Michael Levitt's Blog, page 111

3 Tips For All Businesses In 2020

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There is no denying that 2020 has not been the year that we expected, however, there are still things you can do to make sure your business comes out on top. This includes:

Marketing effectively

It is up to you to show that you are the best company for the job, and this is all about marketing effectively. You may know that you offer a high quality, cost-competitive service. Yet, potential buyers don’t. They aren’t just going to take your word for it either. So, what can you do to stand out from other businesses in this sector? 

One thing you shouldn’t do is be generic about what you have to offer. Stating that you are a qualified and competent company won’t suffice. Show buyers what you have to offer them. What does working with your business bring over the other companies in the industry? 

You also need to ensure your website and marketing materials contain stamps of quality. One of the best ways to do this is to achieve industry qualifications and accreditations and to become a member of a recognized association. You can then use these logos as part of your advertising materials. 

Finally, let your work do the talking. Make sure your website is filled with examples of your work. Take professional photographs and combine them with a compelling description that gives a real insight into the way you work.

Make sure you’re getting paid

This can be a lot easier said than done, especially when clients are going through difficult times themselves. Nevertheless, there are a number of things you can do to ensure that your clients pay you on-time.

Keeping on top of your invoicing and ensuring you send bills at the earliest opportunity is vital. You may also want to look into a company offering Accounts Receivable Management so they can recover your debts for you.

Build up testimonials 

Whenever you complete a job, it is a good idea to get a testimonial from the project manager involved, or anyone else that you worked closely within a management position. Such testimonials can really help to build up your reputation as a reliable, trusted, and premium quality business in the industry. 

However, the way in which you go about acquiring and displaying these testimonials is important. Buyers are becoming increasingly skeptical. A lot of businesses are, unfortunately, guilty of making up their own testimonials and posting them on their website. In order to be viewed as a business that can be trusted, you should also have plenty of information regarding the project in question. 

Case studies can be very powerful and they give a unique and frank insight into the type of service you provide. Aside from this, it is a good idea to get people to post their feedback on independent review platforms. By doing this, there can be no question regarding the authenticity of the comment. Not only this, but by using an independent review platform, you increase your exposure on the web. You may find that buyers do a bit of browsing online and stumble across your website because of the positive reviews.

Five Ways To Protect Your Business

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Protecting your business is important to do in this modern-day world, especially with the rise in the online world and how much we rely on technology as humans. With that being said, there are always things that you can be doing to ensure your business is kept safe and well. Here are five ways to protect your business.

Increase Security On-Site

Firstly, security is important to focus on when it comes to your physical work office or site. There’s a lot of things that you might not have or that you may not have noticed as being a potentially vulnerable point for a business. For example, if you’re someone who has a shop window, then displaying expensive items like an iMac or jewelry isn’t something that’s recommended. It can make it more of a temptation for those who wish to commit a crime and steal your belongings. Try not to leave your valuables out on display, just like you wouldn’t when in your own home.

Your security might be in need of an upgrade, too, and so it’s worth looking at your on-site security systems and whether installing CCTV may be worth doing. Protecting your staff and guests with more secure ways of entering and exiting the building might also be helpful. Key fobs or barriers that prevent people from going in and out without a keycard might be useful too.

Do Random Drug Tests

Random drug tests can be good when you’ve got suspicions of drug use within the workplace, or you want to do them routinely just to be safe. It’s worth looking at things like blue dye tabs to help ensure all samples that are provided have not been compromised or manipulated in any way. It can also be standard for some industries where you’ll conduct a drug test before an employee is hired to work in the workplace. It’s a good way of keeping everyone safe and making sure that there’s no bad press that lands on you as a result of a staff member’s habits.

Educate Your Staff On Using The Internet Safely

It’s good to educate your staff’s safety when using the internet. Not everyone knows how to use it properly, and it’s never good to assume that everyone does know how to use the internet without falling victim to a cyberattack or scam. There are lots of online and in-person training courses that might be worth going on when it comes to educating your staff on the dangers of the internet. These dangers are constantly increasing and changing too, so it’s important to seek regular training where you can when it comes to budgets and availability of time and resources.

Back-Up Your Data

Your data is important, especially if it also contains data from your clients or customers. The last thing you want to do is have that be compromised, and you suddenly find yourself in a lot of trouble with those who relied on you to keep their own personal data safe. It’s worth using a company that you can outsource to help tighten the security of your data and to make sure it’s backed up in the event that it does become damaged or stolen, and you need access to it quickly. Damage control is important to do, so it’s good to have those protocols in place for when you need them. The cloud tends to be a useful place to store your data and having access to everything easily from multiple locations and devices.

