Empathy lets you place yourself in another person’s position and understand and share in what they feel and experience. An article on Fast Company explains that an empathic leader in the workplace translates to higher rates of retention and engagement.

In these environments, employees feel listened to and acknowledged, especially when they’re looking for flexibility and support in their workplace.

However, you should learn to find the right amount of empathy, called neutral empathy, to establish clear expectations and prioritize accountability. This means employees know exactly what’s needed from them, while also having some breathing space to meet expectations and ask for assistance.

To help you develop the right kind of empathy for your employees, here are a few books you can read:

Applied Empathy: The New Language of Leadership by Michael Ventura

Some people may be innately more empathic than others, but it’s a skill that can certainly be learned and taught. Applied Empathy has foundations in fundamental psychology that aims to understand people and their dynamics with others.

In this book, Ventura demonstrates how empathy can be a powerful tool by first guiding you to grasp your employees’ individual skills and work ethics, allowing you to form a better connection with them.

Plus, empathy can also give you an advantage at management level because you’ll be better able to collaborate with them and run a more efficient team.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Drs. Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves

Empathy is a cornerstone of the emotional intelligence, or EQ, skillset. That being said, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 talks about the importance of EQ as a whole, explaining how it’s your overall ability to understand emotions in yourself and others.

What’s more, Drs. Bradberry and Greaves give advice on how you can use this awareness to manage your behavior. As you practice empathy, you also build on the other core EQ skills — namely self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

This book will help you develop your EQ skills into strengths and capitalize on them so you can perform better consistently.

What Are Your Blind Spots? Conquering the 5 Misconceptions that Hold Leaders Back by Jim Haudan & Rich Berens

“Blind spots” are aspects of a job that leaders often fail to recognize as a source of employee disengagement. What Are Your Blind Spots? states that trust is one blind spot that you should pay attention to because this blind spot can cause you to create rigid workflows that limit your team.

If you keep this up, poor management will lead to high turnover rates, which is pretty common among startups, according to our article on ‘How to Solve 11 Biggest Hidden Small Business Problems’.

Given that your success will be dependent on your team, you need to learn how to be confident in your team’s ability to run the ship. To start off, try giving them more leeway to accomplish their tasks so they can learn how to manage themselves and their workloads.

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown

Your idea of a daring leader is probably a strong and unshakeable person with status and titles. But in reality, it’s the opposite. Dare to Lead discusses that a truly daring leader is someone who’s not afraid to be vulnerable in front of others.

You may have experienced mentally drafting scathing counterarguments after someone baited you, but this behavior is actually a survival tactic to prevent yourself from feeling the discomfort of vulnerability.

This can be disastrous in the work environment. However, this book shows that rather than a weakness, vulnerability is simply human. When you learn to be more vulnerable, such as admitting when you’re unsure about something, you’re also starting a more open culture among your employees.

You can learn a lot from books, including core leadership skills. By reading these texts, you can better understand the importance of empathy in the workplace and find opportunities to practice these new lessons.

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A successful business isn’t just about having a good idea. There are millions, maybe even billions of great ideas out there in the world, but only a fraction of those get realized into a solid brand or product.

If you’re planning to start business, you might want to take time to ask yourself some crucial questions before getting the ball rolling. We’ve listed out a few important questions below so you can better plan your next steps as a budding entrepreneur.

Do you need to insure your business?

The U.S. Small Business Association generally recommends that you insure your business right off the bat. While laws and insurance policies may change depending on your country, you should look for general liability insurance with coverage for your entire business.

You can then look into insurance policies that are specific to your business type. Do your research, as these policies will depend on whether you’re offering a product or a service, and what kind.

Do you have managerial skills?

One of the reasons why businesses fail is because many entrepreneurs don’t realize that running a business demands a long-term mindset, something that many first-time business owners fail to cultivate. In our previous post on ‘7 Management Skills That Could Make or Break Any Leader‘, we talk about how having a vision for your business is key to its longevity. Good business owners have forward-facing mindsets and other managerial skills that make the path to success much easier to follow.

Should you register as an LLC?

The legal designation and framework for your business is crucial, because it decides how your business will be taxed, what industry your business can work in, and personal liability. One example of a good structure is the LLC.

AskMoney explains that an LLC is essentially one of the most flexible business structures. It can be used for a large, multi-partnered business or a sole proprietorship, and makes acquiring assets much easier. LLCs also have greater freedom in terms of taxes, yearly member meetings, and much more, which makes it an attractive option for many small business owners.

What is your business plan?

According to The Balance, a business plan is useful for planning everything from ten year plans to short term goals. A business plan is the roadmap you’ll need to follow in order to ensure the success and longevity of your business, and contains everything from budget to market analysis.

Your business plan shouldn’t be static, but should evolve as the needs and goals of your business evolve. While it’s good practice to start out with a solid plan, you also need to learn how to adjust goals and resources in order to push for more growth and development. A business plan is a tool, not a crutch, to make your business grow better and last longer.

Where will you get the funds?

Finally, one of the most important things you’ll need to figure out before starting your business is where you’ll find funding. The Muse outlines several options for finding funding, including personal capital, government loans, and much more.

Funding is essential for operational expenses, product development, marketing, and much more. If you’re serious about getting your business off the ground, you need to find backers who are willing to believe in your product and company.

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The time it takes to bring a new product to the market plays a huge role in the success of your business.

Speed isn’t usually the measure of how much of a success a business could be, but with the varying degrees in innovations your competitions implore, you might as well just act quickly.

What is Time to Market?

Time to Market definition may vary based on the product and business type in question, but the most common definition would be: the length of time it takes, to bring a product into the market, making it available for purchase.

It includes the entire process it takes from coming up with a product idea to manufacturing, distributing for sales, and getting it across to your preferred customer.

With the increasing pace of technology development and the adoption of these innovations by your competitions, maximally optimizing Time to Market is essential in the growth of your business.

Wasting another second gives your competition a big head start in the market, reducing your share of customers in need of your products.

Why Reduce Time to Market?

Reducing your Time to Market, as earlier stated, is important in reducing how much of a threat your competitors are in the market.

Becoming the top-dog in the business requires a swift and efficient move, hence the need to reduce Time to Market.

Having control over the development process of your product will help you adopt the latest technology necessary and predict market trends. Also, a delay in your product launch limits the pricing and customer base of your product; thereby, drastically reducing your expected yield.

How to Reduce Time to Market

The ability to reduce time to market lies on every team inclusive in bringing your project to fruition. Bear in mind; that an entire chain of workers involved is just as strong as its weakest link.

The importance of TTM can not be overemphasized on the quest for a successful business. Knowing how to reduce Time to Market could prove to be pretty tactical, but fear not, accomplishment isn’t impossible.

Without further ado, here are 12 strategies that improve Time to Market;

1. Optimize Your Workflow

Taking total control of your workflow is the very first step in reducing time to market. Set realistic workflows that will help keep everyone on your team on their toes, at the same time, working as efficiently as possible.

The easiest way to do this is by relying on your company’s workflow history. Pick up successful workflows and follow suit. While new companies may find it impossible to access any workflow history, reaching out to similar company’s and adopting their efficient workflow is the next possible option.

An efficient and realistic workflow keeps everyone on the team aware of set deadlines, helping them gain quick access to all the necessary data they will need to deliver successfully.

Optimizing your workflow also helps in monitoring progress and giving support or motivation to team members where necessary.

2. Make Shorter Approval Processes

Keeping your approval processes short help in launching quality products for your business; that will keep you way ahead of your competitors.

A shorter approval process buys you enough time to make crucial decisions and necessary corrections way before the launch date; to avoid the need for damage control.

The approval process is usually a pretty difficult task, depending on the number of stakeholders on your team. Assessing contributors on your team could be time-consuming, but a short approval process leads to a reduction in the overall time to market.

3. Automate

Automation is another secure and efficient way of reducing time to market. The replacement of manual and time-consuming labour with an automatic one helps reduces human errors.

Automating aids in passing clear information; on due dates and activities, getting rid of confusion and delay that might set in.

Keeping your team members of the necessary automation put in place helps keep them focused.

Knowing what to do and when to carry out certain activities; is one of the major importance of automation. The use of automation where necessary helps reduce time to market.

4. Develop an Efficient Tracking System

Keeping every team member involved in the development process is important. Tracking the development process is an efficient means of monitoring the quality as they undergo various production stages.

Closely monitoring the product not only boosts the productivity of each team; it also encourages team spirit.

The application of an efficient tracking system makes accessing data easy for both you and your employees.

Facilitating access to data leads to a well-structured and transparent business system, making it possible to identify potential risks and get rid of them before-hand.

5. Integration

In the development and marketing process of a product, a large amount of data is required from different ends. There is also a need for efficient communication between several teams.

Keeping all the required data in one easy-to-access file.

The integration strategy keeps the work flowing, with no break from one end due to the lack of the required information to proceed with work. Integration is an essential strategy required in reducing time to market, as it keeps all team members active and avoids delay.

6. Outsourcing

Here’s another efficient but risky way to reduce time to market, but what is a successful business without risks?

Outsourcing peripheral aspects of your project to well-trusted and tested experts can reduce time to market.

Always put outsourcing to your advantage when necessary; it helps in building a reliable and properly structured system while speeding up your time to market process.

7. Set Revenue Goals

When it comes to time to market, not only are you trying to save time, the cost is also an important factor that needs to be saved.

Having a fixed budget reduces the possibility of overspending and waste: productivity and financial responsibility work hand in hand. Setting revenue goals help keep track of finances and cuts loss.

Working under an assigned budget not only improves time to market at the managerial level but also at the operative level of business. Thereby improving the overall time to market of your business.

8. Develop Market Segments

Creating a team of customers willing and ready to bear the risks and enjoy the benefits the investment brings. Sharing a reasonable bond with these customers can make them co-innovators, sky-rocketing your product before it is launched.

This process also helps in reducing the cost of marketing and advertisement.

With the development of a healthy relationship, these customers will become partners for life and keep your product in the market for the longest time possible.

9. Compliance and Quality Maintenance

While several shortcuts can get your launched products into the hands of your customers, these shortcuts can lead to compliance violations or a drastic reduction in the quality of your product.

Monitor all innovations, approaches, and technology introduced into the development and distribution process to aid in quality consistency.

10. Control Product Development Processes

Enjoying first-mover advantages is one of the major reasons why releasing your products ahead of your competitors.

Controlling the product development process makes getting your products to customers swift and reduces the risks and costs opting for damage control may bring.

First-mover advantages can only be enjoyed when customers get their products right on time without having to wait.

Delaying delivery can lead to a deterioration of the quality services you promised to offer.

