Whether you have set up a business that exists entirely online or you are moving into the position of having your products shipped out, there are some common mistakes that are always going to be worth avoiding. In this blog post, we are going to be looking at a few of these in closer detail to help you avoid repeating them yourself.
Not Training Your Drivers Properly
Driver training should be treated as a priority as these are the people who are actually going to be getting your packages from A to B and interacting directly with your customers as well. In terms of safety, a fleet defensive driving course is certainly a great starting point. You should also train in areas such as the proper practices for the loading and unloading of a vehicle, as well as how to manage a route in real-time. Don’t forget about the customer service element of the job as well. People are going to remember how they are greeted by their delivery driver when it comes to thinking about whether or not they will order from you again.
Using Poor-Quality Packaging
Packaging may not be a detail that you have thought about too closely, but it is certainly one that is worth bearing closely in mind. Instead of just choosing the first box you see that seems a roughly appropriate size, instead you should test is properly to see how well is does in transit. You should also ask questions of how easily it fits together and if it is going to fit through a mail slot or not. You should also consider the padding in the package that helps to ensure the item does not become damaged along the way. Of course, if your product is easily breakable, this is bound to be even more important.
Not Focusing on Attention to Detail
When you are shipping out packages, it may seem like there are a million and one different details that you have to pay attention to. If you do not juggle them all effectively, this is where problems can start to arise. You have the weight, size, package type, and all the associated costs to factor into it. Also, ensuring that you take a correct address from a customer is important, and you should also think about the distances that will be covered.
Not Estimating the Delivery Time Correctly
While next-day delivery services have revolutionised the industry in a big way, many people are simply happy knowing that their package is going to arrive with a clearly established timeframe. Therefore, you should do everything that you can to ensure an accurate estimate of when that important package is going to drop through the mailbox. Think about the different speeds of delivery service that you are going to offer and how easily and realistically that you are going to be able to achieve all of them.
Avoiding these common courier mistakes can seriously help you achieve successful deliveries.
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If running your own business is your ultimate career dream, then enhancing your entrepreneurial skills should be a top priority. In many ways, it’s easier than ever to set yourself up as an entrepreneur, but this doesn’t mean that success naturally follows. If you want to succeed as a business owner, it’s important to know how to launch a start-up, secure investors, and develop a brand.
However, it’s equally important to know what not to do! With this in mind, take a look at these three rookie mistakes every entrepreneur should avoid and start building your business now:
Not Managing Your Reputation
As an entrepreneur, your personal brand has a significant impact on your commercial success. After all, you aren’t just building a business; you’re establishing yourself as a thought leader and industry guru too. Due to this, you need to be acutely aware of your personal brand and manage your reputation accordingly.
In today’s online world, everyone has an online reputation, but few people actively manage it. By ignoring your digital reputation, however, you could be harming your future career prospects. Conversely, taking steps to implement a reputation management strategy with specialists like Reputation Defender allows you to take control and nurture a positive reputation that will help you to succeed.
Working Too Hard
Entrepreneurs are known for their work ethic, and you’ll often hear of business owners who spend 16-18 hours working every day. However, working too hard can be extremely damaging to your health and, ultimately, to your business as well. While there’s no doubt that you’ll need to put the effort in if you want to be a leading entrepreneur, it’s essential to find a work-life balance.
By using time management strategies to maximize your output, prioritizing downtime, and making time for other interests and hobbies, you can ensure that your entrepreneurial interests don’t take over your life. As a result, you’ll protect your physical and emotional well-being and even enhance your commercial performance.
Moving Too Fast
When you have a great idea for a new business, you’ll want to get it up and running as quickly as possible. After all, it’s important to strike while the iron’s hot and launch your brand before competitors have a similar idea. Although timing is critical to success, moving too fast and launching a business before it’s ready can have disastrous consequences.
Without the right team in place, you might struggle to deliver the service that your customers expect, for example. If you don’t have sufficient funding, you may be unable to fund your operations. Similarly, a lack of marketing can make it hard to engage with your target audience. There are numerous different aspects to consider when launching a business, so take your time to get things right if you want to reap the benefits.
Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
It’s easy to assume that all entrepreneurs are overnight success stories, but the reality is very different. In most cases, people work diligently for years to develop their skills as a business owner, so don’t panic if it takes some time for you to achieve the same. With hard work and dedication, however, you can increase your profile, achieve commercial success and establish yourself as a successful entrepreneur.
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For most people, the sole idea of standing in front of an audience, presenting something, is terrifying. Even so, most have to do this in their lifetime – and more often than they can anticipate. It’s very unlikely that a student will go through the educational system without being asked to present something, or that a person will get a higher position at work without the need to present their ideas to others.
That being said, everyone needs to learn how to create quality presentations. In presentations, the tools used in the process and the presentation itself make the biggest impact.
Now you’re probably thinking – and what about the presenter’s speech?
Yes, this is equally important, but you can hardly make a badly designed, messy presentation look good even if you are the best speaker. This means that everything starts with the presentation.
How to Design the Perfect Presentation
When you have a ready presentation, one that perfectly and concisely captures the information, and looks amazing, your job is almost done. You can prepare your speech thanks to the ready presentation, and engage the listeners with the carefully thought-out design.
Now, how do you make a great design for your presentation? This is what this article will explore.
1. Smart use of visuals
Visual aids are used to attract the listeners’ attention and compliment your oral presentation. The goal is not to repeat the same information, but to put an emphasis on the most important things and help the presenter with their speech.
The slides in a good presentation offer a summary or a visual element that supports the data that the presenter discusses. How you arrange them and which visuals you use can have a huge impact on the audience’s engagement, as well as the presenter’s success.
Let’s see some tips for the visual elements in your presentation.
Pitch’s writer has pointed out one highly important thing when designing a presentation – visual consistency. As their guide says: “slides don’t exist in a silo”. To create a presentation, you need slides that work as a unit, which requires the perfect layout, content, design, and structure. This is why your priority should be to build consistency into the presentation from the start, to avoid endless revisions afterward.
Some excellent tricks to make this possible, according to Pitch, are slide frames and backgrounds. Even if you provide different information in different slides, you can make it consistent thanks to patterns, shapes, and similar or same backgrounds across slides.
This requires a creative touch and some experience so, if you’re struggling with creating a consistent structure, you might want to use Pitch for assistance. The tool allows you to simply add your colors, fonts, and other brand elements, and create an amazing design without any troubles.
Some other tricks related to the visual elements of your presentation are:
Keep it simple. Over-cluttering your slides can only distract the audience, as well as the presenter. They simply ruin the design.
Remember that one picture can tell a thousand words. Instead of writing endless content, find the perfect visual that will present that same idea.
Think about accessibility. Using visuals is not just about using quality images, colors and fonts. It’s also about putting them on the slide. Can everyone see the visuals? Are they clear? Do they hide the content or vice versa?
2. Flowing structure
The visuals you use, as well as your speech, should be guided by the structure and content of the presentation. In most cases, presenters know what they want to say before they sit down to create it. However, many jump right at it without considering the structure, flow, and order of information.
This is where the mess happens.
Since presentation-making includes content creation as well as design, it’s important to plan it ahead. It’s similar to any other piece you create, just like the academic content you wrote at school. It is ideal to have an outline first.
How well you structure your content will have a huge effect on how good the presentation looks. This will also determine a lot of your design i.e. where you place the visuals, how you create font hierarchy, etc.
One general rule-of-thumb for structuring presentations is:
Start with a compelling introduction. Amazing presentations always start with attention-grabbing introductions. Unless you get their attention from the start, your chances of getting them interested in your speech are much lower. This is why this is the trickiest and most important part. It needs to introduce the topic interestingly, provide some facts, and engage the audience.
Offer a body of evidence. Once the audience knows what you’ll talk about and are eager to keep listening, it’s time to throw all the key information at them. Use evidence, facts, quotes, and everything else necessary to back up your main points. If there’s too much content in this part, reduce it to the most important parts, and use visuals to make it more appealing.