Be Careful Of What’s Said In Public

We always need to be aware of what we say to in public and online. It’s one thing that’s worth teaching to your employees because they’re the ones who are going to be representing your business for the most part. Be cautious of what’s been said on social media so that you don’t get yourself or anyone else into trouble. Be wary in a public setting as well, whether that’s making a speech to those at conferences or networking with other individuals at an event. There’s a lot that can be recorded both in the real world and online, so always be cautious of what’s said and that if you say it, know that it can have its repercussions.

With these five tips, hopefully, you’ve got some useful tips on protecting your business so that it can continue with its success in the future. Implement these suggestions in your own business and be sure your employees are also educated on it too.

3 Threats Your Business May Face (and what to do about them)

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Keeping your business safe, can seem like several full-time jobs sometimes, but in this day and age, there are so many potential threats that is really important that as a business owner, you do whatever you can to protect your company because it only takes one mistake for the everything you’ve built up to be lost to you forever.

Bearing that in mind, here are some of the most common threats to business and what you can do about them:

Bad reviews

Bad reviews are an inevitable part of doing business in the 21st Century. The fact is that no0 matter how good your business is, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and some of your customers are going to review you in less than stellar terms. If a lot of customers do this, then you could have a problem.

How do you deal with this? First of all, make sure that your business is efficient, effective, and not promising anything it doesn’t deliver. Then, make sure that you train your staff effectively in customer service. Should you still receive bad reviews despite this, don’t get angry or make a show of yourself by responding petulantly. Be an adult, acknowledge the issue, and calmly state your case using fair, accurate, and unemotional language. That way, customers will still get a good impression of your business overall.

If a review is malicious, contact the company who are hosting it ad see what can be done or consider speaking to a lawyer.

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Cybersecurity threats

We saw a record number of hacks in 2019. Some 2.7 billion identity records, 21 million user passwords, and 774 million email addresses were hacked, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Amongst hacking victims were some of the biggest companies in the world, including Capital One and Fortnite. If they’re vulnerable, so is your business and that is why you need to ensure that you have a high level of cybersecurity protection in place. This is something that ideally needs a professional touch, and luckily there are some great companies who can help you with this. Find out more about them today, protect your most sensitive data, ensure your employees are cybersecurity trained and don’t get complacent. It only takes one hack to potentially ruin your business forever.

The weather

When you think about potential threats to your business, the weather may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but actually, it can have a huge impact on your business. For example, if the area where you operate was to be flooded or suffer from forest fires, you may be unable to trade for a time, which could really hit your profits snd your ability to stay in business long-term.

Unfortunately, there isn’t really anything you can do to control the weather, but what you can do is take out a very comprehensive insurance policy that will cover you should a natural disaster take you out of the game.

Manage the threats, stay in business.

How To Be A Good Leader

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Being a good leader is something all entrepreneurs aspire to be, but not something they all manage. Too many people think that leadership is about yelling out orders and expecting things to happen their way or no way at all. In reality, leadership is a lot more nuanced than this and takes some serious skills to get right. Once you do, though, you can build a successful empire on the back of it and earn some respect along the way. Here are some of the best ways to be a good leader, and we encourage you to try them out. 

Encourage Creativity 

A staid and boring workplace that only has one way of getting anything done is not conducive to happy employees. Unhappy employees are not conducive to a great working environment. Before long, no matter how many tasks you try to get people to do, if they’re not happy in their jobs, they’ll find something else – or start their own business – and leave you to do the work instead. 

 

This is why a good leader will encourage creativity, where possible. Employees will enjoy their jobs more if they’re given a little more leeway with their tasks, and productivity should even increase. Plus, your employees will have a much healthier level of respect for you. They might still do things in the tried and tested way, but the fact they have other options can be enough to keep them smiling. 

 

Be A Role Model 

If you’ve gone into business, you probably have a role model of your own. Someone like Gurbaksh Chahal, for example, who showed you what was possible. Knowing how it feels to have someone to look up to should give you an idea of how to be a good role model for your employees, too – if you can do it, you’ll be a great leader for them. 

 

Some people work on a ‘do as I say’ system. They give out orders and think they are showing excellent leadership skills because their staff follow them. Yet what they are really getting is a lot of resentment and disgruntled employees. It’s far better to run your business on a ‘do as I do’ system, showing your employees what you’re looking for, so they know where to look for inspiration and advice. 

