With the world getting used to the pandemic lockdown, businesses are having to get used to the fact that they’re customers are more cautious with their spending. They say that ‘only the strongest will survive’, but in the case of business, it’s those who adapt. Business expenses are also being limited as the same amount of income is not possible in these current times. The one place where you shouldn’t be decreasing spending is your marketing strategy. However, you must now tighten the scope to focus on strategies that will work the best in the current consumer climate. SMS and email strategies are head and shoulders above the rest and here is why.
Opportunity for expression
Email marketing has an advantage that no other marketing type has. You can convey your message in a much broader and thorough manner. You simply have more validity and space, for explaining your message. It’s been suggested that the word count should be between 50-150 but as people have more time on their hands, you could increase that to 100-200.
Ensure that your message during this crisis is pitch-perfect. The tone in which you express your call-to-action is absolutely critical. Don’t convey your products as essential but rather, things that could inject enjoyment or comfort into the customer’s life. As for the content of your email, keep it simple. Display the top discounted products and services through imagery and display how long the sales will be active. People are more likely to check their emails regularly throughout the day now that everybody is at home. This makes your email marketing approach even more important as every word will be absorbed to a higher degree.
Building new relationships
Customers are browsing like never before. Some internet providers are reporting over 50% more internet usage than before as people are working from home. This is a chance that you may never get again. Place a webform on your website so any visitor can type their name and phone number before carrying on to the page. With their contact details in your database, keyword SMS marketing is the strategy you should employ to display deals, discounts and future campaigns. This is how to build an sms funnel using a three-stage approach. Firstly, select a keyword that fits your brand. You could use your brand name with a number or so at the end of the keyword. The middle of the funnel is where you need to keep the customer engaged through broadcasting and drip campaigning.
Live stream confirmation
At the end of each week, using your social media and video sharing platform accounts, update and or acknowledge the campaigns you sent out during the week. Explain to customers what the campaigns were about, such as details on what products you’re discounting and why. You may also wish to give a heads-up to your viewers about future campaigns and what they can expect to keep them enticed and onboard.
With more time on their hands, customers are more open to SMS and email marketing campaigns. Use this time to your advantage by expressing why your products matter and sharing relevant opportunities that could help custom
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/e-mail-marketing-2745489_1280.jpg8531280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 17:00:142020-05-05 18:09:44SMS & Email Are The Best Lockdown Marketing Strategies
In construction, efficiency is everything. The sooner you are able to see a project on the road to completion, but without rushing it to the point that mistakes are made, the better. As such, finding the most efficient ways to get work done effectively should be a major concern for site managers. Yet, there are significant barriers that could prevent you from having your teamwork at their most productive. Here are a few of them.
Poor planning
The logic behind your planning might be sound. However, it’s the easiest stage to make errors, leading to corrections in the following days. For instance, you could under-estimate how much concrete you might need, meaning you have to take time to buy more concrete and readjust. Good construction management software can help improve your planning processes, as well as taking care of invoices, contractor management, incident reporting, and more.
A lack of accountability
When mistakes are made, it’s important to follow them to the source. Simply put, certain colleagues may be in need of training or being moved to other parts of the project if they are not working well. If you’re not tracking key performance indicators to see which colleagues are affecting overall productivity or, indeed, how certain planning and management decisions affect their individual productivity, it can be hard to nail down the precise solutions you need to put in place.
Waste
Naturally, construction projects lead to a lot of waste. Aside from being unsightly when simply dumped on an empty spot of the site, it can also grow to get in the way of the team, forcing them to work around it and even leading to health risks. Click here to see how post-construction cleanup services can help you keep your project site clear. Have policies to make sure waste is effectively dealt with as soon as its created, not just when it becomes a problem.
Theft
Your team will find it hard to do their work when the tools that they are supposed to use in their work are not where they’re supposed to be. Theft is not just an economic concern in construction, it can threaten the timeline of the whole project. As such, click here to read some tips on how to better prevent thefts, as well as how to better handle them when they do occur.
Starting from scratch
Modular construction is a phase that’s on the rise. Even when construction projects are bespoke, there are still prefabricated elements that you could use to speed up the project some without sacrificing quality. The next time you’re planning out a project, take a look at some of the most highly-reviewed suppliers of modular construction equipment and resources. You could shave a significant period of time off the overall project with the right choice.