11. Sell-in and Order

Do not ignore your already set goals. Every team has its deadlines, and your sales team should not fail to meet theirs. Extending the time given to your sales team to make complete sales will greatly affect the cost of production.

Remember that meeting the set deadlines applies to all team members. A disruption in the workflow can reduce Time to Market and cost your business to lose active and prospective customers.

12. Adapt as You Go

The level of flexibility a business can portray determines the success and longevity of such business. Be open to any sudden change in demand, economic, and social factors.

Although there is a possibility that your business might experience a longer time to market than planned for due to these changes, keeping your team motivated and your head high can help reduce the damage these factors are likely to cause.

Keeping your workflow flexible is also essential in helping your team stay as flexible as needed.

Conclusion

Improving your product’s time to market is not always a smooth sail, as unforeseen circumstances may arise.

Consistency and hard work are key to seeing results. Never expect to see results overnight. Improving the time to market is a gradual process.

With these strategies, you will see results as expected – if efficiently carried out.

It is important to keep your team together and divide them into segments when necessary to monitor productivity and keep each team and its members in check.

Always pay close attention to your analytics; it is the only way to see how well these strategies function. Make necessary adjustments to ensure both cost and time are still saved.

The goal is to enjoy first-mover benefits and keep you way ahead of your competitors.

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A time comes in the life of every business where critical decisions have to be made regarding the growth and evolution of your company and the best approaches to push your organization forward.

You have established a solid foundation and structured a framework for your business. Now it is time to streamline your processes through hiring strategic consultants.

Are you caught up in the process of expanding your business? You will definitely benefit from using the expertise of someone that has already blazed that path before you.

A business strategy consultant will do your business some remarkable good.

Strategic planning is a vital component of your business, especially when targeting growth and moving your company forward.

The greatest challenge comes in because, more often than not, your internal team is a little too close to the process to have an objective perspective that steers your business forward.

Other times, the team is too fixated on the good old ways of doing things that they repel the much-needed change. Such times make the perfect opportunity to contract and consult with a strategic consultant for your business.

It will bring in the much-needed objective outside perspective that will go a long way in helping you set and achieve the new goals that your heart desires!

Who Is a Business Strategy Consultant?

A business strategy consultant is an expert that specializes in offering businesses the assistance they need to discover their most pressing questions. It is from these questions that a way forward is paved on the best approaches to steer business growth and evolution to hit the next target on the progressive map.

A strategic consultant will closely work with your executive and management team to evaluate the current status of your business; they answer the question “Where are you at as a business.”

The position of your business in relation to its marketplace proves useful in developing business strategy or growth.

Strategy consulting will help your organization set workable goals and clearly defined strategies to ensure they are attained.

Your business strategy consultant will work with you hand-in-hand every step of the way to make sure they streamline your systems so that they can accommodate the growth and the changes that come along with your strategic plan.

Let’s take a look at these amazing benefits of how a business strategy consultant will help your business. How will an expert strategic consultant come in handy as you contemplate making key decisions moving forward in your business?

1. A Concise and Unbiased Perspective

Strategy consulting is an important aspect of your business. Investing in a strategy consultant will prove a profitable decision for your growing business.

The last thing your business needs in the role of a strategic consultant at the verge of making critical decisions is another “yes man.” A business strategy consultant does not just nod his or her head in agreement with the same old ideas that have been tabled yet proven futile.

They do not hold back in fear of change or the uncertainties that you are bound to encounter as you roll out your strategic plan for the next phase of your business. Objectivity and creativity, and a little “out-of-the-box” thinking are exactly what your business needs to create the right long-lasting solutions.

2. A Stream of Fresh New Ideas

A business strategy consultant is just what you need to contribute fresh new ideas to your strategic decision-making and operational problem-solving.

What you need to scale the wall of growth and progress in your business is a steady stream of newness to bring about a wind of refreshing times. Get a new perspective on board and generate some new great ideas that you have not yet considered for your business!

This is solely why business strategy consultants exist. Their specialty and expertise will contribute new dynamic approaches to enhance and cause continuous advancement of the structure and strategy you have already laid out on your drawing board.

3. Provocative Yet Diplomatic Approach

Your consultant will offer you the little energy and aggression you need to get things moving. You certainly do not need to create conflict in your organization, but you need someone to keep everyone on toes and accountable.

A business strategy consultant has the ability to ask the challenging questions and provide a little of the much needed “tough love,” which is of great help to your organization.

A good strategy consultant will offer you great leadership and manage even the most challenging personalities among your employees and create a spirit of cooperation and command mutual respect. What else would your business ask for?

4. Results-Oriented Focus

The major setback to achieving your most remarkable desired goals as a business is distraction and disorientation. Whereas your team has agreed on the amazing set of goals, most often than not, they are likely to succumb to the pressure of sliding back into the old way of doing things.

Get a backup plan that ensures you arrive at the desired destination no matter the hurdles you encounter along the way.

A strategy consultant’s major role is to offer you the help you need to get the results that you are most likely never going to get without the outside help.

Your consultant will have a clear view of their role in your business, which includes even how long they need to be involved. It also involves a clear sense of direction on how to set the right goals and the breakdown into specific milestones for assured goals.

You also enjoy a calculated set of specific results that can rightly be equated to a successful outcome of your project.

5. Provide Your Clients With up to Date and Timely Information

One of the most common reasons why you need the assistance of a business strategy consultant is the need for information.

Instead of having to compile data from attitude surveys or conducting cost and feasibility studies or the analysis of the competitive structure of your business and industry, have a consultant to cater for all these needs.

A business strategist will offer you special expertise and more accurate, up to date information on numerous aspects of your business.

It is the most effective way through which you can save on time and resources that would otherwise be used to develop the data and translate it into information internally.

6. Get Your Most Complex Problem Solved

Save your management the trouble and the time spent on solving difficult problems. Your consultant will answer all of your clients’ questions on whether to make or buy components, acquire or divest a specific line of business, or the best time to change a marketing strategy.

It could be your management team that needs guidance on how best to restructure your organization to be able to adapt more readily to change, choose the best financial policies to adopt, or settling on the most practical solution for a problem related to compensation, efficacy, control, and management.

Your business strategy consultants will most definitely solve your most complex problems and help you redefine areas that really need your attention.

7. How About a Diagnostician?

Your business strategy consultant will do more than solve already predefined problems; they will get your business a proper diagnosis.

At times what ails your business could remain hidden for the longest time until you invoke the expertise of a consultant.

The most valuable help you get from a consultant is the expert diagnosis that paints a clear picture of your business and the real issues hindering the much-desired growth and progress.

Maybe the root of your business struggle is covered by your management team for fear of the resulting blame and responsibility.

A competent diagnosis takes more than a cross-examination of the external factors, technological and economic aspects of your business. Your consultant will ask your executives questions on decisions they make that appear as mistakes or why they ignored certain factors that now seem important.

A business consultant will help your business by keeping the management in check.

8. A Set of Actionable Points

After an in-depth analysis of your business, strategy consulting offers you recommendations on what the next course of action for your business should be.

Your consultant will serve the most purposeful interaction of your engagement when they present to you a consistent, logical action plan of calculated steps designed to improve the problems defined in the diagnosis.

It is much easier for you to make progressive strategy decisions when you have different thorough alternatives on which, how, and when to implement as you go on and through your strategic planning and implementation.

9. Implementing Changes

Depending on your agreement and level of involvement and interaction with your business strategy consultant, they can offer you considerable help and support as you go through the implementation process.

A consultant offers your management team the support and tools they need to keep up with the outlined processes and changes.

Your strategist will often ask for a second engagement to help install the recommended new system, and this goes a long way in ensuring that the desired changes are realized in your business.

10. Building Consensus and Establishing Commitment

Get your team the support they need about building an agreement on the steps necessary to achieve the desired goal. A business strategist will offer you this and much more. They will establish the momentum required to see the steps through.

The strategic consultancy will offer the bridges between different departments within your organization and set in place a workable system through which every unit of your business is actively involved and owns up the process of change.

11. Facilitating Learning

Strategic consultants will leave you with something of lasting value in your business. They will not only enhance your ability to deal with issues immediately but also help you and your management team learn how to cope and prepare for future challenges.

Your consultant will actively include members of your business in the assignment process as they all work towards achieving the set targets and realizing the desired goals.

12. Achieve Organizational Effectiveness

The perspective and input of a consultant will help your business by offering different attitudes on management functions, prerogatives, and changes in the basic definition of your organization’s primary objective.

At times, the problem hindering your growth is beyond the introduction of management concepts and techniques.

Strategy consulting will enhance your ability to adapt future strategy and behaviour to environmental changes and make the most use of the contribution of your business’ human resources.

13. Vast Experience

Business strategy consultants have mostly accumulated years of experience across numerous fields. They provide your business with a wealth of in-depth experience they have acquired from working with different organizations.

It, therefore, means what they will be offering you on the decision-making table is not mere thoughts but alternatives after thoughtful consideration coming from the point of a broader perspective.

They already know the steps that your business needs to take, and they will lead your team with confidence throughout the strategic planning process.

14. Speed is of Essence

When it comes to your business, most certainly, time is money. A business strategy consultant will save you valuable time. Instead of creating strategic plans from scratch, which is time-consuming, your consultant comes into play with a ready plan.

Established plans ensure that the process is faster and more efficient as compared to having your team build one from the ground up.

15. Remain Objective

If your consultant fails to do anything else for your business, they will be your objective third-party. He or she is trained to bring a new perspective on board and take an unbiased approach when it comes to solving problems and implementing changes.

Their decisions are not affected by office politics because, unlike your management team, they have not been there before to witness the drama that goes on in the office.

So they are the clear, sober voice giving the best way forward, all factors remaining constant, and politics notwithstanding.

16. Deep Expertise

Consultants offer a heightened level of expertise across varying subjects linked to your business operations. You will not have to worry about getting knowledge of specific industries or difficult subjects like restructuring in the phase of difficulty or effective market positioning techniques.

Your strategy consultant can easily fulfill a legal purpose like during a merger when it is illegal to share information between two companies before the transaction is completed.

17. Create Permanent Solutions

You see those most stubborn recurring problems your organization seems to face every business cycle at a given phase; a consultant will get them to disappear for good!

Whether you have struggled to tackle the issue due to the skills gap or the issue has remained out of your company’s core competency level, strategic consulting will figure it out for you.

Hiring a good consultant will help your business create permanent solutions for the most stubborn problems.

18. Optimization

Your business has grown quickly, and you realize that there are so many things that you need to do and manage better; well, it’s time to get in touch with a consultant.

They will hold your hand and show you exactly where to start to fix everything that seems out of place.

