10 Factors to Consider When Choosing a Roof Type for Your Construction Projects

/in /by

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | 10 Factors to Consider When Choosing a Roof Type for Your Construction ProjectsYour roof will determine the durability and appearance of your business facility whether it’s an office or factory. Here are 10 factors worth considering when choosing a roof type for your construction projects.

Choosing a roof type comes with great responsibility. This also involves choosing the right contractor for your construction projects as they influence your decisions the most. Baker roofing company provides you with the 10 factors to put into consideration when choosing a roof type for your construction projects.

Your budget

Finances will always be your number one constraint. How much are you willing to spend on your roof? A good roof type will always be more expensive than the rest. You should be aware of the costs you will likely incur through the process of purchasing, installation, and maintenance. Costs may include that of raw materials, transportation costs, a roofing contractor, and maintenance costs.

Budget involves estimation of costs prevailing in the market. The use of construction estimating software eliminates the likelihood of underestimation or overestimation. Having a good budget with correct estimates shades more light on how much the project will cost you.

Business needs of the facility

When choosing a roof type for your construction projects you need to consider the business needs. Does it need a roof? Is it an office? In case it’s a factory, are there any pollutants emitted? Will they react or cause damage to the roof? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself to make a good choice.

The geographical location of your building

Different regions have different trends of weather. The weather may differ year to year in terms of wind velocity, rainfall, and snowing and other regions may experience the extremes of these weather conditions. Different roof types are made to withstand the extremes. Your geographical location may restrict you to only certain types of roofs hence you should consider looking into this.

Cost of maintenance

Roofs also need maintenance to keep them functional. Some types of the roof will require high maintenance with the need of expertise which may be expensive. Some may also need to be replaced wholly, therefore, you should take into account this factor.

Reviews, references, and testimonials

A good roof type will be followed by positive reviews. Check the provider’s website or social media platforms to see the reviews and testimonials given by their customers. Ask for references from other owners of buildings who have already installed their roofs.

The length of service

Longevity varies from one type of roof to another. In addition, other factors may influence its normal lifecycle by either prolonging or shortening it. These factors may include exposure to the sun, level of maintenance, and installation. The key goal of any business is to maximize profits and minimize costs hence the need for long-term goals prioritization.

You need to ask yourself this: will there come a time when you’ll have to relocate? Do you have ideas of converting the building into something else shortly? Answering these questions will help you make an informed decision on the type of roof you need to purchase.

Level of expertise of the roofing contractor

Some negative reviews of the roof types may arise due to poor workmanship. You may end up not liking your roof type because it was wrongly installed by an unqualified professional. Expertise in this field has vast knowledge on the different types of roofs and has a better understanding of which one will suit your business. You should also consider looking into the number of years the roofing contractor has been in the market. Those with over 50 years of experience such as slate roofing should provide a high level of expertise.

Energy saving

Energy-saving roof systems are becoming popular because of their efficiency. They can recycle toxins that are hazardous to the environment hence leading to energy bills savings. They are quite expensive than others but in the long run, you save more on your energy bills.

Building codes

Some states have restrictions on the type of roofing for safety purposes. This is because some states are exposed to risks that are natural such as tornadoes and hurricanes.

The roofing application

Are you applying the roof to a new building, as an addition or as a replacement? Answering this will help you in choosing the correct roof type needed.

Conclusion

Making a good choice of roof type is very vital for the success of your business. Your decisions should be informed. Considering the 10 factors discussed above, you will be guided to arriving at the best decision.

How Should Leaders Promote Healthier Workplaces?

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | How Should Leaders Promote Healthier Workplaces?

The food industry is an industry that always has its discussions around the topic of health, but this is something that we don’t always consider within small to medium-sized businesses. While there’s a lot of talk on health well-being and mental health, common physical health is just as important. So when it comes to being an effective leader for a business, we’ve got to learn how to promote workplace health but also make sure that we promote a healthy lifestyle. So how can we do this?

Implement Healthy Practices in the Workplace

It’s about leading by example, if we are shown to have healthier practices, this will begin to slowly seep into our employees’ mindset. It’s important to have certain touchstones of health dotted around the office. A good example would be a juice bar or juicing machine. Juicing is a great way to detoxify and energize us, which can have a massive impact on productivity. You can use this link to take a deep dive into juicing and see if it works for your employees. But also, it’s about slowly getting rid of those unhealthy practices that we’ve come to rely on. A very common example is having doughnuts or pizza at the end of the working week. If you want to decrease productivity, this is the best way to do it! While not many people would like you for swapping pizza or doughnuts for fruits, you can find tastier and healthier choices.

Focus on Prevention

Prevention is much easier than cure, and it’s also much cheaper! Everybody is more focused on health than ever, and if you want to focus on general preventive health, you could bring a doctor into the workplace and speak to your employees about certain health issues. But you can also incorporate this into the perks of the job. For example, you could offer rebates for arranging flu vaccinations. You could also look at rebates on health insurance or provide more incentives. These are all little things that can help you in the long run because they will reduce sick leave, and make for a healthier workplace environment.

