When it comes to starting a business, you have got to be focused. You’ve got to think about a number of things, and ensure that they are all sorted before you can actually start up your business. In this article, we’re going to be taking a look at some of the things that you need in order to start a business successfully, so keep reading down below if you would like to find out more.
Money
The first thing that you are going to need is money. Money makes the world go around, and it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to start a successful company without it. It is true to say that there have been cases in which people have managed, but these people are the exception that prove the rule. Instead of having the notion that you’re going to manage to create a super successful business with what little you have in your pocket right now, work on getting some funding. You can apply to the bank for a small business loan, you can look into investors, and even crowdsourcing if you think it’s going to help.
The Right Equipment
With this money that you have just acquired, you’re going to need to get the right equipment to provide the product or service to your customers. They are not going to be happy if you cannot provide for them, so you need to make a list of everything that you need, and then you need to get it all. For example, it might be the case that you need to look into tools such as carbide end mills, it might be that you need heavy machinery like a digger or a forklift, or you might just need more basic things like tech and materials.
If you ever feel as though there’s something that you need but don’t have, you need to get it. We understand that sometimes this feels as though you’re throwing money away, but you’re not. Think of it as an investment into the future of your business and things become a lot easier to manage.
The Right People
The final thing that you are going to need is the right people. There is no way that you can start a business if you don’t have the right people on your side. You need employees who are hard working, dedicated, and will make your life easier, not harder. It might take some time to find these people, but they are worth taking their time for. Don’t hire anyone that you think will give your new business less than 100%.
We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you need in order to start your business. It’s important that you are taking the time to do everything in your power to start your business as well as you can, so that you’re less likely to encounter problems down the line. We wish you the very best of luck, and hope that this works out in your favor.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/pexels-fauxels-3184465-2.jpg8001200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2022-07-17 09:00:072022-07-17 08:50:57Do You Know What You Need To Start A Business?
Case studies can be an incredibly powerful tool. Created well and deployed effectively, they can show off the best of your businesses and help to push sales and increase conversions.
“Case studies are a huge part of how we attract new clients,” says Mike Knivett, Managing Director of digital marketing specialists Artemis Marketing “nothing that we can say is as effective as being able to show a genuine real-world example of the work that we have carried out having the desired effect and helping a business achieve success”.
But getting your case studies right can be a challenge – it is about much more than just throwing together a few statistics alongside a positive quote from the satisfied customer. Great case studies take planning – and in this article, we take a look at how you can really make the most of your success stories.
Base it on real numbers
Your case study needs to look completely authentic to make the best possible impact. It feels ambiguous and unclear when you say “web traffic doubled”, and vague phrases like “had a big impact on conversions” are worse.
There is a huge difference between doubling web traffic from 5 to 10 and doubling from 5,000 to 10,000.
Tell a story
Customers are impressed by statistics – but they won’t capture their interest. For that, you need good storytelling. This is a crucial and underrated part of marketing your company and it is important in a case study to tell the whole story.
“Focus on the hero and their transformation,” says Matthew Woodget at GoNarrative. “When planning your case study, focus first on the people involved and how they were transformed in a way that made their life and business more successful.”
Think about who you are creating the case study for
It is important to remember the ultimate goal of the case study is to impress potential customers, not to show off your biggest success. You might have done an incredible job for a client, but if that specific client isn’t the type of customer that you are trying to attract, you might be sending the wrong message out.
It is important to drill into the details. Doubling a website’s sales might be impressive, but it isn’t inherently interesting. What a potential customer wants to know is what kind of steps you took to achieve this.
You don’t have to give away your strategy; you can talk about the platforms and the types of work that you did so that potential customers can get a handle on how you operate.
Put your case studies in relevant places on your website
Many businesses have a ‘case studies’ section and this can be a useful place to collate all of the different studies. However, if this is the only place on your site where customers can find the documents, you’re missing a trick.
Make your case studies visible on the pages that your customers actually read – no one is coming to your site to read your case studies.
Better case studies that are deployed effectively can have a huge positive impact on your business. And given that you have all of the information at your fingertips, there is no excuse not to put them in place. The success stories that you present aren’t bragging – they are the right way to help potential customers understand exactly what you can do for them.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/pexels-rodnae-productions-8279463.jpg8001200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2022-07-15 11:00:002022-07-15 01:12:17Better Case Studies: How Your Success Stories Can Help You Get More Clients
Individual and organizational change can be difficult. Each time we go through any sort of change, some of us jump into it with seeming glee. Yet others seem to be held back by the very notion.
In the business world, this is often termed resistance. Moreover, business leaders often go on to tell us that our resistance is irrational or a misunderstanding. Some “experts” will even tell us that the reason we struggle against change is that all the change we see makes us exhausted. But it is not resistance, and it is not exhaustion that makes us resist change. Quite simply, we are stuck.
Getting stuck is a biological response to change that is rarely explored and even more rarely acknowledged in business and work. We build entire algorithms, schema, or mental models around how to navigate our worlds that are deeply wired into our brains. When a change comes along, it requires us to rewire these algorithms. And we don’t want to. We get stuck because our brains get attached to the way things are today.
MEL: The 3 components of our limbic system
More specifically, we have a part of our brain known as the limbic system that is responsible for writing these algorithms. It writes the code not in a computer’s zeros and ones, but rather in three key subcomponents — memory, emotion, and learning. We call this MEL. Every time we learn something new, experience a strong emotion, or create a lasting memory, we develop a new piece of MEL that stays with us and triggers again in a similar situation.
MEL is certainly helpful for navigating the physical world. For instance, it helps us drive to work every day, recognize certain faces, and even read emotions. It is even useful for building connections among our peers, colleagues, and family members. We use the same process to write positive (and sometimes negative) memories into MEL along with the associated emotions to remind us how to respond to certain people that we love and maybe even those we dislike. We also use MEL to build affinities for organizations. It is the core of organizational culture, as we take the positive emotions felt by certain behaviors in an organization and replicate them throughout the organization. These are all positive ways we build and develop MEL for life.
The challenge of getting unstuck
The downside is that MEL does not easily adapt. People feel uncertainty about the future because changes directly challenge MEL. As we consider something new, the positive emotions of the past are replaced with concern, fear, and even anxiety. These negative emotions manifest themselves in the workplace in the form of low morale, reduced motivation, and a decline in productivity (among others). Employees shut. down and get stuck. In turn, organizations get stuck as well.
So, how do we help people get unstuck? Three simple actions:
1. Start where people start
In order to re-code MEL (memories, emotions, and learning), you can’t start with data, logic, and strategy. As important as it is for any person to ultimately understand the business need for a change, it’s far more compelling and effective to meet them where they start: with memories, emotions, and learning. This means acknowledging and embracing the past — positive and negative — as part of developing a change initiative. Use effective storytelling, and create connection among people and the organization to drive change rather than simply rely on incentives.
2. Acknowledge uncertainty
The uncertain feeling people experience in the fact of change is really a feeling of loss. Their MEL is challenged by something new, and it registers as a loss. Having an empathetic response means acknowledging this loss and helping people move through the change process with support. Leaders need to accept that change is hard, explain why it is hard for them as well, and share the pain of change with their team members.
3. Re-write MEL
The only way for people to truly become unstuck is to write create new memories with positive emotions around a change. This can be encouraged through learning to help people feel what life will be like in a coming change. Strong communications can help build new emotional connections, and new positive memories can be developed through reward systems and incentives that help people feel appreciated and valued.
Organizations are inundated with change: it’s become such a part of the way business is done lately that it can seem like the new normal. Viewing change as just part of the working world, however, can set an organization up for failure — as its people shut down facing the prospect of whatever comes next. Understanding the dynamics of MEL, and using empathy and communication, can help bring your team around. And once a team has embraced and prevailed through change, it has that skill as part of its own toolkit. Adapting to change is far less daunting when you’ve gone through it once already.
About the Authors
Dr. Victoria M. Grady is the president of PivotPoint. She directs the MSM Graduate Program, is on the faculty of George Mason University, and is a research consultant at Dixon Hughes Goodman (DHG). She’s an expert on organizational change, working with public and private agencies across the globe. Patrick McCreesh, PhD is the managing partner of Simatree, a strategy, analytics, and technology consultancy. He leads teams through digital transformations and has developed analytics programs across the public sector and Fortune 500 clients. He also serves as adjunct faculty at Georgetown University and George Mason University Business School. Dr. Victoria M. Grady and Patrick McCreesh, PhD are the authors of Stuck: How to Win at Work by Understanding Loss.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/pexels-alexas-fotos-2277784.jpg8001200Sharon Kastorianohttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngSharon Kastoriano2022-07-15 09:00:142022-07-15 10:14:11How to Help People Get Unstuck: 3 Powerful but Simple Actions
The secret to success in today’s business environment is growth. To grow your business, you need to invest in the right things, particularly marketing. Marketing is the lifeblood of every business. It can be the difference between success and failure. In this day and age, content marketing is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. It has been proven to be an effective way to reach potential customers and engage with them. The key to successful content marketing is creating content that solves customer problems and tells a story.
Is There Anything More Important Than Growing Your Business?
There are many strategies out there that will help you grow your business. Some of them are short-term and some of them are long-term. But the one thing that is most important is understanding what your company needs to grow at this moment in time. It might be something that you want to do yourself, or working with experts like Catalyst Marketing to do it. When it comes to growing your business, you need to have the right strategies in place. To do this, you need to know how much money you can spend, and you need to know how much time it will take.
Effective Marketing Strategies & How They Drive Growth
Effective marketing strategies are the key to a company’s success. The strategies that work for one company may not work for another, but there are some elements that are common across all successful marketing strategies. There are four key elements of effective marketing strategies: customer insights, strategy development, execution and measurement. These four elements make up a framework for any effective strategy.
One of the most important aspects of a successful marketing strategy is customer insights. A company needs to know what their customers want and need in order to provide them with the best possible experience. Customer insight is crucial because without it, how can you know what your customers want?
How to Maximize Profits When Supercharging Your Business
The most common business growth strategy is to sell more products or services to the current customers. But this strategy doesn’t work for every company. Often, it’s better to find new customers and grow your market share. This can look like selling more products or services to existing customers, finding new customers and increasing market share, increasing prices or lowering costs.
The Importance of Creating a Productive Environment that Supports Growth
Productivity is an important factor in the success of any business. In a survey conducted by Gallup, it was found that only 3% of employees are engaged and productive at work. The key to increasing productivity is to create a productive environment that supports growth. In order to increase productivity, there are many things that can be done. Some of the most popular hacks include taking care of your physical health, understanding and prioritizing tasks, making lists and breaking down large tasks into smaller ones and not multitasking.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/maranda-vandergriff-7aakZdIl4vg-unsplash.jpg7981200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2022-07-15 08:00:142022-07-15 00:52:42The Key Things That Will Supercharge Your Business
Audits are necessary for identifying problems with your business and making improvements. They are pretty much thorough inspections that focus on a specific area of your business. Financial audits are the most common example, but you can carry out audits on various other aspects of your business too from marketing to security.
In many cases, an audit involves outsourcing a third-party service. That said, you can carry out your own internal audits – providing that you know what you’re looking for. Many businesses do not carry out audits regularly. Some may never carry out audits at all. However, you should ideally be organising them annually. Below are just a few business audits that are worth carrying out each year.
Financial
A financial audit can help you to better understand how you’re spending your money, and can also help you to make sure that your records are accurate so that you declare the right amount of tax. Big companies will typically carry out a financial audit every quarter. At the very least, you should be carrying out a financial audit every year.
During an audit, you want to gather all necessary financial documents. Make sure that there are no missing copies of invoices, bank statements or receipts, and then make sure that all these records are stored somewhere safe in an organised manner (nowadays this is typically done digitally).
A financial audit can be a time for identifying late payments you may have forgotten to chase up. You can also look at exactly how much you’re earning and spending and work out if there are any regular outgoing payments that are worth cancelling or reducing.
Marketing
It can also be worth regularly carrying out marketing audits to measure the progress of your marketing. This could allow you to identify issues with your marketing so that you can make any necessary corrections.
A digital strategy audit could focus on aspects such as SEO, paid advertising and general brand consistency. When it comes to the likes of SEO, it could be worth taking steps such as checking for broken links, checking algorithm updates and checking competitor keywords.
After this audit, you can then make any alterations to your marketing strategy that are necessary. This could include everything from fixing brand inconsistencies to focusing on new keywords.
