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How to Better Manage an Outdoor Photoshoot

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Outdoor Photoshoot|How to Better Manage an Outdoor PhotoshootMost businesses, at one point or another, will want to host an outdoor photoshoot. Urban, rural, boreal or desert; the setting itself doesn’t matter, but the preparation does. Proper management of an outdoor photoshoot ensures that you get the digital assets you want and that you get them done as quickly as possible. Having the photoshoot run into overtime is not an option. You need to get it done quickly and efficiently, so use these tips to make it happen.

Check Weather Conditions in Advance

It is a good idea to have your own team on standby when shooting outdoors. Weather can completely change the look and the type of campaign that you are going for, and if you don’t like the end result of your team making do with what they have, you’ll need to pay to send them out again.

Set Up Base Camp

Have a tent ready to be set up and act as base camp. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining or shining. A gazebo tent and a few foldout tables will help protect your team from rain, shine, and wind. It will make it easier to get the shoots set up and checked, too.

Have a Stylist Team Ready

Your stylist team are your stars on an outdoor photoshoot. You’ll need people who know both how to dress up products and models, as well as set designers. This stylist team should be ready in the wings with the following:

Extra Gear

If it’s raining, they should have rain gear for the team. If it’s cold, then they should have warmer clothes ready for the models. Your stylists need to do more than just prep the people in front of the camera; they should also be the go-to spot for the rest of your team so that everyone is comfortable and stays healthy.

Photoshoot Test Ideas

On top of extra comfort, your stylist team should also have extra props on hand to help control the set better. Their tent is the go-to for everyone, and in your stylist team you should also have a set designer. With both these in mind, ensure you have items like mirrors, dirt, water, and other items to trick the camera into producing great shots.

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Add Dimension with a Drone

You want options when you host an outdoor photoshoot. With the power of drones, it means you can do so much more than just take a few different angles from the ground. You can go for top-down and aerial shots of products and models alike. It means your images will be instantly more iconic, and with the low cost of drones today, it can be done without going over budget. When using a drone, however, you just need to remember a few things.

Ensure You Have Backup Components

To get an understanding of all the drone components and what they do, read up on this GrindDrone guide at grinddrone.com. You need to make sure it’s more than just the drone operator that knows what these components are and how to handle the device. Everyone who could possibly get into contact with the drone should understand it.

This isn’t even a matter of cost, though the professional drones you would use on more established shoots cost a small fortune in and of themselves. Rather, the bigger worry is that a replacement or fix will be needed before the shoot begins, and in effect, completely slow down your shoot schedule.

Have a Drone Operator

A professional drone operator is a must. You never want someone who has never touched a drone before to try to get it where it needs to be, especially if it is windy. The photographer can help direct the drone operator, but you need a licensed operator on set, and that is non-negotiable.

Ensure You Have the Necessary Licenses

You need to have the right to take commercial photographs where you are. You also need to have a license to fly the drone and permission depending on where you are. Getting this in advance will ensure the shoot goes smoothly and without any hiccups like a nasty fine coming your way.

Check Results Before Leaving

Have your team send you some proofs of images as the day goes on, so that you can approve or offer suggestions while the shoot is going on. They won’t be edited, so don’t expect perfection, just check to make sure that everything is going as per you and your team’s vision. Doing this at the time means you can get the shots that are missing or add in new ideas so that your team can walk away from a great outdoor photoshoot.

Simple Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs|Simple Marketing Tips for EntrepreneursEveryone knows that entrepreneurs, working on their startup enterprises, have a lot of different tasks to juggle. As well as representing their firm in business meetings and conversations with clients and customers, the entrepreneur is also asked to oversee all elements of their business – from their accounts and finances through to the strategy and planning that leads an industry toward its goals. As such, entrepreneurs need to know the shortcuts and the tricks to each part of their business – and this article is all about getting the most out of your marketing strategy without spending undue time on advertising and marketing.

Use Apps and Programs

Many entrepreneurs choose to outsource all of their marketing responsibilities to those businesses that they can trust to build them a workable strategy. While this works in practice, in principle, it can sometimes be a waste of money in the early lifespan of a startup.

A better solution is to make use of the digital tools available to generate shortcuts for your team when they’re marketing your brand and your products. Simply search for marketing tools, and use them to cut down your research, content design and strategy development time when marketing.

