Blogs

The customer is King

The customer is King Building a brand is about building a relationship with your customers. For this relationship to be long-lasting, it has to be based on something meaningful. That comes when a brand satisfies a real need, either better or in a different way to any other brand available.

Understanding customers is the key to giving them good service. To give good customer care you must deliver what you promise. But great customer care involves getting to know your customers so well that you can anticipate their needs and exceed their expectations.

To understand your customers well, you need to be attentive to them whenever you are in contact with them. The potential rewards are great: you can increase customer loyalty and bring in new business through positive word-of-mouth recommendation.

Taking a break can improve your productivity

A recent survey indicated that the average American accrues 18 vacation days and uses only 16. The average French worker takes more than twice the vacation time. To some, this statistic encapsulates the difference between American and European workers. Americans are productive. Europeans are lazy. In fact, it might say the opposite.

Europeans understand that breaks improve workplace efficiency. We mistakenly believe that more hours will always increase output, while ignoring the clear evidence: The secret to being an effective worker is not working too hard.

The importance of choosing a brand or product name

Many global companies, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Intel and Microsoft, choose to use the same brand name in multiple countries.

This is not possible for every brand, but it can often be an advantage. Think of the degree to which a single brand name simplifies marketing and increases return on advertising investment. By comparison, how much more would one of these companies need to spend to achieve the same results with a different localised brand name in every market?

How to impress your boss

The ability to impress your boss is a major determining factor in your success, as well as your happiness and productivity at work. Whether you get along with your boss or not, you need to show them you’re capable of greatness.

We looked through the latest research to find science-based strategies to help you seem like a better and more cooperative employee and, in turn, make your boss happier.

Wear red to show you’re ‘focused, committed, and trustworthy’

According to a recent study, waitresses wearing red earned more money.

If you want to persuade or impress someone in the office, you could try wearing a powerful shade of red. The colour makes others view you as someone who’s “focused, committed, and trustworthy.”

Taking risks – is it essential to success?

Taking risks - is it essential to success More small business owners today are feeling optimistic about the economy. Nevertheless, the majority say the number of risks they are taking has remained the same over the past six months.

If you’ve been playing it safe with your business, the time may be ripe to take a chance again on risk. Calculated risks taken within your tolerance level can help you make decisions wisely while keeping your business energised and moving forward.

How to capture consumers’ attention at your event

Whether you call it event marketing, experiential marketing, live marketing, participatory advertising, or any other moniker, this is a brave new world of blowing things up, building in a technological overlay to real-world places, and convincing otherwise sane passers-by to dance or change clothes in the street—all with the motive of engaging consumers.

We talked with some of the smartest minds in experiential marketing to find out how they pull off memorable events—and make sure there’s significant consumer engagement long after the event is over.

Here’s what they told us:

Create an event within an event

Try to create an event within an event where you can touch a consumer one-on-one, where you can engage directly, and teach them about your product, and do so by interacting in a quality way. Have a truth-or-dare themed campaign, ask people to dance in the middle of the street, etc.

How Businesses Borrow Money when the Bank says «no»

When conventional credit markets get tight, individuals and businesses are pushed to seek alternative lenders to obtain financing.

In this article, we’ll uncover the known alternatives (both old and new) and define the benefits, dangers and drawbacks of each.

Factoring
Factoring (also known as accounts receivable financing) is one of the oldest methods of in-house financing. Factoring, simply put, is when a business sells its accounts receivable to a financial institution or «factor». The factor will advance funds on a portion of the receivables, usually 75-80% of their face value. The remaining 20-25% is known as the «reserve» and is initially held by the factor. The amount of the reserve will vary with the quality of the receivables and the historical average of the payers. Historical late payers will increase the amount of the required reserve.

8 Tips to Invest Without Too Much Risk

If you can’t stand the thought of losing money, you might be afraid to invest it. But you also know that keeping your money totally safe in a savings account or a CD that only earns 1% or 2% a year could be financial suicide.

When you get down to the heart of investing, there are two ways to make money: You can be an owner or a loaner. In other words, you can own assets that you expect to increase in value or you can loan money for a specified return.

How to prevent employee vacation scheduling nightmares

How to prevent employee vacation scheduling nightmares Jason just announced that he got a great deal on tickets for his vacation. And Emily dropped a vacation request on your desk this morning. And now, Melanie is talking about her planned summer cruise. You’re happy your employees are looking forward to summer vacations – until you look at the dates and realise that they’re all for the same week in August. Now what?

Conflicts will happen, it’s inevitable. At some point two or more employees are going to request the same vacation days. And only one will be able to go.

How far will technology go?

Singularity is near. The natural progression of human evolution with a just little twist— technology. In other words, super intelligence will soon become a part of our daily lives and man will be merged with machine. Sure it sounds wild, but just think about what we have been able to achieve over the past 50 years alone.

Just look how addictive consumer behavior is for a new Apple product. Sure you can cop the latest iPhone or Mac, but the newer and improved version will always be released in the next couple of months. Similarly, all technology will keep replacing itself at a faster and faster rate until it all becomes a blur. Everything is becoming more efficient and compact and we can expect to see this trend continue until it isn’t even tangible.