HR
If you are an employer, a human resources audit could also be worth carrying out. This can be an opportunity to check that you’re providing for your employees in the best way possible – and that your employees are serving you in the best possible way.
What are some things to check during an HR audit? Start by looking at your employee performance. Are any employees failing to meet targets? Are others exceeding them? Such data can help you to work with employees that are struggling, while rewarding employees that are exceeding targets. It could even be a chance to reorganise your team and their roles.
You should then look at what you’re offering employees and whether you could improve this. Are other companies offering better wages or better benefit packages? Are certain benefits not being taken advantage of? This could be a chance to reassess your benefit package.
Don’t forget to also schedule one-on-one meetings with employees. This could be a chance to raise issues with them and get suggestions on things to improve to make your employees happier and more productive.
IT
Every year, it can be worth inspecting your company’s use of tech to make sure that you’re using the right hardware and applications.
This is a great opportunity to get rid of old tech that is no longer serving you well and embrace new tech. Take the time to compare other hardware and software options out there and decide whether it’s worth migrating.
Try to identify common problems you may be having with your tech and use this as an opportunity to look for solutions. For example, if your company wi-fi is temperamental, it could be a time to look into a new internet service or wi-fi range extenders. Make sure to do your research when choosing new tech and take the time to train employees how to use this new tech.
Security
It could also be worth carrying out security audits to check that your company is as secure as it can be. This involves checking for vulnerabilities that you can patch up.
Examples of things to look at in a digital security audit could include password strength, software security (is any software about to lose support?) and data backup (how many of your files are backed up?). A physical security audit could meanwhile look into things like visitor records and window/door security.
Once you’ve identified security vulnerabilities, you can take steps to patch up these vulnerabilities. Make sure to alert employees of any security updates and train them to carry out any new security protocol that you introduce.
Health and safety
A health and safety audit can help to identify any hazards within your business that could be worth guarding against.
This could include fire safety, slip/fall prevention, air quality, PPE usage and possibly driver safety (if you have drivers working for you). If you sell a product, you may also want to consider how your product can be made safer.
A health and safety audit could help to identify safety measures that you need to invest in such as new fire extinguishers, better guardrails or new PPE. You could also use the opportunity to develop new safety protocol that you can train to employees.
Compliance
A compliance audit involves checking that you are complying with all recommended business laws and guidelines necessary to your company. This ensures that you cannot be fined or sued, as well as helping to possibly earn optional certificates or badges.
A compliance audit may be something that you can work into each of the above audits, rather than carrying out a separate audit for it (for example, data compliance checks could be incorporated into an IT or marketing audit, while employee law compliance checks can be incorporated into a HR audit). A commercial legal advisor may be able to help you identify areas of compliance to focus on.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/pexels-lukas-590011-2.jpg7951200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2022-07-15 07:00:492022-07-15 00:44:157 Audits Your Business Should Be Carrying Out Each Year
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Business Programs
Do You Know What You Need To Start A Business?
/in Starting Your Business/by StrategyDrivenMoney
The first thing that you are going to need is money. Money makes the world go around, and it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to start a successful company without it. It is true to say that there have been cases in which people have managed, but these people are the exception that prove the rule. Instead of having the notion that you’re going to manage to create a super successful business with what little you have in your pocket right now, work on getting some funding. You can apply to the bank for a small business loan, you can look into investors, and even crowdsourcing if you think it’s going to help.
The Right Equipment
With this money that you have just acquired, you’re going to need to get the right equipment to provide the product or service to your customers. They are not going to be happy if you cannot provide for them, so you need to make a list of everything that you need, and then you need to get it all. For example, it might be the case that you need to look into tools such as carbide end mills, it might be that you need heavy machinery like a digger or a forklift, or you might just need more basic things like tech and materials.
If you ever feel as though there’s something that you need but don’t have, you need to get it. We understand that sometimes this feels as though you’re throwing money away, but you’re not. Think of it as an investment into the future of your business and things become a lot easier to manage.
The Right People
The final thing that you are going to need is the right people. There is no way that you can start a business if you don’t have the right people on your side. You need employees who are hard working, dedicated, and will make your life easier, not harder. It might take some time to find these people, but they are worth taking their time for. Don’t hire anyone that you think will give your new business less than 100%.
