Posts

How To Be Constantly Improving Your Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program (BPAP) Article |Improving Your Business|How To Be Constantly Improving Your BusinessYour business may be getting by currently, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to achieve or sustain long-term success. The reality is that nothing is promised to you, and you must stay ahead of the game and curve if you’re going to be able to retain customers and win over new ones. To do so, you must focus on ways you can constantly be improving your business and getting ahead.

As the business owner and leader, it’s your job to put measures in place that help you to achieve and exceed your goals and customer expectations. You want to make forward progress before it’s too late, and all your hard work becomes irrelevant. Now is the time to step up and take control of your business and figure out what you can be doing to excel and win over more customers.

Revisit Your Goals

You can be constantly improving your business by revisiting your goals often. Although you have a good idea about what you want to accomplish in the next few years, it doesn’t mean that the information is set in stone. Evaluate the situation regularly and determine what’s working and where the gaps exist so you can make necessary adjustments to your plan. Remain flexible and adaptable so that you can modify your approach and management style based on what you’re observing around you. Make amendments that will help you reach your goals at a quicker rate and keep you from wasting precious time and resources.

Train Your Employees

Improve your business by investing in your employees and their futures with your company. You have to communicate expectations early on and set them up for success if you’re going to get the performance results you desire. It’s in your best interest to train your employees and get them all on the same page and up to speed with recommended business processes. Make your training events such as employee onboardings, software training, and corporate learning events more successful by using an iPad rental service. Each person will have their own technology device to use and will be more engaged in the educational programming you’re offering this way.

Gather Feedback

It’s easy to make quick judgments and assumptions in the workplace, but this may cause you more problems in the long run. Instead, constantly be improving your business by collecting feedback from employees and clients frequently. It’ll help you to make better decisions based on data and facts instead of you playing guessing games. You may find that some areas need your attention that you thought were going smoothly. Gathering this information will provide you with valuable insights into what you should be focusing on as you strive to make improvements at your company.

Follow Industry News & Updates

Another way to be constantly improving your business is to follow industry news and updates. Knowing what’s going on with your target audience and niche will help you to adapt and roll out better products and services. Understand how your industry is changing and evolving and what impact technology is having on your business. Take the time to read relevant blogs and follow thought leaders on social media so that important information doesn’t pass you by. You’re going to be able to predict future trends better with this knowledge and impress customers with your agility and ability to innovate.

Be Open to Learning

When you improve your skills, your business will also improve. If you become too comfortable and stagnant as a boss and leader, then you risk your business following in your footsteps. Therefore, be open to learning and working on becoming more knowledgeable in areas that are unfamiliar and challenging for you. Take online courses, attend seminars, and converse with other business leaders so you can advance your skill set. You’ll want to not only educate yourself but also implement what you learn at your workplace so you can make impactful changes to your current approach. Remain curious and inquisitive so that you’re always taking new information in and can avoid assuming you know it all.

Evaluate the Competition

Your competitors are going to be right at your heels, just waiting for you to make mistakes and take a wrong turn. They want to steal customers away from you and make sure they’re number one. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to evaluate the competition regularly if you want to be constantly improving your business. Focus on identifying where they’re falling short and figuring out how you can step in and offer solutions to problems that they aren’t currently solving. Learn from their mistakes and build off of their successes so you can stand above and apart from your competitors.

Address what’s Broken

Looking the other way and ignoring significant problem areas your business is facing will only backfire on you. Your employees must have the tools and resources they need to perform their jobs so they aren’t always fighting an uphill battle. You can constantly be improving your business by addressing and fixing what’s broken. Be a good listener and hear what your employees and clients are saying and what their pain points are so you can deal with the situation. Although there may be a mess to untangle, your hard work to rectify the situation will help move your business forward in the right direction.

Find A Mentor

Constantly be improving your business by finding a mentor who you can rely on for advice and input. Use this person as a sounding board and try to understand the reasoning behind their recommendations so you can apply the lessons you’re learning in the future. You’re going to have questions and issues that arise along the way, and it’ll be helpful to have someone you trust in your corner that you can bounce ideas off of as you go. Learn from their past mistakes and experiences so you can avoid these same mishaps at your workplace. A mentor is a helpful observer and will be able to objectively tell you what you’re doing right and what may be holding you back from achieving a higher level of success.