You must let a consultant come in and bring in some fresh perspective and evaluate all areas of your business to determine the processes and procedures that need to be adjusted to increase the levels of productivity.

19. Supplement Your Staff

At different stages of your business, you could require additional staff experts on a given subject matter. It could even be just to relive one of your managers for leave.

You should consider hiring a consultant to enjoy great management skills introduced to your team.

The short interaction between your team and the consultant will prove so useful that you might need to retain him or her longer.

20. Teach and Train Your Employees

When going through the process of strategic planning, the hardest challenge is in getting your team to adopt the new way of doing things as a means of achieving the desired results.

Introducing a business strategy consultant will offer your team the much-needed perspective and strict guidelines and follow up to ensure the new stipulated techniques are fully utilized.

A consultant will not only point the way but closely work with your employees to ensure the new system becomes the normal way of doing things in your business.

21. Revive Your Business

Reviving your business is an engaging task that requires relentless efforts and a high level of commitment. It could mean letting go of the staff that seems troublesome and stubborn in adapting to the new phase of your business operations.

Whatever the needs of your business are amidst the transition, strategy consulting will land you on the coveted spot of your industry’s map.

Conclusion

Hiring a business strategy consultant will help your business improve its performance and make the necessary changes to achieve higher levels of success.

Strategy consulting will paint a detailed picture of your past: where you have been and how that affects where you are currently, the present: what you’re doing now and how that is translated into a beautiful future.

Most importantly, a detailed and systematic approach to achieving your dream business in calculated and defined steps. Get in touch with us; let us help you write the success story of your business!

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What Is Disruptive Innovation?

Disruptive innovation is a technology whose application greatly affects the functioning of a market or industry.

The internet is an example of a modern disruptive innovation that has, in a big way, altered how companies did business and negatively affected companies that were reluctant to adapt to it.

Disruptive innovation refers to the new developments that cause dramatic changes in the structure of organizations and industry functions.

It causes a disturbance in the structure as opposed to a disruptive technology that is used to refer to the actual technology.

Why Do You Need the Disruptive Innovation Guide?

Investing in disruptive innovation is a complicated endeavour. It requires you as an investor to focus on comprehending how companies will adapt to disruptive technology and not on the actual development of the technology.

The internet has been used heavily as a disruptive technology by many companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Internet use has become so embedded in the modern world that it has forced companies to integrate their business models in the disruptive innovation or be pushed out of business.

We want to help you sail through the waters. Avoid the problems associated with conflating a disruptive innovation with any breakthrough that causes changes in an industry’s competitive patterns and trends. Different types of innovation must be given different strategic approaches. Not everything you hear about succeeding as a disruptive innovator will hold water, or the techniques to defend yourself against a disruptive challenger. Not all factors are constant for different companies, especially in a shifting market.

Using this guide, you will be prepared to be apt and up to the task. You cannot afford to get sloppy with your labels or fail to incorporate insights from subsequent research and findings into the original theory.

It is the surest way to ensure your managers do not end up using the wrong tools for their context. Through this thorough guide, you and your management are guaranteed higher chances of success. Remain on track and let the theory’s value be fully utilized.

1. Make your Origination Point Count

Most disruptive innovations emerge in new-market footholds or the low-ends. Disruptive innovations succeed because they start in these two types of markets that are overlooked by the incumbents.

Take advantage of the low-end footholds. They are mostly left unattended because the incumbents are primarily focused on meeting the most profitable and demanding customers’ needs.

The attention is kept on providing ever-improving products and services for the demanding customers, and little or no attention is paid to the less-demanding customers. Making the most of the opportunity for you as a disrupter to provide the low-end customers with “good enough” products is your winning blow.

Your other option is the new-market, and this is where you create a market that initially did not exist as a disrupter. The secret lies in finding a particular way through which you can turn non-consumers into customers.

For instance, in the early days, photocopying technology was highly valued, and the Xerox Company targeted the large corporations to provide them with the performance they needed as customers at high prices.

Small customers, such as librarians, could not afford the prices. In the 1970s, personal copiers were introduced by new challengers at prices affordable to individuals and small organizations. This is how a new market was created from an affordable solution.

From the modest beginning of personal photocopiers, the makers gradually established a major position in the mainstream photocopier market that was valuable to Xerox. Disruptive innovation is defined as one that emerges from one of these two footholds: the low-ends or the new market.

2. Let the quality catch up with the mainstream customers

Some disrupting innovations go wrong in chasing after the mainstream customers too early before they build up-on the quality of their service or product. Work at developing the quality of your standards till they level up to those of the mainstream customers.

First, it is better to develop a winning product or service first rather than concentrate on getting the mainstream customers, only to realize your standards cannot sustain them.

Your focus must be on disruptive innovations and not on sustaining innovations. The latter is all about making good products even better for the incumbent’s existing customers. Such innovations include the fifth blade in a razor, a screen with a higher resolution, and a mobile phone with a better camera.

Such improvements can be gradual advancements or done as major breakthroughs. However, their primary role is to help the companies sell more of their products to their most profitable customers.

On the contrary, disruptive innovations are viewed as inferior by most of the incumbent customers. In most circumstances, customers do not just switch to the new offer just because it is less expensive.

They are likely to wait for your quality to rise to a level high enough to satisfy their needs. Once you get to this level, the mainstream customers will readily accept the new product and happily embrace its lower price. In this way, disruption drives prices down in a given market.

3. Get it Right from the Go

It is not enough that your new product or service just throws the industry into disarray. Disruptive innovations do more than just causing disruptions. You need to apply the theory correctly for you to enjoy the maximum benefits.

You should only ignore the small competitors that bite at the side-lines of your business. However, you should be on the lookout for the competitors that take up a disruptive trajectory no matter their size. They pose a grievous risk and are a mortal threat to your business.

Disruptive innovation examples show that the challenges are essentially from the efforts made by your competitors to woo your all-time favourite customers. It takes more than a few similarities or borrowed concepts to keep up with all the disruptive innovation theory requirements.

Identifying and establishing disruptive innovation is a tricky balance. You must ensure that your executives, those that seem to have a good understanding of the disruption theory, do not forget some of its subtler aspects, especially in making strategic decisions.

4. Exercise Patience

Disruptive innovation is misleading as a term that is used to refer to a product or service at any given point in time. The best description captures the evolution of that product or service over time since disruption is a process and not a one-off happening.

Take the first minicomputers. For example, they were not just disruptive because they were low-end start-ups or because they were later used to pave the way for superior mainframes in the market.

They were disruptive mainly because of the entire process they went through from the fringe to the mainstream.

Regardless of whether or not an innovation is disruptive, it kicks off as a small-scale experiment.

As a disrupter, you must focus on getting not only the product right but also the business model. When you hit the successful notch, you will have moved from the side-line either through the low end of the market or through a new market.

You will erode first the mainstream of the incumbents’ market share and then swiftly move in on their level of profits. Doing all this will take time, and you must be patient and relentless.

The incumbents will fight back in creative ways in a bid to defend their already established area of monopoly. Complete substitution of the existing market products or services may take decades.

This is mainly because the incremental profits yielded from staying with the old model do not just die off suddenly.

It takes time. For instance, it took 50 years for the departmental discount stores to dominate the market once ruled by the incumbent mainstream retail companies.

You must use the time factor for your advantage. The fact that it takes pretty much time for disruption to happen makes most incumbents ignore disrupters. With this knowledge, you must keep at your product or service build up until you are ready to hit the road running.

Always remember that incumbents frequently overlook disrupters because disruption is a process that can take time.

5. Differentiate your service

Disrupters are always building business models that are distinct and very different from those of the incumbents. Apple’s iPhone is one good example of how to innovate.

In 2007, the product that was debuted by Apple was a sustaining innovation in the Smartphone industry. Its primary target audience was the same customers that were coveted by the incumbents in the market.

The initial success was mainly associated with the superiority of the product. Subsequent growth of the product resulted from the disruption process of the laptop as the primary access point to the internet rather than the Smartphone.

The greatest success did not come from just simple product improvements but by introducing a new business model. The new model incorporated a facilitated network that connected application developers with phone users, and this was a game-changer!

Apple created a new market through the iPhone in which internet access was in high demand.

Eventually, the product challenged laptops as the mainstream users’ device of choice for going online. Similarly, there must be some clear distinction that results from your disruptive innovation.

6. Weigh Your Results on the Right scales

Not all disruptive innovations succeed, some do, and some just don’t. So you must be on the lookout for this common mistake made by disrupters. Do not weigh the effectiveness and the results achieved from your disruptive efforts against the success obtained.

Success is not built into the definition of disruption since not every disruptive effort leads to victory, and it is also not every successful newcomer in a market or industry that follows a disruptive path.

Do not confuse every business success story with disruptive innovation. It is the surest way to avoid the common mistake of perceiving all the companies that rise to the top in many ways as sources of insight into one common strategy that leads to success.

It is dangerous because your management team could mix and match what is unrelated and is least likely to be consistent with one another.

Such combinations significantly reduce the chances for your business to achieve the desired results.

7. Do Not Be Misguided by the Tune

Most business owners believe that they are to disrupt the industry or they will be disrupted and faced out. This is not always the case.

Incumbent companies may need to respond to disruption when it is occurring, but it does not call for a dismantling of a profitable business venture.

What you need to do is to continue to deliberately strengthen your relationship with core customers by investing in sustaining innovations.

Additionally, you can also create a new division whose sole focus is on the growth opportunities springing from the disruption. Treat this new division as a separate enterprise independent of the main business.

This means that as an incumbent facing disruption, you may manage two very different business operations.

As the disruptive stand-alone business continues to grow, a day may come when it eventually starts to steal customers from the main business.

As a corporate leader, you must ensure you do not start trying to solve this challenge before it is an actual problem.

Conclusion

So much knowledge and information concerning the theory of disruptive innovation continues to unfold.

The disruption theory does not explain innovation in totality, especially the general success of business endeavors.

However, through these seven steps, you are better placed to cause some disruptive change and make some great profits in the process.

Do not dance to the rhythm and waves based on assumptions. Remember, disruption is a process, and you must be patient. It matters where you start and whether or not you get all the facts right.

Your product or service needs to be different from the incumbents’; all you need to do is to consistently build-up to the level of the mainstream customers.

Success does not define a disruptive innovation; the key is in the resulting change.

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Do you come from the generation that saw Dodo birds and compact digital cameras? Whether you have seen or only heard of them, this is what you should know.

They are nowhere to be found now. They are extinct!

Let’s take a look at these seven amazing ways of ensuring your company does not face the danger of extinction.

What Is Disruptive Innovation?

Disruptive innovation, a term coined by Clayton Christensen, describes a new product or service that is so innovative that when it is introduced to the market, it disrupts the market and forces the business operating in that market to change their business or suffer grievous consequences radically.