Encouraging More Physical Exercise

Physical exercise is a great way to encourage better health, but it doesn’t need to be expensive. You might not want to start a running club, but if you are looking to encourage employees to be healthier, you may want to add standing desks, install bike racks in the car park, or provide allowances for public transport. Another unconventional approach could be to have walking meetings. You may think that you are part of The West Wing by doing this, but when you think about the benefits of walking, it could stop that lethargy that occurs during mid-afternoon meetings.

Creating Healthy Attitudes

This is something that will take a while to embed, but from a cultural perspective, healthy attitudes will improve productivity and well-being in the long run. It’s a very difficult thing to get right, but when we start to incorporate health as a priority, we have to remember that it should come from the employees. Healthy attitudes can come from well-being hours, allowing people to finish an hour earlier so they can focus on their well-being, but also providing implements around the office that can help. Of course, we should focus on improving our employees’ education as well. Sometimes, we don’t have the relevant knowledge to improve our health. And as things are changing so much in terms of exercise and attitudes to health, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest data. What we can do is facilitate discussions on the latest trends and how it impacts people in the workplace. We could encourage our employees to speak to a doctor or a practicing dietitian about certain concerns, and then help them to manifest ways to incorporate being healthy in the workplace. Many people find it difficult to be healthy in the workplace because of the temptations, but also a lack of time to prepare things before coming into the office. In which case, what we need to do is to bring healthier options into the working environment and encourage your employees to choose their best options.

Promoting health is something that doesn’t come easy because we have to find the right balance. Some people do not want to be told how to be healthy, but others merely need guidance. But we have to remember that for the benefit of productivity and workplace happiness, health should be a priority.

Improving Quality Assurance During The Software Development Process

/in /by

Quality assurance (QA) is a crucial part of the software development process. Regular testing ensures that applications are not filled with bugs and they operate as they should. Unfortunately, a lot of companies have trouble with their QA process because they think that throwing money or more people at the problem guarantees results. However, that’s not the way that it works and if you want to improve QA, you need to adapt your strategy and change the way that you approach it. Here’s how you can improve quality assurance in the software development process.

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | Improving Quality Assurance During The Software Development Process

Improve Project Management

One of the biggest ways to improve QA is through project management. If you want to make sure that QA is working, you need to make sure that it’s an integrated part of the development process and not something separate from everything else. So many companies make the mistake of thinking of QA as an afterthought and that’s when the process suffers. Everyone has to have clear roles and responsibilities in testing as well as communicating with each other about what’s going on. It’s important that you have a good project management team to help integrate QA and ensure that it is a priority throughout the development process.

Implement Automation Tools

Another way that you can improve QA is through automation. With automation, it’s going to be a lot easier for people to do their jobs and test applications because they have tools at their disposal that make testing much more efficient. Using automation tools (like this one at testRigor.com) allows you to automate a lot of the time-consuming aspects of QA instead of testing everything manually. You can create detailed reports so you know exactly where the issues are and they can be resolved quickly and easily. Many people make the mistake of expanding their QA team instead of improving efficiency with automation tools. The problem is, more people complicate the process and increase the chances of mistakes. Automation tools solve this problem and save you a lot of time and money, while also ensuring that your QA processes are working as they should.

Test Throughout The Development Process

Another way that you can improve QA is by testing throughout the entire development process. Instead of waiting until everything is more or less completed and then testing, you should be constantly testing as things are added to applications. This ensures that new components and features don’t throw off the balance of what’s already been created and that there aren’t any crucial components that are overlooked. The more you test, the easier it is to fix issues when they arise and improve production quality. It’s always more effective to deal with small issues as and when they come up instead of trying to iron out complex problems at the very end of the development process.

Quality assurance is so important during the software development process and if you don’t get it right, the user experience of your applications will suffer. By making these simple changes, you can drastically improve QA in your business.

Top Business Tips for Hiring the Right Salesperson

/in /by

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Top Business Tips for Hiring the Right SalespersonHiring the right people is one way to encourage long-term business success and also reduce employee turnover, saving your business time and money. Hiring the right people can seem like a highly daunting prospect for many businesses, especially for entrepreneurs looking to build a solid team for their new brand.

Ensuring you hire the right person for the job is critical, no matter whether it’s a marketing assistant, a receptionist, a customer service contact, or an accountant. One area where it’s particularly crucial nonetheless is with a salesperson. This person — or team of people — is going to be responsible for chasing leads, driving sales, and ultimately succeeding in making a profit.

With this in mind, here are some top tips to get it right.

Set Your Wants, Needs, and Expectations

With sales comes a lot of potential, which means a high number of applicants and the need to wade through a great number of applications. While interest in the position is, of course, a good thing, you need to make sure you’re not wasting valuable business hours looking through candidate resumes that simply aren’t a good fit.

Setting strict requirements of what you’re looking for before advertising and interviewing will help you to stay focused and only receive applications from those people who fit the bill. Not only will this help you to preserve business time, but it’ll also prevent you from wasting the time of candidates too.