 

Be Passionate 

Think about all the teachers and employers you’ve known. When you remember the best ones, we expect those people will be the most passionate ones. They were the ones who inspired more action and who made every lesson or working day a good one. To ensure you are a good leader, you must have passion behind what you do. Otherwise, why should anyone follow you and do as you are asking them to? Remember that passion and a passionate feeling about what you’re doing can be contagious, and if you can show your employees how much you love what you do, they’ll start to feel the same way, and they will be happy to follow your lead. Think how depressing it would be to have a boss who clearly hated their job…

Why Safety In The Workplace Is So Important

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Keeping a workplace in order is one of the major tasks that any entrepreneur has to follow throughout the course of running a business. And one of the biggest elements of that is the safety one, which is so vital for so many reasons that it’s not something you can ever afford to overlook. But if you are wondering specifically why it is so important to prioritize safety above all else, here are the reasons.

Morale

With improved safety, you are always going to have a much higher sense of morale in the workforce. That morale is important in keeping everyone happy and ensuring that they are working hard, and it is something you can approach in many ways itself. But having a safe office is definitely one of the best ways to boost morale, so make sure that you are doing everything you can to keep it high.

Trust

You need your employees to trust you, and to trust the business. They can only do this if they know that you really are championing their safety, and that is something which you need to do as best as you can. One of the best ways to show this is to have the kind of access to legal resources they might need in the case of an accident occurring, such as the number of an established injury law firm. This, along with safety rules in the workplace, will make that trust so much easier to establish and maintain.

Protection

There are so many things and people that you are protecting when you focus on better safety in the workplace. Most importantly, of course, you are protecting your employees and any guests or customers who might visit the workplace. But you are also protecting the business and the brand. If you are known to provide a safe workplace, that is only ever going to be a positive thing for your business and how it is regarded by the general public.

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Stress-Busting

Having a safe workplace is also directly linked to having stress-free employees, and when your employees are less stressed they tend to work a lot better and be a lot happier. If you have noticed an increase in the stress in your office, you should check whether the safety protocols have fallen out of line in any way, as this is one of the most common ways this happens. Keep safety high, however, and the stress stays low.

Legality

Of course, it is also a legal responsibility to make sure you are providing a safe workplace, so that is an important reason you should do so too. You don’t want to get your business into trouble with the law, so make sure that you are providing the safest workplace you possibly can at all times, including following all relevant health and safety rules. As long as you do that, your office or workplace is going to be so much safer, and everyone will benefit from that improvement too.

How To Get Employees To Print Less

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No matter how many changes you make as a business to try to move towards a paperless office, there will always be someone who doesn’t get on board. Perhaps it’s from habit, or they prefer a physical print-out. Despite this, companies are looking for ways to discourage printing, to reduce the costs of paper, ink, energy and printer wear and tear.

There are lots of steps that businesses start with to reduce printing and move toward a paperless office, including scanning, filing scanned documents, sharing documents on the crowd, and improving efficiency by selling unused ink and toner to Sell Toner. Unfortunately, despite these measures, some people need more encouragement to change their behavior. 

Eliminate personal printers. Each printer in the workplace must be stocked with ink and paper, and be maintained. That can add up. Instead, change to a shared printer, but don’t tuck it away in a corner. Keep the printer near the office manager or the person whoever is in charge of maintaining them. People who can be seen printing too often will self-regulate over time. 

Have people print their jobs at the printer itself. People often forget that they’ve printed something and print it out again. Use a virtual print queue so the person has to be at the printer before their job will actually be printed, so they have to be there to get it. 

Use printer policies. Reduce late-night printing, large print runs, and heavy use of color. Use printer servers and other printer management controls to limit things like this. You could even implement different policies for different levels of the company. 

Change the default setting on all the printers from single-sided to double-sided. People won’t think about changing the default before they print, so set all your printers to print double-sided unless specified otherwise. Doing this can save a huge amount of paper. Other useful settings to save ink include grayscale, draft mode, and shrink to fit. 

Track individual use of printers. You can use managed print services to monitor the individual use of printers. Printer use often mysteriously drops a lot when use is tracked like this. You can share people’s use stats with them, and the shock of seeing just how much paper they use might encourage them to change their habits. 

Use a chargeback system to account for costs. These systems let you assign costs per printers so you can attribute low costs to the efficient printers that you want people to use, and higher costs to the less efficient ones that you don’t want them to use. 

Reduce margins and typeface sizes. Smaller fonts and narrower margins mean you can get more content onto one side of the paper, meaning fewer sheets will be needed for printing. 

