Blogs

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.

Make your customers part of your team

Make your customers part of your team As a general concept, research is the process of gathering information to learn about something that is not fully known. Nearly everyone engages in some form of research.

From the highly trained geologist investigating newly discovered earthquake faults, to the author of best selling spy novels gaining insight into new surveillance techniques, to the model train hobbyist spending hours hunting down the manufacturer of an old electric engine, each is driven by the quest for information.

How to kick-start your work week

shutterstock_116821123 We all know that success in life depends on a combination of hard work and talent. There’s also no denying the « luck » factor – being in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people. That said, there isn’t a « secret » to that kind of luck. It’s about doing things that put you in a position for that luck to happen.

We found ten things that successful people do at the start of their work weeks. Try them out, and you might find yourself having better luck as well.

Use weekends effectively

You can’t have a great Monday morning if you had a lousy weekend. Work is obviously important if you want to be successful, but there’s always something that can wait until Monday. Weekends are a time for yourself, to unwind, to relax and to think. In fact, many people do their best thinking during leisure time, because you’re free from other work distractions and can think abstractly.

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.

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.

Starting from scratch Vs Buying a business

Deciding whether to buy an existing business or start your own comes down to three things: what experience you have, what kind of business you want, and how open you are to taking financial risks.

Once you decide these things you can make a decision on how to proceed.

• How much experience do you have?

There is much more risk involved with starting your own business versus buying your own. 40 percent of new businesses fail in the first year and 80 percent fail within five years. If you have little experience with business or with the industry that you are planning on entering, buying an existing business is the safer route, as starting your own requires expertise in the areas of financing, infrastructure, and cash flow. Even if you are buying a business, it will take time to learn how it operates and where its weaknesses lie in order to craft a proper growth strategy.

How to Reduce Expenses without Sacrificing Quality

How to Reduce Expenses without Sacrificing Quality Operational margins are narrowing; leaving business owners constantly looking for ways to reduce business running costs and increase profits.

Here are simple things you should do to reduce your business expenses and increase revenue without affecting productivity or quality.

Review Standard Operating Procedures

If a business has been in operation for several years, it is possible that some standard operating procedures have become obsolete or less efficient. It is important to re-evaluate operational processes from the bottom to the top, and make changes like trimming unnecessary steps that were needed before but are not anymore, or making new changes to labour functions.

International Development

International Development The decision to embark on an international expansion can be both exciting and frightening: seemingly endless growth opportunities exist, but there can be significant risks involved.

The checklist for setting up international operations is lengthy and varies country to country. And what’s worse, one missed detail could mean serious negative consequences for your business, in the form of fines and frustrated employees.

Not sure where to start? Here are 10 tips to keep in mind when thinking about international expansion:

How to launch a product successfully

According to reports, 250,000 new products are introduced to the world each year. Success rates of new product introductions and innovations have improved little over the last 20 years. Reports show that 66% of new products fail within two years, and a startling 96% of all innovations fail to return their cost of capital. This is due to a number of factors, including economic conditions, an explosion of consumer touch points, shifts in decision-making behaviour, and the deluge of information marketers have to sift through to ensure they are up to speed with the latest trends.

Solutions for bad customer service experiences

Good customer service goes a long way in business; a happy customer is a customer who will recommend you to other shoppers, a returning customer,…. But so many companies just can’t get this right. They’re either putting their needs ahead of their customers’ or too wrapped up in finding new customers that existing ones become expendable.

I’ve had my fair share of experiences with bad customer service. Here are some horror stories… and what you can learn from them:

I’ve recently bought 30 books from a man who started the negotiation with “I do not negotiate.” True story. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to give a discount for buying multiple items, but what was most frustrating was his attitude in general. It didn’t matter how much I was spending, or how pleasant I was trying to be, he does “not negotiate” (or he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed) and nothing was going to change that.

Recognising Opportunities

Whether we are going through a good phase in our lives or whether we are in the doldrums, it is always a good idea to be on the lookout for a better opportunity. We tend to get so engrossed in our daily lives that we often end up ignoring opportunities that pass in front of our very eyes.

Here is how you can realise if there is an opportunity to be grabbed and how to work on it: