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How to Transfer Business Skills to Manage Your Life

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Business Skills|How to Transfer Business Skills to Manage Your LifeStarting and running a successful business requires a great number of skills, including fantastic organization, great financial planning, and people management. If you are an entrepreneur, chances are you have worked to hone these skills to the peak of your ability. Yet they don’t have to be confined to your business world. These abilities can help you manage your personal life, ensuring you stay on top of your finances, personal investments, and work-life balance. By taking a holistic approach to your life, you’ll find you make better decisions, and that you’re able to approach your business with greater focus and positivity.

Managing Personal Property

When you buy a new house, it is never simply a personal decision. You are also investing in a property, one that you can profit from in the future if and when you decide to sell, and it’s worth using all your business acumen to ensure you make the right decisions. Properties come in all shapes and sizes, with all different circumstances attached, and it’s worth doing your research. For example, if you’re buying an apartment that falls under an owners corporation, this can have many advantages, but it’s worth investigating strata law as the bylaws that govern these bodies can be complicated. A specialized lawyer may be able to advise you and make sure you’re getting the best deal possible in this situation. Whatever the type of property you’re considering, treating it as a business decision as well as a decision of the heart will ensure you are investing in your future.

Overseeing Your Accounts

For some reason, many business owners with an incredible grasp of their company’s accounts and finance can fail to apply this same attention to detail to their own personal financial situation. Don’t let this be you. Keeping a close eye on the state of your accounts is a vital part of living a successful life, one that allows you to plan for the future and accomplish everything you desire. There are also tips and tricks you can pull from business models to help you manage your finances more easily. Just as you may have ‘pots’ of money separated for different departments in your business, why not apply this same structure to your own bank account? Put aside a budget each month for clothes, groceries, and casual spending, and make it more efficient for yourself to keep track of your expenditure.

Scheduling and Prioritization

Do you ever feel like achieving the perfect work-life balance is an impossible task? You’re not alone. Many business owners find it difficult to make time for themselves. One solution to this is simple: schedule personal time and social events into your calendar just as you would a meeting or a work deadline. This may seem frivolous, but in fact, taking time out to destress and spend quality time with family and friends is vitally important in maintaining your physical and mental health. In turn, this will affect your ability to concentrate, and therefore the health of your business.

9 Tips To Improve Your Customer Service

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Improve Customer Service|9 Tips To Improve Your Customer ServiceEvery business knows the importance of good customer service. However, sometimes procedures can slip, and of course, everyone is only human when it comes to dealing with situations that arise. The scale of business that can be lost due to poor customer service techniques is surprising. Now more than ever, people place companies on a pedestal when choosing where to buy. So, getting this aspect right is essential to get the right balance for your business.

So what does excellent customer service look like? Check out some of the top ways to incorporate typical company characteristics and techniques into your company processes.

1. Become an expert

Nobody likes a know-it-all, but when your company displays knowledge and expertise in a product or service, you can give precise and specific solutions to their issues. If the customer has to go through five different people to have a query resolved, they will not be happy. It’s also essential to have a troubleshooting or FAQ section on your website that can help in the first instance. If a customer can resolve an issue without needing to speak to someone, the more likely they’ll return.

2. Empathy

Companies should not act like robots. People want to talk to someone that understands their issues. To build a strong relationship with consumers, your team needs to be active listeners and establish a common ground.

3. Be personable

As mentioned before, customers want to be able to communicate with a human. Contact details should be clearly available on your website. If possible, integrate an option such as live chat to help people get answers quickly and easily without picking up the phone. This function can also help convert people. Suppose they have any immediate questions about an item. In that case, they’re less likely to leave the site to go and compare the information.

To help make your staff more personable, allow then to incorporate their personality into the customer experience while staying on brand. This is also important for any communication type, such as social media, live chats, and phone conversation. Consumers like to feel the personality of the brand and its staff, so they know they’re not buying from a faceless entity.

4. Clear communication

In short, don’t waffle or hit customers with sales jargon when they have an issue! If they contact customer services, it’s typically because they have questions or queries regarding an order. So don’t avoid the problem, just get straight to it and communicate clearly to resolve issues. If this does not happen, you could risk losing the customer and receive a request for a refund, as the issue was not resolved.

