The return to work after your well-deserved fortnight in the sun isn’t all bad. After all, your crisp white work shirts look fabulous offset against your tan, and you have reams of photographs to “entertain” your workmates with! However, once you’ve regaled them all with tales of your adventures it’s time to face the dreaded list of emails that have pinged in whilst you’ve been away.
It may be too late for this year, but it’s worth making some preparations before you jet off to make the transition back into business smoother after your next break. Set up an auto-reply on your emails prior to leaving and establish contact boundaries with your colleagues. You may need to be kept abreast of major business issues whilst you are on holiday, but you might not want office gossip distracting you from your trashy novel whilst lazing around the pool.
Try not to plan the commencement of any ambitious and huge-scale projects for as soon as you get back – the first day in the office should be about reorienting yourself. You may still be feeling the effects of jet lag – or one Pina colada too many – so don’t set yourself any hugely demanding targets immediately. Except for the aim of describing your hotel/food/snorkelling expedition in the minutest detail of course!
A brief catch up with peers before you switch on your computer can pay dividends. This will help with prioritising once you start trawling through your messages, particularly as generous and sympathetic colleagues may have already dealt with some issues. But remember when you have just started up a business, taking a break at different times of the year will benefit you in the long run.
With the rise of inbound marketing, many businesses are focusing on activities to provide inbound leads. This is great, but outbound marketing is still important too. When you’re trying to build up your customer base, you shouldn’t wait for people to get in touch with you – pick up the phone and make some calls! Here are three reasons to consider making more sales calls.
Find the right kind of clients
When you spend more time on your outbound marketing, you can choose who to contact. This means that you’re more likely to acquire the type of customers that you want to have. The more time you spend researching prospects, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to convert the people you’re calling into clients. Take the time to fully understand your target market before calling – what problems will you solve for them? Be more targeted with your approach and develop a manageable list of suitable prospects. Always try to find the name and contact details of the decision maker, in order to get the best results.
Convert website visitors into clients
If you capture data on your website (e.g. for newsletter subscriptions), always follow up with a sales call. If someone has subscribed to your newsletter, or provided their details for another reason on your website, it means they’re interested in what you have to offer. A well-timed sales call can improve your chances of converting website visitors from leads into customers.
Retain your existing customers
If someone hasn’t bought from you for a while, calling to remind them who you are and what you can help with can increase the profitability of that client. Whether you are setting up a new business or simply looking to boost the one you have, taking time to make the call and change will have a dramatic effect.
The last few years have seen a significant change in the way we use social media, especially for when you set up a new business. Social media marketing has gone from an afterthought, to the first thing most new businesses will consider: even before setting up a website, many entrepreneurs will create Facebook and Twitter pages. So to help you optimise your social media marketing, here are three top tips.
1. Only post quality content
This sounds obvious, but you have no idea how many businesses get this wrong. People do actually read what you post on social media, and if you post low quality, self-promotional content, then they’re likely to delete or unfollow. Posting quality content ensures you gain followers and friends, spread the word about how great your brand is, and drive sales. Posting quality blogs, funny images related to your business, and thoughtful tweets is always better than click bait.
2. Schedule your posts
What’s the point of posting quality content if no one is around to see it? Scheduling your posts means that you maximise views, and in doing so optimise your posting. Once you’ve posted a few times, you’ll be able to see when your posts attract the most activity, and then you can schedule your future postings to coincide with this.
3. Let your personality shine through
Social Media Marketing is also a great way to stand out from your competitors, and letting your personality shine through is a great way to do this. Be funny, original and creative, and you’ll stand apart from big business and corporations – as long as it’s family friendly and on-brand, go for it!
Whatever you want nowadays, you can find it somewhere online. If you want a loan, you’re spoilt for choice. When it comes to getting a mortgage, however, there is a difference. The banks and other financial institutions are all trying to steer people towards their own products. The pressure is unrelenting.
Unrestricted access means the best deal
Unlike banks, a mortgage advisor can go anywhere they want in order to get the best possible deal for you. They can sometimes even get a preferential rate for you. They are also obliged to find the most suitable mortgage to meet your particular circumstances, even if your credit isn’t so good.
Mortgage advisors are qualified to advise you (many bank and call centre staff are not) and they’ll be honest with you. What’s more, they’ll also consider your other needs, such as insurance.
