What is an Apostille and when do I need one?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | What is an Apostille and when do I need one?Apostille is what confirms the validity of a document in another country. But apostillization is allowed only for countries that did not participate in the Hague Convention in 1961. This method is considered simple and does not require much time. The participating countries must complete the legalization with the help of the consulate.

An Apostille is an international standardized form filling data on laws issued by an official document for presentation on the territory of countries that recognize this form of legalization. Today more than 80 countries are parties to this agreement. The purpose of affixing an apostille stamp (apostille) is to confirm that such a body exists in a given state, and it has all the necessary powers to draw up and (or) certify a document. The apostille confirms that the person acting on behalf of the state body and issuing the official document was authorized to issue it.

The “Apostille” stamp is placed only on the original documents of the state standard. Apostille is placed on official documents and (less often) on their certified translations only if they are intended for use abroad, i.e. in a country other than the one in which they were issued. The apostille contains the details prescribed in the Convention, does not require any other certification or legalization of the document, and is recognized by the official bodies of all states parties to the Convention. Apostille is issued by a state body, which is a higher authority of the body that issued the official document.

According to Article 1 of the Convention, the following documents are considered official:

  1. Documents emanating from a body or official subject to the jurisdiction of the state, including documents emanating from the prosecutor’s office, a court clerk, or a bailiff’;
  2. Administrative documents (documents on education, civil status, certificates, powers of attorney, etc.) ;
  3. Official marks such as registration marks; visas confirming a specific date; certification of a signature on a document not certified by a notary.

The apostille itself is a square stamp that includes information about the paper or document on which it is located. It should say about the name of the country in which the legalization took place, when and where the certification took place. You also need information about the person who performed this procedure, the name of the document itself and the date of its issue, and the name of the organization that carried out the apostille.

You can put such a stamp on papers from the registry office. These include a document confirming marriage, birth, or death, as well as a change in passport data such as first and last name. Also, it can be affixed on educational documents such as a diploma and certificate. This can also be done on decisions with sentences and other documents issued by the prosecutor’s office. Papers issued by a notary are no exception. This can be done on charters and contracts, visas and certificates of experience.

Sometimes the papers mustn’t be subject to apostille, because they are the property of the country where they were issued. These are passports, workbooks. To prove their experience, they use certificates that will be accepted abroad. However, it is allowed to put this stamp on their copies.

You can affix an apostille at the Ministry of Justice, Education, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs together with the Prosecutor General’s Office. It is also possible to do this at the Ministry of Finance and Defense. However, you should first check for corrections and inscriptions, because they should not be. It is also important to look at the correctness of the information on the document.

The apostille procedure is needed when a person applies for a well-paid and good job, leaves for another country for a while or forever. It is also needed when treatment abroad is required or when the preparatory stage of obtaining citizenship is underway. The procedure is required when a person participates in a lawsuit with a foreign citizen or adopts a child abroad. It is also necessary when obtaining a license to carry weapons.

So, apostillization is an important process that takes place in several stages. First, a copy or original of the document is certified by a notary, then apostille in the relevant authorities follows, then the text is translated, if necessary, and the signature of a specialist.

 

Strategies to Transform Your Small Business into A Large One

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Strategies to Transform Your Small Business into A Large One

Small businesses play a large role in the world’s vibrant economies, as they employ many people and drive innovation and competitiveness. According to the US Small Business Administration (SBA), small businesses constitute 44% of the country’s economic activity. However, every small business owner’s primary goal is to have a company that expands and eventually becomes large and profitable. So which smart strategies can help turn your small business into a large one? Here are four points to consider:

1. Extend your market reach

Making your products or services available to new customers is a great way to expand your small business into a large one. New markets represent new customers, who also represent fresh opportunities for increased earnings. You should open stores in new areas to introduce your business to new customers. Experts also recommend targeting new groups in your locality who could use your products and services, aside from your regular customers. Finding and promoting new uses for your product also encourages existing customers to purchase more from you. Therefore, it would be advantageous if you extended your market reach to increase sales and transform your business into a more stable model. Over time, this stability will only lead to increased earnings that will transform your business into a large one.

