StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Alarm System|Learn About Alarm System Technology

Learn About Alarm System Technology

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Alarm System|Learn About Alarm System TechnologyNearly 70 percent of the homes in the United States don’t have a security system in place. Without a home security system, you are giving burglars an invitation to come in and steal whatever they want. Millions of home burglaries occur each year, which is why taking preventative measures to protect your home is important.

Learning about and investing in the latest alarm system technology is crucial. While this security technology will be expensive, it is definitely a great investment. The more you know about how to navigate the world of alarm system technology, the easier it will be for you to find the right elements for your residence.

Here are some of the things you need to know about alarm system technology.

Choosing a Smart Hub is Important

Do you already have a number of smart home devices in place? If so, being able to pair them with your new security system is a good idea. The only way to accomplish this is by investing in a smart hub. In essence, a smart hub acts as the centralized control system for your smart home. With this hub, you can control everything from your lights to your security system with the sound of your voice.

Instead of rushing out and buying the first smart hub you find, take some time to do a bit of research. Making sure the security hub in question is compatible with your devices and security system.


Monitoring is a Must For Modern Security Systems

One of the main goals you should have when having a security system installed is protecting your family and your possessions. If a burglary does occur, you want the authorities to be notified immediately. A security alarm will be useless if it is not being monitored, which is why working with a company like Alarm Grid to get this monitoring is so important.

A security system with monitoring will dial out to the authorities and the security company as soon as the alarm is tripped. This means that the burglars will be caught and brought to justice for robbing your home. The extra money you pay for this monitoring will be worth it considering how helpful it can be in the long run.StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Alarm System|Learn About Alarm System Technology

Choose a Security System You Can Easily Operate

When trying to find the right security system for your home, be sure to do your homework. Ideally, you want to choose a system that is easy to operate. If a system is hard to operate, the chances of mistakes happening will increase substantially.

Looking at the reviews a particular security system has can be helpful. With this information, you can start to narrow down the selection of systems at your disposal. Failing to do this type of research can lead to problems in the future.

Allow Professionals to Install Your New Security System

One of the biggest mistakes a homeowner can make is trying to install their own security system. Rather than deal with the problems this can cause, you need to hire experienced professionals to help you out.

StrategyDriven, Business Management, Retail Sales, Marketing Automation, Lead Generation,

How to Boost Your Retail Store Sales with Task Automation

StrategyDriven, Business Management, Retail Sales, Marketing Automation, Lead Generation,Every business owner needs a little more time and money on their hands. But both resources can be hard to come by, especially if your everyday tasks are bleeding you dry.

Enters task automation and you can save the day and your sanity. Task automation saves you a lot of time and money, while allowing you to close more sales on autopilot.

Thanks to automation, you can effectively boost productivity, lower costs and offer better customer service online and offline.

With a clever automation strategy, your cash registers keep ringing and you spend less time on mundane and repetitive tasks.

At the end of the day, you end up with more time and money to channel towards business growth. And when you hit your growth goals, automation scales with you making your job easy.

With the preamble, continue reading to learn how you can easily boost sales in your store(s) with task automation.

How to Use Task Automation to Boost Sales

Automation uses software to carry out most of the tasks that were traditionally performed by a team of people.
Nowadays, and thanks to advances in technology, you can automate many tasks including marketing, lead nurturing, sales, daily operations and customer service among others.

In the following section, we cover several areas you can automate in a bid to increase sales while saving tons of time and money.

That out of the way, let us get down to business.

Marketing Automation

Businesses spend a huge amount of money marketing their products and services. Usually, most businesses don’t achieve the desired ROI thanks to poor execution, human error and so on.

Automating your marketing strategy can save you a lot of money and time. If you run a website for your store (and you should), automating your marketing efforts include adding features such as newsletters and social media.

Once a visitor sign ups to your newsletter, you can send them automated emails to convert mere subscribers to ready-to-pay customers. To automate opt-ins on your website, you can use a service such as OptinMonster and Thrive Leads among others.

If you didn’t know, email is a powerful marketing channel for online and offline businesses. You can easily send automated offers to your customers, which can boost both online and instore purchases tremendously.