Take Calculated Risks

No one in business ever made it too far without diving into unknown waters and taking a chance. Improve your business by getting away from the business as usual mentality and instead taking calculated risks based on your problem-solving skills. Sometimes you have to step outside your comfort zone and do what’s not so easy if you want to make a true difference in the business world. You want to feel comfortable moving forward with your decision and also have a backup plan in place if you should fail or begin to struggle. The good news is that if you’re right, taking a risk may be the best choice you ever made for your company.

Conclusion

Being able to improve your business around the clock may require a lot of hard work and effort on your part but the rewards that come with it can be priceless. You risk falling behind and becoming irrelevant if you aren’t willing to take chances and make changes as a business owner. You can’t rely on what you’ve always done to get you to the next level. It takes a commitment and you dedicating yourself fully to overcoming obstacles and staying the course even when you stumble and fall or have setbacks. Believe in yourself and give yourself the benefit of the doubt so that you can turn your business around for the better and make impactful improvements.

How to Get Reviews: 3 Ways to Get More Product Reviews

/in /by

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |how to get reviews|How to Get Reviews: 3 Ways to Get More Product ReviewsDoes your company need reviews but you’re not sure how to get them? We’re here to help. Product reviews are important in showing potential customers that you have a community of customers that use your products, increasing brand reliability.

Building a community with your customers through reviews can help them feel they have real-life advice and insight into your products. Many times, product reviews can even answer questions other customers may be having about a product.

Increase your sales and improve your brand reliability with reviews. Keep reading this guide so you can learn how to get reviews today.

1. Make Leaving a Review as Easy as Possible

Like all things Ecommerce, leaving a review comes down to user experience. Making sure that leaving a review is easy and simple will increase your chances of customers leaving them.

A great way to do this is to create a space to leave a review on every product page. Give your site’s visitors an easy way to review, like leaving a rating and brief description.

Make sure you’re also sharing awesome reviews on your site and making them visible to other customers. This original content is also great for upping your SEO rating.

2. Incentivize Customers to Review

Incentivizing your customers with discounts or an entrance into a giveaway is a great way to persuade them to leave a review. A discount can be a great idea if you also want your customers to make another purchase with you. Making a loyalty program is a great idea for returning customers, who can continually make reviews and receive points for doing so.

Mention your incentives and giveaways on social media so that your customers can leave reviews on many platforms, from Facebook to Google as well as your site.

3. Send Follow Up Emails

Another great way to catch your customer’s attention is through email. If your launching a review incentive program or giveaway, send an initial email out to your customer letting them know about this exciting offer. After this initial informative email, set up an automated email that goes out to customers after they receive their products from you.

Try sending an email asking your customers how they like the product, encouraging them to write in a review about a week after their purchase. This makes sure that you give the product enough time to ship, but the product is still fresh in your customer’s mind. This also shows that you care about customer satisfaction.

While all companies hope their reviews are great, it’s impossible to please everyone. If you have bad reviews you’re hoping to get rid of, learn more here.

Tips and Tricks on How to Get Reviews

Reviews are essential to building trust behind your brand and creating a community with your customers. If you need more reviews, keep these tips on how to get reviews in mind today and start implementing them into your marketing plan.

For more advice on business, Ecommerce and more, head to the “Insights” section of our site!

Business Blind Spots – How To Know What You’re Doing Wrong

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Business Blind Spots|Business Blind Spots - How To Know What You're Doing WrongWe all have blind spots. For example, perhaps one we all understand is those who are angry or showboating often hide a vulnerability or weakness underneath. Someone becoming incredibly toxic and aggressive following a romantic breakup, for instance, is often hurting underneath, and that’s what will motivate their hard reaction. While businesses are nowhere near as complex as people, the idea of the eternal blind spot is something that carries with it a sense of validity. After all, if you do not look in those darker areas, you’ll be unaware of how to improve or solve them.