2. Introduce new products and services

Many business experts agree that the business world is in constant flux, and as such new products and services are crucial to the survival of companies. Consider introducing new products and services that attract new customers and encourage your existing ones to buy more. Accomplishing this can be quite tricky, but with research and flawless execution, you could be on your way to bigger things. First of all, you must identify a pressing need through customer interaction, employee brainstorming, and personal research. Then, you must develop and test a product concept that meets this urgent need. Developing a good prototype is essential here, so reach out to experts to find out how it works and how best you can bring your ideas to life to permeate new markets.

3. Consider franchising

Research reveals that 80% of McDonald’s locations are franchises. Franchising is a useful tool that you can also leverage to transform your small business into a big company. As your small business begins to experience success, consider licensing your branding, business model, and processes to others who will market your products under your brand name. Franchising has many benefits that should make it a vital consideration in your business expansion plans. Firstly, it can substitute capital acquisition as a less risky and more cost-effective way of business expansion. Franchising also gives you more motivated unit managers because your franchisees are business owners themselves with a vested interest in your business’ success. It facilitates faster growth because you team up with already successful companies, which catapults you to a market leadership position within your industry ahead of your competitors. You should see franchising as a way to increase your business’ profitability, penetrate new markets, and transform your small business into a large company.

How Franchise Owners Can Use Customer Service to Outdo the Competition and Grow Their Business

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Franchise Owners|How Franchise Owners Can Use Customer Service to Outdo the Competition and Grow Their Business“Next in line.”

Nothing projects mediocrity better than this tired, dusty greeting. You know it well, because you’ve heard it thousands of times. This robotic phrase and its cousins (“May I help you?” “What can I get you?”) efficiently move things along and cue the customer to state their business. They also prepare the customer to be underwhelmed. It’s the typical encounter we’ve settled for as consumers. And that’s the opportunity for franchisees.

With the bar set so low for customer service, franchise owners are well positioned to jump ahead of the competition. Their franchisor has already developed proven systems and desirable products. Franchisees who deliver these products in a delightful, surprising way will stand out from the lackluster crowd. They’ll awaken customers from their lifeless transaction trance and prime them for excitement, loyalty and spending. Here are three ways to make that happen:

1. Elevate the customer’s emotions. Whether you sell cheeseburgers, pest control or senior care, you’re in the happiness business. People tend to remember how they feel more than what they got. It’s their emotions that most influence what they think of you, what they say about you and whether they come back. Every customer is a potential repeat customer and a walking spokesperson for your business. If you just sell them the “thing” but don’t make them feel a little better, you’re missing an opportunity and leaving money on the table. Be deliberate about providing emotionally satisfying experiences. Use the delivery of your products and services to lift their spirits. In exchange, they’ll lift your revenue.

2. Connect with your customers. Research shows that few things in life make people happier than meaningful human connections. We’re a social species. We’re drawn to community and we deteriorate when lonely. Even introverts have a need for occasional companionship. That doesn’t always mean deep friendship or intimacy. But small moments acknowledging each other’s humanity validates our individual existence and feeds our soul. These moments range from long conversations to saying “bless you” to a stranger who sneezes.

Your customers aren’t coming to you for friendship, but they do respond to friendliness. That means giving them a warm greeting that’s different from the way you greeted the last customer. (You wouldn’t walk around a party and greet every person the same way.) It means relating to them person to person, rather than cashier to customer. You can still do this quickly and professionally (think Starbucks, In N Out Burger). What you don’t want is to facilitate cold transactions or robotically repeat phrases that are written friendly but not spoken friendly (“WelcometoPete’sPizzahowcanihelpyou”). Be present, be authentic and be human.