With the tips above, you can face the biggest problems plaguing the productivity of your team. Ensuring the right investments and organizational tips will help your site work more cleanly, more smoothly, and more quickly.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/architecture-1857175_1280-1.jpg8531280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 16:00:062020-05-05 15:40:37The Barriers Towards A More Efficient Construction Business
“A transactional email is an automatic email sent to a single recipient to confirm a transaction or an event.”
Transactional emails have the highest opening rates because they are a direct response to a previous action; the user is somehow already waiting for them. In general, the click-through rates are incredibly high.
Transactional email is a service email that is sent after a user’s action, for example, a welcome message after registering on a website, a reset password confirmation, an auto-responder, a purchase receipt, etc.
Transactional emails are functional, and they are necessary for the normal functioning of your activity. If they are no longer sent, the function they perform ceases to be fulfilled, which can have severe consequences and cause you to lose many customers. Since transactional emails are so good for marketing, it is vital to ensure that they are delivered correctly to recipients and to trace it accurately.
Difference between email marketing and transactional email
Unlike marketing emails (newsletter type), which are sent in mass, transactional emails are sent to a specific recipient to confirm an action or notify them of an event. Typically, transactional emails include order confirmations, invoices, etc.
Types of Transactional Email
Invoices and receipts
Invoices and receipts can be integrated directly into confirmation emails but are sometimes the subject of a dedicated transactional email.
This kind of transactional email is particularly the case for:
Services not requiring delivery tracking
Subscriptions requiring the sending of an invoice at regular intervals
Tracking control
Your communication after a sale should not stop at the confirmation email. The various order follow-up emails have a crucial role in managing the wait.
You can send an email to notify your customers of the different stages of the order:
Order preparation
Shipped
Arrival order
Order confirmation
Your customer expects the transactional email the most. It is essential if you sell products or services online.
Pledge of seriousness and confidence for your customers; it must fulfil several objectives:
Confirm that the order has been taken into account
Reassure the customer
Send him all the information necessary for follow-up (order reference, access to his account, customer service contact, etc.)
Give him an estimate of the delivery time
This email plays a vital reinsurance role, and it often happens that the user has doubts about taking into account his actions, hence the importance of confirmation emails.
For some customers, ordering online is still something unusual and sometimes anxiety-provoking: a particular order confirmation email should reassure them that you are serious.
Password reset
The password reset email allows you to configure a new password via a single link. It is one of the essential transactional emails to set up: without it, your users who have forgotten their password have no way of being able to access their account!
How to set up your transactional emails?
Transactional emails are based on the SMTP protocol and require a specialised solution to ensure constant and reliable deliverability.
Sendgrid indeed offers many advantages compared to transactional emails included in CMS such as Prestashop, Magento, Woocommerce:
Real-time monitoring of performance indicators: deliverability, openings, etc.
Ability to customise your templates
Optimal and instant deliverability
Using the native solutions of most CMSs, you have no way of knowing if your transactional emails have arrived at their destination!
Separate your transactional mailings from your marketing campaigns
It is also essential to choose a solution that allows the routing of transactional emails to be separated from marketing emails.
Transactional emails are a vital point on your site and should not be penalised by the necessarily lower deliverability of your marketing mailings.
A problem in a marketing campaign can quickly lead to a decline in your reputation with email providers. You must, at all costs, avoid this impacting your transactional mailings.
Tips to Improve Your Transactional Emails
Finally, here are some tips to improve your transactional emails:
Keep the email concise and very clear. The user already knows what he expects, so be synthetic.
Send them a few seconds after the user action.
Use the most beautiful and most uncomplicated model to encourage clicks.
Place your contact details at the bottom of the page (footer).
Always send from an active address, better if authenticated.
Pay attention to the subject, and it must indicate the content of the transactional email to make it immediately recognisable in the inbox.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/email-3249062_1280-1.png7161280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 09:00:252020-05-05 03:51:27What is Transactional Email and How is it Used?
Managing cash flow is so important in business, which is why unpaid invoices are such a huge problem. If you have a lot of customers that are not paying up on time, that will soon lead to cash flow issues and it could mean the end of your business if you are not careful. All businesses deal with a few tricky clients at some point, but if it is becoming a regular occurrence, you need to do something about it. The good news is, there are some simple ways that you can get your customers to pay up on time. These are some of the best ways to avoid unpaid invoices and improve your cash flow.