A duty of care, freedom from stress and a complete service
Perhaps the best reason for using a mortgage advisor is that they do all the work for you and free you from the associated stress. They must also exercise a legally binding duty of care towards their clients, as well as making entirely sure that everything is clear and fully understood.
They want you to come back when your circumstances change in the future and as a result, they are ready and willing to build a lasting relationship with you that is built on honesty and transparency. In short, it is simply not in their interests to give you anything other than the best possible service.
Yes, you may pay a fee, but for the peace of mind and expertise on offer, it is well worth it.
So you’re currently in the process of setting up a small business and you’re slowly, but surely ticking off everything on your list of things to do, which are legally required. After months of getting everything sorted, you’ve finally made it, you’ve got new clients ready to start work on and your first day as a new Managing Director and CEO of the company has arrived.
When setting up any new small business, it’s normally planned and developed by a team of just one person; you, so things are bound to be missed off. It’s natural, but everything falls into place once the company is up and running. One of the things that many businesses forget, whether they’re a big blue chip company or a local smaller one, is their merchant services.
There are different forms of card payments out there and these include:
- Chip and pin
- Online payments
- EPOS systems
With various merchant that are available throughout the UK, most are the UK’s leading merchant services who offer all of the above services, as well as offering you free advice on the most effective ways to reduce costs within your business. They’re an independent merchant services company, which is why there is no catch involved or any unwanted, extra fees included. They’re in it for you and not for themselves.
Most merchant service companies provides free services to businesses, especially to those who are setting up a small business, they will break down and simplify their services and offer all year round support. But please note that they are not a card payment provider, or a lead generation company and they certainly won’t sell on your enquiry.
So, if you are setting up a small business or you’ve just started then please consider the benefits of using a professional and trustworthy merchant services companies throughout the UK. You can find their information over on their website and we highly recommend that you get in touch with them.
Setting up a new business can be both an exciting adventure and a daunting prospect, with one of the biggest challenges being choosing and buying the equipment, tools and materials you will need.
Unless your new business is based entirely in an office, or online, there’s a reasonably good chance that you’ll need to get out and about visiting clients, transporting goods, or collecting materials, which means buying a vehicle.
There are a number of advantages to having a business van rather than using cars or other personal vehicles. Obviously there’s the practicality, with vans providing far more room, or at least, more usable room. But there are other benefits too, such as being able to advertise your business or brand very clearly.
Vans are mobile advertisements for your business. Whenever you’re driving down the road, stopped at traffic lights or the van is simply parked somewhere it can be displaying your business details, catching people’s attention and providing them with key messages and important information. It’s worth spending some time thinking about how best to use this mobile marketing space because for a small business or for any new business it’s a great opportunity to sell your services at no extra cost.
Of course buying new vans can be expensive, but there’s actually a huge market for buying used vans. Perhaps this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, since one of the main reasons there are so many used vans for sale is that as businesses grow and expand so too does their need for larger vans, leaving smaller, newer businesses with the opportunity of starting out with extremely affordable and practical small vans.
This saves money, and because many of these used vans for sale are still relatively new they represent a great long term investment. Versatility, practicality, affordability and great marketing potential – it’s an ideal way to help drive your new business forwards.
Passion? Money? Whatever your motivation, start your business today!
At some point in our lives, most of us think we have a great idea for a new business. Sometimes that idea is about a useful product or service. Sometimes it is a major plan for international enterprise. Whatever your ideas, you are probably trying to figure out whether you are going to set up your business because of passion or because of money. It’s a decision we are encouraged to make. In this blog post, we look at the other side of the coin: the fact that being motivated by passion or by money doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t be motivated by the other thing too.
Let’s start with passion. What do people mean when they talk about ‘doing your passions’? Passions don’t necessarily pay the bills. For that reason, you might be hesitant to start a new company on the back of something so intangible and hard to explain. But on the other hand, passion is the thing that keeps us going even if the money isn’t rolling in (and if you are a new business, there will most likely be times like that). We can’t dismiss our passions as irrelevant in any new endeavour.
So where does money come in? Well, it helps if you’re in the black and not the red. You might even have bigger financial plans and aim to get rich from your new business. But what will you do if the money doesn’t come straight away? What’s the thing that will keep you going? Passion might just be that thing.
There’s a clear overlap here, and it’s not convincing that passion and money have to be totally separate motivations. Whatever you are more motivated by, embrace the other thing and start setting up a business today: you won’t be passionate or in the money unless you do!
