Michael Levitt's Blog, page 65

Attain Top-Notch Leadership: Signs Your Managers Need Leadership Training

Image credit

The sign of a good manager is someone who can take on the responsibility and authority to lead their team members. A great leader will get people excited about what they are doing, have a clear vision for the future, and know-how to motivate those around them so that everyone can work together towards common goals. If you think your managers may need some help with leadership skills or training, here's what you should look out for!

Poor Communication Skills

Too many managers are not comfortable with the idea that they should have to go through leadership training. They either don't want to admit their shortcomings or refuse because it's challenging to change a bad habit. However, this is an essential first step in developing your company into high-quality and professional management. 

Poor communication skills is a sign that your managers need leadership training. If you notice they are not communicating well, it's time to start developing them into high-quality and professional managers who can work for the company's benefit. Poor communication skills can lead to poor morale and lower productivity.

Inability To Motivate Team Members

A manager's inability to motivate team members is a sign that they need management training. Managers who have difficulty maintaining the morale of their staff will not be able to meet deadlines and may even resort to reprimanding employees for mistakes. Training from an established leadership institute can equip managers with powerful toolsets to transform any company or team into a cohesive, motivated, and productive entity.

A good manager will always encourage and provide a platform for your members to grow exponentially. You need to hone the strengths of your members and suggest good courses for their growth. For example, a good designer can take online school for video game design to further their skills and knowledge. In contrast, poor advice and ill feelings will often point to poor leadership. 

High Employee Turnover

Businesses with high employee turnover rates are often the result of poor leadership.  When employees feel like they have no voice or don't receive feedback, it affects their job satisfaction and performance.  Without this engagement from managers and executives, businesses can experience higher salary costs as more people leave to find a company that will be happier and low productivity as the remaining employees must take on more work.

If you're experiencing high turnover, it may be time for leadership training. Leadership training can help your managers identify their strengths so they know how to leverage them in a way that will motivate all their teams.

Coaching Without Giving Feedback

In any form of coaching, it is essential to assess the needs and plan how you can fulfill them. A good coach will give feedback that allows the coach to make changes in their approach or workflow. It can happen in an hour-long meeting where both parties could discuss specific situations and what behavior worked and what did not. 

The lack of feedback can lead to stagnation, and poor performance as employees do not know how they are doing their work or what skills need development. Employees also may find themselves working too hard on tasks that don't help them improve their skills, which decreases the quality of life in those areas because it is too draining. 

Failure To Delegate

Failure to delegate is a common sign that managers need leadership training. If you are the sole person responsible for everything, it's time to learn how to share responsibility with your team. When managers fail to delegate, they wear themselves out and lose the opportunity for growth. 

They may also be neglecting their team by not providing them with any opportunities. It is a sign that you need leadership training to learn how to share responsibility and work collaboratively with your team members.

Conclusion

You've read a lot of content about the importance of leaders and what they do. But without leadership training, managers might not be able to reach their full potential as great leaders. This article has highlighted some signs that may indicate your manager needs leadership training, especially if you're in an organization with no clear leader or vision for success. 

4 Strategies to Implement in Your Business: Growth Strategy

Source: Pexels

If you are looking to grow your business, then this blog post is for you! It will discuss four strategies that will help ensure growth. You can also get knowledge from awesome people like Chip Packard to grow your business.

Portfolio strategies

The business environment is constantly changing. The one thing you can count on is change, so it's wise to plan for the future and make sure your company has options open because things are bound to happen. 

One of the best ways to do this is by implementing portfolio strategies. This strategy includes looking at how a business creates value through various revenue streams and ensuring there are enough profitable products or services available in each category should something happen with one revenue stream.

The first step in executing such a strategy would be taking inventory of what revenues make up the bulk of your income and work backward from there: What percentage does your most significant product account for? What percentage does your second-biggest product account for? 

You'll end up with a list of percentages representing your current portfolio distribution, which can help you determine if it is time to reallocate the resources and assets better to prepare yourself for future changes or unexpected events. 

Doing this could also be helpful when considering new opportunities as well–knowing what each revenue stream contributes will allow you to strategically allocate capital accordingly and make more informed decisions about where investments should go. 

Differentiation strategy

The differentiation strategy is all about providing a product or service that differentiates itself from the competition. This type of strategy incorporates making your products and services unique, such as having an exclusive offer in place for first customers. 

You can also be very selective with who you provide by only offering certain goods and services to select individuals or companies. For example, if your company offers both clothing and electronics, you may focus on just one area instead of doing everything simultaneously.