Or, you could get the best of both worlds by using AI marketing services. These companies, rather than taking over all of your marketing responsibilities completely, offer an automated AI-powered marketing tool that uses deep learning to analyze your customer’s interests. This data can in turn be used to create a strategy tailored to your marketing objectives and your brand. If your business is growing and you’re struggling to keep up with the marketing needs of your company, this may be a good option.

SEO Boosts

Another element of your marketing strategy that it’s crucial to get right is the SEO approach. If you have a marketing professional on your team, this is one of the primary areas of focus that you’ll want them to concentrate on throughout the week.

Above and beyond the usual marketing tips for SEO, though, it’s worth considering investing in Spanish SEO assistance – so that your firm can tap into the millions of Spanish speakers in the US and abroad. Competing in this space is far easier – a great way to conquer this large market.

Social Media

It’s incredible how much you can achieve with an hour on social media when you’re looking to share your product and your brand with a specific demographic of consumer. You can target adverts incredibly specifically on the likes of Facebook and Instagram, and you can get into the feeds of your target consumer on YouTube with ease.

All of this takes a little investment in targeted advertising, but this is the sort of investment which pays off almost immediately, with big hits on your website and your social media pages. For time-pressed entrepreneurs, social media is a great ally in your attempts to market your products.

Website

Finally, it’s incredibly important that you’re proud of your website. You should certainly hire a trustworthy professional to help you build out your site, ensuring that you’re on-trend and looking professional for consumers who visit your corner of the internet.
Remember, too, that this is your home on the internet. It’s the foundation that you’ll build upon. As such, it pays to get some aspects of your website right the first time – like the page structure and the color scheme and branding. Invest in this part of your business to see your traffic convert to more sales over time.

Busy entrepreneurs should make use of the above tips to ensure their marketing is second-to-none in their first few months of business.

Strategy-Proven Methods to Improve Sales Across the Board

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Improve Sales|Strategy-Proven Methods to Improve Sales Across the BoardImproving sales is the goal of every business. It is the only way to grow at the end of the day, and there are a lot of ways to do it. You can focus on marketing, you can work on training your sales team, you could even open your profit channels to bring in more money from different locations.

There are so many ways that you can improve sales, but at the end of the day, for any progress to be made you will need to first look internally. Improve from the inside, so that customers enjoy nothing but the best from you and your employees.

Understand the Buyer’s Cycle

The best way to improve sales across the board is to understand why, when, and how people buy. The psychology behind buying anything is often fairly simple. You need to convince someone that they need your product. This can be an entirely superfluous need, like when someone wants to buy something purely for the aesthetic, but it is a need all the same. You need to drum up the impulsion to buy and you can do that in a variety of ways.

The method you choose will depend on what your business is and what it sells. Once you know that, you will then want to target each stage of the buyer’s cycle. Building trust is one of the best pathways towards a sale and repeat business, and targeting every step in the buyer’s cycle is the way to do it.

1.Problem

Buyers always have a problem. This problem could be as simple as having a nightstand that doesn’t have a lamp yet, or a space on the wall for a painting. The problem could also be more complex. They may need a household or business item that will help them streamline their everyday tasks and chores.

Understanding the problem that your product or service solves is the perfect way to start selling your business.

2. Investigation

Once a customer understands their problem, they will begin to investigate. The only other alternative is that they saw an item that solved a problem they weren’t actively looking to solve. This is an impulse buy, and it’s harder to accurately encourage impulse buys than on-purpose purchases, especially if you run a very specific type of business.

Either way, you will want to market to attract buyers at this stage. Guides and how-tos that go into detail about the many ways that they can solve their related problem are great places to start. Not only can you insert your own product or service as a solution, but you can also showcase your skills and knowledge on the subject and win over their trust.

3. Comparison

Before people buy, they often want to compare to make sure that they are getting the best item. You can create guides or online tools that make it easy for them to compare and see why your product is the best.

4. Buy

The final stage is to buy the item. You can encourage more sales by going through the entire buying process to ensure it is streamlined and efficient.

Improve Efficiency to Streamline Sales

If there is any sort of hiccup, you could lose a sale.