The keys to effective web design for a small & large business in todays world
If you are setting up a small business then, unless you are a specifically online operation, designing a website might not be high up on your list of immediate priorities. Should your company already be up-and-running, then managing your website might again not be front-of-mind.
Yet how you presents yourself online will increasingly be vital to the success of virtually every business. Of course, using professional help can remove the stress and strain of actual creation or ongoing management. However, it is still so important to understand what your website should be – and achieve.
The two vital things your business website should be and do
Fired Up Marketing who offer website design in Website Design in Waterlooville say… First of all, it should be there when needed. A generation ago, searching for a business meant delving into the telephone directory and then calling, often at random, one of the companies listed there. Nowadays, a search engine is ever increasingly the port-of-call. Therefore, if you are not there, potential customers will be completely unaware of your existence.
Secondly, it should deliver your business in the way that a potential customer would wish to see and use it. Too often, websites are created in the image of their owner, saying the things which that person feels are important. It will probably use their tone of voice. This is like meeting someone at a party who only talks about themselves. Your customer is also self-interested. He or she has visited your website purely because they hope or believe that you can help them gain or achieve something, or solve a problem they have. Talk to those areas – and in a voice the visitor recognises – and you start to build a relationship with them.
Now, it’s about design
Fired Up Marketing who offer web design in Waterlooville also say… Once you have established this vital starting point, it’s time to consider your website design, presentation and content. This is where a professional web designer comes into their element, working to deliver what you need to say in the best-possible style. In this way, throughout the hectic everyday of your business, you can know that one area is well taken care of!
We say… in business it is now ever more crucial to have your say online, and there are many good and bad ways of getting seen. But a good looking site, that is getting seen on the internet will always be better than one that isn’t, but with every business always give it 100% and give it your all and you will succeed.
If you’re planning to hold an important event outside where there will be a large gathering of people with food, drinks and speeches, you want to be sure you’ve thought of everything and there is no major or minor catastrophe on the day.
One thing you can definitely predict with a degree of certainty is the unpredictability of our great British weather. There’s just no way you can be sure what the weather is going to be like in this country, despite what the forecasters say.
We’re an island with a maritime climate and our weather is variable, to say the least. In any case, most outdoor events are planned well in advance so you want to know your guests or clients are going to be adequately sheltered.
Have you thought about marquee hire? Putting up a marquee is a great way to host an occasion outdoors so that even if it does rain, your guests will be warm and dry. The recently televised Great British Bake Off competition was held in a marquee over several weeks and if the contestants’ soufflés failed to rise the weather certainly wasn’t to blame!
A light and airy marquee can help to create a more relaxed atmosphere than you get inside a stuffy hall or a sterile conference suite in a city-centre hotel. Marquee hire is well worth considering if you have the space and want somewhere a bit more informal for your corporate or private event.
Complete Marquees in Hampshire offer a wide range of sizes and can accommodate all your catering and seating needs. Ideal for outdoors, marquees also work well within a large indoor space, such as a hanger, tram building or grand hall. They provide a superb service that is unrivaled throughout their catchment in Hampshire, Surrey, Dorset and West Sussex and offer a solution for any new business event.
‘Business management’ is a fairly general term in today’s society. We’re presented with an over abundance of titles and authority figures, so you wouldn’t be blamed for getting a little confused if not frustrated by it all. We’ve drawn from experience and professional opinion to give you the typical roles of business management.
Business management is an umbrella term for a group of senior figures in a company, usually made up of account managers, business development mangers, sales managers and general managers. Business management are very goal-oriented positions and likely are under serious pressure to perform (so perhaps cut them a little slack if they get intolerable when targets aren’t met!).
Business managers play a key role in the future of organisations, and are often integral to organisational changes. They know the business’ strategic plans and targets, how on track they are to hitting those targets, whether their department plays a key role achieving this goal, and how they can help be part of said goals. Constantly evaluating their team for reorder and refocus is a daily task for business managers.
However, business management are also expected to hold an in-depth knowledge of every department in the company, not just their own. Their decisions can change the core of the entire organisation, so misinformation and lack of knowledge are simply not an option. No pressure.
People can become business managers by either working their way up vocationally or by attaining educational degrees. Each company will also have their own in-house training, as no two companies are identical. Further training can be completed to enhance business managers’ employability, which means they never fully stop learning, making it an interesting position.
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