We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you need in order to start your business. It’s important that you are taking the time to do everything in your power to start your business as well as you can, so that you’re less likely to encounter problems down the line. We wish you the very best of luck, and hope that this works out in your favor.
Better Case Studies: How Your Success Stories Can Help You Get More Clients
/in Marketing & Sales/by StrategyDriven“Case studies are a huge part of how we attract new clients,” says Mike Knivett, Managing Director of digital marketing specialists Artemis Marketing “nothing that we can say is as effective as being able to show a genuine real-world example of the work that we have carried out having the desired effect and helping a business achieve success”.
But getting your case studies right can be a challenge – it is about much more than just throwing together a few statistics alongside a positive quote from the satisfied customer. Great case studies take planning – and in this article, we take a look at how you can really make the most of your success stories.
Base it on real numbers
Your case study needs to look completely authentic to make the best possible impact. It feels ambiguous and unclear when you say “web traffic doubled”, and vague phrases like “had a big impact on conversions” are worse.
There is a huge difference between doubling web traffic from 5 to 10 and doubling from 5,000 to 10,000.
Tell a story
Customers are impressed by statistics – but they won’t capture their interest. For that, you need good storytelling. This is a crucial and underrated part of marketing your company and it is important in a case study to tell the whole story.
“Focus on the hero and their transformation,” says Matthew Woodget at GoNarrative. “When planning your case study, focus first on the people involved and how they were transformed in a way that made their life and business more successful.”
Think about who you are creating the case study for
It is important to remember the ultimate goal of the case study is to impress potential customers, not to show off your biggest success. You might have done an incredible job for a client, but if that specific client isn’t the type of customer that you are trying to attract, you might be sending the wrong message out.
It is best to take some time to think about who your ideal client is, and then create a case study around what will appeal to them.
Be specific
It is important to drill into the details. Doubling a website’s sales might be impressive, but it isn’t inherently interesting. What a potential customer wants to know is what kind of steps you took to achieve this.
You don’t have to give away your strategy; you can talk about the platforms and the types of work that you did so that potential customers can get a handle on how you operate.
Put your case studies in relevant places on your website
Many businesses have a ‘case studies’ section and this can be a useful place to collate all of the different studies. However, if this is the only place on your site where customers can find the documents, you’re missing a trick.
Make your case studies visible on the pages that your customers actually read – no one is coming to your site to read your case studies.
Better case studies that are deployed effectively can have a huge positive impact on your business. And given that you have all of the information at your fingertips, there is no excuse not to put them in place. The success stories that you present aren’t bragging – they are the right way to help potential customers understand exactly what you can do for them.
How to Help People Get Unstuck: 3 Powerful but Simple Actions
/in Managing Your People/by Dr. Victoria GradyIn the business world, this is often termed resistance. Moreover, business leaders often go on to tell us that our resistance is irrational or a misunderstanding. Some “experts” will even tell us that the reason we struggle against change is that all the change we see makes us exhausted. But it is not resistance, and it is not exhaustion that makes us resist change. Quite simply, we are stuck.
Getting stuck is a biological response to change that is rarely explored and even more rarely acknowledged in business and work. We build entire algorithms, schema, or mental models around how to navigate our worlds that are deeply wired into our brains. When a change comes along, it requires us to rewire these algorithms. And we don’t want to. We get stuck because our brains get attached to the way things are today.
MEL: The 3 components of our limbic system
More specifically, we have a part of our brain known as the limbic system that is responsible for writing these algorithms. It writes the code not in a computer’s zeros and ones, but rather in three key subcomponents — memory, emotion, and learning. We call this MEL. Every time we learn something new, experience a strong emotion, or create a lasting memory, we develop a new piece of MEL that stays with us and triggers again in a similar situation.
MEL is certainly helpful for navigating the physical world. For instance, it helps us drive to work every day, recognize certain faces, and even read emotions. It is even useful for building connections among our peers, colleagues, and family members. We use the same process to write positive (and sometimes negative) memories into MEL along with the associated emotions to remind us how to respond to certain people that we love and maybe even those we dislike. We also use MEL to build affinities for organizations. It is the core of organizational culture, as we take the positive emotions felt by certain behaviors in an organization and replicate them throughout the organization. These are all positive ways we build and develop MEL for life.