Small businesses use the differentiation strategy. Mainly because it's hard enough competing against other large brands without adding more variety into the mix; staying focused makes it easier to stand out among competitors while still thinking strategically in terms of growth opportunities.

Diversification strategy

A diversification strategy is a portfolio strategy where you can reduce the overall risk by dividing investments across different asset classes. A diversified portfolio will have stocks in various industries and sectors and contain other types of securities such as bonds or mutual funds.

The idea behind diversification is also known as "don't put all your eggs in one basket." This principle advises against putting everything into a single system or plan because the entire venture will fail if it fails.

Focus strategy

A focus strategy is all about identifying what you do well and doing more of it. Elite athletes, for example, know how to practice their strengths while also maintaining a balance with the other facets of training. Likewise, businesses can do this in marketing by examining past successful campaigns and determining which messaging resonated best with customers or potential clients. 

For instance, if your company has found success using humor on social media channels instead of being too serious, then stick with a similar approach when evaluating new content development opportunities such as blog posts, videos, or infographics. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, implementing portfolio, focus, differentiation, and diversification strategies in your business will help you accelerate growth. Try this today!

5 Ways To Impress Your B2B Clients

Unsplash

If you want to gain new clients, and impress your existing ones, you need a solid plan. With ample competition, B2B companies need to think carefully about how they’ll appeal to their audiences. To help you impress your clients today, try these five top tips.

1 . Host special events

Hosting special events is an amazing way to impress clients. Using events you can offer entertainment or education, you might like to network, or present yourself as a thought leader. Depending on your niche, you might choose a workshop, a leisure event, or an event for brand storytelling. If you have special clients traveling from far away, you might consider impressing them with classy corporate transportation.

2. Improve your content

B2B Clients are looking to be educated, which is why content marketing is such a useful tool. You can impress your B2B clients with a range of different materials from blog posts and whitepapers to infographics and ebooks. When you’re designing your content keep an eye on your competitors. Clients have plenty of content options, and so you’ll want to ensure that you offer something unique. With the right content strategy you can improve your social media campaigns, and boost your online presence.

Once you’ve developed a solid content strategy, you can monitor your performance, to help you keep making improvements. You don’t always have to make brand new content, you can also refresh your old material with some great updates and new info.

3. Share client content

Looking to impress your B2B clients? Then remember to share their content on social media. In our current economy, local businesses have much to gain from supporting each-other, especially on social media. When sharing content, it’s important to ensure that you appeal to the values of your audience as a whole. Social media is a powerful marketing tool because it makes it easier to target the right people in the right places.

If appropriate, ask your clients for testimonials, and offer to provide testimonials in return. Many clients will first check testimonials or reviews, before working with a new company.

4. Customer centric marketing

During COVID-19 lots of marketers worked on offering useful info, (instead of merely working on leads). In the B2B world, marketers are concerned with retaining customers, as much as widening their reach.

According to HotJar, ‘Customer-centric marketing is a marketing approach designed around customer needs and interests. It is about prioritizing customers over any other factor, using a blend of intuition, common sense, and solid data about customer behavior.’ With a customer centric marketing strategy B2B companies can impress their customers.

5. Video marketing 

Video marketing has many advantages for B2B brands, using an effective marketing strategy you can increase customer engagement and boost customer retention. You can support your social media campaigns, blogging and search engine optimization. With the help of video marketing you can design remarketing systems and connect with your clients at various points in the sales journey. There are plenty of different ways to approach video marketing, and you don’t need a huge budget. 

As time moves forward B2B marketing trends will grow and change. To remain future proof as a company you’ll need to keep up with what’s current, and reevaluate your strategies ongoing.

Why Your Personal Online Brand Matters

Pexels-CC0 license

How long have you had social media? Did it start with a Bebo account when you were 12? A Myspace page at 14 or Facebook at 17? Did you know that no matter how many years ago you started these accounts if they’re still active and on sites that still exist? The chances are that if someone gets hold of an old username of yours, they can find some of the things you posted on that site, even from years and years ago.

Remember all those times of celebrity scandal when somebody’s tweets from 12+ years ago came under media scrutiny because of their views and opinions when they were younger? It’s a bit like that.

Who cares about my online presence? 

Lots of people do. Especially when it comes to things like applying for jobs. Recruiters will often do a quick online search to see who has applied for their roles before calling you with an interview. They want to see the type of person you are as is often displayed on social media.

That’s not just professional social media pages like LinkedIn or like Security company Founder Robin St Martin puts on websites that connect entrepreneurs, they will also look at your social media to see what you put on there and whether some of your views are questionable at all and in line with that of the company’s. 