3. Exceed customers’ expectations. Customer service is your absolute best form of marketing. Unlike an ad that gets seen mostly by people who don’t need what you’re selling, customer service is making an immediate impression on the hottest lead there is. This is someone who’s right there with money in their pocket and an interest in your offerings. And they’re quite likely to need you again. Good ads bring customers in. Good service brings customers back, often with friends. And when they do return, they’ll have more confidence in you and more enthusiasm for what you sell. The goal is always to give them an experience they want to repeat.

Giving the customer more than they ask for is a smart investment. Whether you’re throwing something in, taking a few dollars off or just giving them a little more time and attention, this something extra is part of your marketing. It’s something you do to ensure they return. You’re probably already spending money running ads for people who will never come in. It makes a lot more sense to invest in people who’ve already identified themselves as your base.

Most businesses are too busy being busy to do these things well. Your franchisor undoubtedly wants you to create great experiences for your customers, but they can’t control that. It’s up to you. Make customer service your number one priority. Create experiences that make people happier. Customers will notice, and they’ll come back for more.

About the Author

Scott Greenberg is an internationally recognized speaker, author and coach who helps franchise owners grow their businesses, build high-performing teams and create unforgettable customer experiences. He has given presentations in all 50 states and throughout the world with franchise clients that include McDonalds, Great Clips, GNC, RE/MAX, Smoothie King, Global Franchise Group and many more. For 10 years, he was a multi-unit franchise owner with Edible Arrangements, winning Best Customer Service and Manager of the Year awards out of more than 1,000 locations worldwide. Learn more about his new book, The Wealthy Franchisee, at https://www.scottgreenberg.com/the-wealthy-franchisee/ and https://www.amazon.com/Wealthy-Franchisee-Game-Changing-Franchise-Superstar/dp/164201124X.

4 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Improve Their Business With Agile Marketing

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Agile Marketing|4 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Improve Their Business With Agile MarketingAgile marketing has been lauded as a must-have for marketing teams and big-name businesses. But startups, small businesses, and even solopreneurs can all benefit from Agile marketing in four crucial areas: improving discipline and communication, growing the business faster through validated learning, adapting to changes (like the COVID-19 pandemic) quickly and successfully, and creating remarkable customer experiences.

Agile boosts discipline and communication

“Discipline” and “process” are two words seldom used by entrepreneurs. Yet, startups and small businesses can grow faster – and more predictably – with some discipline and just the right amount of process. And that’s where Agile’s methodologies come in.

When everyone in your business is running around like Usain Bolt at a Black Friday sales event, they’ll all benefit from Agile’s 15-minute morning meetings to talk about what they did yesterday, what they’re going to get done today, and what’s blocking their progress.

If you’re a solopreneur, answering these questions for yourself is a good way to take stock of each day’s progress and challenges. The Agile term for this 15-minute session is the daily standup.

Weekly planning sessions, and the use of whiteboards for tracking work, can also help entrepreneurs and their teams prioritize and track the progress of critical work, allowing everyone to see at a glance what’s getting done and what’s not. In the Agile world, these techniques are known as Sprint planning and Kanban boards.

Spending a few minutes at the end of each week to look at what’s working and what’s not, and trying new ways of working, also has an Agile name: the retrospective.

Whatever you call these processes, they’ll add discipline and structure to your startup or small business, and they’ll ensure you’re getting the right things done each and every week.

Agile grows your business faster

The two most precious resources of any startup or small business are time and seed capital. How can you maximize these investments? Through an Agile discipline called validated learning.

Many entrepreneurs take the “throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” approach to marketing. But with Agile, you’ll use validated learning to think like a scientist: Who are my best customers? Where do they get their information? Why do they buy from me? What experiment can I run to confirm my best-guess answers to these questions?

Scientists call best-guess answers hypotheses, and you’ll be testing your hypotheses through validated learning.

Rather than throwing $20,000 at Facebook advertising, for example, and hoping it will produce some sales, you’ll run a small test for $500 or $1,000. Only when you know that your advertising is working will you spend your full budget.

How do you decide which experiments to run? I recommend a simple framework called ICE:

  • I stands for the impact a successful experiment could have on your business.
  • C stands for your confidence that the experiment will be a success.
  • E stands for how easy (or hard) it will be to run the experiment or promotion.