Use thinner paper. Paper comes in many thicknesses. You don’t need quality inkjet or laser paper for everyday printing. Thinner, cheaper paper does the job just fine for most printing tasks within an office and will work in both inkjet and laser printers. 

Top Reasons Your Employees May Be Unhappy - And How To Fix It

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Plenty of people aren't exactly excited about going to work every day. If they could, they'd rather do something else with their time. But many people do enjoy work or find it fulfilling, and know they would get bored if they weren't working. When employees are unhappy at work, it makes it difficult for them to do their best work. They might feel underappreciated or bored and wish for things to change. If you want your employees to be happier, to work hard, and to stay on at your company, you need to know what they want. Here are some things that could be making them unhappy and how to fix them.

Feeling Bored or Unchallenged

Feeling bored at work is something that most people experience now and then. But when someone dreads coming into work because of the boredom they experience, it could mean that they have practically checked out of their role. Many people need to feel challenged or engaged if they want to do their best work. You might need to think about how you can offer your employees challenging opportunities and how you can help them feel like they're making a difference. What chances do they get to push themselves and do more?

Not Feeling Heard

It's important for your employees to feel like they have a voice and that they have some kind of influence. They want to know that they're heard when they offer their opinion and input. They want to know that their work makes a difference, and if they weren't there, things might not run as smoothly. You can create a work culture where people feel like they are listened to and where they have opportunities to share their thoughts. They might also have occasions when they get to take more responsibility.

Battling Against IT Issues

If there's one annoyance that can get in the way of working, it's IT issues that keep cropping up. When your business experiences constant IT problems, your employees are the ones left dealing with the consequences. You need to make sure you have good IT support to prevent this from happening. At www.cuttingedgenet.com, you can see how managed IT services can help you. With the right IT support, you can keep everything running smoothly at an affordable price. It will help to prevent IT problems so that your employees don't have to deal with them.

Problems with the Boss

One of the biggest complaints about work for many people is the behavior of their boss or manager. How well do you really know your management team? Would you know if any of your employees had problems with them? There are several ways to deal with these issues. Firstly, hiring the right people is important. Secondly, providing training to your managers will help them to be better leaders. And lastly, make sure your employees have a process to follow if they want to make a complaint or just have a discussion about their boss.

Take care of your employees and listen to their needs so you can help them to be happier and hard working.

How To Invest Your Profits

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Understanding how to invest your business profits is what separates the best leaders from the rest. Bad leaders will be content to sit on their profits and take a large chunk of them home. Instead, you should always look ahead to the future. The money you invest in your business will help it become more successful. By investing your profits, you ensure that you have even more profits to invest next time. 

Let's look at three ways you could (and should) invest your profits:

Invest in wealth

To begin, invest your profits in more wealth. What I mean is that you make investments that will grow over time. These are traditional investments you can make personally or as a business. Think about certain things that could generate a lot of money in a few years. Stocks and shares are always popular, but cryptocurrency deserves some consideration too. If you do a bit of cryptocurrency research, you'll know that things had quietened down since the boom a few years ago. However, this sector's technology is only just getting started, and it seems impossible to imagine a future where crypto isn't big. So, it can be a smart thing to invest in now, and reap the rewards later. 

Invest in growth

Grow your business by pumping money back into it. A simple idea is to invest in better manufacturing equipment to speed up your manufacturing process. This could allow you to generate more products per day, boosting sales. Of course, that's a specific example for businesses in the manufacturing sector. The things you invest in will vary based on your business and where you want to take it. Still, the same thought remains; invest in things that help you grow a bigger company. 

Invest in employees

Now, this investment kind of blends in with the previous one. You can invest in employees by hiring more people for your company. This is one of the first ways you should start expanding a business. More employees can take on more work, leading to more business in the future. 

However, you should also invest in your existing employees. Use your profits to pay bonuses or give people a salary increase. Things like this will ensure your employees are looked after. In turn, they owe you a great deal of loyalty, and they enjoy working for your company. This helps you improve your employee retention rates, reducing turnover. In the long run, this will enhance business performance and also save you a lot of money. 

Every idea on this list will contribute to a better organization. The worst thing you can do is invest none of your profits. Or, you invest them all in personal gains where nobody else sees the benefits. By making investments in things that appreciate, you can secure some money and grow your business assets. Pumping money back into your company is a genius way to expand and unlock your potential. Finally, employee investments keep everyone happy and let you reduce turnover rates.