Disruptive innovation examples include digital imagery that is now even on Smartphone cameras. Initially, all virtual photography was film-based until a few years ago.

Currently, teenagers and young children have no concept of a film camera; all they know is looking at every picture they take as soon as it is taken.

No wonder you need to be in the know on how to leverage disruptive innovation for your business.

1. Use a Disruptive Innovation Lens

It is uncommon for a new product or technology to be inherently sustaining or disruptive.

The disruption theory does not dictate what management teams should do once a new technology is developed. However, it offers you great insights into making strategic decisions on whether to adopt a sustaining path or take up a disruptive one.

You must look at the immediate and long term future of your business through the eyes of disruptive innovation. It is the surest way of achieving sustained stability.

From the theory of disruption, you get the prediction of how your business is expected to respond.

When an entrant tackles incumbent competitors head-on by offering better services or products, the incumbents respond by accelerating their innovations to defend their business.

You can choose to beat back the entrant posing a threat to your business by offering even better products or services at an affordable price.

You could also consider buying the entrant so that your company becomes the agent of disruptive innovation. From the theory’s prediction, “Entrants pursuing a sustaining strategy for a stand-alone business are likely to face steep odds.”

Therefore, it requires calculated moves and a comprehensive view of the likely outcomes and the determining factors.

Remain ahead of your competition by using the disruption theory to make strategic decisions when new technology arises.

2. Evaluate New Technological Developments

You need to be a step ahead with new technological advancements, never mind that it is not directly linked to or enhanced in your industry.

It is most likely that the very technology that will cause a revolution in your industry in the future is already revolutionizing an entirely different industry currently.

To make the most of the disruptive innovations, do not wait to be in the loop on new technologies until it is too late. Having a proactive approach to new technologies gives you an upper hand when those advancements begin to cause dramatic changes in your industry.

Technology is a form of social relation that is always evolving. No technology remains fixated over the years. It starts, develops, persists, declines, or advances at given points in time.

The changes experienced throughout the evolutionary lifecycle in the use and development of any technology are significant to your business. As a new high-technology core emerges, it challenges existing technology support nets, which are, in turn, forced to evolve with it.

No wonder you need to take note of the changes in technological developments.

3. Keep your eyes on your Competitors

Look out for your competitors; it is the best way to know how to achieve disruptive innovation in your industry. When it comes to the part of competitors, you should be ready to match and even overtake actions geared towards disruptive innovation.

By predicting the disruption theory, you have the necessary tools to anticipate your competitors’ plans and stay five step s ahead of the competition.

Disruptive innovations deliver important benefits to the competition levels in a given market or industry. Maximum benefits are enjoyed by consumers who are always looking for new and better products and services.

From the introduction of new disruptive innovations, you must keep up with new products or services and offer competitive prices. The effects of the stimulated innovation result in price competition among the already established providers.

Interaction of the forces of price competition may cause changes in policy and regulations.

As such, you must be actively involved in the competition so that your business does not face out from the effects of disruptive innovations coming from new competitors in the market.

4. Stay one step ahead of the Disrupting Forces

Initially, the theory of disruptive innovation was merely a statement about the correlation between market forces. As empirical findings on how to innovate revealed, “Incumbents outperformed entrants only in a sustaining innovation context, but they significantly underperformed in the disruptive innovation contexts.”

Smart disrupters do not only improve their products and services; they are also a driving force of the market upswing.

The inclination of your company towards strategic change is intensely affected by the interests of your customers, who are the providers of the very resources that your business needs.

You need to find a balance to overcome the limitation of only listening to your existing customers, which means you can only concentrate on sustaining innovations.

As an incumbent, do not have your management solely fixed on the existing customers; give them room to consider shifting investments into disruptive innovations. Watch out for the forces that cause incumbents to ignore the early-stage disruptions.

It is these same forces that compel the disrupters to ultimately disrupt and dramatically change the market.

5. Keep Your Customers Close

A remarkable turnaround in market forces occurs when the flow of customers’ needs is diverted or met in a new amazing way. As a business owner, the heartbeat of your progress remains in the customer satisfaction experienced by your clients.

Beyond providing them with good products and services, you need to keep them close. Place a finger on the pulse of your customers; they can be your early-warning system.

Keeping your customers close will give you access to signals on the changes in the market. Knowing your competitors’ efforts to take away your best customers will give you an upper hand in the face of disruptive forces.

You will be able to react to the market changes in real-time. Be sure not to create products and services for a market that no longer exists by gathering information from your customers.

You could also take a look at this quick guide on Disruptive Innovation: how to anticipate and manage disruptive forces that come to your industry.

6. Savour the Surprises

Disruptive innovation is a process loaded with surprises: unexpected technological advancements, customer feedback, competitive moves, and shifts in the political and regulatory policies, as well as other unforeseen happenings around strategic involvement.

Most businesses assume that all these surprises should be avoided. However, equip your management team to be made up of leaders who recognize that surprises are an unavoidable part of the business.

An equipped team of leaders that appreciates the inevitability of unexpected happenings is best suited to use surprises as a strategic tool that makes them understated, more agile, and highly effective in capitalizing the unexpected events.

You need to embrace the new skills in today’s increasingly disruptive competitive environment to make a significant difference for yourself and your business. Leading disruptive innovation requires that you operate with a new set of assumptions, most of which include recognizing that you cannot have all the answers.

You must remain open-minded because disruptive innovation is about finding clarity, but you need to embrace the uncertainty and restructure your components, respectively.

7. Embrace Adaptive Planning

After you are flexible enough to adjust and embrace unexpected happenings within your industry’s market, it is time to patch up your planning process.

To lead disruptive innovation and make the most out of it, you must be in a position to manage high levels of uncertainty. You need to embrace adaptive planning.

Adaptive planning is an approach that makes use of repetitive corrective action to achieve a given set of desired results. Using this approach, you will learn from the variable factors in every set of actions, modify the assumptions and approaches according to achieve the desired results.

Regardless of whether the results are desired or not, they will get you closer to the breakthrough as they offer you new insights and perspective into the approaches taken.

Adaptive planning will help your organization move away from the view that failure is not achieving a desired pre-defined goal.

Conclusion

Leveraging on disruptive innovation requires a high level of flexibility. As a leader, if you are not proactively creating disruption, at some point, you will have to respond to it.

Whether as the causative agent, or an incumbent protecting a brand for your product or service, you need to be equipped to make the most out of the disruption within your industry.

You must make calculated moves with your eyes set on your customers.

Embrace a life of continuous uncertainty and ambiguity as you navigate through disruptive changes and create breakthroughs that have profound effects on the ways of doing business.

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The thought of standing in front of an audience petrifies and cause many to panic. Even weeks of preparation may not cure the terrifying feelings.

Public Speaking is an activity that imparting information to an audience or the public. It is a necessary skill to master in our world today. Public speaking can be either online or with a physical audience.

We have opportunities present before a large audience, like a school, an organization and indeed in our personal lives. Public speaking sharpens your critical thinking skills, and it helps you to keep your mind sharp while thinking on the feet.

It helps to improve the consistency of verbal and non-verbal messages that you send when speaking.

Today, Public speaking is a prerequisite life skill in the contemporary world, full of meetings, seminars and networking events. It is the action of presenting a speech to a live audience in an organized manner, to inform, entertain and persuade them.

Public speaking anxiety is a real issue. Speakers both over-prepare and end up forgetting their speech or skipping many important parts out of the public speaking fear they develop in the period leading up to their speech.

This may have also happened because sufficient time was not devoted to preparation, leaving the audience wondering why they showed up at all.

There are many aspects to public speaking. To deliver a solid speech, you need to pick a topic, write a speech, and prepare to answer questions from the audience while making sure to understand the cultural differences of the questions you may receive.

You also need to ensure the clarity of your messages and make sure that there is no confusion among your listeners as a result of what they hear.

Public speaking plays a significant role within the professional world – 70 percent of all jobs involve some form of presentation and speaking to the public.

Many job descriptions include ‘presentation skills’ as a job requirement. By presentation skills, they are referring to your public speaking skills.

Public speaking is not a trend or a fad; it dates as far back as 2,500 years ago – to ancient Athens. Speech giving was a part of the citizens’ civic duties. Sometimes, to defend themselves, men had to give a rousing speech in public as the cost of hiring a lawyer was not affordable.

Citizens would meet in a marketplace and debate issues on war, economics and politics. Good speaking skills opened doors of opportunities to meet with and mingle with the high and mighty.

Aristotle discovered that to rally the citizens into conformity, one needed to influence people. This is what he called rhetoric, and it’s defined because of the capacity to influence people. He broke it down into three strategies: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.

We use Ethos when the origin is trustworthy, and the speaker can establish authority over the subject.

We use Logos when there are pieces of evidence to back the argument requiring that the public use logic and deduction build on the strengths of the speaker’s logic.

We use Pathos for passionate, emotional appeals to secure audience approval.

In the 21st century, you must communicate to succeed. The art of your communication often makes a difference between landing your dream job, winning a multi-million-dollar contract, or delivering a moving speech at a corporate event.

Here are the 15 techniques that will make you a stronger public speaker. These techniques will help you become better at public speaking and convey your messages across articulately and elegantly.

1. Prepare

Preparing or researching for a public speaking engagement is the first step towards a successful public speaking activity. Prepare your subject matter well ahead of D-Day. Practice the speech. Make it yours.

You can record yourself to hear how your tone sounds. Is it a hysterical, high-pitched shrill note, or is it steady? Rehearsing your speech will help you identify any areas that need tightening. Create the framework for your speech.

Write the topic, general-purpose, specific purpose, central idea, and focal points.

2. When Speaking, Have a Point

One of the most important recommendations for you – is always to have a point when speaking. Don’t just use the filler words, generic phrases.

Do your best to frame an issue very accurately, and use surgically-sharp words to get to your point. Depending on the audience, you may need to tell them what exactly you need from them or what should be their next steps after hearing your speech.

Repeat your key point or the most important takeaway at least three times during your speech. This way, at a minimum, the audience will remember your most important point.

3. Rehearse Using Imagery, Feelings and Emotions

Not everyone is great at memorizing and practicing the words of their speech. If you still forget the words or mix your points up, no matter how long you spend rehearsing or practising, you can try using feelings and images.

If I asked you to describe the storyline of your favourite movie, how would you do it? For many public speakers, especially those who get anxious during a speech, the first two minutes are the hardest.

With that in mind, it would be helpful for you to practice your opening in such a way that you will only feel uncomfortable with it but remember it. You shouldn’t attempt memorizing your entire presentation, just the primary two minutes.

