It’s one of the pains of a small business, being so cash-strapped, that you have to think about where every single penny goes all of the time. As a result, a lot of the important things that define a business can get ignored. Finding the right person is one of the biggest challenges anybody can undertake but are there any ways for you to find the right person, but also to keep them when your resources are minimal?
Never Underestimate Social Media
It is a cheap way to find the right person, but so many businesses out there ignore social media completely. There’s a case for and against using social media to find the right person, but you should at least try these avenues, and while Twitter and Facebook have excellent means to hire people, don’t underestimate LinkedIn, especially if you’re looking for a more professional avenue to hire someone. The popularity of sites like LinkedIn is showing exponentially how people are leveraging social media to find the right candidate.
Test Their Performance And Personality
You found the right person on paper, now what? At this point, while probationary periods are a common way to determine if someone is a right fit, to fully ensure this, you should give them a trial period. This isn’t just about ensuring they are able to maintain productivity, but, they are a good fit for the company ethos, and work well with your current employees. The best way to do this is to set up a smaller task that they can complete as an independent contractor, something you would normally outsource. This guarantees you are not wasting time in the business, but you’re also putting the candidate to task.
Keeping The Right Person
And if they’ve ticked all the boxes, it’s plain sailing, right? In fact, you may have put them through their paces, and this could drive them away. So instead, perks are the way to keep them on board. When drafting your contract, it benefits you and the candidate to lay out the perks and positives as boldly as possible. After all, there are so many startups, and if you are part of a big industry, who is to say that they will actually stay with you? Instead, it’s important at this point to highlight what makes you different, not just in terms of the company culture, but also what you can offer them that others do not. This is something that is done, a lot of the time, in the job advertisements. They mention those little details, like a ping-pong table, or team meals, and so forth. It’s worth taking inspiration from this, especially when posting your job.
When you are struggling for cash, the right person is like gold dust, and you need to ensure that your search for the right candidate isn’t overly expensive, but you need to know for sure that the person is going to be the right fit. By going through social media channels, and putting them through their paces at the very outset, you will find the right person to take you to the next level.
The rules of ecommerce are very different to that in the real world. If you currently run an online business or are thinking of launching one, here are some ingredients that you will need to make your business a success.
Strong online presence
Ecommerce businesses operate entirely online – having a strong online presence is therefore essential. On top of a website, you should consider setting up social media pages as these will help to make your business more credible and attract more customers. Social media sites such as Facebook can even serve as an extra platform to sell your wares, whilst Twitter can be great for connecting with new customers through hashtags and interacting customers. You may also want to put some money into SEO to improve your search engine rankings as well as creating PPC ads to help build brand awareness across the web. Mobile marketing is now taking off, so it could even be worth building your own company app that smartphone users can download.
A user-friendly website
A user-friendly website will encourage people to buy your products. Shopping around for the best ecommerce platform can help you to create a well-designed website that has all the features that you want. Ensure that your check-out process isn’t too complicated and that all your products are easy to find and navigate through (a search bar can be handy if you have a large inventory). You could consider hiring a professional web designer to create something for you.
Fast delivery service
Many people want the fastest delivery service possible. If you sell your products internationally and it takes a month for you to ship them overseas, you could put a lot of people off looking for a last minute gift. Consider paying extra for a faster courier service. Fast delivery won’t just encourage sales but it will improve your company’s reputation – the bulk of negative reviews in ecommerce companies tend to be related to delayed deliveries.
Positive reviews
Talking of reviews, these are essential for your company’s credibility. Many people can be wary of buying from a site they’ve never tried before and will look up reviews to check that your company is credible. Make sure that these reviews are largely positive by encouraging every happy customer to leave feedback. On top of customer reviews, consider trying to get reviews and mentions from professional publications and blogs. You can also build up reviews on social media.
Good customer service
There may be no face-to-face interaction involved when running an ecommerce business, but many customers may still want someone they can contact with queries or complaints. Being able to handle these courteously and quickly is important for your reputation. Provide contact details such as an email address and phone number and respond to any messages you get quickly. You could even consider setting up an instant messaging chatbox on your site for quick queries.
In business, you need to be shrewd to succeed and keep an eye on the competition, because there is a lot of competitors out there that will gladly jump into your shoes if you can’t deliver or get something wrong. However, as well as watching what your peers are doing, you also need to keep an eye on what is happening within your company internally as well. This is because you may be self-sabotaging your own business and not even realize it! Luckily, in the post below you will find some detail on the most common ways of doing this and what actions you can take to avoid or prevent these situations ruining your company’s success.