Assign a value from 1 to 5 for each experiment along each dimension – I, C, and E – and then calculate the score as the total of the three scores. Run the experiments with the highest scores first.

Agile helps you adapt to change quickly

Every entrepreneur is encouraged to write a business plan. “Where’s your business plan?” asks the banker. Yet, as every entrepreneur knows, business plans and marketing plans quickly become outdated. You can’t update them frequently enough to keep up with the daily pace of your business.

I recommend a different Agile-themed approach: napkin plans. Write your business plan on a napkin (or a single sheet of paper) and update it often.

Napkin plans work because they’re:

  • Short
  • Visual
  • The product of talking to prospects and customers
  • Updated frequently based on feedback and changing conditions

Agile creates remarkable customer experiences

Rather than buying products, many people today are buying experiences. Think about it. When someone buys an Apple product, whether it’s an iPhone, a Mac, or an Apple Watch, are they really buying the product, or are they buying the Apple experience?

Sure, not everyone loves Apple. That’s OK. But those who do love Apple pay premium prices, buy anything they make, are incredibly loyal, and can’t remark enough about the experiences they have with Apple products.

How do you create your own remarkable experiences? You have to know your best customers better than anyone else and go above and beyond satisfying the needs of those customers who will ultimately become your biggest fans. And Agile marketing can help with that.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | JIM EWELJim Ewel is one of the leading voices on Agile marketing. He co-organized the first meeting of Agile marketers and co-authored the Agile Marketing Manifesto. Today, his blog is one of the most trusted sources on Agile. Jim runs an Agile marketing consultancy, where he has helped over 60 organizations adopt this futureproof approach to marketing. His new book is The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing: Proven Practices for More Effective Marketing and Better Business Results. Learn more at AgileMarketing.net.

Making as Many Sales as You Possibly Can During Difficult Times

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Making Sales|Making as Many Sales as You Possibly Can During Difficult TimesIt’s nearing the end of 2020 and many of us are having a bit of a tough time in many ways. The coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has been impacting the majority of our lives since March – and for the most of us, this hasn’t been in a particularly positive way. Now, it’s important that we don’t forget the main tragedy to come out of this pandemic – the huge loss of life throughout the world caused by this potentially fatal virus and disease. But that’s also not to say there haven’t been other troubles along the way too. For many of us, the pandemic has caused significant hardship and financial struggle. Why? Well, in order to save lives by slowing the spread of the virus, many governments around the world have implemented measures that have caused businesses of all shapes and sizes to struggle. In order to combat the virus, we need to stay at least two metres away from each other, or, when the R rate has boosted, even had to go into lockdown situations where all non essential businesses have had to close their doors. All of this means less sales. If you can’t have people in your store, you can’t operate. If you can still have your store open, but can only have people in there if they’re stood two metres apart, you have a limited capacity and sales will suffer. This is all doom and gloom, we know. But what can you do to continue making sales during these difficult times as a business owner? Here are a few pieces of advice that could help you to get through this!

Selling Products? Switch to Ecommerce

If your store sells products, now is the time to switch to Ecommerce. Ecommerce stores are allowed to continue operations. Sure, you’ll need to make sure that the staff fulfilling your orders in the warehouse are safe, and if you have your own delivery staff, you’ll need to make sure they’re safe too. But this is an ideal way to be able to continue operations while stores are shut and even while stores are open, but you can’t have all too many people inside. Now, we’re fast approaching two of the biggest shopping seasons of the year so far. These are Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season. So, you’ll want to make the switch as quickly as possible in order to be able to make the money you usually might. So, how do you go about switching to Ecommerce? Here are a few steps that will help you to get it right first time around.