1. Audit and Fix Online Sales

Regularly go .through and audit the entire buying process to ensure that there is nothing wrong with the checkout process. If you can, try to get customers to create an account in exchange for discounts or shipping tracking. It’s an easy and effective way to get them to agree to signing up to your mailing list, at which time you can retarget them through loyalty programs and work to build a lifelong relationship.

2. Use Automation to Improve Sales

Your entire business must be streamlined. This means there should be minimal time when a product is out of stock before a new shipment comes in. Use software to automate many of these tasks to reduce downtime and improve sales.

Improve the Efficiency of Your On-The-Road Sales Team

When salespeople go door to door, they need to be courteous and helpful. Anything less and you can turn a potential sale into a door slam before you know it. One of the biggest reasons a sale doesn’t go through is if it takes far too long for a rep to visit a potential client. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a free evaluation or not. People have busy lives and waiting around for a salesperson to convince them that they need something is not what they have in mind for their day.

That is why you need to do all you can to improve the efficiency of those on the ground. To do this, it is recommended that you use a Sales Route Planner. This software is simple and efficient and can even be tacked on to your existing CRM program so that you benefit from an integrated approach.

Create highly efficient routes and manage your remote teams in real-time. Get your team at their appointments on time, turn losses into gains, and improve the ROI of your efforts.

Collaborate and Expand

Always look to collaborate. Partnering with businesses, expanding your offerings, and generally looking to new markets to expand is how you will continue to increase sales. It won’t always pan out, so use metrics like unique discount codes to determine what works, and what doesn’t.

You may find that your business does a lot better working on the B2B stage than it does with B2C. In that case, there is an entirely new market and new way of selling that prioritizes physical salespeople over automated systems. Work to your strengths every time you try something new and be prepared to tweak and adjust your strategy as you go.

Improving sales is the goal of every business, but you must take a long-term approach in order to see success on the grand stage. Repeat business and business partnerships are far more lucrative, so market and sell with this goal in mind and you’ll find greater success in your efforts.

The Right Foundation for Your Career Advancement Strategy

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StrategyDriven The Advisor’s Corner Article |Career Advancement|The Right Foundation for Your Career Advancement StrategySeveral years ago I was invited to coach a competitive healthcare executive who wanted to be the best healthcare CEO in the region. I’ll refer to him as Bob. Confident he was already a great leader, Bob basked in the “celebrity” status he enjoyed as a business influencer in the community. However, Bob’s career advancement strategy had not panned out as he had hoped. For example, although he’d achieved the CEO role, his compensation was less than he believed he deserved. This was due, at least in part, to the underperformance of members of his leadership team. Despite the external image Bob projected, he still struggled privately with feelings of inadequacy.

From the beginning, Bob had taken a thoughtful approach to his career advancement, but the design of his strategy overlooked a key element: character development. In my experience, character, defined as one’s mental and moral qualities, is the foundation for effective professional development and career advancement. Lacking the foundational development of one’s character, career progress may be halting, hollow (e.g., gaining the CEO title and position without the corresponding compensation), or otherwise unsatisfying.

To incorporate Bob’s character into our coaching work, I needed to evaluate the stage of character development he was in — and perhaps stuck in. Using six of the seven stages I’ve identified and work with, Bob was in one of these stages: Beginning, Yuckiness, Fear, Authenticity, Boundaries, or Love. (The seventh stage is Exit, but Bob was not looking ahead to retirement.)

Assessing Bob’s place within the six stages wasn’t a simple process. Bob believed he was in the Boundaries stage and, to him, this stage included learning how to “make” his direct reports more responsible for their unsatisfactory performance. In Bob’s mind, he wasn’t advancing because of their deficiencies.

As it turned out, Bob’s self-assessment didn’t match my evaluation, which was decidedly more objective. From what I saw, it was evident Bob was still in the Fear stage of character development. How did I come to that conclusion? Well, for one thing, Bob was quick to react (versus respond) to issues that came up. And, he deflected blame. In fact, Bob habitually blamed his staff for anything that might reflect poorly on him; he used several fear-based behaviors to protect himself from his feelings of inadequacy. Furthermore, based on my work with other key leaders in the organization, Bob was blissfully unaware that his inconsistent and sometimes disingenuous leadership style caused any of the confusion and chaos throughout the organization.