Another area where your social media may get scrutinized is in the world of online dating. As soon as somebody learns another person’s last name, their first instinct will be to search for them online to see what they can find out. It’s true. You may not have had your first date with someone yet, and they know all about your travels to Bali, whether you voted in the elections, and maybe even what you had for lunch last Wednesday. 

How can I protect my online identity? 

Protecting yourself from what people see about you online may just be a simple case of making things a little more private. By only sharing the most intimate details about your life with those who know and love you, you can rest assured knowing that people may not get access to this information.

However, there is still the chance that someone can take and send screenshots when you least what them to, so it may be best to go through your socials and delete anything that could be used against you when it comes to things like work and romance. 

Online Identity

Whether you’re going for a job, a date, or setting up your own business, how you portray yourself online matters. A good rule of thumb to follow is to not post anything your grandparents wouldn’t be happy to see, and you should be safe to post it for the world to see.

Make your social media pages as private as possible and only share the things you want to remember or be remembered for.

Ways To Make Your Daily Commute More Bearable

How do you set yourself up for a successful workday? If you’re returning to the office, you might not be feeling too inspired at the prospect of sitting in traffic or cramming into a train. With a little creative strategizing, though, you’ll find that there are plenty of ways to make your daily commute more bearable.

Do Some Breath Work

This is a little different from all the times someone told you, “Take a deep breath.” Breath work is a more active form of meditation with a variety of exercises. The techniques, including alternate nostril breathing, tongue curling, and soft hissing, are based on influences as far back as China circa 400 BCE. Scientific studies back it up, too. Breath work can offer all kinds of health benefits, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Oprah have already given the practice their stamp of approval. If you’re on public transportation, no one has to know you’re doing it. Even if they hear you hissing, they’ll probably just give you some personal space. Win-win.

Incorporate a Little Exercise

Leave a little extra time and get off the train a stop early for a vigorous walk the rest of the way. Or park your car more conveniently and use a folding bicycle for part of the trip. If you don’t want to arrive sweaty, buy an electric model that can give you a pedal boost if you want one. You can adjust the setting when you want more of a workout. But don’t be that person who strides into the office with bicycle shorts on. Wear less clingy exercise clothes or stop by the restroom first for a quick costume change.

Try More Active Listening

It’s hard to make your daily commute more bearable when all you hear is honking, gossiping strangers, or the drone of talk radio. But if you’ve been resisting people’s recommendations for podcasts and audiobooks, this is the time to give them a chance. With a good set of earphones, you can amp up your energy with heavy metal, listen to the latest best-selling biography, or finally learn a new language. Your commute is time just for you. During the pandemic, many newly remote workers have missed this often helpful transition between home and the office. Use the time productively—even if it’s just listening to soothing sounds to de-stress.

What To Consider When Designing a Commercial Kitchen

Once you’ve set up your food-based business, it's time to start planning your design, but where do you start? It all starts with pre-planning. The best plans often come from the heart, mainly if you serve a particular food style. Find out what to consider when designing a commercial kitchen in your restaurant or other food-based business.

Figure Out the Menu

The first thing to note is what your menu will look like. If you're serving basic foods, your encumbered list of equipment can get cut down to the simple gear. However, if you're planning to operate an overwhelming menu exploring a specific cuisine, or maybe it's a fusion of the two, you'll want to understand the food processes and what's needed to prepare each dish.

Communicate With Design Teams

Creating a commercial kitchen is not a one-person job. When it comes to the nitty-gritty, you'll need to work with separate departments to ensure that all messages and plans are addressed well. Also, coordinate with a chef about the kitchen's layout to determine how many stoves will be needed, if there are safety measures that need to be followed, and how and where the food will be delivered. Your kitchen setup helps other workers know where everything will be and where to pick up an order—whether it's take-out, delivery, or dine-in.

Measure Your Space Top To Bottom

In this step, you’ll begin to work with other departments to figure out the appropriate equipment to use in your cooking area. When you’re in your space, make some measurements to help determine the right range hood for the height of your kitchen. Once all sizes are figured out, you'll have a better idea of what other appliances and gear you need for your kitchen.

Determine the Kitchen System

Each kitchen is built differently, and you should consider how you'll implement a proper kitchen flow to figure out what areas need to be used for storage, paths, and separate working areas. Consider things like the assembly line and modular stations. If you're looking to implement third-party delivery options for customers, consider a designated pick-up area for those types of orders.