Experience May Not Be Everything

Of course, the ideal candidate might be someone who understands the sales cycle in detail, has a lifetime of successful sales experience, and is an exceptional people person. However, if you’re setting too much store by experience, you may be missing out on a compassionate people-person who has a great rapport with customers and the potential to shine with the proper training.

All of this will depend on the time and resources you have for training up candidates with less experience, but if you do have the resources, you may want to be flexible about experience and think about people eager to develop their sales career who have great personalities (compared to someone with 30+ years sales experience whose personality may not fit your brand).

Look for People Who Understand Your Brand and Fit Your Ethos

While the ability to make sales and work hard is naturally key, you want your salesperson to be the perfect fit for your brand — both for the success of your company and to ensure that they can have a job they’re passionate about too. Sales work more easily when the brand representative truly believes in and aligns with what the company and product is all about. You could have a highly experienced and likable salesperson who simply doesn’t understand your brand’s mission, and this could be a problem over time.

If you want your potential clients to get excited about your product and invest in you, then the salesperson needs to be someone who genuinely feels that way, too.

How To Maximize LinkedIn Ads

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |LinkedIn Ads|How To Maximize LinkedIn AdsLinkedIn is the most organic social network for B2B businesses. Therefore, business owners readily use LinkedIn ads to target decision-makers and make sales. Although social media ads are promising, not everyone gets their desired results. Usually, this results from a missing mark on critical factors, including audience, visuals, and messaging. This is why businesses work with B2B LinkedIn agency for expert help in getting better results.

This article discusses five ways you can maximize your LinkedIn ads strategies, especially if you are doing a DIY LinkedIn Ads setup and management.

5 Hacks For Maximizing Your LinkedIn Ads

1. Defining Your Target Audience

LinkedIn ads with proper targeting deliver effective results just like other paid advertising. A question that pops to mind is, how can you target the right audience? Identifying your target audience can significantly improve your marketing strategy.

When setting your LinkedIn ads targeting, consider professional interests, job titles, industry focus, education, and location. Afterward, you can use filters like industry, seniority, and job title to narrow your audience.

Defining your Target Audience helps provide solutions to decision-makers that most likely will take action through your ads. After narrowing your audience, the next step is to identify the LinkedIn groups they most likely spend their time on. Afterward, include such groups in your search parameters.

2. Selecting the Right Visuals

The human brain processes images about 60,000 times faster than text. Visuals, including photos and videos, are essential in LinkedIn ads. Fortunately, there are various text and visuals features that can enable businesses to craft the perfect ad. In addition, LinkedIn does not limit the text performance compared to other social media platforms

Studies show that LinkedIn ads containing larger, bold text have higher conversions. When creating your ad, you can add colorful, bold background to your graphic and a call to action of about four to five words. In addition, you can capture your audience’s attention by adding catchy photos and short videos to your ads. The most important thing to note is that using eye-catching content in your ad is more important than the visual because only eye-catching content can make users stop scrolling.

3. Crafting A Proper Message

Selling your product via LinkedIn ads may not produce the desired results. Your focus should be on solving a specific problem. Most businesses use blogs and eBooks to educate audiences while drawing their attention back to a website. This type of content helps with starting conversations on LinkedIn and collecting prospects email addresses for further discussion in a private environment

Furthermore, it is best to ensure that your visuals and messages work hand in hand. In this case, creating an objective regarding texts and visuals helps. Afterward, you can craft your ad. A defined purpose ensures that your ad copy and visuals are delivering the same message.

Keep in mind that you can’t create the perfect LinkedIn ad overnight. Although you have to understand your audience to create an engaging ad, it is more important to ensure that such ads fit your overall marketing strategy goals. Also, regardless of the channels you are using, all your content should pass the same message.

4. Nurturing Leads with Follow-up Email Automation

Sometimes clocks on a LinkedIn ad do not convert immediately. Therefore, you should aim at nurturing leads via email once a lead opts in. You can schedule the first emails to be sent an hour or a day after resource delivery.

Automating a natural sales process rather than hard-selling should be a primary focus. It is best to open up communication channels just as you would in a sales conversion. In this regard, it is best to ask your prospects questions regarding their businesses. Pertinent questions include the type of businesses they work with, the number of stores they manage, and the number of salespeople in their showroom.

Your leads are the prospects that respond to your messages. After creating your content, setting up your landing page funnel, and email automation, you are ready to target your audience.

5. Monitoring And Analyzing Ad Performance

The metrics you monitor are primarily dependent on your campaign goals. Monitoring clicks, impressions, average engagement, and click-through rates are necessary if your campaign goal is to gather views and interest. However, monitoring conversion rates and their corresponding costs are essential for campaign goals that involve driving leads.

You can monitor other factors to increase ads performance, including checking if the CPA is within target, identifying top-performing campaigns, and checking if you are targeting users in the right industry.

We can help!

If your marketing strategies are not giving you the best results, it is time to contact a LinkedIn ads agency. Professionals can utilize their experience in efficiently maximizing LinkedIn ads. At Getuplead, we are experts at creating awareness and increasing traffic and leads.
Reach out today!