Set Up a Website / Improve Your Website

If you don’t have a website yet, now is the time to create one. If you already have one, but haven’t focused on it all too much in the past, now is the time to improve upon it. Your website is going to be your customers’ and potential customers’ main contact with your store. So you need it to look good and you need to make sure that people can easily navigate their way around it to find what they want. Of course, learning how to code and learning what kind of design works is a long and difficult process. You probably don’t have time for this right now. So, work with the following individuals – a web designer, a web developer and a UX designer. The web designer will make sure that your site looks great. They’ll know what to put where and how to combine everything together to create something that is on brand and beautiful. The web developer will take care of the back end of your site. They’ll make sure that everything actually works. The UX designer is a user experience designer. They’ll ensure that the site makes sense for your users and is easy to use. This reduces the number of people leaving your site. Finally, you should work with all three individuals to make sure that your site is optimised for mobile too. Increasing numbers of people are shopping on their mobile, so you don’t want to miss out on these sales!

Provide Customer Support

Of course, when people buy online, they tend to have more questions than they might in store, as they can’t feel or try out the products themselves before buying. This means it is essential that you have some sort of customer support put in place and that your website lets customers know how to get in touch too. If you don’t have time to deal with customer queries, make sure to hire a customer support agent who can respond to questions via a business email, via a chat box on your website, or even via phone. The more points of contact that customers have for your company, the better, as it allows everyone to use their preferred way of getting in touch!

Selling Essential Services? Manage Your New Workload

If you’re selling essential services and cannot work from home, chances are you’ll be able to continue work as usual. You’ll simply have to follow new safety measures, which will include staying two metres away from others, wearing appropriate additional PPE (such as face masks or face visors) and washing or sanitising your hands regularly. Now, chances are, you may be experiencing an increase in demand. Essential services are in high demand right now and, unlike the majority of the population, you may be experiencing a higher workload. You’ll need to organise and manage this effectively to ensure that you don’t miss anything out or disappoint anyone. Consider using software or apps like JobNimbus to help you with this. It will take care of everything from sales to estimating, scheduling and work orders. It can be tempting to take on more work than you can handle, but avoid this. You want to do a good job, get good reviews and maintain a good reputation. You also don’t want to burn yourself out.

Are Your Staff Able to Work Remotely?

If you’re running a business where staff would usually work in an office, consider whether they would be able to work remotely. Remote working is becoming favoured by business in a wide range of industries. Many have seen that their staff can work just as effectively from home and are opting to continue remote operations permanently, as it saves significantly on commercial property rent and overheads too! Now, a switch to remote working has to be done carefully to ensure that everyone copes with the move well. The steps below could make this process seamless.

  • Ensure All Staff Can Work Remotely Safely and Comfortably – in offices, you provide your staff with ergonomic furniture and equipment. This keeps them safe and prevents them from experiencing issues such as chronic strain injuries. Apply this same mindset to when they’re working at home. If your staff require, allow them to pick up their chair, footrests, backrests and other essentials from the office to use from their own home.
  • Make Sure Staff are Trained in New Software – it’s likely that your staff will have to use new software when they start working from home. This can include software like communications software, video call software, time tracking software and more. Don’t simply assume that everyone will figure out how to use it. Instead, hold virtual training that will ensure everyone knows what they’re doing.
  • Set KPIs – if you are concerned about your staff’s productivity while they’re working from home, you may want to set KPIs. KPI stands for “key performance indicator” and it will be some sort of individual goal that each staff member will need to achieve by a set date. This will indicate whether they are performing as they should. This will ensure that everyone keeps up with their workload and doesn’t slack.
  • Be Understanding and Flexible – of course, these are very difficult times for some people. So, make sure to be understanding and flexible with your staff. Some may not have ideal working conditions, or may have more responsibilities on their hands during the day, such as extra childcare if schools close, or caring for vulnerable loved ones.Chances are you’re experiencing a lot of changes if you’re running a business right now. But at the end of the day, change may be essential in order to keep things up and running! Hopefully, some of the above advice can help you to experience success with your business in spite of the pandemic. Some of the changes are easier to implement than others, but all are essential for different types of businesses to continue making sales and generating profit. Implement them into your operations sooner rather than later and you should benefit!