4. Rehearse With an Audience

You’ve practiced your speech by yourself a few times now, but what about with an audience?

One of the simplest ways to practice your speech is to practice it under conditions that will resemble the day of your speech.

Practice in front of a small group of people to build your confidence that way, when you hit the stage, you won’t get nervous when you see the crowd in front of you.

5. Structure Your Speech

To design your speech and make it easy for your audience to accept your position, break it into three sections:

Open, main body, and end. In each category, you’re seeking to accomplish a specific objective: In the Open, you want to state to your audience who you are and what you’re communicating about.

Don’t be apprehensive about re-stating your key position. A classic means to structure a discussion is that the addition is 10% of your speech, content 80%, and conclusion 10%.

This makes your audience to recognize the meat of your speech versus an over-long introduction or conclusion.

6. Arrive at the Venue Early Enough to Get a Feel of the Room

Get to your venue at least an hour or two before the event starts and perform a little simulation. Look at the equipment, stage and stage. Stand in the spot where you are likely to deliver your speech and determine what it feels like to be delivering a speech to an imaginary audience.

Check your posture. If a particular spot doesn’t feel right, consider changing it. Also, go to the audience, assume you are a member of the audience.

How does it feel? Don’t work yourself up while rehearsing for your public speaking event.

7. Start Strong

For background, as of December 2020, the total worldwide population is 7.8 billion. The internet has 4.54 billion users. This is an interesting way to start a public speech.

It is best not first to exhaust your audience to tears before you get to the interesting part of your speech. Starting strongly wins them over to your site early.

You can do this by starting with a shocking statistic, an interesting anecdote, a funny reference. These get the crowd wanting to hear more.

8. Move People to Action With Your Speech

A stirring speech moves people to act. If your speech, no matter how well-rehearsed, does not make people do or see something different after listening to you, then it has failed to be effective.

Martin Luther King’s, I have a dream speech will for the life-changing effect it had on listeners around the world.

While your aim may not be as life-altering as the civil rights movement, it should deliver that ‘light bulb moment’ to your audience at least once.

9. Be Spontaneous

Public speaking is such a nerve-wracking activity that you can dread even more than death. Hence, people do it right and stick to a script till the end, memorizing the words, gesticulations and body language.

But some of your strongest speechmaking can come from the emotion and passion of spontaneity.

Anyone giving a presentation can learn from King to avoid memorizing your script from start to finish. Instead, try gauging your audience’s emotions—and improvise accordingly.

10. Go with the Audience Flow

When Public speaking, it is vital to be present, in mind, and watch for audience responsiveness and feedback and go with the flow. If you observe a particular point elicits positive responses such as nods, laughs, claps, spend a little more time on the topic.

You can even make it interactive for a short time before you continue.

This is if it is that kind of event. And if you observe a negative or indifference in the audience that lingers, you can also adapt.

11. Prepare in Advance for Show-Stoppers. But Visualize Your Success

Before you craft your message, examine whom you intend the information for. Learn as much about your audiences as you can. This will help you work out your choice of messages, material and content, organization pattern, and psychological feature.

What if something goes wrong despite all your best efforts? What if a technical problem still occurs? What if you forget your lines? What if the public is not oohing and aahing?

Prepare for all this by rehearsing and reporting early. And you will see yourself at the conclusion of your speech, receiving applause, engaging with your audience and open to receiving feedback.

12. Avoid Filler Words

Filler words serve as a clutch for when you run out of ideas. They are words like “you know,” “like’ and “um” add nothing to your speech. They can also be called discourse markers, pause fillers, or hesitation forms.

Though filler words are not entirely useless because they help you when you are thinking of what to say next, it is better to avoid them.

13. Connect With Your Audience

Practice making eye contact with your audience, even if it makes you uneasy. It’s the rightest approach to connect with them emotionally, and when you feel that connection yourself, it feels great and will improve your confidence.

As far as public speaking and presenting is concerned, there is no further powerful manner of connecting with your audience than making eye contact with them.

14. Dress To Succeed

Public speaking intends to influence and impress. To woo, impress the audience, you have to show you care about the little details. When you dress and carry yourself well, this helps communicate to others the business message you’re seeking to transmit.

This is specifically critical in delivering presentations, whether the audience is one person or a hundred. Make certain your boots are polished and hair nicely combed. This is again a great form of grooming.

The strongest way to avoid errors in dressing is to look at yourself in the mirror before walking out for your event.

Remember, dressing appropriately will not merely represent you a superb speaker but also make them interested in listening to what you have to say.

15. Use a Speaking Style You are Comfortable With

Besides imitating excellent speakers, work on strengthening your style as a public speaker, and becoming better at public speaking. Incorporate your personality into your speaking style, and you will feel more comfortable in front of the audience.

Telling personal stories that tie into your theme is a great way to let others get to know you further.

Audiences can identify the distinction between you expressing your views and when it appears speaking someone else’s lines because you are using a style that you copied from someone else.

16. Ask for Feedback

Most of us don’t want feedback, chiefly when you perceive the feedback may hold some constructive criticism. Speaking is an effective means of connecting with people and a skill we all need. So you never know where an excellent speech will take you.

Good communication is never perfect, and nobody expects you to be perfect, so be open to hearing about what others think about your work. It not only also helps you get better.

It forces you to examine areas you did great and continue to do better every time you have to speak in public.

Public speaking skill is a must for leaders and managers. It’s a must for sales. It’s necessary for all entrepreneurs and business leaders whatever you do, you never know when you have to speak in Public and killing this activity requires practice.

However, putting in the time to prepare will help you deliver a great speech. You may not shake your nervous feeling off entirely, but you can learn to manage them.

Conclusion

Public speaking is an essential skill that can make or break any business leader or business professional.

When speaking publicly, have a point that you want to make. Connect with your audience, and deliver a strong message that will generate the highest impact.

During your speech, don’t just deliver the speech to the audience as a whole, but do your best to connect with every member of your audience.

This will add a personal touch, and as a result – your speech will be received incredibly well.

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Building rapport is about forging genuine connections with people you interact with. They could be customers, colleagues, neighbors, and your audience. People who develop rapport easily tend to get things done well because they secure the buy-in of stakeholders and collaborate well with teammates.

You can consider it as a state of harmonious understanding with another individual or group. Building rapport is developing that connection with someone else.

Mostly, rapport happens naturally. We have all had experiences where we ‘get on well’ with somebody else without trying. This is often how friendships start.

However, rapport can also be built by being opening you up and appreciating that though we may be different, we all want the same things, such as respect, empathy and acceptance.

Building rapport can be beneficial to your career–it helps you establish good interpersonal relationships, which can open many doors for you.

Why Do You Need Rapport-Building Techniques?

Rapport makes it easier to get by daily, both in our personal and professional interactions or relationships.

Employers are more likely to hire somebody whom they believe will get on well with the rest of the team.

Friendships and rapport are easier to form and develop when there are deeper connections and understanding between the parties involved.

Working with people that make it easy for others to establish rapport with them is a thing of joy.

A Guide on How To Building Rapport

Building rapport is not a complex task, but there are many important aspects to building rapport and smooth relationships and network with people around us.

Make Eye Contact

Eye contact builds rapport with others, and rapport encourages them to listen to you because they are interested in what you say. People respond to you by looking at you as well when you maintain eye contact.

Try maintaining eye contact for approximately 60% of the time. Relax and lean slightly towards them to show listening and mirror their body-language if appropriate.

When they stop paying attention to you, their eyes wander on to other things.

Find Common Ground

When you meet people who appear wealthier or better read or have travelled the world, or we assume did more significant work, you may not want to be one to build rapport for fear.

At our core, humans have the same fears and anxieties when speaking to those who may appear “perfect.”

Regardless of how much money an individual may have in the bank, they want dignity and respect that each of us requires for ourselves. They also want to be friends or get along with you because of who they are, not because of what they possess or their position.

If you can remember that, at our core, we are all the same, you will be able to build rapport with anyone.

Don’t Cross Your Arms When Speaking to Someone

The arms remain an effective tool to influence how people perceive you. If you use your arms correctly, you can take an open, welcoming stance, encouraging others to come and speak to you.

You can use hand gestures to show the other person that you are present and enjoying their company. Placing your arms tucked loosely behind your back will help you convey interest, all while keeping your arms in place.

You can unknowingly erect a barrier with your arms or things you are holding. Having your hands in your pockets or across your chest suggests disinterest or boredom.

Drop Your Phone

When you want to build rapport, do your best to tear yourself away from your phone.

When you are scrolling through your phone while trying to strike a conversation with someone you are meeting for the first time, you come across as bored or uninterested in the conversation.

While you may genuinely have wanted to build rapport, if you don’t drop your phone, you may lose an opportunity to establish a meaningful connection with others because you are on your phone.

Do Your Research About the Person

To engage in actual conversations, you must research the person or persons you build rapport with. You should appreciate what drives them in life.

It’s easier to look up people on the internet now than it was in the past. So look up that person of interest to you, so you don’t miss any opportunities.

Use the Person’s Name

If the person is introduced, do your best to remember their name as you continue to talk. Do you not repeatedly ask them to remind you what their name?

Using names can be great icebreakers and helps you communicate more informally.

People also appreciate that you remember their name; it shows you fully engage with those around you.

Find Things to Admire

Everyone has some goodness in them. There is something to admire about almost everyone.

You can always recall that time when the most competitive colleague did something nice or when the boss who wanted always wants to look good in management meetings at all costs threw his colleague or teammate “under the bus.”

We All Possess Admirable Traits

We all have some basic good in all of us. If you look for the positives in people first, you will have greater success in building rapport with others. Be non-judgmental towards the other person.

When meeting people newly, approach the relationship with open arms, not using the stories you previously heard about them to form an opinion or erect mental barriers that stop you from building rapport.

Put a Smile on Your Face

A good way to win people over from the beginning is to smile. A smile lights up a room and your face. Smiling when you enter a room signifies you are confident and ready to talk to others. A smile shows you are confident and optimistic that others will smile back.

You smile warmly when you approach someone and develop it organically as they introduce you and shake hands. This creates a lingering impression of friendliness.

Create Value in Your Relationships

Most people see building an exercise that you engage in so you can get things from others. But this does not help you in the long-term. If you want to build genuine connections, you have been willing to be of value to the people around you. How can you provide a solution?

Alternatively, you can answer some questions. Building rapport should be about what you can give towards creating a mutually genuine relationship with those around you.

Not everybody you meet will interest you at first, but showing disdain or disapproval openly could hurt the rest of your networking efforts if others see your reactions and form a negative opinion of you.

Be Open

So many conversations at happy hours, receptions, conferences and events are transactional and shallow. I am skeptical that many results in genuine and authentic connections.