But how can you know what you’re doing wrong as a firm? This might be clear if you’re struggling to sell your products, or if your staff turnover is increasing due to a bad manager. That being said, what if your business is improving and successful? We might take this as proof that we are perfect in our efforts, yet of course, this is never correct. Thankfully, with the following advice, your operation will remain more self-aware than ever:

Thorough Inspections

Inspect your processes thoroughly. Leave no stone unturned. It could be that you’re spending way too much on inventory, you’re failing to turn your stock over efficiently, or you’re experiencing an unusually high number of product damages at a certain area of your manufacturing line. Thorough inspections matter, and they can truly make a difference – allowing you to potentially slash tens of thousands of yearly dollars that may otherwise have been written off. The same can go for business expenses from your travelling remote representatives, or even computing equipment being replaced by overzealous IT managers. You’ll fail to find anything unless you look.

Worthwhile Consultants

Using expert procurement consultants can help you figure out if your procurement process is running in a streamlined manner or not, and if you’re truly maximizing the deals you are able to gain through this process. Additionally, they will be able to suss out flaws in your communication, in your staff training, and also the crippling overspending you may be laying down in certain departments. Procurement is complex and that means it is rarely perfected. With a team such as this on your side, you’ll take every step to get there correctly.

Coherent Feedback

If you’re not investing in the internal communication and surveying structures that can allow for staff to report issues, and for those reports to be read and understood, and for practical fixes to be considered and put in place, then you have an issue listening to coherent feedback. Even if you do not act on every issue that you’re presented with, the willingness to listen to them and maximize your attention to possible solutions at least helps you lay those cards out on the table, even if you decide that now is not the best time to move forward.

With these tips, you’re sure to understand where you’re going wrong as a business, and you’ll more than likely take steps to avoid that in the future.

Human Feedback is the Greatest Path to Efficiency

/in /by

Feedback, at its core, is simply information about the results of past action that can improve the results of future actions. An airplane’s navigation system, the thermostat in your home’s heating unit, and a flashing electronic sign that displays your car’s speed are all examples of feedback that drives improvement. The plane adjusts its course, the heat turns off in the warm afternoon, and you slow down to the speed limit. Each time an adjustment is made, a ‘feedback loop’ is completed.

It’s not happening in the workplace
This is so not the way information flows between human beings in the workplace. Although employees receive massive amounts of information via electronic sources, feedback from their boss – information that could help them improve performance – dribbles in at a very slow pace or not at all.

Why is this?

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

About the Author

Anna Carroll, MSSW, is an organization development consultant, facilitator, coach, and speaker. She designs and leads training and group planning experiences and creates learning tools and assessments to speed up group success. Most recently, Anna has focused on how leaders and team members can overcome their barriers to exchanging valuable feedback in the workplace. Her book, The Feedback Imperative: How to Give Everyday Feedback to Speed Up Your Team’s Success, was published in July 2014 by River Grove Press.

Want to learn more? Visit Anna’s website: www.EverydayFeedback.com or contact her by email at [email protected].

Management Observation Program – Introduction

/in /by

StrategyDriven Management Observation Program Introduction“You can expect only what you inspect.”
Military Axiom

Managers are responsible for establishing and reinforcing work priorities and standards of performance. Reinforcing expectations requires interaction with subordinates and is most effective when the manager personally observes, rather than reading or hearing about, performance behaviors and immediately provides feedback. Lasting individual and organization performance improvement occurs through ongoing reassessment supported by performance data collection, documentation, and analysis used to reinforce desired individual and group behaviors, modify counterproductive behaviors, and eliminate organizational barriers to performance excellence. A well designed and executed management observation program serves as an effective performance improvement and reinforcement tool to achieve these long-term performance changes.

The management observation program is an integral part of an organization’s evaluation and control program. By design, these observation programs compel direct management observation of and feedback on work performed while supporting the performance data collection and analysis needed to realize lasting, beneficial personnel and organizational performance change. They typically consist of predefined performance assessment scorecards, a data collection and analysis application, key performance indicators and reports, and a governing procedure. This procedure defines required observation topics, frequencies, and quality standards as well as documentation and feedback protocols and data analysis, trend reporting, and corrective action; all aligned to support achievement of organizational values and mission goals.

Focus of the Management Observation Program Category

Articles in this category will focus on the underlying principles, best practices, and warning flags associated with establishing and executing a management observation program aligned with organizational values and mission goals that effectively modifies personnel and organizational behaviors for the achievement of superior results. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to a robust management observation program.

Articles

Best Practices

Warning Flags