Provide Clear Invoices
If a customer doesn’t want to pay up, they will try all sorts of tricks to avoid the invoice. They may say that they didn’t know that the invoice was due or they might challenge some of the items on the bill to delay payment and try to get a discount. You can avoid that by writing a detailed and clear invoice that breaks down exactly what they are paying for and when the invoice is due. It’s also important that you keep a clear paper trail when negotiating the price and sending them quotes so they cannot claim that the invoice is higher than agreed.
Consider Recurring Payments
If you have clients that use your services on a regular basis, consider asking them to set up a direct debit for recurring payments rather than issuing a new invoice every month. It makes life easier for you and for the customer and if you use recurring billing software, it’s simple to manage. You can make the prospect more attractive to customers if you offer them a small discount in exchange for making recurring payments every month. This gives you a good steady income, which makes managing your cash flow a lot easier.
Build Good Relationships With Customers
If your customers like you, they’ll be more willing to pay up on time, but if you don’t have a good relationship with you then they will be far more likely to leave invoices unpaid. It’s important that you build good relationships with your customers from the outset, and if you do, you will find that you don’t have an issue with unpaid invoices.
Don’t Be Afraid To Chase People Up
Sometimes, business owners are afraid to chase people up because they don’t want to damage their relationship with customers. However, if you allow people to get away with paying invoices late, they will take advantage of you and the problem will only get worse. It’s best to be clear from the beginning and if people have not paid, call them up and ask them where the money is. In most cases, people will pay up and if they decide that they don’t want to work with you again in the future, you just have to accept that and consider it a win because you don’t have to deal with a tricky customer anymore.
Follow these steps and you should be able to avoid any unpaid invoices in the future.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/numbers-money-calculating-calculation-3305-1.jpg7951200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 08:00:572020-05-05 03:31:15How To Deal With Unpaid Invoices In Business
Small business owners wear many hats. They are marketers, IT specialists, inventors, accountants, security experts, website designers, human resources, and much more. There are so many different things to think about every single day, so it is little wonder that occasionally, something gets overlooked. For many businesses, that is a plan for what you would do to get your business back up and running after a disaster strikes. Almost three-quarters of small business owners do not have a written disaster recovery plan. While it is something that you hope you never have to use, having one in place is imperative.
Depending on where your business is based, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and fires are just some of the things that pose a risk to your company and your livelihood. Here, we look at some of the things that you can do to mitigate the risk, and if the worst should happen, what you can do to get back on your feet as soon as safely possible.
Before a disaster strikes
Identify responsibilities
Every person within your company has a role to play and responsibilities to handle, but often these can become blurred. It is important to note down in your disaster plan and make sure every person is aware of their responsibilities, and should there be a disaster, they know what they need to do.
Back up documents
The last thing that you want to do when your premises have been damaged or destroyed, or if conditions have made it unsafe to travel is to have to worry about finding out important documents. It is essential that you have at least one copy of all your relevant documents – insurance details, inventories, employee details, etc. Store these somewhere secure, and that is easily accessible.
Install security cameras
These might be damaged in the event of a disaster, but they are still worth having in to see what happened. They may be useful if you have to claim on your insurance as well.
Have secondary power sources available
Sometimes, the whole premises might not be damaged or destroyed, but the electrics blow or a storm knocks out your power. Give yourself a chance of trading, or at least make sure anything that relies on electricity such as fridges, freezers, tanks for animals etc. are kept running and protect your stock by having a secondary source of power available, such as industrial engines and generators.
Inventory
For both stick purposes and insurance purposes, an inventory is essential. Where possible, keep receipts and invoices as you may be asked to hand these to insurance companies as proof of costs, but having an up to date inventory of stock, machinery, and equipment is useful.
When a disaster strikes
Inform your employees
One of the first things that you need to do is inform any employees who might be due to work that day so that they know exactly what to expect. It is important to have a contact list accessible at all times. You also need to have a contingency plan fr paying your staff – it is vital that you try to keep paying staff as normally as possible, as you may find that you do not have a workforce when you are back up and running.