Sum things up. Now it’s time to end your presentation, so sum it up with key takeaways, and don’t forget to ask your audience if they have questions.
3. An acceptable amount of content
In presentation-making and designing, less is more. You can’t just take the guide, book, or content you need to present and copy it into hundreds of slides. Okay, you can do it – but you definitely shouldn’t.
You also shouldn’t fill the entire slide with tons of content. Many do this and when the presentation begins, they read it word for word. That’s not how presentations should work.
The actual, tangible presentation on the screen should serve as a guide for the presenter. It’s you who has to share the information vocally, not write it all on the screen.
Even if your first content draft includes tons of data, that’s why edits are there for. You can write down everything you want to share at first, and reduce it gradually as you are designing your presentation. Ideally, you should limit the amount of copy on every slide you create to the very minimum.
Slides in your presentation should include only the key data. You should use it to point out the most important things and make them longer-lasting in the eyes of the audience. You should use it to list numbers that your audience might want to write down, or to emphasize things with percentages, quotes, and data.
When you’re creating the presentation, think ‘bite-size’. Present the information in chunks and, wherever possible, use visuals to complement the text. Inc.com reports that content that includes images produces up to 650% higher engagement compared to text-only content.
Just imagine – you are in the audience and someone talks for an hour by showing slides full of text all the time. Compare this to an experience where you can see charts, tables, images, and even videos. Which one sounds better?
It’s the latter, of course.
In terms of words in a slide, there are many opinions of the ideal number. For example, Pharmacoepi’s research shows that you need to use up to 30 words per slide. The popular 1-6-6 rule (or variants such as the 1-5-5 or 1-7-7) say that your slide should have 1 main idea, 6 bullet points, and 6 words per bullet point.
These aren’t rules and shouldn’t be taken as such. In fact, no one can tell you what the ideal word count is per slide, and it’s not obligatory to use the same system throughout your design.
In the end, it all comes down to your content, design choices, and preference. But, you should still keep your content more limited.
4. Right choice of fonts
Fonts are a tricky business when you need to present limited content, emphasize the key information, and make it visible from all angles. There are plenty of things to consider. If used properly, the font can make your design amazing. Here are some tricks that could help:
Find the right contrast between the background and your font. If your font and background don’t fit, it won’t really matter what you put on the screen. It can be hard to read, look bad, or annoy your audience. You don’t want any of this. This is why you need to find just the right combo, the perfect contrast between your font’s color and the background.
Use the standard fonts. It can be tempting to use those silly, bolded, or unusual fonts when you make your presentation. You may even think: “this will make it more unique and memorable”. But in most cases, this results in illegible presentation or messy content. This is why it’s safest to stick with the standards, fonts common for all computers (such as Arial, Verdana, or Tahoma). If you don’t, one big issue can occur – the computer you’re using might not have the font installed, and it will substitute it with something that doesn’t fit instead.
Wrapping up
Presentations can have a huge effect on the audience, as well as the presenter’s success. They can help you present your findings, make arguments, convince people to take action, guide them, motivate them, etc. But, to achieve all this, they need to be amazing. One huge part of it is the design. This is where you should get started – and focus on. Good luck.
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An MBO or MBI can give you the opportunity to step up from senior manager to business owner. How do you plan a successful MBO?
What is an MBO and why might a business go for a MBO
When a business is purchased by the management team within the company by borrowing funds, this is referred to as a Management-Buy-out (MBO). Generally, MBOs are only partially financed with private assets by the management. Most of the money used to buy out the current owners is provided by banks and financial investors.
A business might decide in favour of a MBO for various reasons. One might be that the current owners of the business decide to retire or withdraw from the company. It can also be a move to release divisions in large-scale companies that are no longer considered significant to the overall brand.
For management teams it can mean greater financial rewards and more influence in the decisions that the company makes.
In general, business owners often welcome MBOs, since they can be confident that management is extremely committed to the success of the brand.