Why Flexible Leadership Is So Important

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COVID-19 has shown us that uncertainty is part of the new norm, and therefore it's essential to be prepared for anything. As a business leader, in today's rapidly changing business environment, flexibility is an absolute necessity. 

New processes, technologies, regulations, customer demands, and cultural shifts require businesses to adapt and adjust to the change. This is why it is essential for leaders to be flexible too. But what does a flexible leader look like? 

Flexible leaders embrace change and are open to new ideas; they enjoy working with a broad spectrum of people and can modify their style or approach to leadership as and when needed. This is something all leaders need to be able to do within their companies as they work with the design team who will have a very different way of working to the accounts team. Flexible leaders are able to adapt to changes as they need to and are able to revise their plans to incorporate these changes, to overcome challenges, and to allow for innovations while still achieving their goals. They are also able to implement new behaviors to old existing situations and are willing to try new behaviors, regardless of whether there is a global pandemic or it is just an ordinary day. 

Being flexible allows you to be more effective when working with different people and dealing with different situations. If you think there is room for you to be more flexible in your role, then here are some tips on how to do this:

Ask for feedback 

First of all, you need to be aware of yourself, so the best place to start is to ask your team members. Find out what they think of you, how you handle things, find out if they feel if their skills and talents are being put to good use, ask them if they think you're flexible and what you could do to improve. There's no harm in asking your employees to review your performance, too, just as you do theirs. 

Manage your time effectively

To be flexible, you need to be prepared for anything, but rather than just being on your roes all the time; you can actually anticipate likely scenarios and start working on them or preparing for them ahead of time.  

Look for opportunities to be more flexible

You can learn to identify situations where you can be flexible instead of going about your normal routine. There are obvious situations, such as when a familiar situation changes or when new problems arise, but you could also find opportunities to be flexible in everyday situations. Rather than acting straight away as you normally would, take a step back to think about what your normal reaction would be to a certain situation. Is this reaction the most effective response, or is there something you could do differently? 

Listen to the advice

As well as listening to and implementing feedback, it's also a good idea to take notice of advice from others. It's not up to you to come up with new ways of doing things, but simply to try them. Benefiting from others' experience and knowledge can help you to evaluate and implement new approaches to problem-solving. 

What Needs To Be Considered When Creating New Products

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It doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned businessperson with all the experience in the world, you still need to go through proper checks with regard to launching a new business – or even a new product within that business. Nobody is invincible, and nobody knows everything without sitting down and thinking about it for a while. Whether you’re a budding, young entrepreneur or a veteran of the game, you need to plan things out and test the water. 

Let’s say you’re looking to create a new product for people to indulge in – how are you going to ensure it’s a success and has very few bumps in the road? Well, you need to sit down and go through every minute detail in order to figure every aspect out. You want no stone to be left unturned so that you can’t possibly be caught out or waste your money. While it’s not rocket science, you still need to take time out of your day to detail every facet. For now, here are a few fundamental points that you must consider: 

Is Everything Okay In Terms Of Legal Issues?

When coming up with any kind of business idea, you need to make sure you’re covered from head to toe with regard to your legal side. You could accidentally create something that is slightly similar to another product in the sector. You may accidentally forget a few formalities along the way, too. We’re all flawed humans, and we’ll leave some kind of hole somewhere – it’s just a case of reviewing things. If you aren’t confident in what you’re doing, then hiring a lawyer would help tremendously. 

Where Might The Parts Come From?

If you’re looking to create any kind of clothing item, electronic device, or anything like that, then you’re going to need materials and parts beforehand. You may need the right electronic components in order to piece everything together for a particular mechanical product you have in mind. If you’re creating a clothing brand, then you’ll need manufacturers to provide you with what you’ve asked on a consistent basis in order to get everything moving properly. A relationship with suppliers is pretty paramount. 

Will They Suit The Needs Of Those Interested?  

At the end of the day, you need to satisfy the people you’re trying to attract. If you can’t do that, then you’re not going to last very long as a business. Customer satisfaction is the number one priority once everything is out there and moving – make sure people care about what you’re offering. You need to provide a solution to the problems people are currently going through – if they don’t care, then they’ll walk right past you and find something else. View your product from the outside looking in, and you’ll get a much better perspective. 

Do You Have Marketing Strategies Ready To Go?

You can’t just create a product, and then, voila, you’re good to go. You need to supplement your work with a well-planned-out marketing scheme. People who have no idea who you are will need to know about you – and that’s all on you to make it happen. People will not gravitate towards you out of anywhere.