You Need To Meet Health Codes and Regulations

When designing your commercial kitchen, it's vital to meet all codes through the FDA and OSHA. OSHA regulations comprise having a proper placement of emergency equipment like a fire alarm, smoke detector, and others. For the FDA, it's standard to meet all codes and regulations regarding the production of food product, how it's prepared, served, handled, and what equipment is used. Also, take into consideration your state's specific laws.

Don’t have trouble navigating without looking at what to consider when designing your commercial kitchen, so you know what to do. Pre-planning your layout plan will help in the long run when you need to make any changes in the future.

Ensuring The Best Delivery Processes For Your Customers

Photo by @rosebox

When it comes to making home improvements, you might think of home decor, of comfort, of practicality, and of enhancing your lifestyle but how often do you think about your security? Here, we’re going to look at the steps you can take to address some of the gaps that might exist in your home’s security.

Securing the openings

First of all, think about how would-be criminals might enter the home in the first place. It’s usually by entering the windows or the doors. However, if these parts of the home are well-secured, they will find it difficult to make their way in. For that reason, it might be worth looking at replacement doors and windows strong enough to offer your home real security.

Keeping it under key

If you’ve just moved into your home, then you should be aware that you might have a rather urgent security fault to deal with already. A lot of people do not change the keys when they first get into their home, but you have no idea who might have a copy of the old keys. Call out a locksmith for mobile key cutting and lock changing and get it fixed immediately. Even if you totally trust the seller, you can’t be certain you’re the only one with working keys for your own home, which is not a good notion to entertain.

Deterring any unwanted visitors

Deterrence can be just as effective as securing the home to prevent entry. Criminals typically target easy victims, meaning that any home that makes it difficult to go about unseen or without issue is going to be a harder mark. Outdoor lighting can improve the visibility around your home, meaning that would-be criminals are less likely to go near it since they don’t want to be seen.

Keeping an eye out

One of the biggest benefits of a home CCTV system is that it, too, acts as a deterrent. A visible sign that your home is being watched and guarded can be enough to keep plenty of unwanted elements away. Of course, the other big benefit is the ability to keep an eye out around your home for anyone who might be lurking around a little too often.

Getting alert

If someone were to get into the home while you were away, what could you do about it? If you don’t have an alarm system, the answer could be “not much at all.” However, alarm systems are getting smarter and more affordable. Instead of hooking up to some complicated surveillance system, smart alarms can let you know via your own phone or device when there’s a security issue and you can call the police or get back home yourself.

It doesn’t take paranoia to understand the real risk of criminals targeting your home. If you have any assets worth protecting or you simply want to keep your peace of mind, then you should start thinking about some of the security updates you could apply to your home.

Top TIps For Using SMS In Your Business Growth Strategy

image

Every month, nearly 400 billion text messages are sent around the globe. As a business person, you may be curious to know how you can leverage this to reach out to customers and boost revenue.

Interestingly, it is simple to set up and can be extremely profitable. Less than 20% of cell phone users believe that text messages from businesses they frequent are intrusive - that's 80 percent you can reach out to and appeal to. 

Here, we look at how you can use SMS in your business growth strategy.

Improving your customer care and service

Text messaging can be a huge asset to your existing customer service processes, whether you text customers to let them know their order is ready or to let them know you have scheduled or booked an appointment with them for a particular time. Any business can use them - hairdressers, health care and there is even utility text messaging. Customer satisfaction will boost loyalty and keep customers and users returning for more. 

Communicate with colleagues and employees

When you need to share important information with your team, a text message can be an excellent option. Text messaging is being used by an increasing number of people within departments and throughout the company to ensure that paperwork is signed, products are launched, and leads are followed through. This can be an excellent way for you to improve your company's performance and efficiency. 

Boost your marketing strategy

Text message open rates surpass 98 percent, with 90 percent of them being opened within three minutes of being received. For your most time-sensitive promotions, text messaging allows you to reach your target demographic in seconds. No other system can compete with this level of efficiency.

More personal communication with your customers

As you gather your customer's information, you can kickstart your relationship by asking for a few personal details that will allow you to customize your message so that you can make it personal and valuable to the person you are sending it to. You can use simple segmentation and auto-fill mail merges to send personalized text messages to each of your customers, just as you would with email marketing. It has much better delivery and open rates than email marketing though!

This makes your customer feel as if they are being spoken to as an individual and by a human rather than a faceless piece of tech, increasing their sense of worth from your company. Sending bland and generic messaging to your customers on top of all the messages they already receive from brands and companies battling for their attention is a guaranteed way to have them delete your messages and unsubscribe from your commercial enterprise.