Ignoring the value of your online presence
It could be argued that as a business your online presence is even more important that the impression you give in person, or in your brick and mortar stores. Why? Well, its because you may not have any face to face or real-world contact with your customers, and end up dealing with them entirely through your website and other online platforms. With this being the case your online presence has tremendous value in term of the success of your business, and you undervalue it at your peril.
In fact, an effective online presence needs to be many things. Firstly, it needs to be professional and look the part. To that end, it’s best not to get your mate down the pub to cobble it together for you in your spare time but go with a professional design company that makes a living at this sort of thing.
It also needs to be on brand, which means that the images, interactions, actions, and content that you put out need to meet the style, tone, and values of your business. Something that can help establish your company in your customers’ mind and encourage them to think of you as consistent and trustworthy.
Also, your online presence needs to be user-friendly. At the very base level, this means you need to use a reliable business internet provider that will ensure any downtime your site has is kept to a minimum. After all, your customers cannot connect with you and purchase if they can’t even get onto your site!
Lastly, your online presence also needs to have a humanized edge as well. This is vital because customers don’t tend to respond well to automation when it is customer facing, especially online because they already feel that there is too little interaction with real people in this space and that no one is looking after their interest personally.
With that in mind, provide real people for customers to speak to over the phone, by email, or even over instant chat. The value of this being that it can make them feel much more secure in their purchase decisions and help to raise your conversions online.
Spending on the wrong things
Another way that you may be sabotaging your business without even realizing is that you are investing in the wrong things. Now, I’m not saying that investing in your business isn’t a good idea because it is if you do it the right way.
In fact, to be sure that you are investing correctly you need to consider two factors. The first is will the money you are spending have a positive effect on your customer’s experience? If the answer is yes, as it will be when it comes to things like customer service training, improved UX and UI on your website, or shorter delivery time, then it is usually a good idea.
Secondly, before you part with your money for business investment, you need to be sure that it will positively affect your revenue. Something you will need to perform a cost/benefit analysis to find out.
What this means is that by doing a simple analysis you can easily see which things should be invested in first and which should be left, no matter how good an idea they might seem to be. Something that can stop you getting carried away with investing concept that seems fantastic on paper, but won’t make any difference to the bottom line of your business when it comes down to it.
Wasting time on unnecessary tasks
Next, it is effortless to unconsciously sabotage the success of your business by wasting time on unnecessary tasks and working in an unproductive manner. Of course, this is a quit complex issue that needs to be approached in several different ways to be completely rectified.
First of all, it’s vital that you have your own system for productivity, something like the Pomodoro technique can work well, and that you stick to it. What this does it to allow you to set a good example to the rest of your staff in term so balancing work and breaks and ensuring that you maintain short and effective focus while you are working.
In addition to this, it is vital that you understand that hours at your desk does not productively make. An attitude that will reinforce to your staff that you do not wish them to waste time, energy, and morale on busy work because they don’t want to leave their desks until 8 p.m.
Next, as a leader in your company, you need to be able to recognize the value of delegating and outsourcing work. Luckily, this isn’t such a difficult thing to do once you have got the hang of it, even if you are someone that likes to be naturally in control.
In fact, all you have to do is look at the task you are doing and ask two questions. The first is, “Can someone else do this task for me?” While the second is “Would I happily pay my salary to someone to do this task?”. Of course, the answers you are looking for are yes, and no respectively, and once you have these, it is quite apparent that the task should be delegated or outsourced.
Happily, even if you are a smaller company or startup and have no one to delegate your tasks to within the business, many things can now be done by outside providers. In fact, you can find companies like this cheapest 1800 numbers provider with just a simple search, who will be able to provide a number that is not only free of charge for your customers to use, but is answered professionally and can field you call as well. Something that is perfect for small companies who staff’s time would be better spent on other tasks that are vital to the running of the business.
Giving off an unprofessional image
Lastly, a way that many otherwise well run companies self-sabotage is that they do not pay enough attention to creating a professional image for their business. Of course, without this potential customers are unlikely to take you seriously, or want to use you when it comes to making that all-important purchase.