Most email marketing providers offer you automation with a basic plan. For popular players in the industry, checkout MailChimp, AWeber and Campaign Monitor among others. Once you sign up, you can offer free content on a regular basis to win over customers, a practice known as content dripping.

Further, you can schedule social media posts that feed your social media marketing campaigns on autopilot. You don’t need me to tell you that posting on various social media platforms daily can eat up a lot of your precious time.

To be on the safe side, you can pick a few hours to schedule a month’s (or a year’s) worth of social media posts, and automate everything with a tool such as Hootsuite or BuzzSumo among others.

Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing involves actively participating in the customer’s journey from lead acquisition to purchase and beyond.

Many first timers to your businesses aren’t ready to purchase. However, you can turn the tables in your favor by automating lead nurturing – the process of converting a mere visitor to paying customer.

For starters, you must respond to contact requests immediately. If you delay your responses to customer queries for more than 30 minutes, you are 23X more likely to lose leads left, right and center.

What to do? Automate the contact process. How? Automate email/SMS responses that are sent out as soon as the visitor contacts your business.

As soon as you send out the canned response, automatically assign the lead to a sales rep who then follows up immediately. The prospect appreciates the fast response times, and you smile all the way to the bank.

Additionally, you can incorporate an automatic system that helps you to master phone calls. Such a system allows you to win leads you’d have otherwise lost due to phone tag.

On top of that, follow up with networking connections to generate more leads. However, following up manually can cost you a lot of time. You can automate the whole process, so you can follow up on prospective customers while saving time.

You can automate lead nurturing using a combination of tools such as email marketing, LeadSquared, Zapier and so on.

Sales Automation

Netting that one elusive sale doesn’t end with lead nurturing. Once you or your team has qualified a lead, it’s time to move on to the next phase; closing the deal. But inefficiencies can arise and kill the sale when you’re so close.

Your best bet is to automate the sales pipeline. There are couple of stages involved in closing the sale, and the fewer problems you have in the workflow, the better your bottom line.

A typical sales pipeline involves four main stages namely:

  • Identifying the new opportunity harnessed via lead nurturing
  • First contact when you or your sale representatives contact the prospect
  • Engagement, where your team finds out the prospect’s needs
  • Qualification, when the sales representative goes full throttle and closes the deal

To avoid problems, it’s best to automate the sales pipeline, such that the sales team focuses entirely on the hottest leads, without wasting time on trivialities.

With a great sales automation strategy in place, your sales team can move the lead from stage to the next without any hiccups, saving you plenty of time and money.

On top of that, you should also engage with interested leads who are not ready to buy yet. With a little automated persuasion, you can convince such leads to make the leap and become a customer.

Other than that, always welcome your new customers with automated welcome emails/SMS/phone calls. A huge chunk of customers loves welcome emails, and if you do your homework, you can even score repeat business automatically without trying hard on your part.

For sales automation tools, we recommend EngageBay sales CRM, Pardot, Hubspot Sales, and Keap (formerly InfusionSoft) among others.

Office Operations

Daily office operations can take a lot of time. On top of that, many stores don’t carry out next-day tasks, which results in huge losses. The best scenario for all businesses is to boost employee engagement and productivity.
And did you know you can leverage the power of automation to boost employee engagement, productivity and achieve consistent store execution? That’s right, you can automate plenty of instore tasks to save time and money, boost employee morale and promote effective customer service.

You can easily automate tasks such as office communication with a tool such as RetailZipline. Additionally, you can use the same tool to automate sending and receiving of important documents, set up daily task checklists, and foster store participation via surveys.

Other than that, you can automate inventory tracking (you can use Zoho Inventory), job applications, employee onboarding (you can use RetailZipline) and so much more.

Other Areas

You can further automate areas such as:

  • Events such as instore sales or networking events
  • Ecommerce including tasks such as recovering abandoned carts, updating credit card numbers, generating repeat business, etc.
  • Customer service such as making it easier for customers to seek help, gauging client satisfaction, asking for referrals by offering small gifts e.g. coupons, remembering client birthdays, and cleaning your email lists among others

Conclusion

Task automation can save you a lot of headaches, time and money. Provided you know the right strategy and tools to use, you can easily automate your business.

