There are a million and one brilliant ways to market your business online, and hopefully you’re already implementing these ideas into your marketing strategy. But your business is about more than just its online presence: there are people behind your digital space: you’re real people, doing real things, and there’s no reason to stay hidden in the shadows. Instead, you can put the human factor of your business right front and centre for people to see. There’s no better way to do that to host your own company event for customers or potential partners, which are brilliant for strengthening your customer relations, showing off what you’re all about, and sure – it’s also about having fun.
Of course, it’s all good and well throwing a party with live music and drinks, but alas, there’s work to be done here. You’re hosting an event for a reason, not just because it’s a fun way to spend an evening. It’ll be up to you to determine what this reason is. Are you looking to bring more people on board, or get to more business from your existing customers? Perhaps you just want to get your name out there and promote your brand. Whatever it is, have at the forefront of your mind when it comes to the ideas stage.
The Space
Where you host the event will depend on your end objective, and also how good your headquarters are. If your offices are more functional than stylish, then it’s probably better to hire out a space specifically for the event. Where this is exactly will depend on your budget, but it should be generally be somewhere pretty swanky that’s close to your business and in the neighborhood of the businesses you’d like to be associated with.
Setting the Tone
Every inch of the event will be showcasing who you are, so make sure it’s all well thought out and done properly. Look at a café services company that goes beyond what’s expected from the catering at an event: your offerings should be creative, fresh, impressive. The same goes for the decor: you want a wow factor when people walk through the door. Have custom made decorations tastefully incorporated into the space so that there’s no doubt which company has brought this magnificent event to fruition.
The Exclusive Guest List
Your event should have a degree of exclusivity. You don’t want just anybody walking in off the street and attending, so make sure you have a well curated guest list. Who you will invite will depend on the goals of the evening: they may be big order customers, companies you’d like to partner with, or invitations to a corporate sector you want to make connections with.
The Aftermath
A toast to a great evening! And now the work really begins. For the night to be a success, you need to follow up on the momentum of the evening and make sure the goals you had for the evening are achieved. Don’t let your hard work all go to waste!
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Try as you might, you will never really “own” your business. It is too much part of a bigger network that is too far beyond your control for that. While there might be plenty of directions you want to take your company in, you’ll also be subject to the whims and plans of your fellow humans, who all too often (it can feel like) have plans that are out of sync with your own. Here are just a few of the ways your business can be affected by external factors, to which you only have a passing, observing role.
Political
A thriving economy relies on there being not too many things rocking the boat. You can see the way the stock market reacts whenever an announcement or decision is made; sometimes it gets a boost, which is its way of saying ‘we approve!’, and sometimes it takes a nosedive, at which point everything gets a bit nervous. With Donald Trump, for instance, no one – including quite possibly Donald Trump – is quite sure which way the economy will go. That one is just for time to figure out, but down the line it could have a knock on effect to your business. A good economy means you’re in the best possible position to succeed. Also, you’ll notice how things can get a bit twitchy whenever there’s political unrest, more commonly when it’s overseas. A destabilised China, for instance, can have effects that spread across the world, such is the way all our economies are interlinked.
Your Business Partners
It’s all good and well keeping your own house in order. It’s all good and well operating at full capacity, with the books in order and things slowly progressing just fine and dandy. But how many other businesses do you rely on for your success? You’re probably more wrapped up in the well-being of other companies than you think. For instance, how does the software you rely on influence your success? You might want to look at a service such as software escrow, which would give you access to the software you depend on should the software company fold. Elsewhere, you could face major difficulties if your suppliers unexpectedly fold. You can’t stop that from happening, but you can make sure you have the contingency plans in place so that you’re able to handle any temporary setbacks relating to stock and so forth. Essentially, it’s important not to be too reliant on any other single company.
Trends
You’re at the top of your game at the moment, right on the cutting edge of what’s new and fresh. You’re part of a movement that is going places! Only, it’ll only be going places up until the time when it’s not. Take a look through history and everything that was once ‘hot’ ended up being pretty ‘not’ in the end. You only need to look at what passed as fashion twenty (or any number) years ago to see that things really do change. Did the people wearing the clothes back then think they’d one day look so lame? Of course not! Did Blockbuster think there would always be a demand for home videos? Probably! Trends come and go. The important thing is to realise that ‘trendy’ doesn’t really mean anything, and that you shouldn’t be relying on it for your success. Always make sure you’re looking to the future, especially if the industry you’re in is prone to change.
External Innovation: Good
Not every external factor is bad, of course. In fact, all the ones listed above can be good if the cards fall nicely enough. This positive change also extends to innovation, which as we all know is essentially what’s making the economy thrive in recent years. And it looks like it’s here to stay. Innovation is creating new markets, new products, new services, new just about everything, and it’s happening all the time. Every year, there are new services that help to streamline businesses and make them less dependent on other factors. You should be keeping your ear out for the developments that will aid your business. Everybody else will, and to not do so you run the risk of falling behind. Make sure you’re reading up on all the best business online blogs and reading your industry magazines; it’ll keep you fresh.
External Innovation: Bad
With that being said, not all innovation will be there to give you a boost. In fact, sometimes it’ll come along and put you right out of business. This has been happening for centuries, with new products popping up that resulted in massive shifts in the economy. We see it today, with Uber versus traditional taxi companies. No matter who you are and how successful your business is, you should always be ready to face oblivion. It’s the way innovation works. If you’re worried about an emerging company or trend, then look at diversifying your business – but do it well in advance. The number of jobs that may be lost – and industries taken of – by robots in the coming decades should be an eyeopener for many business leaders.
Environmental Factors
Sometimes, the factors that affect your business has nothing at all to do with other humans. It’s all about that grand old mother earth, our home. We think we know a lot about the environment, but we don’t – and unfortunately, we’re about to know a whole lot less once climate change really gets underway. A changing climate will affect a lot, from how things are produced (if they’re able to be at all) and how they get around the world. It’ll also bring more extreme weather, so making sure you have business insurance and cloud storage will be essential.
Predicting The Changes
You don’t know what will happen in the world, because no one does. But you can be prepared by keeping on top of global events – not just what’s happening in your industry, but in all the industries that branch out from your own too. We’re all connected in the end!
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The monetary compensation plays a big role in retaining your best employees and giving them good reason to give their job their all. But if you believe that’s all they need, you’re going to find more people leaving the team than you would like. There are deeper needs that you and even they might not recognize at first. Neglect them for too long, however, and those will serve as the reasons you can’t retain your staff.
Goals
Employees have responsibilities for day-to-day work in their role, and they should know that. When it seems like the day-to-day involves nothing other than just running through a workload to no aim, however, that’s when people can get frustrated. Goal setting for employees, whether it’s collaboration toward a certain goal or simply improving productivity and efficiency can give them something important. It can give them something to aim at, so they don’t just feel like they’re standing still in their job. It’s also a good way to align their goals at work with the goals of the organization.
Progress
Beyond their work goals, you should consider your employee’s personal goals a little more. If they’re looking to progress in the company, see if you can bring out that leadership material. If their job requires expertise, help them build on it with training. If they have personal projects they want to tackle, then offer them time in the office environment to work on it. Make your leadership instrumental in their personal progress.
Value
Let’s not pretend this relationship is all about what you can do for your team. Your team does plenty for you and showing that you acknowledge and value that is important. From simple thanks and an employee-of-the-month scheme to an awards dinner complete with award plaques. Showing real, verbal appreciation and offering a physical token of that appreciation shows that you truly value the team. It also gives you the opportunity to incentivize the behaviors that you consider most important in the workplace.
Cohesion
The work environment is most likely one of multiple people. Getting them cohesive and collaborative is important. Even for those like remote workers who aren’t in the physical environment. Improving the ways they communicate and organize, such as using project management tools, removes the barriers from that cohesion. You should also consider those corporate get-togethers as the opportunity to have people build rapport and relationships without the pressures of work exerting on them.