5. Flexible

The saying ‘the customer is always right’ is mostly true. However, this is only possible if your company is flexible. Adapting to different situations is vital for all team members. Unfortunately, some people try their luck when querying or communicating issues. The key to customer service excellence is to remain level-headed and calm. This can be easier said than done. However, investing in good training for your teams will help them tackle different scenarios and put their skills into practice.

6. Open to feedback

No company is perfect. While you may have a good reputation for excellent customer service, there’s always more than can be done to improve it. One of the best ways to ensure improvement is to be receptive to feedback. Of course, you may get the odd discrepancy in negative feedback. Still, constructive criticism is always important to take on board. A good way to collate feedback and reviews is to conduct customer satisfaction surveys. These will highlight areas of improvement and tackle any lingering issues that customers have, however small.

7. Listen to staff

One of the most significant aspects that can help improve customer service is by listening to your staff. They are the people face to face with the consumer and experiencing the issues they face. By collating staff feedback and frustrations they have with delivering good customer service, you can create a plan to implement changes. Staff may have various input from requiring more training on products to having insufficient authority to issue refunds, which hold the process up. Looking at each area and determining what can make the customer experience better will help consumers and staff in the long term.

8. Act on your promises

Getting feedback from customers and staff is all well and good, but what are you going to do about it. A company that says they’ll change and fails to doesn’t hold onto a good reputation for long. Act on your promises and give solutions to issues that are affecting the customer journey. In some cases, it may not be possible to implement changes straight away. Still, it’s also important to communicate this to customers and staff. An announcement such as ‘you told us this, and we’re working towards making it possible’ is a great way to let people know you’re listening but can’t do it straight away. If feedback is ignored, then it shows.

9. Don’t bombard the customer with surveys

While it’s essential to try and get feedback from customers, some companies make the mistake of bombarding customers with surveys about their experience. There are many ways that consumers can give reviews, including incorporating tools to encourage feedback on specific products. Giving customers the option to leave feedback is crucial, and if they say no – don’t push it. One of the best ways to drum up engagement is via social media. People love to suggest brands and let others know about their experiences, so be sure to interact and engage with others on your platforms to encourage tags and mentions in consumer social posts.

These are just some of the ways to improve your overall customer service experience and success rates. By implementing good practices and remaining consistent and on-brand, you will ensure customers get the information they require without confusion and hassle. Does your company cover the above?

Help Your Employees Perform At Their Absolute Best

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Performance|Help Your Employees Perform At Their Absolute BestThere’s something of an unbalanced impression among employers that employees will do all they can to work less, get paid more, and generally lower their morale if they haven’t anything better to do. That’s simply not true. Most staff care about their jobs, care deeply, and are willing to work extremely hard to keep them. This is especially true in these uncertain times, where the health of your business could quite easily mean if they have a job or not for the foreseeable future.

Employees just want to be given the tools to perform their jobs well, while enjoying fair compensation in the process. It’s really rather simple when we boil it down that way. Managers that fail to care for their staff are often managers (or owners) that care little for truly getting to the heart of the matter.

What daily protocols could your staff use assistance with? How can you make sure they can perform their work well, and limit the possible mistakes they may make? How can you alleviate the grunt work to help them apply their best, most creative potential? A few of the following tips could work well here:

Make Security A No-Brainer

Making security a no-brainer is essential for your business, and essential for your employees. Sure you should educate them in how to care for their devices, what SSL certificates are, the importance of VPN’s and encrypted website access, but it can also be that through Enterprise Email Security Software and more, careful protection against cybersecurity threats are taken care of in advance. This gives them the chance to actually focus on their work, something they won’t argue with.

Keep Employees Updated

It’s essential to keep employees in-the-loop, particularly at a time where remote work might be one of the most important and essential measures of staying productive and safe from COVID. Keeping employees updated means holding regular morning briefings over Zoom, disseminating newsletters, or publishing announcements to shared workspaces.

There’s no reason why these updates must be at the same time every day, but a daily summary can be very effective in helping people attend work with care and attention. Keeping employees updated can also mean reminding them of protocols and policies that need adhering to, and more.