As a store manager, HQ or district leader, it is important to invest in task automation to take your business to the next level.

Have concerns, suggestions, favorite tools or questions? Please share in the comments. Cheers to happy automating.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Phone System|How a smarter phone system equates to safer spending for any business

How a smarter phone system equates to safer spending for any business

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Phone System|How a smarter phone system equates to safer spending for any businessThe phones your business uses may be a central tenet of your operations, or they may barely even register as an after-thought. However, in every modern business it is an advantage to be able to have a proper conversation over the phone with someone at a distance. And for every business, therefore, it can be worth considering investing in a smarter phone system.

Smart telephone systems can look like an unnecessary upfront cost, but there are several reasons why upgrading your phone systems can represent an absolutely solid investment which will offer savings in the long term for any kind of business. Read on for our guide to the advantages to smarter phone systems.

How can you make your phone system smarter?

Smarter phone systems can reduce your costs and remove several different administrative needs. If you currently have to pay for both landline and mobile office phones, with confusing contracts, it can make sense to move to a service which is hosted on the cloud. While most of us associate “the cloud” exclusively with computing needs, such as file and image storage, the term more generally refers to secure, supported services provided in real time over the internet. The most commonly known effect of any cloud service is to save on server space and ease pressure on I.T. requirements at your office space.

It is possible, however, to have your phone services provided over the cloud as well. This would mean that all your business’ official phones would run on a single contract, and this also avoids the hidden costs of on-premise PBX network. This can be a particular advantage if your business is split across multiple locations, as it avoids the need for either expensive landline options or two different on-premise PBX systems.

How to upgrade your phone system

To upgrade your system, you need only look online. If you choose a cloud phone system by Gamma then you will be able to tailor your package to your company’s needs and size. One advantage here is a system which is compatible with a wide variety of phone handsets and headsets. With an app interface and administrative settings manageable from a mobile, your employees and freelancers have greater flexibility to work from home.

This freedom for employees to work from home while retaining access to their work phone and documents allows for a clearer relationship between management and home workers. This can allow for a greater level of telecommuting from your staff. In turn, this can have positive effects on your business’ carbon footprint and lead to increased productivity in cases where the reduction in commuting time has a positive effect on the mental and physical health of your employees.

The flexibility to increase telecommuting offers up whole new realms of possibility for reducing spending and reducing the amount of office space you need. When this is combined with the savings possible from being free of the costs of landline or on-premise PBX systems, choosing smarter phone systems is clearly the way forward.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Government Procurement|Why Including Government Procurement In Your Sales & Marketing Strategy Will Catapult Your Business To The Next Level

Why Including Government Procurement In Your Sales & Marketing Strategy Will Catapult Your Business To The Next Level

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Government Procurement|Why Including Government Procurement In Your Sales & Marketing Strategy Will Catapult Your Business To The Next LevelThe federal government spends over $4 trillion per year, and state & local agencies spend over $3 trillion. Government spending is the largest “industry” in the United States representing over 13% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — with manufacturing second at 12% of GDP.

Yet, despite this enormous opportunity, many companies don’t pursue doing business with the government because of common misconceptions about the government sales process.

I want to set the record straight. It’s time for business leaders to know the facts of government sales rather than believing the many myths surrounding this lucrative and probable client.

Most business leaders believe that government sales are beyond their reach and that the process is just too complicated. But times have changed. Doing business with the government has become more viable for ALL businesses — including small and minority-owned businesses. The process of government procurement has been streamlined — making it very feasible for the smallest of company’s and well worth the effort.

Government sales have evolved so much so that a majority of the spending does NOT go through a bid or RFP process. In fact, 80% of all government spending does go through a bid or RFP. Government agencies are using a wide variety of procurement options to complete purchases within weeks . . .or even days. In addition, the GSA has huge initiative to modernize its procurement process with an eMarketplace, which will help even the playing field further – ensuring that virtually all businesses have an opportunity to sell to the government.

Combined, U.S. governmental agencies represent the largest customer in the world, spending over $7 trillion per year. How can your company make no attempt to sell to the largest “prospect” in the world that spends an average of $20 billion per day?

Some of the best business advice you will receive is that your company MUST designate some resources toward selling to the government.