The challenge of getting unstuck
The downside is that MEL does not easily adapt. People feel uncertainty about the future because changes directly challenge MEL. As we consider something new, the positive emotions of the past are replaced with concern, fear, and even anxiety. These negative emotions manifest themselves in the workplace in the form of low morale, reduced motivation, and a decline in productivity (among others). Employees shut. down and get stuck. In turn, organizations get stuck as well.
So, how do we help people get unstuck? Three simple actions:
1. Start where people start
In order to re-code MEL (memories, emotions, and learning), you can’t start with data, logic, and strategy. As important as it is for any person to ultimately understand the business need for a change, it’s far more compelling and effective to meet them where they start: with memories, emotions, and learning. This means acknowledging and embracing the past — positive and negative — as part of developing a change initiative. Use effective storytelling, and create connection among people and the organization to drive change rather than simply rely on incentives.
2. Acknowledge uncertainty
The uncertain feeling people experience in the fact of change is really a feeling of loss. Their MEL is challenged by something new, and it registers as a loss. Having an empathetic response means acknowledging this loss and helping people move through the change process with support. Leaders need to accept that change is hard, explain why it is hard for them as well, and share the pain of change with their team members.
3. Re-write MEL
The only way for people to truly become unstuck is to write create new memories with positive emotions around a change. This can be encouraged through learning to help people feel what life will be like in a coming change. Strong communications can help build new emotional connections, and new positive memories can be developed through reward systems and incentives that help people feel appreciated and valued.
Organizations are inundated with change: it’s become such a part of the way business is done lately that it can seem like the new normal. Viewing change as just part of the working world, however, can set an organization up for failure — as its people shut down facing the prospect of whatever comes next. Understanding the dynamics of MEL, and using empathy and communication, can help bring your team around. And once a team has embraced and prevailed through change, it has that skill as part of its own toolkit. Adapting to change is far less daunting when you’ve gone through it once already.
About the Authors
Dr. Victoria M. Grady is the president of PivotPoint. She directs the MSM Graduate Program, is on the faculty of George Mason University, and is a research consultant at Dixon Hughes Goodman (DHG). She’s an expert on organizational change, working with public and private agencies across the globe. Patrick McCreesh, PhD is the managing partner of Simatree, a strategy, analytics, and technology consultancy. He leads teams through digital transformations and has developed analytics programs across the public sector and Fortune 500 clients. He also serves as adjunct faculty at Georgetown University and George Mason University Business School. Dr. Victoria M. Grady and Patrick McCreesh, PhD are the authors of Stuck: How to Win at Work by Understanding Loss.
The Key Things That Will Supercharge Your Business
/in Managing Your Business/by StrategyDrivenIs There Anything More Important Than Growing Your Business?
There are many strategies out there that will help you grow your business. Some of them are short-term and some of them are long-term. But the one thing that is most important is understanding what your company needs to grow at this moment in time. It might be something that you want to do yourself, or working with experts like Catalyst Marketing to do it. When it comes to growing your business, you need to have the right strategies in place. To do this, you need to know how much money you can spend, and you need to know how much time it will take.
Effective Marketing Strategies & How They Drive Growth
Effective marketing strategies are the key to a company’s success. The strategies that work for one company may not work for another, but there are some elements that are common across all successful marketing strategies. There are four key elements of effective marketing strategies: customer insights, strategy development, execution and measurement. These four elements make up a framework for any effective strategy.
One of the most important aspects of a successful marketing strategy is customer insights. A company needs to know what their customers want and need in order to provide them with the best possible experience. Customer insight is crucial because without it, how can you know what your customers want?
How to Maximize Profits When Supercharging Your Business
The most common business growth strategy is to sell more products or services to the current customers. But this strategy doesn’t work for every company. Often, it’s better to find new customers and grow your market share. This can look like selling more products or services to existing customers, finding new customers and increasing market share, increasing prices or lowering costs.
The Importance of Creating a Productive Environment that Supports Growth
Productivity is an important factor in the success of any business. In a survey conducted by Gallup, it was found that only 3% of employees are engaged and productive at work. The key to increasing productivity is to create a productive environment that supports growth. In order to increase productivity, there are many things that can be done. Some of the most popular hacks include taking care of your physical health, understanding and prioritizing tasks, making lists and breaking down large tasks into smaller ones and not multitasking.