Being yourself when building rapport is a beautiful thing, and it allows others the liberty to shed whatever persona they assumed when coming for an event and, therefore, the liberty to be themselves. Being open means you allow your feet to touch the ground. You are real.

When you are advised to be open, it does not refer to you giving too much information too fast or doing so without restraint. You don’t have to tell people everything or tell embarrassingly personal jokes to show you are open. I mean acknowledging where you are at the moment.

If you have something to comment on, don’t hold back for fear of talking out of turn. Also, listen to what others have to say too, and be open to soak in everything you can from the interactions.

When you do that, you formulate to what you’re holding inside, and you let the person with whom you’re engaging know that there are dynamics at play that affect how you are showing up.

Know That You are Great

If you struggle with feelings of low self-esteem, you may have difficulty building rapport. You wrongly believe that other people are better than you and perhaps you do not deserve to communicate with them.

To form a rapport, you have to believe you deserve to be in the room, you good enough to engage with others, you have experiences that others can learn from, you are breathing the same air as everyone else.

If you would like to find out the skill of building rapport with anyone, you want first to examine how you esteem or view yourself. At your core, you are worthy. You do not have to do or be anything to be worthy; you are worthy under your existence.

You are worthy because you exist, and you are doing all you can do every day. If you’ll shift your mindset and truly embrace your worth, it’ll be easy to create rapport with others.

Don’t Build Rapport Because You Want Something in the Future

People in authority or influential leadership positions do not always enjoy the luxury of having people around them who will tell them the truth.

Many people approach leaders from an opportunistic standpoint. It is refreshing to meet someone or build rapport with someone who tells the truth or can tell you.

Honesty requires courage and a willingness not to be afraid of being wrong, to take a chance. It requires diplomacy and wisdom–and you must acknowledge the conditions that make different leaders more receptive to truth.

But many leaders can come to appreciate someone whom they know will be honest with them.

When a leader asks you how you sincerely feel, find the courage and the words to diplomatically and carefully tell the individual the truth. This will improve your rapport with the leader.

Focus on Neutral Topics

Talk about established shared experiences, the weather, how your trip was, what you love or not about the city. Don’t be the one who can’t get tired of hearing your own voice. Don’t spend all your time talking about yourself and your interests.

The conversation should be two-way. Also, don’t ask personal or direct questions. Don’t ask them if they have kids or pets or about their spouses. You may think it’s harmless to assume they have kids because they smiled at your child. But you do not know if talking about kids is a painful topic for them because they just lost a child or pet.

Keep the topics safe and non-intrusive when you are just meeting people or about to build rapport with them.

Be an active listener and show interest in what they are saying. This will make it simpler to talk in the beginning stages of communication.

Use Laughter and Humor

Certain studies about laughter perception by Dr. Carolyn McGettigan suggest that our brain can identify forced laughter and try to work out why.

And when they hear genuine laughter, they could build a better rapport. When we are building rapport, laughter and humour help to keep the conversation genuinely free-flowing.

Building rapport is critically important, no matter the job. In the past, people who didn’t work in large teams didn’t think they needed to build rapport, but more than anything in the 21st century.

While building rapport, we must maintain self-awareness and emotional intelligence. And make sure the other person feels included but not interrogated during initial conversations. Just as you may feel tense meeting and talk to somebody new, so may the people you are building rapport with.

Put the other person at ease. This will enable you to relax and conversation or rapport to become more natural. Remember, building rapport is not the same thing as lobbying or trying to make people like you because you want something from them.

Building rapport is also not a complicated activity. Put a smile on your face and be genuinely interested in people and watch your relationships blossom.

Conclusion

Rapport happens naturally. It is established between two people as an “invisible” thread that connects them and helps them to open up to each other.

The easiest way to build rapport is to be sincere and genuine and use the techniques outlined in this article to establish an even stronger connection to your counterpart in the conversation.

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Your alarm went off roughly an hour ago. It hard to make it out of bed though, you drag yourself to the shower. The dark rings under your eyes, telltale signs that you had enough sleep.

Driving to work is an arduous task. You sit in your car in the car park for another 15 minutes before you drag yourself inside. You dread interacting with your cheery coworkers, some of whom are already curious about you lately.

It’s not that you are not an enthusiastic person; it’s just that you don’t feel like seeing anyone at your job, and you suffer this way every day.

If this sounds familiar, you may assume you’re anxious or stressed. But you might need to address an unusual problem: work burnout.

Research shows that many people who experience manifestations of work burnout don’t believe their work is the underlying cause.

Burnout is a state of emotional, visible, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, wearied, and helpless to accommodate constant demands.

As the stress remains, you lose the enthusiasm and motivation that prompted you to assume a certain role. If left unchecked, burnout can be harmful. So if you’re anywhere between dried and burned, it’s time to take a step back.

There’s no specific medical disorder called burnout, but every doctor knows that prolonged stress has negative consequences for your health, organs and mental wellbeing.

Burnout makes you less productive and feeling exhausted even before you start your day, leaving you feeling helpless, hopeless, pessimistic, and irritated by those around you.

Work Burnout is not the Same Thing As Stress

Work burnout is not the same thing as stress, though we often think of them as the same thing because the early burnout signs are like stress. Burnout at work may result from unrelenting stress, but it isn’t the same as too much stress.

However, stressed people can still imagine that if they can get everything under control, life will be better. Burnout is not enough. Work burnout means feeling empty and exhausted, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring at work.

People experiencing burnout don’t conceive any hope of a practical change in their situations.

If excessive stress feels like you’re drowning in a sea of commitments, burnout is a sense of being all used up.

And while you’re aware of being under any stress, you rarely know burnout when it happens.

Work Burnout Symptoms

Burnout symptoms present themselves in diverse ways. If you answer yes to any of the below questions, you might experience job burnout.

Consider talking to a doctor or a mental health provider because we can also relate these symptoms to health conditions, like depression.

• Have you become pessimistic or critical about tasks at work?
• Have you become impatient with co-workers, customers or clients?
• Do you find it hard to remain focused on a goal for long?
• Do you find it hard to concentrate and stay consistent on a task?
• Do you lack satisfaction from your achievements, no matter the accolades you receive, you feeling you don’t deserve it?
• Do you feel disillusioned about your work goals?· Are you using drugs, alcohol or food to feel better or numb your feelings?
• Do you drag yourself to bed, but toss and turn for hours and wake up tired still?
• Are you troubled by unexplained headaches, bowel problems, or other physical complaints?

To combat burnout, be intentional about the actions and techniques you will use to bring yourself back from burnout.

Techniques to Combat Work Burnout

1. Talk About It

Negotiate your contributions at work with your supervisor or line manager. Are you doing more or saddled with responsibilities that should be shared with others?

Will you need improved work tools or more experienced hires in your department?

Do you need a break?

Were you afraid of saying no to your boss and taking on more work than you can handle?

Discuss this and agree on ways you can achieve your goals without burnout.
Be Present!

2. Engage with activities or people that will provide support like friends, family and colleagues.

Supportive relationships and having deep connections in the workplace can help reduce monotony and ward off the effects of work burnout.

Having friends to chat and joke with during the day can help ease stress from an unsatisfying or challenging role, improve your job action, or get you through a rough day.

3. Practice mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness is a meditation exercise in which you concentrate on being receptive to what you’re sensing and feeling at the moment, without translation or analysis. It is the state of being mindful of things.

Meditation is a mind training activity that trains you to control racing thoughts, manage negativity, and relax both your mind and body. Mindfulness involves breathing exercises and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.

Mindfulness helps direct your thoughts from distracting thoughts and engage with the life around you. This helps you manage work stress.

4. Get More Sleep

Sleep is an important, often less regarded component of every person’s health and well-being. When you sleep, you will allow your body to relax and be ready for the new day. Getting enough sleep may also help prevent excess weight gain, heart problems, and immunity issues.

To combat work burnout, you need sleep as one of your techniques. You can switch off your phone, go to bed early and perform relaxing activities before bed.

5. Exercise Often

You can engage in less strenuous exercises, about 30 minutes a day. This can lead to valuable benefits for your overall health. The exercise doesn’t need to be athletic or difficult.

When experiencing work burnout, taking time to exercise improves your health and has immense benefits for your mood.

6. Reassess the Way You Approach Work

People find it hard to separate themselves from the work that they do. This leads to disillusionment. Rediscover enjoyable aspects of your work.

Be kind to coworkers. Certain studies suggest that the more kindness you show others, the better you will feel.

Take brief breaks throughout the day. Spend time away from work doing things you enjoy.

7. Engage in Relaxing Activities.

Relaxing activities could take a walk during your break, signing up for painting classes, join a salsa dance class, yoga, meditation and actions that help you relax.

You can also prioritize going out with friends, going to the movies, camping with friends and family and/or relaxing at home watching TV.

Conclusion

In our high-pressure workplaces and the increasing pressure to perform, it is easy to experience burnout. But you can escape it once you recognize the burnout signs and take action.

You should place a top priority on emotional wellbeing and create a rewarding and fulfilling life for yourself without burning out.

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Successful entrepreneurial endeavors do not just happen; it requires you to put some muscle into business leadership.

As Jack Welch put it, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

So what is it that distinguishes successful entrepreneurs from the rest?

1. Unwavering Passion

An entrepreneurial mind is not stopping at doing what you love. It goes beyond to exhibit leadership through commitment and dedication.

Successful business leadership is in finding something you love too much that you cannot keep it to yourself; you want to share it with others.

What sets up successful entrepreneurs from the rest is being super enthusiastic about your product or service.

2. Turning Passion into Opportunity

Entrepreneurs are not just passionate about what they do, they spot and grab opportunities around their areas of interest and passion. Entrepreneurship is about filling the particular needs and demands of customers.

Spectacular leadership is in exploring the market gaps and providing customer satisfaction.

Opportunities and passion will get your business through the early or rainy days.

3. Putting up a Remarkable Team

The best leadership traits are evident in the performance of a committed team. Your team’s level of efficiency determines your level of productivity and in turn, the profitability of your business.

Building a flexible team offers the necessary business leadership especially the bad days.

A remarkable team, one that understands the objective of your business, the core values, and lives by them, makes the difference between successful and struggling entrepreneurs.

4. Remaining Open-minded

No matter how experienced or successful you are, you can always learn from others. Business leadership does not excel in self-sufficiency, but rather it thrives on networks as they determine your worth.

Great entrepreneurs are flexible and ask for advice, soaking up all the best practices around them. Remaining open to new ideas will help drive business growth.

5. Maintaining your Cool

Uncertainties are inevitable and the effects are magnified or controlled by how you respond to them as an entrepreneur leading a team. During the storms, successful leaders do not lose their composure.