There are many benefits of doing business with the government. Unlike private companies, government agencies always pay. Most agencies have very high credit ratings, and companies can even get advanced payments from financial institutions on the future payments of government contracts (if necessary).

In addition, government spending is almost recession proof. When the normal business cycle slows and private industry spending declines — government agencies still spend large amounts of money. Government contracts are typically larger and can span multiple years. So, just 1 to 2 multi-year government contracts can have a MAJOR impact on the revenue of your company – catapulting your business to the next level.

If your business does not currently have one… I encourage you to create a government sales initiative to pursue the enormous opportunity of government procurement.


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Jack SineyJack Siney is an entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in government sales and procurement. He co-founded his current company, GovSpend, Inc., that aggregates the purchase order data from government agencies at the federal, state, & local levels.

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Credit Score|Do You Need Good Credit to Start A Business?

Do You Need Good Credit to Start A Business?

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Credit Score|Do You Need Good Credit to Start A Business?We all know that many entrepreneurs have bad credit score. Some businesses only start because the owners are unemployed, laid off, or worse, bankrupt. Some even start their businesses when opportunity arrives and not when their financial situation is good to begin with. Moreover, some go through personal difficulties which affect their personal credit score at the same time.

Do you need good credit to start a business? While having a bad credit should never be a hindrance for you to start your own business. There are some things that you can do to at least improve it. Improving your credit score allows you to get loans or business line of credit that you can use to build your business.

If you’re planning to startup a business but realized you have a poor credit history, you can check out these tips on how to improve your credit:

1. Don’t use big banks as a funding source.

Back then, banks only depend on your credit history, collateral, cash flow, and character when it comes to bank loan approval. These days, most banks tend to focus on credit history, particularly when making decisions on loan approval for small business owners. This happens because banks are now driven by the banking consolidation, which force them to automate the credit decision process and lessen the labor that takes place in credit evaluation. Regardless of how great your business proposal is, having a below 650 credit score will not get you anywhere a bank loan is involved. A good credit score is important if you want to get a loan.

On the other hand, you may apply for home equity loans in order to secure that much-needed funding. However, it is not advisable, particularly during the earlier cycles of business as cash flow can be a little unstable.

2. Determine the difference between your personal and business credit scores.

You may know by now that banks, especially the large ones, focus on the personal credit scores. Smaller lenders or banks, on the other hand, combine your personal credit score and business credit score, together with a lot of other factors when it comes to loan approval.

Keep in mind that your personal credit score is affected by a lot of factors. These include outstanding debts on personal credit cards, history of bill payments, late payment history, as well as the number of credit lines opened. While your personal credit score is associated to your Social Security number, business credit score is linked to the business tax ID. These differences can help you and your business get the financial boost you need.

A damaged personal credit score can affect how banks or lenders see your loan application. Hence, you need to consider obtaining a separate business tax ID number to link with your account. This is possible but you need to be very careful when doing this.

Apart from getting a separate tax ID number, making sure that your business has a distinct identity is crucial. Here are some tips:

  • Get an official business name and register it with the local authorities.
  • Get a separate business address that is not a P.O. box and have a separate telephone number listed under your business name.
  • Open a bank account under your business name.

These administrative tasks may look minor and unimportant, but they play a crucial role in distinguishing your personal accounts from your business.

3. Slowly build the credit score of your business.

Now that you have a business tax ID number and a legal business name, you can now start building the credit score of your business. Doing this helps your business establish a way to qualify for a business line of credit from suppliers and other sources of capital.

Starting a Business is Not Always About Good Credit

Keep in mind that anybody can start a business, regardless of how good or bad their credit scores are. If you need some funding and cannot go to banks and big lending facilities, you can opt for other ways to fund your business. You can ask family and friends to lend you personal loans. Just make sure to thoroughly talk it over and discuss with them the payment terms or the risks that they are about to take. Also, you can use credit card loans to help you with your startup. Although it is not the best way to do it, it is a much better option than not starting at all because of lack of funds.

Remember that nothing should stop you from building yourself to success. You may have a bad credit score now, but slowly, with the help from the right institutions or the right persons, you will be able to start the business and eventually make that business grow.