Regular Training Investments

Regularly investing in employee training is more than something you would read in a light business advice column on Forbes. It’s an essential measure of retaining skillsets, of keeping staff motivated to stay at your firm, and to help dispel poor action, and misdirected intentions. Regularly investing in training, even if that’s just in public speaking or customer handling will emphasize the standards and principles you hope to evoke as a brand, and from there, how you will be perceived. Training can help rejuvenate a team, and it will keep them prepared for the future. In that context, it’s reliable and worthwhile to focus on this approach.

With this advice, we hope you can help your employees perform at their absolute best, no matter what.

What Are Professional Development Goals?

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Professional Development Goals| What Are Professional Development Goals?With the advent of technology, many careers have been created, and others are destroyed. Do you seek to remain relevant and competitive in this era? You will have to come up with progressive professional development goals.

You should ensure to improve and increase your competencies as well as capabilities. That way, you will be up-to-date with the knowledge and skills needed in the market today. Are you wondering how to achieve that?

You can enroll in learning and training that match your profession within your workplace. Many sources exist through which you can attain your professional development. They include job sharing, mentoring, coach webinars, seminars, and online learning.

Ensure any source you choose can help you meet your professional goals. It should increase your skillset or knowledge.

Have you identified your professional goals? Come up with a professional plan. They will assist you in attaining your goals quickly.

Professional development plan to aid you in achieving your career goals

1. Examine where you are at present

How is your career progressing? That’s an important question you need to answer as you seek to implement your professional goals.

Get to know what you have been doing within the last three or even five years to help grow your career. Assess if you are at the point you have always aimed to be in your career. In case your answer is not, take that as your turning point.

2. Define your specific professional goals

You need to figure out where or what you want to be. It will help you remain on course in any steeps you take to develop in your profession. Don’t rush to find your actual goals. Take enough time and ask your several questions and get answers.

Think of what success means to you. It’s a great way to begin finding your career goals. Can you easily identify activities you move most?

Are they within your present job? How can you change if they are not?

Ensure to identify long-term goals also. Where do you see yourself maybe five years or ten from now?

3. Do the research and get information.

Have you already found where you want to go or who to be? Gather information on what skills you need to achieve that.

4. Measure your present professional skills

By now, you have got your ideal care path. Take some more time and look professional skills needed and match with your current strength. It will help you see what you lack.

5. Decide your strategy

It’s time for you to choose methods that will help you achieve your professional development goals. But that should be after you have areas to have to work on. It could be seminars, workshops, or mentoring.

6. Have a timeline

Up to when you seek to achieve your goals? The time frame is very vital. It will help you stick to your PDP. Ensure to meet each target you set for yourself.

7. Analyze your plan

Before committing to your plant, it will be useful to evaluate it. Is it worth your time and resource?

8. Implement your plan and measure your progress

Execute your professional development plan. Don’t forget to access the results to see if you are heading in the right direction.

Conclusion

Professional development goals are part of your life if you want to grow. Ensure to have a solid plan that can help you achieve your goals. While you got many sources of career development, choose the one that increases your skill set. That way, you will remain relevant and competitive in the market.

About the Author
Naman Modi is a Professional Blogger, SEO Expert & Guest blogger at NamanModi.com, He is an Award Winning Freelancer & Web Entrepreneur helping new entrepreneur’s launches their first successful online business.

I Want to Start My Own Business But How?

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start my own business|I Want to Start My Own Business But How?Modern advancements in technology have made it easier than ever before to start your own company and become an entrepreneur. Millennials are more willing to take a leap of faith and quit their jobs if they don’t feel happy than previous generations. That’s because you can find numerous success stories online of people who chose to follow their dreams and got rich.

It’s important to understand that your end goal doesn’t have to be to become rich. You can start a business simply if you want to lower the stress you experience on a daily basis and pursue your passions. After all, everyone deserves a chance to do something they love. Becoming an entrepreneur is a great wait to gain financial independence and express your creative side. With enough success, you may one day even help shape the industry you are in. If you’re interested in starting your own business but don’t know where to begin, you should follow these useful tips.

Plan Your Finances

When you decide that you’re ready to leave your job and start your own business you’ll likely be faced with a huge challenge. In case you don’t have enough money saved up, you’ll probably have to continue working until you have enough to get your company off the ground. This can be hard to do, especially if you’re fired up about your idea. Nevertheless, it’s important that you do everything right. The last thing you want is to quit your job and end up with a failed business.