Flexibility
Speaking of those pressures, every workplace has them. But allowing a little more flexibility to your team can help them deal with said pressures a lot better. Everyone has ways that they work better. Flexibility helps them discover those ways. Whether it’s flexibility in time, location, dress code, method or otherwise. You have to think of what you can reasonably allow. Whatever you can allow, you should.
A better understanding of the human needs in your team is going to make you a better employer in every way. You’re going to retain them, keep them motivated, engaged, and even happy to work for you.
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To a lot of start-up owners, growth is a universally good thing. You’re a small business now, and you want all the financial stability and branding strength of a large one. Naturally, this means that once you stimulate enough growth, everything else will fall into place, right? Well, not quite. If your start-up has experienced a lot of rapid growth recently, you’ll know that it’s something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you’ll have better profit margins and a stronger platform for making a name for yourself. On the other, you’ll have to take care of a lot of scaling, which will mean managerial and organizational changes. Regardless of what your period of growth has done to your business, you need to be able to sustain these challenges. Here’s a guide to managing a rapidly expanding business…
When you drew up your business plan, it’s pretty much a given that you set a range of short and long-term goals, but what about medium-term ones? When business owners totally overlook any medium-term milestones, it can cause all kinds of scaling problems which will come back to bite them in the future. Every good business plan should have a long-term vision and mission, which you’ll ultimately want your business to reach. You’ll need a wider range of medium-term objectives, which will support that end-goal vision, and are usually milestones set five to three years down the line. Then, there are short-term plateaus you should keep in mind – skills, accomplishments and experiences which you can achieve realistically in the next year. A lot of people at the heads of growing businesses become too wrapped up in the long-term, and change the direction of their venture far too frequently. Set yourself some medium-term goals, and stick to them!
Keep Your Customers Happy
You should be placing a strong emphasis on customer satisfaction no matter what stage your business is in, but it’s especially important to make sure you’re not getting distracted by scalability. Your customers are the people who will come up with the most relevant ideas, the most immediate feedback, and in today’s social media-oriented world, they’re increasingly happy to help. No matter how rapidly or drastically your business is changing, don’t sacrifice a formal process for constantly listening to customers, and acting on their input. Aside from holding an ear to the ground, you also need to make sure that you can keep a handle on delivery, back-end support systems, and order fulfillment in the midst of all this chaos. If your customers become dissatisfied with your performance, you’re going to have a very hard time retaining them, and continuing to grow at a healthy rate.
Think About Finances
As your business expands at a fast rate, there are a range of financial implications which all need to be taken into consideration. As your business becomes larger and larger, your cash flow is going to become strained before it gets any better, so it’s a good idea to look for ways to save as much as possible. Recover any outstanding debts promptly, decrease prices wherever it’s practical, consider refinancing and borrowing money, offer up some rewards for prompt or upfront payments, and eliminate as much unnecessary overhead as possible. You may also be able to draw some savings from incorporating your business or registering it as a certain type of company. This can be done through services like yourcompanyformations.co.uk – registered formation agent . As more and more factors are added to your cash flow, you need to make it a priority to understand and manage those factors, and eventually manage all your income and outgoings with a “big picture” mindset. Financial growing pains have ended countless promising businesses over the years – don’t let yours become one of them!
Find a Good Mentor
Finding a good mentor, with a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur or executive in your field, can take a huge amount of the weight off your shoulders. You’ll be able to reap the benefit of their years in the business, and the advice of someone who’s been in the same position as you in the past. When you imagine a great entrepreneur, you probably don’t see someone who’s constantly asking for advice. However, you shouldn’t let your pride get in the way of the potential success of your business! Some of the most successful businessmen in recent history have developed on the advice of a mentor. Bill Gates had Buffet, and Mark Zuckerberg had Steve Jobs. I don’t care how smart you are, or how disruptive your business idea is, find a mentor if it’s possible!
