How to Boost Your Retail Store Sales with Task Automation

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StrategyDriven, Business Management, Retail Sales, Marketing Automation, Lead Generation,Every business owner needs a little more time and money on their hands. But both resources can be hard to come by, especially if your everyday tasks are bleeding you dry.

Enters task automation and you can save the day and your sanity. Task automation saves you a lot of time and money, while allowing you to close more sales on autopilot.

Thanks to automation, you can effectively boost productivity, lower costs and offer better customer service online and offline.

With a clever automation strategy, your cash registers keep ringing and you spend less time on mundane and repetitive tasks.

At the end of the day, you end up with more time and money to channel towards business growth. And when you hit your growth goals, automation scales with you making your job easy.

With the preamble, continue reading to learn how you can easily boost sales in your store(s) with task automation.

How to Use Task Automation to Boost Sales

Automation uses software to carry out most of the tasks that were traditionally performed by a team of people.
Nowadays, and thanks to advances in technology, you can automate many tasks including marketing, lead nurturing, sales, daily operations and customer service among others.

In the following section, we cover several areas you can automate in a bid to increase sales while saving tons of time and money.

That out of the way, let us get down to business.

Marketing Automation

Businesses spend a huge amount of money marketing their products and services. Usually, most businesses don’t achieve the desired ROI thanks to poor execution, human error and so on.

Automating your marketing strategy can save you a lot of money and time. If you run a website for your store (and you should), automating your marketing efforts include adding features such as newsletters and social media.

Once a visitor sign ups to your newsletter, you can send them automated emails to convert mere subscribers to ready-to-pay customers. To automate opt-ins on your website, you can use a service such as OptinMonster and Thrive Leads among others.

If you didn’t know, email is a powerful marketing channel for online and offline businesses. You can easily send automated offers to your customers, which can boost both online and instore purchases tremendously.

Most email marketing providers offer you automation with a basic plan. For popular players in the industry, checkout MailChimp, AWeber and Campaign Monitor among others. Once you sign up, you can offer free content on a regular basis to win over customers, a practice known as content dripping.

Further, you can schedule social media posts that feed your social media marketing campaigns on autopilot. You don’t need me to tell you that posting on various social media platforms daily can eat up a lot of your precious time.

To be on the safe side, you can pick a few hours to schedule a month’s (or a year’s) worth of social media posts, and automate everything with a tool such as Hootsuite or BuzzSumo among others.

Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing involves actively participating in the customer’s journey from lead acquisition to purchase and beyond.

Many first timers to your businesses aren’t ready to purchase. However, you can turn the tables in your favor by automating lead nurturing – the process of converting a mere visitor to paying customer.

For starters, you must respond to contact requests immediately. If you delay your responses to customer queries for more than 30 minutes, you are 23X more likely to lose leads left, right and center.

What to do? Automate the contact process. How? Automate email/SMS responses that are sent out as soon as the visitor contacts your business.

As soon as you send out the canned response, automatically assign the lead to a sales rep who then follows up immediately. The prospect appreciates the fast response times, and you smile all the way to the bank.

Additionally, you can incorporate an automatic system that helps you to master phone calls. Such a system allows you to win leads you’d have otherwise lost due to phone tag.

On top of that, follow up with networking connections to generate more leads. However, following up manually can cost you a lot of time. You can automate the whole process, so you can follow up on prospective customers while saving time.

You can automate lead nurturing using a combination of tools such as email marketing, LeadSquared, Zapier and so on.

Sales Automation

Netting that one elusive sale doesn’t end with lead nurturing. Once you or your team has qualified a lead, it’s time to move on to the next phase; closing the deal. But inefficiencies can arise and kill the sale when you’re so close.

Your best bet is to automate the sales pipeline. There are couple of stages involved in closing the sale, and the fewer problems you have in the workflow, the better your bottom line.

A typical sales pipeline involves four main stages namely:

  • Identifying the new opportunity harnessed via lead nurturing
  • First contact when you or your sale representatives contact the prospect
  • Engagement, where your team finds out the prospect’s needs
  • Qualification, when the sales representative goes full throttle and closes the deal

To avoid problems, it’s best to automate the sales pipeline, such that the sales team focuses entirely on the hottest leads, without wasting time on trivialities.