Work remotely
You may need to work remotely for a while, as may your staff. Ensure that you have access to the technology and tools you need – this is where cloud services are a good idea, as you and your team can access any documents required to continue working from anywhere in the world. Ensure that any confidential information is encrypted to prevent any hacks in the transfer of information – the last thing you want to be dealing with at this point is a huge data breach!
Let your customers know
Your customers keep your business going, so it is imperative to let them know what is going on as soon as possible. Pop a note on the door if it is safe or appropriate to do so, informing them of the situation and when you expect to be open again, as well as any contact details. Put a note on your website and a post out on your social media platforms.
Talk to lenders
If you have any loans or finance on anything, talk to your lenders and creditors. In a situation such as this, many will be willing to work with you to give you a payment holiday and catch up when things are back to normal, but if you don’t ask, you won’t get!
You can’t stop a disaster from happening, but the steps you take to prepare for one and how you deal with it afterwards can make the situation a little less stressful and get you back up and running as soon as possible.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/street-3246398_1280.jpg8531280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 07:00:312020-05-05 03:20:23Preparing Your Small Business For A Disaster
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SMS & Email Are The Best Lockdown Marketing Strategies
/in Online Marketing and Website Development/by StrategyDrivenWith the world getting used to the pandemic lockdown, businesses are having to get used to the fact that they’re customers are more cautious with their spending. They say that ‘only the strongest will survive’, but in the case of business, it’s those who adapt. Business expenses are also being limited as the same amount of income is not possible in these current times. The one place where you shouldn’t be decreasing spending is your marketing strategy. However, you must now tighten the scope to focus on strategies that will work the best in the current consumer climate. SMS and email strategies are head and shoulders above the rest and here is why.
Opportunity for expression
Email marketing has an advantage that no other marketing type has. You can convey your message in a much broader and thorough manner. You simply have more validity and space, for explaining your message. It’s been suggested that the word count should be between 50-150 but as people have more time on their hands, you could increase that to 100-200.
Ensure that your message during this crisis is pitch-perfect. The tone in which you express your call-to-action is absolutely critical. Don’t convey your products as essential but rather, things that could inject enjoyment or comfort into the customer’s life. As for the content of your email, keep it simple. Display the top discounted products and services through imagery and display how long the sales will be active. People are more likely to check their emails regularly throughout the day now that everybody is at home. This makes your email marketing approach even more important as every word will be absorbed to a higher degree.
Building new relationships
Customers are browsing like never before. Some internet providers are reporting over 50% more internet usage than before as people are working from home. This is a chance that you may never get again. Place a webform on your website so any visitor can type their name and phone number before carrying on to the page. With their contact details in your database, keyword SMS marketing is the strategy you should employ to display deals, discounts and future campaigns. This is how to build an sms funnel using a three-stage approach. Firstly, select a keyword that fits your brand. You could use your brand name with a number or so at the end of the keyword. The middle of the funnel is where you need to keep the customer engaged through broadcasting and drip campaigning.
Live stream confirmation
At the end of each week, using your social media and video sharing platform accounts, update and or acknowledge the campaigns you sent out during the week. Explain to customers what the campaigns were about, such as details on what products you’re discounting and why. You may also wish to give a heads-up to your viewers about future campaigns and what they can expect to keep them enticed and onboard.
With more time on their hands, customers are more open to SMS and email marketing campaigns. Use this time to your advantage by expressing why your products matter and sharing relevant opportunities that could help custom
The Barriers Towards A More Efficient Construction Business
/in Managing Your Business/by StrategyDrivenPoor planning
The logic behind your planning might be sound. However, it’s the easiest stage to make errors, leading to corrections in the following days. For instance, you could under-estimate how much concrete you might need, meaning you have to take time to buy more concrete and readjust. Good construction management software can help improve your planning processes, as well as taking care of invoices, contractor management, incident reporting, and more.
A lack of accountability
When mistakes are made, it’s important to follow them to the source. Simply put, certain colleagues may be in need of training or being moved to other parts of the project if they are not working well. If you’re not tracking key performance indicators to see which colleagues are affecting overall productivity or, indeed, how certain planning and management decisions affect their individual productivity, it can be hard to nail down the precise solutions you need to put in place.