Management Buyout (MBO) vs. Management Buy-In (MBI)
The terms Management Buyout (MBO) and Management Buy-In (MBI) can seem confusing since they sound similar. However, they are very different. Instead of management buying the company, during an MBI a company is bought by external managers and the existing management team of the company is replaced.
How is an MBO funded?
Since the management team is usually not able to purchase the company themselves, the money for the sale needs to be raised. Substantial funding is required for management buyouts. For this reason, management looking to buy the firm will connect with investors, banks, private equity firms, and possibly mezzanine lenders. This means that outside entities gain some financial control over the company.
How is an MBO undertaken?
A MBO is a long process, which typically takes many years to complete. For a successful MBO it is important that the management team has enough experience and is regarded as trustworthy by the owner of the company.
A management team within a company usually has a deep understanding of the brand that they are looking to purchase. This makes an MBO a good option for a buyout in many cases and gives managers the chance to purchase all or part of a company and gain more influence within that firm. While funding typically has to come from investors, which may give external entities some control over the company, management will still be able to invest in a brand that they are already committed to and very familiar with.
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Science and technology have made tremendous progress over the last decade. What was the subject of science fiction books and films not so long ago has become real and accessible today. Perfect examples of the implementation of these visionary ideas are virtual and augmented reality. Although these technologies are similar, they offer different types of experiences for users: Virtual Reality (VR) is completely computer generated, while Augmented Reality (AR) superimposes selected images over the user’s field of view.
Not only for entertainment
Virtual reality is commonly associated with entertainment and games. No wonder – the exploration of digital worlds can be exciting, and immersion – the feeling of being immersed in a computer-generated environment – can be incomparably greater than when we simply sit in front of the screen while playing.
No one is surprised by the use of virtual reality in military training, medicine and tourism. The possibilities that arise when we put on the VR goggles seem almost endless, which, for example, museums make great use of.
Virtual reality in a banking version
It is an opportunity to present various data in an attractive way. Instead of presenting tables and numbers, the advisor will be able to, for example, transfer the client to some real estate, show him spatial, attractive charts or visualize data or the effects of various decisions.
Searching through a variety of financial data can be a serious headache. The question is, how do you turn boredom into fun? Then virtual reality comes to mind. The idea is to visualize said data, which is usually dry and unfriendly – and in effect make it much more accessible. We can also visualize the potential effects of an investment decision.
The digital world as an argument
However, this is only one aspect of the revolution that virtual reality can bring in banking. What else could change? The latest research shows that virtual reality is a great tool that helps us understand the meaning and meaning of various banking products.
This is evidenced by an experiment conducted on a group of volunteers. Its participants were given VR goggles, and after putting them on, they were placed in a room with a large mirror that they could look into while remaining in virtual reality. Some saw his current reflection in him, and others saw his face, but reshaped to reflect his appearance at the age of 70.
After such a session, the respondents were asked how much of the $ 1000 they would like to spend on their current needs and various pleasures, and what part to save for future retirement. It turned out that people who saw their old alter ego in virtual reality were inclined to retire almost twice as much as the rest! Virtual reality helped in this case to show that saving is not some abstract sacrifice, but actually money that we give to ourselves – just a little older.
Our only limit is our imagination
When and if we visit the bank wearing VR goggles? The growing popularity of virtual reality suggests that it will happen soon. It is all the more likely that access to VR has become cheap and common due to solutions that use our smartphones.
Therefore, it is only a matter of time when, sitting comfortably in an armchair, we visit our bank, the appearance of which we will adapt to our current well-being. Pastel walls and a startup atmosphere? Here you go! Or maybe stylish marbles finished with brass? No problem!
During the conversation with the advisor, we will move, for example, to a housing estate where we intend to finance the purchase of real estate with a loan or – if we have such a whim – even to the Amazon jungle. With VR goggles on your head, we will only be limited by our imagination.
All this with the innovation that is Mazerspace – a virtual space platform that lets banks create tailor made VR spaces and VR experiences for both their clients and employees. To learn more visit https://mazerspace.com/finance/
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