With a great sales automation strategy in place, your sales team can move the lead from stage to the next without any hiccups, saving you plenty of time and money.

On top of that, you should also engage with interested leads who are not ready to buy yet. With a little automated persuasion, you can convince such leads to make the leap and become a customer.

Other than that, always welcome your new customers with automated welcome emails/SMS/phone calls. A huge chunk of customers loves welcome emails, and if you do your homework, you can even score repeat business automatically without trying hard on your part.

For sales automation tools, we recommend EngageBay sales CRM, Pardot, Hubspot Sales, and Keap (formerly InfusionSoft) among others.

Office Operations

Daily office operations can take a lot of time. On top of that, many stores don’t carry out next-day tasks, which results in huge losses. The best scenario for all businesses is to boost employee engagement and productivity.
And did you know you can leverage the power of automation to boost employee engagement, productivity and achieve consistent store execution? That’s right, you can automate plenty of instore tasks to save time and money, boost employee morale and promote effective customer service.

You can easily automate tasks such as office communication with a tool such as RetailZipline. Additionally, you can use the same tool to automate sending and receiving of important documents, set up daily task checklists, and foster store participation via surveys.

Other than that, you can automate inventory tracking (you can use Zoho Inventory), job applications, employee onboarding (you can use RetailZipline) and so much more.

Other Areas

You can further automate areas such as:

  • Events such as instore sales or networking events
  • Ecommerce including tasks such as recovering abandoned carts, updating credit card numbers, generating repeat business, etc.
  • Customer service such as making it easier for customers to seek help, gauging client satisfaction, asking for referrals by offering small gifts e.g. coupons, remembering client birthdays, and cleaning your email lists among others

Conclusion

Task automation can save you a lot of headaches, time and money. Provided you know the right strategy and tools to use, you can easily automate your business.

As a store manager, HQ or district leader, it is important to invest in task automation to take your business to the next level.

Have concerns, suggestions, favorite tools or questions? Please share in the comments. Cheers to happy automating.

How a smarter phone system equates to safer spending for any business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Phone System|How a smarter phone system equates to safer spending for any businessThe phones your business uses may be a central tenet of your operations, or they may barely even register as an after-thought. However, in every modern business it is an advantage to be able to have a proper conversation over the phone with someone at a distance. And for every business, therefore, it can be worth considering investing in a smarter phone system.

Smart telephone systems can look like an unnecessary upfront cost, but there are several reasons why upgrading your phone systems can represent an absolutely solid investment which will offer savings in the long term for any kind of business. Read on for our guide to the advantages to smarter phone systems.

How can you make your phone system smarter?

Smarter phone systems can reduce your costs and remove several different administrative needs. If you currently have to pay for both landline and mobile office phones, with confusing contracts, it can make sense to move to a service which is hosted on the cloud. While most of us associate “the cloud” exclusively with computing needs, such as file and image storage, the term more generally refers to secure, supported services provided in real time over the internet. The most commonly known effect of any cloud service is to save on server space and ease pressure on I.T. requirements at your office space.

It is possible, however, to have your phone services provided over the cloud as well. This would mean that all your business’ official phones would run on a single contract, and this also avoids the hidden costs of on-premise PBX network. This can be a particular advantage if your business is split across multiple locations, as it avoids the need for either expensive landline options or two different on-premise PBX systems.

How to upgrade your phone system

To upgrade your system, you need only look online. If you choose a cloud phone system by Gamma then you will be able to tailor your package to your company’s needs and size. One advantage here is a system which is compatible with a wide variety of phone handsets and headsets. With an app interface and administrative settings manageable from a mobile, your employees and freelancers have greater flexibility to work from home.

This freedom for employees to work from home while retaining access to their work phone and documents allows for a clearer relationship between management and home workers. This can allow for a greater level of telecommuting from your staff. In turn, this can have positive effects on your business’ carbon footprint and lead to increased productivity in cases where the reduction in commuting time has a positive effect on the mental and physical health of your employees.