Waste
Naturally, construction projects lead to a lot of waste. Aside from being unsightly when simply dumped on an empty spot of the site, it can also grow to get in the way of the team, forcing them to work around it and even leading to health risks. Click here to see how post-construction cleanup services can help you keep your project site clear. Have policies to make sure waste is effectively dealt with as soon as its created, not just when it becomes a problem.
Theft
Your team will find it hard to do their work when the tools that they are supposed to use in their work are not where they’re supposed to be. Theft is not just an economic concern in construction, it can threaten the timeline of the whole project. As such, click here to read some tips on how to better prevent thefts, as well as how to better handle them when they do occur.
Starting from scratch
Modular construction is a phase that’s on the rise. Even when construction projects are bespoke, there are still prefabricated elements that you could use to speed up the project some without sacrificing quality. The next time you’re planning out a project, take a look at some of the most highly-reviewed suppliers of modular construction equipment and resources. You could shave a significant period of time off the overall project with the right choice.
With the tips above, you can face the biggest problems plaguing the productivity of your team. Ensuring the right investments and organizational tips will help your site work more cleanly, more smoothly, and more quickly.
What is Transactional Email and How is it Used?
/in Tactical Execution/by StrategyDrivenDefinition
“A transactional email is an automatic email sent to a single recipient to confirm a transaction or an event.”
Transactional emails have the highest opening rates because they are a direct response to a previous action; the user is somehow already waiting for them. In general, the click-through rates are incredibly high.
Transactional email is a service email that is sent after a user’s action, for example, a welcome message after registering on a website, a reset password confirmation, an auto-responder, a purchase receipt, etc.
Transactional emails are functional, and they are necessary for the normal functioning of your activity. If they are no longer sent, the function they perform ceases to be fulfilled, which can have severe consequences and cause you to lose many customers. Since transactional emails are so good for marketing, it is vital to ensure that they are delivered correctly to recipients and to trace it accurately.
Difference between email marketing and transactional email
Unlike marketing emails (newsletter type), which are sent in mass, transactional emails are sent to a specific recipient to confirm an action or notify them of an event. Typically, transactional emails include order confirmations, invoices, etc.
Types of Transactional Email
Invoices and receipts
Invoices and receipts can be integrated directly into confirmation emails but are sometimes the subject of a dedicated transactional email.
This kind of transactional email is particularly the case for:
Tracking control
Your communication after a sale should not stop at the confirmation email. The various order follow-up emails have a crucial role in managing the wait.
You can send an email to notify your customers of the different stages of the order:
Order confirmation
Your customer expects the transactional email the most. It is essential if you sell products or services online.
Pledge of seriousness and confidence for your customers; it must fulfil several objectives:
This email plays a vital reinsurance role, and it often happens that the user has doubts about taking into account his actions, hence the importance of confirmation emails.
For some customers, ordering online is still something unusual and sometimes anxiety-provoking: a particular order confirmation email should reassure them that you are serious.
Password reset
The password reset email allows you to configure a new password via a single link. It is one of the essential transactional emails to set up: without it, your users who have forgotten their password have no way of being able to access their account!
How to set up your transactional emails?
Transactional emails are based on the SMTP protocol and require a specialised solution to ensure constant and reliable deliverability.
Use a dedicated and reliable solution
The best option is to go through a specialised transactional email services to manage your transactional shipments, such as sendgrid transactional email.
Sendgrid indeed offers many advantages compared to transactional emails included in CMS such as Prestashop, Magento, Woocommerce:
Using the native solutions of most CMSs, you have no way of knowing if your transactional emails have arrived at their destination!
Separate your transactional mailings from your marketing campaigns
It is also essential to choose a solution that allows the routing of transactional emails to be separated from marketing emails.
Transactional emails are a vital point on your site and should not be penalised by the necessarily lower deliverability of your marketing mailings.
A problem in a marketing campaign can quickly lead to a decline in your reputation with email providers. You must, at all costs, avoid this impacting your transactional mailings.
Tips to Improve Your Transactional Emails
Finally, here are some tips to improve your transactional emails:
How To Deal With Unpaid Invoices In Business
/in Customer Relationship Management, Managing Your Finances/by StrategyDrivenProvide Clear Invoices
If a customer doesn’t want to pay up, they will try all sorts of tricks to avoid the invoice. They may say that they didn’t know that the invoice was due or they might challenge some of the items on the bill to delay payment and try to get a discount. You can avoid that by writing a detailed and clear invoice that breaks down exactly what they are paying for and when the invoice is due. It’s also important that you keep a clear paper trail when negotiating the price and sending them quotes so they cannot claim that the invoice is higher than agreed.