Don’t fret though, because there are some simple hacks that you can do to ensure that your business looks as professional as possible. The first is to ensure that you have a well-designed logo and that this is on all of your paper correspondence, business cards, and emails.
Secondly, don’t forget that genuinely professional companies have more than a good image. They have an excellent reputation as well, something that is gained by delivering on promises made to customer big and small, and by encouraging positive reviews on external sites like Feefo, and Trust pilot, or Trip Advisor for those in the leisure and restaurant industry.
Positive reviews are essential for business success.
After all, there is nothing that will sabotage your business quicker than promising the world to everyone you come across and then not being able to deliver!
Whether you are trying to run a business, or you are self-employed, there is one thing that you must never overlook, yourself. It is fair to say that in the business world there are so many things you need to take into account. There are a lot of things you can do to get ahead in the world of business, and one of the main ways of achieving this is by investing in yourself.
There are a lot of things you will need to think about when it comes to making yourself a better business asset. This involves thinking about what you would like to do to enhance your own skills, as well as how you can make yourself more essential within the workplace dynamic. There are loads of ways to achieve this, and it is best to plan for it now so you can get the best possible outcome.
If you are running a business, you are going to need to work on improving and enhancing your management skills. This is essential for the way in which you interact with people and boost morale, as well as how you delegate and sort out important areas of the business. As a good manager, you are a better asset to the business, and you can work on helping it grow and thrive as much as possible.
Be Unique
You must look at what you can do to make sure you stay unique and figure out the best way of ensuring that you get some originality. When people are going to employ you, they want people who are different and unique, and who are going to bring personality and style to the company. Be the unique person they turn to, and this will really help you make sure you are more of an asset.
Get Qualified
It is important that you do as much as you can to get qualified and figure out what you can do to become a better option. There are a load of options these days, depending on what you want. A policing program, for instance, would be ideal if you are looking at entering the emergency services. This is certainly something to think about when you are looking at how you can ensure you are more qualified.
Think Outside the Box
Thinking outside the box is very important, and this is one of the things that can make you a more attractive business asset. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there are plenty of business problems that can be sorted or addressed by thinking outside the box. This is a hugely important skill that can be solved by way of…
These are just a few of the things that you can do to make yourself a better business asset. These are all about the way you carry yourself, as well as the business decisions you make that are going to help with the future. It is important to get all of this right as soon as you can because it will help your career prospects improve, as well as boosting the business you are running or working for.
You want to make the most out of everything you have managed to build with your small business; it has been a rocky start but you have managed to build a successful empire from scratch. No matter how big or small your empire is, it is still something to be extremely proud of and should be something you cherish for the years to come. You are always looking for new ways to havea more productive day or increase your profit margins, but keeping a flawlessly fruitful business is no easy task. Have a go at boosting your productivity levels and creativity by implementing some of the fabulous methods.
Outsource to the Experts
You want to be focusing your time on the creative and inventive aspects of your business, rather than messing around with technology and trying to optimize your software. Look intoCloud Services, that will help your business productivity soar; this type of subscription will be super friendly on your budget and it will give you the ability to enhance the way you work every day using in-app messaging and scalable cloud storage.
You can’t always sit at a desk and force yourself to get on with your daily tasks; you need to take regular breaks and make sure your brain is getting a rest. You can never push yourself to feel creative, so the best thing to do would be to go for a walk or do a mundane task such as washing up. Most of the brightest ideas in business occur during the strangest of times, so try not to focus too much or try too hard. You might just find that your best idea is plucked out of thin air one day!
Save Your Earnings
When your business starts making money it can be very tempting to start spending it straight away; the excitement of actually earning a decent profit from your business can overpower your sensible side. Be wary about shelling out all of your hard earned money all at once. Save some money for the future and make sure your investments decisions are always carefully considered.
Expand and Explore New Ideas
You never know where a bright idea might lead, so it is always worth exploring your options. Weigh up the pros and cons of starting a new venture and make sure you are ready to handle yet another task on your to-do list. Carry out some valuable market research so that you can assess whether your groundbreaking idea is actually going to take off. The important thing to know about business is that it’s a marathon and not a sprint. Try not to put all of your ideas out into the world all at once; bide your time and don’t rush into any important decisions.
You could have a fabulously fruitful business in a flash as long as you make the most of the resources available to you. Whether you need IT support or a helping hand with a new idea, make sure you take all of these notions into consideration.
Recent Comments