Instead, they stand their ground and offer objective decision-making that determines how well the business is able to sail. Please take a look at How to Keep Your Composure When Leading Teams.

6. Staying Positive

After hard times in business, successful entrepreneurs protect their focus by looking ahead. Once you stray from the roadmap, get up, dust off, and jump right back on track.

Staying focused on your set of goals ensures you do not get stuck at the pitfalls.

7. Keeping a Pool of Ideas

Effective entrepreneurs do not rest on their laurels.

One successful project is great but you cannot afford to stay there. You need to always be working on the next big thing!

Conclusion

Successful entrepreneurs make calculated moves. They do not just think about today’s business, or just do the bare minimum.

The difference lies in the extra mile they cover. It takes deliberate effort, timely decision making, and defying all the odds to achieve desired goals.

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You have set your family on a long journey to the most remarkable yet unfamiliar destination for the much-needed vacation. You know where you want to be, but since you have not been there before, it is only right to keep cross-checking the road signs to ascertain you’re indeed headed in the right direction.

Such is the path to a winning strategy and as Constantinos Markides put it, “Designing a winning strategy is the art of asking questions, experimenting and then constantly renewing the thinking process by questioning the answers. No matter how good today’s strategy is, you must always keep reinventing it.”

Creating and executing a business strategy is a very engaging process that requires impartial commitment. No wonder there are numerous business strategy problems that most companies just can’t seem to get past.

1. An Undefined Business Strategy – Poor Goal Setting

For most businesses, what they presume to be a strategy is actually not a strategy at all. It does not make clear and decisive choices about where to play, how to win and configure the business.

A vague picture of what you only hope to achieve over time is in no way a winning strategy.
Strategic goals may often be large and complex objectives that need to utilize many resources scattered across different departments and locations.

Establishing clear goals across individual teams will result in more clarity on priorities and responsibilities. You must ensure that your organization adapts a goal-setting technique.

Build up and establish best practices for writing goals such as OKRs – Objectives and Key Results and SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goal-setting methods.

2. A Limited Perspective

Developing a strategy is not an independent set of many things to do in the near future. For most businesses, what they refer to as a strategy is too tactical and short-term.

They limit the strategy into the near future with the assumption that all factors and aspects of business operations will remain constant.

Strategic planning requires in-depth thinking on how to stay relevant, stay abreast amidst an ever-changing business environment, and deliver value both now and in the future.

3. An Unsanctionable Business Strategy Plan

When business planning only involves a list of aspirations and only a small number of clearly defined leads, it is bound to encounter execution problems.

Your business needs clearly defined lead and lag performance indicators that show where you are going, how much ground you have covered, and what needs to be done, by whom, and by when. All this information is what is summarized and outlined in a scorecard.

Great leaders are business strategists who have regular and effective conversations on how the business is keeping up with short-, medium-, and long-term objectives.

4. Overwhelming Actionable Points

Whereas for some business leaders, the strategy comes short of actionable vivid steps, others lean towards the other extreme. Business planning needs a balance of the two, having too many strategic or change initiatives at one particular time is not only overwhelming but all disorienting.

A remarkable strategy has to be precise, aggressive as well as actionable, bound by a baseline and target. You need to ensure your strategy execution captures how much can be done within a stipulated timeline to ensure it is achievable.

5. Inadequate Capacity and Limited Resources

The tenacity and capability of your business as an entity is what sets the pace on your level of performance. Great strategies require great minds, undying commitment, and abounding resources to bring into reality the desired goals.

Direct costs of executing new strategies are associated with the consultants brought in to plan, execute, and provide training. New strategies also involve the introduction of new technologies which is a major problem for companies, especially small businesses.

To avoid this most common business strategy problem, start small and consider your scalability as you expand once your formative objectives have been met. Make use of the expertise and resources you already have.

Choose a training platform or strategy execution method that is affordable, accessible and scalable, one that can eventually be cascaded throughout your organization.

6. Lack of Excellent Leadership Skills

Most organizations embark on grooming managers to steer the business strategy and this is where the rain starts beating. Proper implementation of business plans requires leaders and not managers.

Strategy execution does not thrive when bits and pieces are delegated to the different functional managers so that each department focuses on a given fragment.

The chief implementation officer needs a top-notch highly skilled leader that coordinates all aspects of the business strategy, including the management team.

Strategy execution is difficult mainly because it involves change and the management team may not be on the same page; it requires high levels of leadership skills for proper coordination and execution.

7. Unprotected Focus

When you have a great leadership team steering the way, a great plan is up and running, your next stop is when the organization starts losing focus and slowly drifts back.

When execution of the new strategy kicks off, there’s a likelihood to go back to the old ways especially in the face of uncertainties or challenges. You must keep track of the changes achieved between the period before and after the launch of the strategy.

You also need to look out for any new plans that are introduced along the way after the launch of the strategy to make sure they are significant contributors to the realization of the vision.

8. Non-Committal Engagements

Strategy execution is an involving process that requires commitment from all stakeholders within the organization. It does more harm than good to have one part of the strategy fully functioning in only a segment of your company.

Not getting the buy-in from your organization is a huge obstacle to achieving your strategic goals. You need buy-in from your management team to every employee within your company.

The challenge comes in when ensuring that there are no one or two problematic individuals that have not owned the plan and are only going to derail things.

9. Lack of Internal Expertise

Understanding the market trends is critical in informing the approach your business strategy takes. Most businesses experience unprecedented disruption when the change in market trends is beyond the enterprise strategy team’s bandwidth to analyze and comprehend.

For instance, if your strategy team lacks enough knowledge and subject matter expertise to analyze the important data science trends, it becomes difficult for them to participate in predictive analysis or the Internet of Things (IoT).

It is imperative that you develop an innovative and future-oriented way of bringing in the talent that your strategy team requires, even if it’s on a demand-basis.

10. Meeting Aggressive Timelines

Some businesses wait for things to start declining at an acute rate to appreciate the need for a winning strategy. Corporate strategy teams are always working under tight deadlines that are based on the scheduled release of evaluation meetings or earnings reports.

Such reflections may miss out on the real picture and the underlying challenges of the organization. External pressure dictating timelines can get in the way of realizing optimal results.

An unrealistic and unattainable deadline accompanied by the internal pressure of the pressing business operations weighs down on the strategy team and has a demoralizing effect on the employees. You need to assemble a team from multiple sources to deliver on strategic goals and keep up with external pressures.

You could use on-demand talent to supplement your team as the need arises. Keep your agility high by developing the capacity to assemble and blend the talent, assets, and resources you need.

11. The Uneven Blend Between Digital Tools and Hybrid Teams

Every corporate strategy team is diligently seeking efficiency and in the wake of the ever-changing technologies, it is difficult to keep up.

Remaining up to date requires your business to have the capacity to constantly restructure its enterprise assets, resources, and talents. In the era of new complex digital tools such as the IoT, enabling your organization to collect data in real-time is a great advantage but it comes at a cost.

It, therefore, means that management and strategy teams are under pressure to flex and adapt their strategic development and decision-making tools.

12. Opposing Change

Whereas change is inevitable, resisting it is a natural response and this is a major challenge to business strategies. As good and progressive as the new business plan may be, it will still face some rigidity, a bias that solely favors the way things have always been done previously.

To achieve the desired goals, you need to drive change through creating a “change mindset” among the individuals within your organization.

Coping with and making use of change is the ultimate challenge for businesses and strategy teams. It takes submission to admit that there might exist a better way to do things.

Openness is the only way through which one can understand why a better way worked elsewhere and how it could work here.

It will need determination, commitment, and follow through to drive the desired change within your organization. You must align your people, the operation processes, and systems around the new ways of doing things to achieve the desired outcome.

13. Ever Evolving Technologies

Currently, a year may be too long for an accounting system to remain the most effective one. Technological advances and the rate at which they keep changing pose not only an advantage due to the convenience they accord entrepreneurs, but also a problem in keeping up with them.

Strategic execution is subject to changes in the market trends and technological inputs significantly affect business performance.

Since new technologies such as CRMs and ERPs are expensive to incorporate into an existing business, companies struggle with fitting their strategies within tight budgets and retaining a competitive advantage in the industry.

14. Ineffective Branding

Branding gives your business an edge over other competitors. When engaging in business strategies, businesses face the problem of retaining their identity and objectivity.

A plan put in place may overemphasize the aspects of progressive growth and leave out on the need of the organization to remain authentic and deliver on its mission statement.

15. Unanticipated Political Factors in the Business Strategy

A business strategy is primarily pictured in the best case scenario and with the assumption that all factors affecting business operations remain constant. Yet we know that the economic, social, and political factors in play vary and have a significant effect on businesses.

A setback comes in when political adversity is experienced which affects businesses negatively.

Your strategy should have a what-if clause, appreciating that the dynamics of change depending on the stability of the political, economical, and social environment. It should contain clear alternatives if a roadblock is met.

Flexibility calls for a balance between ideal and reality and anticipating change gives you a competitive advantage.

16. Poor Planning and Weak Strategy

A new vision is the springboard of strategy; it is an opportunity to create a roadmap with broad perspectives and narrowed focus.

Most businesses go wrong when they do not set up distinct milestones, stipulate clear timelines and precise roles for all the employees.

When taking up a large organization-wide initiative you need to make sure you set manageable goals for every individual, department and level. Assigned responsibilities should be concise and not fuzzy vague ideas.

17. Ineffective Training Methods

For your strategy to hit the ground running, you must get the strategy execution team and all involved employees properly trained. Businesses skimp on proper learning and corporate opportunities for their employees for various reasons.

Currently, there are numerous modern options for low-profile yet highly effective trainings that easily fit into your employees’ busy schedules. Businesses need to invest in finding the right option that is affordable, does not involve too much downtime, and still strengthens or introduces new skills.

If a training method does not offer a follow-up to ensure that employees execute the lessons and skills acquired in their daily work flow, it impedes progress and proves ineffective. Valuable trainings roll out the new strategic initiatives in bits and consider scalability.

It is the right mix of instruction, training technique, and action that will help your new strategy initiatives stick.

18. Lack of Proper Communication Channels

Communication is critical in the execution of any new strategy and an efficient communication plan must be developed from the top down. Strategy initiatives bounce back once information does not flow throughout the organization.

Every employee should have an avenue through which they can raise a concern or ask a question as they interact with the new plan.

Lack of communication channels creates discord and disjointed teams that spread uncertainty which is a problem for the new strategy. Especially if teams have worked together for a long period, communication breakdown increases their resistance to change.

Keeping the communication lines open helps the team appreciate the ultimate change and progress awaiting down the line should they stick to the new guidelines no matter the discomfort.