I spent a considerable amount of time introducing insights, resources, and ideas Bob could connect with from his self-protective mindset, which is a characteristic of the Fear stage. I was ever so careful not to inadvertently reinforce his self-protective stance by overwhelming him or causing panic. In my work with Bob, my goal was to guide him to methodically evolve from the Fear stage to the next stage, Authenticity, where he could finally shed his fear-based behaviors. That milestone would represent a significant and positive leap in Bob’s professional growth, and it would open our development work to a whole new level of leadership behaviors that were inaccessible to Bob from the Fear stage.

In short, using character development as the foundation for professional development is, in my opinion, the most clear, caring, and powerful way to move individuals forward in their careers — and personal lives. This is why I encourage you to evaluate your stage of character development using the seven stages of the BY FABLE model: Beginning, Yuckiness, Fear, Authenticity, Boundaries, Love, and Exit.

The stages of the BY FABLE model will help you put your development in a context that allows you to be more objective and self-observant. Once you evaluate which stage you’re in, you can use that information to determine which resources, experiences, or insights will help you grow your character at work.

The BY FABLE model will work at any point in your career. Stage by stage, this framework for character development helps you find the clarity necessary to achieve greater fulfillment and success from your work, plus the career advancement you desire.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor |Terri JackeTerri Jacke is author of IS THIS A LOUSY JOB OR IS IT ME? A Real-Life Guide For Achieving Success At Work, a seasoned organizational development consultant, and founder of Inspired Training Institute, Inc. She holds an MS in Applied Leadership For Teaching and Learning from The University of Wisconsin. For more information please visit www.inspiredtraining.net.

Modern Day Screening: The Importance of Pre-Employment Testing to Discover the Ideal Job Candidates

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Pre-Employment Testing|Modern Day Screening: The Importance of Pre-Employment Testing to Discover the Ideal Job CandidatesJobs are becoming more technical and people have to learn more and do more to qualify for these positions. Employers don’t usually like to take a lot of time to screen applicants individually so instead they rely on other methods, such as testing to weed out those who are not a fit. Such testing is known as pre-employment testing and it is useful in helping employers screen for those who would be ideal to fit into their company. This article will address some of the measures taken to screen potential employees for possible job opportunities.

Things That Are in Pre-Employment Testing

It is critical on both sides of the employment grid for a test to be used to see who will be a good fit for each other. In these kinds of tests, a person’s personality traits, his or her characteristics, skills, behaviors, and thinking skills will be measured, especially in terms of the job being applied for. It saves time when a person can be sufficiently matched to a particular job function, facilitating the employment process. These tests will also check to see how advanced a person is in the use of software and other technical applications.

More Reasons Pre-Employment Testing is Valuable

One thing that must be carefully scrutinized is whether or not a given pre-employment screening has information that will fulfill the criteria necessary for proper matching. Some aspects of an individual simply cannot be captured in a test and will only come to the surface after a person is working for a while. Aptitude tests may be able to measure a person’s ability to learn but they will not be able to capture if that person actually has enough basic skills to begin the work. Some people test well but do not perform well in actual applications.

A Final Look at Pre-Employment Testing

Other tests that are used for pre-employment are personality profiles, drug screenings, and integrity testing, all of which have limited value. However, pre-employment tests can rapidly narrow down the list to people who are qualified for the next phase, interviewing. It will help the employers to minimize the chances of hiring an employee who is surely a bad fit, and reduce the turnover rate in the company. As an added benefit, using an online format for pre-employment testing facilitates the screening and hiring process of employers, which is always desirable for those with limited time.

Final Tips of Pre-Employment Testing

Potential employers should make sure their pre-employment tests meet all the requirements of the Equal Employment Opportunity grid, so as to not be in danger of discrimination. They should avoid questions that are obviously too personal and have no bearing on the job being applied for. If they are using tests outside of their facility, they should thoroughly research the validity and integrity of the tests being used. The employers should ensure to use the right tests to arrive at the right information necessary for the jobs being applied for. The employers should not rely singularly on these tests for employment, but only use them as an initial base for the hiring process. Any future questions about these tests should be discussed with the agencies that originally put the tests together.

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