Consider Recurring Payments
If you have clients that use your services on a regular basis, consider asking them to set up a direct debit for recurring payments rather than issuing a new invoice every month. It makes life easier for you and for the customer and if you use recurring billing software, it’s simple to manage. You can make the prospect more attractive to customers if you offer them a small discount in exchange for making recurring payments every month. This gives you a good steady income, which makes managing your cash flow a lot easier.
Build Good Relationships With Customers
If your customers like you, they’ll be more willing to pay up on time, but if you don’t have a good relationship with you then they will be far more likely to leave invoices unpaid. It’s important that you build good relationships with your customers from the outset, and if you do, you will find that you don’t have an issue with unpaid invoices.
Don’t Be Afraid To Chase People Up
Sometimes, business owners are afraid to chase people up because they don’t want to damage their relationship with customers. However, if you allow people to get away with paying invoices late, they will take advantage of you and the problem will only get worse. It’s best to be clear from the beginning and if people have not paid, call them up and ask them where the money is. In most cases, people will pay up and if they decide that they don’t want to work with you again in the future, you just have to accept that and consider it a win because you don’t have to deal with a tricky customer anymore.
Follow these steps and you should be able to avoid any unpaid invoices in the future.
Preparing Your Small Business For A Disaster
/in Managing Your Business, Risk Management/by StrategyDrivenDepending on where your business is based, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and fires are just some of the things that pose a risk to your company and your livelihood. Here, we look at some of the things that you can do to mitigate the risk, and if the worst should happen, what you can do to get back on your feet as soon as safely possible.
Before a disaster strikes
Identify responsibilities
Every person within your company has a role to play and responsibilities to handle, but often these can become blurred. It is important to note down in your disaster plan and make sure every person is aware of their responsibilities, and should there be a disaster, they know what they need to do.
Back up documents
The last thing that you want to do when your premises have been damaged or destroyed, or if conditions have made it unsafe to travel is to have to worry about finding out important documents. It is essential that you have at least one copy of all your relevant documents – insurance details, inventories, employee details, etc. Store these somewhere secure, and that is easily accessible.
Install security cameras
These might be damaged in the event of a disaster, but they are still worth having in to see what happened. They may be useful if you have to claim on your insurance as well.
Have secondary power sources available
Sometimes, the whole premises might not be damaged or destroyed, but the electrics blow or a storm knocks out your power. Give yourself a chance of trading, or at least make sure anything that relies on electricity such as fridges, freezers, tanks for animals etc. are kept running and protect your stock by having a secondary source of power available, such as industrial engines and generators.
Inventory
For both stick purposes and insurance purposes, an inventory is essential. Where possible, keep receipts and invoices as you may be asked to hand these to insurance companies as proof of costs, but having an up to date inventory of stock, machinery, and equipment is useful.
When a disaster strikes
Inform your employees
One of the first things that you need to do is inform any employees who might be due to work that day so that they know exactly what to expect. It is important to have a contact list accessible at all times. You also need to have a contingency plan fr paying your staff – it is vital that you try to keep paying staff as normally as possible, as you may find that you do not have a workforce when you are back up and running.
Work remotely
You may need to work remotely for a while, as may your staff. Ensure that you have access to the technology and tools you need – this is where cloud services are a good idea, as you and your team can access any documents required to continue working from anywhere in the world. Ensure that any confidential information is encrypted to prevent any hacks in the transfer of information – the last thing you want to be dealing with at this point is a huge data breach!
Let your customers know
Your customers keep your business going, so it is imperative to let them know what is going on as soon as possible. Pop a note on the door if it is safe or appropriate to do so, informing them of the situation and when you expect to be open again, as well as any contact details. Put a note on your website and a post out on your social media platforms.
Talk to lenders
If you have any loans or finance on anything, talk to your lenders and creditors. In a situation such as this, many will be willing to work with you to give you a payment holiday and catch up when things are back to normal, but if you don’t ask, you won’t get!
You can’t stop a disaster from happening, but the steps you take to prepare for one and how you deal with it afterwards can make the situation a little less stressful and get you back up and running as soon as possible.