The flexibility to increase telecommuting offers up whole new realms of possibility for reducing spending and reducing the amount of office space you need. When this is combined with the savings possible from being free of the costs of landline or on-premise PBX systems, choosing smarter phone systems is clearly the way forward.

Seven Ways To Prepare Your Business For Expansion

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Expansion|Seven Ways To Prepare Your Business For ExpansionKnowing when and how to take your business to the next level is an important skill for any business owner, whether you own a startup or a nationally recognised company. If you’re successful in your current market but feel like you need more of a challenge, expanding nationally or internationally needs careful strategy planning. Put your business through these top tips to get it expansion ready.

  1. Set attainable goals for your business. Make sure these goals are specific and measurable, such as taking on five new accounts by the end of the financial year, or increasing revenue by $1million in the next six months. Goals you can measure can be tracked so you know if you’re on track to meet target or if you’ll need to push harder to reach them. Set out a plan. How will you get from your current position to the goal?
  2. Can your company manage the growth? Do you have the capacity to manage the planned growth? Can you afford it? Do you have enough staff or will you need to bring in more? Can your suppliers meet a higher demand? Is your office large enough to cope with more staff? Make sure the answer to all these questions is yes before you start to grow.
  3. Do you have the right management in place? You need someone at the reins who is ambitious, driven and capable of taking your business into a larger market. Like Tully Rinckey, consider bringing in a new CEO or other management who can help you to grow. Look for people with experience in growing business who can advise and steer the ship successfully.
  4. Don’t be afraid to adjust the plans. You’ll inevitably learn more as your business grows. The industry may change, or the market may shift direction. Be ready to respond and adjust targets and plans to get there if you need to. There’s no point in sticking hard to a goal that is no longer relevant. It’s important to be flexible.
  5. Be realistic about your company. Are you already established in your field and working successfully? If not, don’t try to grow too early. Focus instead on becoming an established recognised name at your level. Growing too fast won’t help you at all. Is there a demand for what you do? You can’t grow if there’s not enough demand for your business. Some businesses just work better small, and that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
  6. Does your company owe money? Debt can snowball easily, so before concentrating on expansion try to clear or pay down as much debt as you can. A fresh slate will make growth much easier. A debt snowball method can help you to cut down your debts easily.
  7. Are you already growing? If you’re experiencing steady growth each year, with an increase in demand for your business, this is an excellent sign that it’s time to take things up a notch. Expand with more staff to take on a higher demand for your work and keep things profitable. If you’re not growing, it’s probably not the right time to expand.

The 4 Keys To Retail Success

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Retail Success|The 4 Keys To Retail SuccessRetail is one of the best kinds of business you can possibly be involved in. After all, people are generally always going to want to buy products from retail stores, and if you can set it upright and manage it properly you will find that it is not too challenging to be able to get people interested in your store. This is especially simple and straightforward if you happen to run a food retail store, or a fashion store, or anything which sells items which people always need and will always need. If you are keen to make it even easier for yourself, however, then there are plenty of things that you can do towards that end. You can, for instance, take a look at some of the following ideas on how to ensure retail success. You might be surprised at how powerful some of these can be once you put them into practice in your store.

Focus On The Experience

Something that makes a huge difference if when you change your perspective from what the business needs or wants to what is right for the customer. In general, you should always make decisions based on what the customer would think. As you walk around your retail store – or explore its online web pages – you should imagine that you are the customer. What would you want to see, what should change or disappear entirely, and how can you be sure that it is going to be the best experience possible for each of your customers? This is something which you need to ask yourself at all times. Introducing incentives like convenience store loyalty programs is a way to gain returning customers to use their rewards. The more that you do this, the more likely it is that you will be able to ensure your customers have the best experience possible, which is probably the most important thing to be sure of after all.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Retail Success|The 4 Keys To Retail SuccessGet Pricing Right

If there is one sure-fire quick way to get rid of your customers, it is by pricing your products wrong. People don’t want to pay too much for anything, and if you are consistently getting the price too high then it will mean that people just start to go elsewhere. At the same time, you need to make enough of a profit for it to be worthwhile, so you have to try and find a balance there somehow. That is easier said than done, but there is one tool which you might want to have in your arsenal here to make it easier: research.

There are a few kinds of research which can really help you with pricing. One is pricing analysis, where you look at what other competitors are offering for the same product, or a similar product. That will ensure that you are being competitive, which is the main thing when it comes to pricing. Then you have a tool from the likes of Trade Vitality which allows you to see what the minimum advertised price is that you are allowed to use for something. That can be particularly helpful when you are drawing people in with low prices, or when you have a sale on, for instance. As long as you can get the pricing right in all this, you will find that your retail store is going to have much more success on the whole.

Cleanliness

How clean you keep the store is hugely important too, and hugely relevant, as if it is not clean you will find that the customer is not going to be anywhere near as happy with the experience. The simple way to keep it clean is to hire someone to clean it every day, and then a deep clean every week. That will ensure that it remains clean, but you also need to make a point among your staff of having a policy whereby you clean up as you go along. That will be necessary for health and safety, and will keep the store looking its absolute best.

Marketing

Remember too that you can’t really get much done in businesses of any kind without a strong marketing tactic. The better you know how to approach your marketing, the more likely it is that you will be able to get more customers in, so that is absolutely something that you need to focus on. It’s best to employ a combination of both local advertising and digital marketing, so that you can get a wide, but targeted, reach. Get that right, and there is no reason why your retail business won’t see great success in the future.

5 common business problems solved with software

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Business Software|5 common business problems solved with softwareMany of the problems your business is currently facing can be solved by finding the right software. In our times, when our lives are getting more and more intertwined with the digital world, it’s only natural that the same will be happening at work. You can decide to use some of the already existing programs, but there’s also a possibility of choosing bespoke options. Just remember that when you’re looking for software developers in Poland or any other country, you need to make sure their offer is good for your company. The price shouldn’t be the main factor behind your decision, it’s their previous work you should be focusing on.

Productivity

Productivity is the key to success in business. The more work you get done, the better the results you’ll be able to achieve. Modern technology can enable you and your employees to complete all your tasks much faster. Everything from sending documents to tracking expenses can now be done in a matter of seconds with the right programs. Another effective solution you should consider implementing in your company is the use of online calendars. They make it easy to create convenient schedules that can be regularly updated for everyone to see and follow.

Documents

Running a company requires producing a lot of different documents, and it used to be really difficult to keep track of all of them. The point is that if an important piece of text gets misplaced, it can lead to serious consequences for your business. But if you make everyone at the office use compatible software and provide a possibility to store all the files in the cloud, you’ll be able to access everything easily and make sure it won’t get lost.

Administration costs

Administration can create additional operating costs because it requires hiring more employees. But if you find ways to make tasks like tracking activities within a company, manage expenses and invoices, more time-effective, everyone will have more time for completing other work. It will not only boost your productivity but also lower the costs. There’s no need to personally take care of every little detail. You shouldn’t ignore the opportunities offered by modern technology, because your business has a lot to gain from such solutions.

Attracting new clients

As the internet is becoming a bigger part of our lives with each passing year, it creates a lot of different possibilities to communicate with one another. You can use such options to improve your contact with your clients. By using social media, you can easily get your message across. Such platforms are a great way to keep people interested in your offer and inform them of all the changes. But you have to remember that if you want your profile to attract new customers, you need to create content that will be engaging and appealing. A great way to save time is to use applications that allow you to schedule regular updates on your profiles in advance. This way, you can focus on other things and not be distracted.

Security

Keeping your data secure is an extremely important thing. That’s why, if you want to keep your business safe from potential risks, you need to make sure all your passwords are strong and regularly changed. Another sure way to protect yourself is to have backup storage for your documents. The truth is that if you lose your files, your company will find itself in a difficult position. So don’t underestimate such dangers, as even smaller companies can encounter problems with security.

Implementing technology in your business offers many benefits at a relatively low cost. Of course, if your company has very specific requirements, the price will get higher. But still, it’s possible to find satisfying options that will let your small business expand without having to spend a fortune.