Continuing on this theme of not thinking of yourself as a one-man-band, surrounding yourself with team members who are significantly smarter than you is essential for anyone who’s at the head of a fast-growing company. No matter how good your product, service or strategy is, if you don’t have a good team behind you, the rapid growth of your business can quickly become overwhelming. If the departments at your company are growing faster than you can handle, then choose the best minds you have available and give them positions as the heads of their departments. By doing this, you’ll be able to free up your time and invest it in your overall strategy. As these people become more familiar with their departments and senior roles, you should keep them in the loop about more executive decisions. Make them a part of the hiring process, and anything else that could impact their role.
Take Away While You Add
A lot of business owners think that once their company grows enough, they’ll have a lot more freedom and flexibility. As a matter of fact, scaling can actually be very restrictive. There’ll be all kinds of things that used to work, but won’t anymore, meaning that you’ll have to rub these out of your usual strategy. It’s only when your operation gets a little larger, you’ll realize that there are a range of things that have always been slowing you down, without you realizing it. Whether you axe paperback to revive the company or do away with things like performance reviews altogether, you need to be aware that certain things will need to go, and holding onto them will only drag your company down. Getting rid of performance reviews, for example, will mean that you’ll free your employees from a lot of tedious work, and redirect those people-hours to more pressing issues. Don’t be afraid to make drastic changes when they’re a gamble, provided that you’re certain you can make them pay off. If your grocery is on the verge of bankruptcy, but hiring greeters will reduce theft and improve sales, then go ahead and do it. If team meetings are too long and ineffective, don’t be afraid of being seen as a horrible boss by banning the use of phones! Whatever’s on the horizon, you need to stop resisting change, and choose the sacrifices you’ll have to make very carefully.
Wrapping Up…
Rapid growth, if you know how to handle it, can promise all kinds of great things for your business. However, if you approach it in the wrong way, it could be the thing that brings your promising idea to ruin. Going from managing a bootstrapped, fledgling start-up to a feverishly expanding business will require a lot of changes in your tactics, but through applying the strategies above and learning as you go, you’ll be able to assure a bright, successful future for your company!
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Picture this scenario; you have an employee on their way to a business meeting in Dubai. He’s currently in the taxi on his way to the airport, but sadly his work phone is out of battery and you have no way to contact him about the cancelled deal. He boards the plane, heads off to Dubai, and it’s only once he lands that he gets your message about the deal being cancelled.
This example highlights just one of the many uses of an effective communications system. The ability to contact the people you need to in an urgent manner is incredibly important due to how time-consuming and money-wasting a delay in communications can be. Yet, unfortunately, there is only so much you can do with traditional systems such as emailing and messaging. If there are other business emergencies, such as a fire breaking out at the office or your business premises being burgled, then you need a quick and swift way to notify everyone within your company because every second counts.
Emergency Notifications System
Let’s pretend one of your employees has come into work early. He’s the first one at the office and he enters the premises to find that your entire office has been trashed, the computers have been stolen and the security system smashed into pieces. With no way to contact everyone in a short time span, the employee isn’t a hundred percent sure what he should do. This is just one of the many emergency notification use cases. Giving your employees the ability to make a company-wide emergency notification is a great way to alert all of the staff about a pressing issue that needs to be sorted out immediately. Instead of relying on a chain of command that they have to climb up for their message to reach someone, they can simply tell everyone in the business with a simple message.
If your team are able to easily contact each other with an effective communications system, then it helps to make the team more efficient. Whether there’s an important change that needs to be made or some hardware that broke which was critical to their project, everyone in the team needs to know so that they can adjust their working schedule to either fix the hardware, prepare a replacement or work around it. If your team is unable to communicate effectively, it will lead to delays, disputes and other problems that are going to slow down your business.
Employee Management
Managers are usually quite effective at communicating with their employees, but there are going to be times when having social skills isn’t enough and you need software or technology to improve the way a manager contacts an employee. For instance, if there’s an easy way for your senior members to keep a track of their team members and record their progress, then it makes your business more productive. By having your managers communicate effectively and inform staff of their daily tasks, goals and issues, it creates a workplace that runs smoothly.
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