7 Audits Your Business Should Be Carrying Out Each Year
/in Business Performance Assessment Program/by StrategyDrivenIn many cases, an audit involves outsourcing a third-party service. That said, you can carry out your own internal audits – providing that you know what you’re looking for. Many businesses do not carry out audits regularly. Some may never carry out audits at all. However, you should ideally be organising them annually. Below are just a few business audits that are worth carrying out each year.
Financial
A financial audit can help you to better understand how you’re spending your money, and can also help you to make sure that your records are accurate so that you declare the right amount of tax. Big companies will typically carry out a financial audit every quarter. At the very least, you should be carrying out a financial audit every year.
During an audit, you want to gather all necessary financial documents. Make sure that there are no missing copies of invoices, bank statements or receipts, and then make sure that all these records are stored somewhere safe in an organised manner (nowadays this is typically done digitally).
A financial audit can be a time for identifying late payments you may have forgotten to chase up. You can also look at exactly how much you’re earning and spending and work out if there are any regular outgoing payments that are worth cancelling or reducing.
Marketing
It can also be worth regularly carrying out marketing audits to measure the progress of your marketing. This could allow you to identify issues with your marketing so that you can make any necessary corrections.
A digital strategy audit could focus on aspects such as SEO, paid advertising and general brand consistency. When it comes to the likes of SEO, it could be worth taking steps such as checking for broken links, checking algorithm updates and checking competitor keywords.
After this audit, you can then make any alterations to your marketing strategy that are necessary. This could include everything from fixing brand inconsistencies to focusing on new keywords.
HR
If you are an employer, a human resources audit could also be worth carrying out. This can be an opportunity to check that you’re providing for your employees in the best way possible – and that your employees are serving you in the best possible way.
What are some things to check during an HR audit? Start by looking at your employee performance. Are any employees failing to meet targets? Are others exceeding them? Such data can help you to work with employees that are struggling, while rewarding employees that are exceeding targets. It could even be a chance to reorganise your team and their roles.
You should then look at what you’re offering employees and whether you could improve this. Are other companies offering better wages or better benefit packages? Are certain benefits not being taken advantage of? This could be a chance to reassess your benefit package.
Don’t forget to also schedule one-on-one meetings with employees. This could be a chance to raise issues with them and get suggestions on things to improve to make your employees happier and more productive.
IT
Every year, it can be worth inspecting your company’s use of tech to make sure that you’re using the right hardware and applications.
This is a great opportunity to get rid of old tech that is no longer serving you well and embrace new tech. Take the time to compare other hardware and software options out there and decide whether it’s worth migrating.
Try to identify common problems you may be having with your tech and use this as an opportunity to look for solutions. For example, if your company wi-fi is temperamental, it could be a time to look into a new internet service or wi-fi range extenders. Make sure to do your research when choosing new tech and take the time to train employees how to use this new tech.
Security
It could also be worth carrying out security audits to check that your company is as secure as it can be. This involves checking for vulnerabilities that you can patch up.
Examples of things to look at in a digital security audit could include password strength, software security (is any software about to lose support?) and data backup (how many of your files are backed up?). A physical security audit could meanwhile look into things like visitor records and window/door security.
Once you’ve identified security vulnerabilities, you can take steps to patch up these vulnerabilities. Make sure to alert employees of any security updates and train them to carry out any new security protocol that you introduce.
Health and safety
A health and safety audit can help to identify any hazards within your business that could be worth guarding against.
This could include fire safety, slip/fall prevention, air quality, PPE usage and possibly driver safety (if you have drivers working for you). If you sell a product, you may also want to consider how your product can be made safer.
A health and safety audit could help to identify safety measures that you need to invest in such as new fire extinguishers, better guardrails or new PPE. You could also use the opportunity to develop new safety protocol that you can train to employees.
Compliance
A compliance audit involves checking that you are complying with all recommended business laws and guidelines necessary to your company. This ensures that you cannot be fined or sued, as well as helping to possibly earn optional certificates or badges.
A compliance audit may be something that you can work into each of the above audits, rather than carrying out a separate audit for it (for example, data compliance checks could be incorporated into an IT or marketing audit, while employee law compliance checks can be incorporated into a HR audit). A commercial legal advisor may be able to help you identify areas of compliance to focus on.