That You Can Improve Your Customer Care With TechnologyYou Can Connect With Them Over Social Media

Social media has made building a relationship with your clients easier than it ever has been before. You need to consider exactly what sort of company voice you want to use: a lot of businesses settle on a business-like but friendly tone, but if you’re aiming at a younger market then you could also look into hiring a social media expert who speaks the language of memes and emojis in a way that can connect to younger people. You can demonstrate through your social media that you answer questions, that you’re always available, and that you provide simple solutions to any problems that people might have. Keep calm, don’t interact with trolls, and make sure that you post regularly.

You Can Keep Their Data Secure

Security is something that is hugely important to everyone, and technology can thankfully help to make sure that data is stored in a secure way, rather than on paper in filing cabinets in your office. You can encrypt data, password protect it, and make sure that only certain people can access it. This is particularly important when it comes to personal information like contact addresses and numbers, and even more so, payment methods.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Care|Ways That You Can Improve Your Customer Care With TechnologyYou Can Outsource To Speciality Companies

Not everyone is completely adept at using technology, and if that sounds familiar, remember there’s absolutely no shame in outsourcing. A copywriter for your website blog is a great idea, a social media expert for your Twitter feed, and an IT company to run your IT services. It’s a good idea to hire a company that’s specific to the field that you work in: for example, a healthcare IT expert will have different skills from a company that’s used to running small online stores. Outsourcing can be difficult if you’re used to running a company mostly by yourself, but remember that you didn’t start your business to struggle with computers, with payroll, with other aspects of the business that you can’t quite get your head around – there’s no shame in enlisting experts to make those aspects of your company as good as possible.

You Can Ask For Their Opinions

Technology makes it incredibly easy to ask your customers for their opinions. You can post polls on Instagram to see what lipstick shade you could bring out, or you could make it more serious and send out surveys to see how your customer service is rated after people buy products and services from you.

It’s never been easier to build great relationships with your customers – technology has made it incredibly fast and simple to reach out to people and to provide them with what they need.

Unusual Hiring Practices

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Unusual Hiring PracticesInterviews are terrible vessels for people to get to know each other truthfully. Everyone is putting on a show. To make a terrible analogy, consider dating. People are at their best, hiding their flaws and playing up their strengths, flirting with lying and omission in order to control the perception of the other. Interviews share a lot of this.

The opposition between the interviewer and interviewee makes it so that both parties are trying to sell to each other. The interviewer sells the idea that working in that organization is a dream while the interviewee sells the idea that they are the perfect match for that position. It’s pretty ludicrous when you think about it. Rather than have an open and honest dialogue about the organization, the candidate and the fit or unfit, interviewers to flaunt about how great the organization is in, rejoicing in the schadenfreude experienced by the candidates who so desperately want to make it through and be accepted by the all-powerful interviewer. It boils down to power-tripping that adds very little value to a meticulous selection process.

That’s why I try to deconstruct this framework. Hiring is not about us evaluating candidates. It’s about trying to establish whether or not fundamentally there is a cultural and behavioral fit. We will also consider past experience and skills but as secondary to the decision making the process. The primary driver is the fit and both the candidate and the interviewer are discovering together whether the fit is there or not.

Even though it’s straight-forward, deconstructing the current paradigm is not easy given how ingrained it is in our thought-process. Deconstruction is a multi-pronged process and it involves the following elements:

1. Get out of the Evaluator chair. You are no different, no better than the person you are interviewing. Be normal, be human and make others feel comfortable. This gives people the chance to disarm and to forget about having to prove themselves. Having the chance to see people in their natural state is the greatest revelation you can attain from an interview. No one I know can work in interview mode all the time. It’s not sustainable. Work is stressful and the hours are long. That’s why we want an interview process that leads us to find people who feel naturally comfortable in our culture.

2. Focus on the behavioral aspects. We tend to be very impressed with big names and big titles on people’s resumes. But we are not hiring their education nor their work experience. We are hiring a person. And that’s what we want to get to know. How do they react when feeling examined? How do they feel when we are smiling? How do they feel about being confronted? How do they deal with pressure? And you don’t find out these behavioral trends from asking about them. You find out about these things by getting to know a candidate. Go beyond your own biases and use your senses.

3. I strongly advise candidates not to work with us. Why should we try to pretend that it’s great working here? It’s not. It’s work. Most people would not choose to work here if they had 50 billion dollars in the bank. That’s just a fact of life. We don’t want people choosing us for the wrong reasons. Paying bills, needing a job, wanting to advance a career. Those are all legitimate pursuits that most of us share. But we want to hire people based on the deeper motivational drivers. We want to find people who want to be a part of something bigger than their own selves, who do not mind getting into constructive conflicts and will stand by their opinion. We understand that people that we bring into the company are the very fabric of the company’s soul, which most of us refer to as culture.

So we deconstruct the traditional hiring paradigm by forgetting about skills and focusing on the person. We deconstruct the interview paradigm by not positioning ourselves as interviewers but as partners who are working together to find out whether or not this is indeed a good fit for all of us. We find out more about people when they get a chance to speak more honestly and when we truly hear what is being said. We forget about the labels and the brands that are pegged to resumes and we look at the intersection of values and goals. Those are the pillars for a solid and prosperous relationship. And that’s what hiring is in the end. A relationship.

About the Author

Gabriel Fairman, Founder and CEO of BureauWorks, has been working on transforming localization business processes into technology over the past 15 years. Over the past 5 years he has focused on developing algorithms that make sense of bigger data patterns in order to predict translator performance based on data obtained through peer reviews. The challenge on building AI towards that end is that translations can be great and still be significantly changed by reviewers. As changes are for the most pasty subjective, there is no direct correlation that can be established to easily determine the quality of translations based on simple data sets. The challenge requires digging deeper into more complex correlations that allow translation quality to be managed through algorithms that can reliably pair the right linguists to any given document. Gabriel’s focus is to think systemically as opposed to through a causality framework in order to solve these harder problems through AI.

Working from Home with A Disability

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Working with a Disability|Working from Home with A DisabilityIt is estimated that around 19% of the UK population of the adult, working age suffer from a disability according to recent data obtains by the department of work and pensions (DWP.) Despite significant improvements in employment rates and government programs arising to further support those with disabilities enter into work, it is undeniable that having a disability has a significant impact on your success when seeking a job.

Depending on the impairment, disability can influence the duties you are able to perform. In the case of mobility complications, getting to work and around work can present its own set of challenges that cannot always be avoided. Advances in technology and online job roles present a much greater opportunity for those with disabilities to work from home, and this can actually be an advantage. It can offer autonomy, flexibility and the opportunity to either take up remote working for a company or to work for yourself.

What can you do?

The options available to you are limited only by your own imagination. If you are computer savvy then suggestions could include:

  • Remote telemarketing
  • Online tutoring
  • Freelance writing
  • Transcription
  • Home call center or customer support agent
  • Online auctioning
  • Online businesses

In addition to this there is also a growing trend surrounding crafting, and many people both enjoy and make a good living from making things to sell; baking, greetings cards, trinkets, artwork, and customized clothing are all popular homemade products that are allowing people to make money, work around their family life or appointments and enjoy the autonomy of working for themselves.

It is fairly straight forward to set up an online business, there are many apps and software to manage your finances and invoicing and it is quick and easy to get professional websites and marketing material produced.

Preparing for home working

There are a few things to consider when preparing for working from home with a disability:

Technology

If you plan to take up an online endeavor then you may require a computer or laptop, or appropriate hardware or software to improve its ease of use. There are various technologies available such as screen readers, magnification, voice recognition, and adapted keyboards available for those with physical impairments, that can make computer use far more accessible.

Access

Mobility can pose an issue both at work and at home. If you intend to set up your own home business then you may prefer to use a designated office space. For many this can be a spare bedroom or study space. The chances are that you will store paper work, materials or other essentials away from your working area and if you suffer from mobility issues or are a wheelchair user, this can be taxing. Terry Lifts can make traveling from floor to floor for work much easier and quicker, are unobtrusive and don’t require significant structural changes to your property to install.

Deciding what to do

Settling on a business idea or setting up a home business can present its own hurdles. The beauty of home working is you have the autonomy to find your passion. You can try a few things and see what brings you the greatest job satisfaction, job satisfaction is important for both motivation and mental wellbeing. Test the water a little, experiment and pursue something that you find interesting or enjoyable. Contacting equal opportunities for employers and enquiring about remote working options may open up other ideas that you had thought were off the table. Do some research and don’t be afraid to ask for assistance; there are many charities, community, and government schemes and investors whose objectives are to assist those with disabilities in finding work.

Don’t let disability hold you back

Whatever your condition, don’t let it hold you back from following your dreams. Remote working opportunities, crafting, online retail, having a determined and positive mindset and finding convenient work can bring a multitude of job opportunities to your doorstep, quite literally.