To ensure you don’t make any mistakes, you should estimate how much money you would need to get your business up and running. Note that you’ll have some one-time costs like purchasing equipment, getting licenses and permits, as well as doing market research and branding. Along with that, you should also take into account the costs of keeping your company running for at least a year. That includes rent, production, salaries, utilities, and similar expenses.

You should have a rough estimate on how much it would cost you to start your business and keep it running for at least 12 months. This is also vital information for meetings with investors.

In the event that you’re unable to save enough money to start a company by yourself, you’ll still have many different funding options. For instance, you can get a bank or small business administration loan. It’s also worth asking your friends and family whether they’d like to invest in your company. Finally, you should search for angel investors.

Write a Business Plan

Your business plan will serve as sort of a roadmap for your company that contains all of the crucial information about your business. Although you may have a pretty good idea of how you want your organization to look, you won’t have a detailed guide on how to structure, run, and grow it without creating a business plan. This document can guide you through the various stages of starting and running your company.

If this is your first time starting a business, you probably don’t know how to write a solid business plan. Even if you don’t have the technical knowledge to do this properly, know that you can easily find assistance online. Some professional writing services that offer the dissertation writing services can often help you craft a business plan. Your best bet may be to find a professional writer that does the research proposal writing service and ask whether they can help you.

Despite the fact that you’re yet to start your company, this is a good time to think about your exit strategy. Determine how much money you’d want to one day sell your business for. If you’re successful in this, you may be able to make a huge profit.

Decide on a Legal Business Structure

One of the most crucial steps to starting your own business is defining what type of entity it represents. Although you may think of this as just a formality, it actually has a huge impact on your personal life. For instance, if you register for a sole proprietorship, you’ll be accountable for all debts related to the organization. Note that this can have an effect on your personal credit.

The legal business structure of your organization will also determine how you’ll file your taxes. In case you decide to form a partnership with one or more people, you’ll have great tax benefits. However, there’s also the option of creating a limited liability corporation. This is a hybrid business structure that allows you to have both the tax benefits of a partnership and limited liability if something goes wrong. Your plans and business goals should be a determining factor in the legal business structure of your choice.

StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start my own business|I Want to Start My Own Business But How?Choose a Location

Once you write your business plan, secure funding, and determine the legal business structure of your company, your next step is to set up your space. Think about how important location is for your business. In case it’s not too important, you should search for office space that’s located outside of the city center. Make sure that the location you choose has access to parking and can be reached with public transportation.

Another thing you have to check is how many competitors are close to you. In case there is a lot of competition in your preferred area, it’s best to search for a different location. If you plan on opening a store, you should pick a location in a busy part of your city. Aside from choosing a good location for your shop, it’s crucial to carefully plan your store’s layout. Your goal should be to make an impression on any person that passes by your shop and encourage them to come in.

On the other hand, if you need a physical location only for storage and office space, your primary concern should be to ensure you can provide your employees with good working conditions. Of course, it’s also imperative to pick a location that is easily reachable from every part of the city.

Create a Team

The people you hire to work at your company will be one of the factors that determine whether it will become successful. Before you post ads online or around your city, it’s important to decide which positions to create. Think about what’s most essential for the survival of your business. In most cases, organizations need an accountant, sales representative, product manager, and a marketing expert. You can outsource any tasks that these employees aren’t able to do.

You’ll be required to provide certain benefits to your employees, including:

  • Social security taxes
  • Disability insurance
  • Workers’ compensation
  • Unemployment insurance
  • Leave benefits

Any other benefits you choose to give your employees are optional. Of course, it’s worth noting that good benefits play an important role in employee retention.

Conclusion

The most important step to successfully starting a business is to do extensive planning. Before you even consider leaving your job to become an entrepreneur, make sure you know exactly what you need to do and how much money you need to get your company off the ground.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Tiffany HarperTiffany Harper is a training guru who’s been working in the corporate sector for over a decade now. She loves to share her experience through blogs and articles. Due to her love of writing, she also works as the consultant for the essay writer service like custom essay help. Ever since Tiffany earned experience in corporate business, she provided her talents to some of the top essay writing services UK. Please do not hesitate to contact her on twitter.