Tailoring your customer text messages would help you stand out from the other forms of mass information exchange your customers receive, giving them a more personalized experience with you and your company. Customers will continue to prefer purchasing from you over your competitors because they are appreciated by your brand.

4 Tips on Growing an Online Presence for Your Small Business

Image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay

As a small business owner, you know that your company's success hinges on the digital presence. You don't necessarily have a lot of time to devote to marketing because of other responsibilities, but there may be plenty of things you can do to increase traffic and visibility online. This article will discuss four tips for growing an online presence for your small business - with or without much experience!

Aesthetically Pleasing Website 

Team up with an expert to help you create your website. The website's design is fundamental and can make or break the success of your company's online presence. In addition, you may save money by hiring someone who has experience in this area; by partnering with a Web Design Company, you give yourself the best chance of owning a quality website. A good rule of thumb: see how many hours will go into designing your site before you decide whether or not it would be worth paying extra for a service provider so that you don't spend more than necessary!

Facebook Presence

Post on these platforms with regularity and exciting content that will keep people coming back for more! A good rule of thumb; post at least once per day, preferably twice. Make sure you are posting consistently so that visitors know what they can expect from you. Don't forget to share original content as well because it is the most valuable type of content - not only does this help grow awareness and helps influence engagement levels (which in turn drives up revenue). The best thing you can do when using social media marketing? Engage! Talk to potential customers who visit your page, reply to comments or questions posted there, participate in discussions related to posts that have sparked.

Google Ads

There's no need to be afraid of Google ads. If you do it right, they can work wonders for your online presence! You may want to start by selecting a few keywords with high search volume related to the type of business or service you provide so that potential customers know what you're all about when they land on your page. Don't forget to set up an account and pay attention to budgeting - if not properly managed, this could leave you with little money left over at the end of the month!

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the process of increasing your website's ranking on search engines like Google and Bing. There are many SEO tactics, but it can be challenging to know which ones will work best for you! A good rule of thumb: try using a few different strategies in tandem to see what works well - this can be frustrating, but it will save you time and money in the long run! SEO can make an incredible difference over the long run; most established businesses make use of it, and so should you. 

When you use the right strategies and target the correct audiences, you'll most likely not have the time to complain about business after Covid-19.

6 Tips for Delivering Excellent Customer Service

Image Credit

Any business that wants to thrive, they’ll need to think about customer service. Businesses are competing now more than ever and customer experience is a big part of whether or not a business will make it or break it. Even if you have a fantastic product if your customer service is bad or unreliable then you’ll not only lose customers but will be prevented from getting more due to bad reviews online. This is the biggest reason why you have to invest in customer service. This is the key to having a business exceed in the long term. Continue reading on for tips to deliver great customer service to your clients.

Keep a positive attitude

The attitude that you and your team have is everything and will go a very long way when providing outstanding customer service. It’s very important to have the right attitude. When dealing with customers in person, it’s best to show facial expressions and body language that can be interpreted as positive. While online communication can at times be misinterpreted as cold, try to convey this positive attitude through emojis or be humorous. Service with a smile is key, even if it can be difficult to do.

Quick response

When it comes to customer service, prioritizing tasks and valuing time is a very important component. Resolving customer queries as quickly as possible is a huge pillar in customer service. While some queries may take a while to resolve, informing your customer about this and the speed that you plan to get things done will help with giving them a better understanding.

Help customers who are helping themselves

 There are plenty of customers who will try to resolve issues by themselves. Most will try to fix the problem before reaching out to a representative for assistance. Self-service is an excellent way that is also cost-effective with getting queries done quickly. This can be something such as a FAQ or even a bot that the customer can chat with for answers before needing to escalate to speaking with a human.

Show appreciation

Customers appreciate a personalized email or letter. If you know their birthdays, send them a birthday email with a coupon attached, the same can go for holidays. Showing appreciation to customers with thank you cards is another excellent way to show appreciation. If it weren’t for your customers, you wouldn’t have a business so it’s very important to recognize that.

Provide value

Always try to bring value to the table for your customers. Whether this is helping them out with a query or even bring something new to the table for your business. Regardless of what it is, always think about your customers and how they may perceive something.

Never stop improving

Always accept feedback from your customers. This customer feedback is vital to your business’s success. Listen to what your customers have to say and figure out a way to implement this into your business. Developing a better way to improve their experience will improve your business and will lead to more customers in the long run. Never settle, but always keep moving forward.