19. Incomplete Execution Attempts

Once the new plan is rolled out, there is a need for regularly scheduled review meetings to evaluate the performance of the new strategy.

Lack of follow-through is what makes most business plans and strategy only work in the formative phases but soon enough fade away to the old operation methods.

It is in the review meetings that decisions on alterations needed are recapped, evaluation of the experienced change and the desired outcome done, and the overall performance realized. Follow-through initiatives ensure long-term consistency and continuous growth and skills evolution.

20. Lack of Alignment

Challenges to the new strategy revolving around priority issues and collaboration conflict emerge from lack of alignment. The effect derails the daily work operations that are critical in achieving the strategic goal.

Strategic misalignment comes from the accustomed way of doing things previously within the organization without a clearly outlined and restrictive roadmap. Nonstrategic objectives may receive a high priority since they are part of the common routine and are easily achievable.

A clear alignment clearly shows who is working on which strategic objective at a given time. It also indicates which of those objectives will empower the team to drive the priority attached to the strategic goals rather than the non-strategic objectives.

Establishing your alignment throughout the management and hierarchical structure will ensure your business strategy stops at nothing.

21. Inability to Track Progress

After putting in place all the necessary measures to attain your strategic objectives, you now need effective means through which you can track objectives.

Most companies use spreadsheets to track progress but this can only work well between a manager and an employee.

You need a more advanced system to aggregate results throughout your business and create transparency. An effective system is one that allows you to manage the attainment of strategic goals in real-time.

Strategy execution platforms make it possible for clear direction in real-time to managers and employees on why and what is important. Through an improvement in alignment, transparency, collaboration, and manageability, your business remains synced to the strategy throughout and realizes high efficiency and performance.

Knowing the score at any given time lets everyone associated with the strategic goal adjust their goal to maximize the outcome.

22. A Disconnect Between the People and the Strategy

A successful strategy is one that people can closely identify with. Your employees need to own the business strategy; they need to feel like an integral part of the process.

Since a business already has a way of doing things, embrace order and routine and you are likely to fall into operational-tactical focus that yields immediate results. However, strategic goals require time and patience and you need to get your team to work differently.

Connect the people more closely to the strategy by aligning the professional goals with personal interests so that the strategic objectives are not things your employees must do but they would not have it any other way.

You could allow your employees to create and define their own strategic goals to capture their ambition and preference in relation to the business goals.

23. Too Much Focus on Financials

For some companies, a strategy cannot be torn apart from the financial aspects. When creating a strategy most managers tend to rely on a flawed definition of strategy that primarily capitalizes on financial considerations and achievements.

Strategy execution is only successful if a company has a well-formulated strategy to start with. To some business leaders, a strategy is just a set of aspirations for competing and being the lead in their field of industry. These are just goals and aspirations.

Strategy goes beyond what the company wants to be or achieve. It delves into ‘the how’ to get there. As crucial as goals are, they do not substitute for strategy.

It is great strategies that provide guidance and coherence to the company, financial goals would never do that!

24. Settling for Functional Strategies

Functional strategies cannot take the place of business strategy. It is a common problem for businesses to reach a consensus on one clear business strategy since the focus is on the development of functional strategies.

Businesses create a strategy for sales and marketing, HR, operations, and every department within the organization.

The more you break down your strategy into various functional strategies, the more likely you are to get stuck on your overall winning business strategy.

25. Too Much Talk with Minimal Corresponding Action

Now that you have all the common business strategy problems under control, get down to business. Beyond the alignment of different activities, strategy implementation is about creating commitment throughout the entire organization.

Create commitment by showing your employees where and how they can make a difference. Stimulate them to take action within the confines set by the strategy.

You must put in the effort, time, and patience to create an organizational context within which action stimulation is widespread throughout your business. It makes all the difference.

Conclusion

You know the challenges, now it is time to avoid them! Acknowledging these numerous challenges to business strategy and communicating them to your employees and management team is critical.

The dissemination and execution of any new strategy is critical and demands the active involvement of all parties within the business.

Now that you know how businesses can get in their own way, make it your responsibility to ensure your business does not make the same mistakes. And since uncertainties and hurdles are inevitable, ensure your strategy gives a way out for the rainy day!

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Successful Leaders across the globe can seem to be superhuman in the way in which they are capable of achieving a lot despite having the same time as everyone else in a day. Different Leaders have different approaches to the work they do.

However, if you closely study their nature, there is an array of similarities between all successful leaders despite the different lines of work. They all depict certain leadership trait that is evident from their habits and how they interact with people.

Below are 17 habits of highly successful leaders:

1. Waking up Early

From the routines of a good number of successful leaders, one thing that stands out is that they all wake up very early in the morning. Their wake up time ranges between 3:30 pm and 4:30 pm, which is quite early.

By waking up this early, they can have enough time to plan their day and even work on certain projects before everyone else is up and rolling. This, therefore, means that if you have the dream of playing in the big boys’ league and be a leader, then it is time to forget sleep.

You should instead make waking up at 4:00 am a habit just like these successful leaders.

2. Regular Exercise

Most successful leaders wake up early to exercise. This is among the first activities in their daily routine immediately they wake up.

Working out in the morning makes them reflect on the day’s activities and get motivation from within to face it and be successful.

Apart from that, exercise keeps them healthy with the energy to run their errands without getting overwhelmed easily.

I believe that this is a great habit that you should consider adopting if you find it hard to carry out your duties during the day. It can also prove to be a way of boosting your concentration and productivity.

3. Ability to Inspire and Motivate

One of the most predominant leadership traits of successful leaders is in the ability to inspire and motivate those around them. They value their employees and work with them hand in hand to ensure that they win together.

Ultimate Software’s CEO, Scott Scherr is once made a statement that business has various similarities with sports as a leader has to organize their team and ensure that they work together.

Ability to inspire the team, and create conditions that help the team members to be their best is an important leadership trait possessed by successful leaders.

4. Time Management

Time is a very precious commodity that no one would want to lose. Successful leaders can achieve a lot by having effective time management skills, and exceptional professional effectiveness.

It is the habit of any successful leader to know how long will various activities take, not just for themselves, but for their teams and business units that they are responsible for.

Good leaders understand that time is money, and that both can only be treasured if never wasted.

5. Having a Stellar Team

Any achievement of a business or a company is always determined by the employee’s morale and willingness to work. Therefore, if they lack the moral compass and are not engaged at work, the company will not be successful.

A leader needs to have skills and competencies to spot the talent, and be able to fuse the individuals into highly performing teams. To achieve that, leaders need to set the direction, and be clear enough regarding the expectations, and what the successful outcome should be like.

Within the team, the presence of the leader should instill confidence in their vision, and the stability of their character, and their expectations. Clarity of expectations would result in the team not having the need to second-guess the leader’s direction.

6. Effective in Delegation of Tasks

In every company, the leader has the authority, and ultimately – is accountable for the successful business outcomes.

To accomplish that, leaders need to be aware of talents, abilities, and aspirations of their team members, and delegate tasks based on motivation factors.

To some employees, a task may be daunting and boring, to others – a show of faith may serve as an incredible opportunity to learn, practice, and to show their talents.

7. Use Modern-Day Technologies to Solve Business Problems

Modern leaders understand that the technology is a modern-day source of the competitive advantage.

They do not see technology as something that is separate from the business, but they help to establish great relationships between business units and technology groups to establish the most optimal way to apply modern day technologies to solve tomorrow’s business problems.

8. Staying Informed

Staying informed is the most common leadership trait that characterizes every successful leader. They make their decisions based on actionable data, rather than emotions, and they know how to ask the right questions, even if sometimes – the question may be unpopular.

Up to date business and competitive data is used by such leaders to establish and implement business practices that have a solid footing.

9. Building Relationship Capital

Highly successful leaders are master at networking. They don’t just use traditional communication channels, they know how to build relationships informally, and are always likable. Within such relationships, leaders put forward a relationship capital, and have a sincerity and substance.

Within their vast professional networks, they know how much of capital do they have and where, and can tap into the relationships to help their businesses to get to the next level.

10. Daring to Experiment

The growth and success of a business are depicted by its ability to try out new things. This means that any successful leader should be more than willing to get out of their comfort zone and try out new things and explore new horizons.

This can include employing new marketing strategies or even making some incremental changes to the business model.

A competent leader would need very little time to determine if a new approach is working well, or if corrections need to be made.

11. Quick to Make Decisions

Decision making is an essential facet of a successful business leaders. Decisiveness is one of the traits by which you can spot a great leader in the making.

Seasoned leaders have split seconds to make dozens of decisions that don’t just impact them, but their teams and organizations. Some of such decisions – may have lasting impacts for the years to come.

To ensure that such decisions are successful, business leaders need to build their judgement and intuition. And that comes with the expertise of leading larger, more complex, and more diverse teams.

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“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure” Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich.

When starting your business, small business problems are unavoidable and it requires you to set your best foot forward. For most startups, the problem is in identifying the not so obvious challenges and tackling them.

So what are the 11 biggest hidden problems in your small business that you need to be aware of?

1. Undiversified Client Base

A small business should not allow itself to be reliant on one single client. It’s too great a risk to take. If one single client contributes to more than half your income, you are operating as an independent contractor instead of a business owner.

Diversifying your client base is paramount for your business growth. It safeguards you from a sudden destabilization should your client dash off to your competitors. This arrangement is only safe if you are sure that your main client has a consistent need for your product or service.

Whereas for many small businesses having a client willing to buy in bulk and pay on time is a dream comes true, you should never settle there.

Better have a diversified client base for your business from which you can pick up the slack when any of your clients stops business.

2. Cash Flow Money Management

You need plenty of cash to cater for the needs of your business. More importantly, you need the perfect traceability of your incoming as well as your outgoing cash.

If you do not put measures in place, your business and personal finances will get mixed up, and eventually one will prove a capital drain to the other.

You have numerous alternatives to avoid this problem from online invoice software to better budgeting systems and effective cash flow management. You must keep strict track of your money, where it is coming from, and where it is going.

3. Founder Dependence

How independent of you is your small business, would it continue to generate an income should you have a personal emergency? If your business cannot operate without you as the founder, it is working with a deadline.

Founder dependence is a risky place for your business. Your business operations should be independent of you as a person.

You need to let go of certain functions, decisions, and responsibilities as your business grows. To start with, you need to give over more control to your partners or employees. It is a difficult place since you may have to compromise on the quality of work produced until the new team learns. However, it is a worthwhile endeavor since it assures your business longevity.

4. Fatigue

Unlike a job, when you are working on your business you do not protest against long hours of work or unpaid overtime. As good as it is for you to diligently work on the success of your business, therein lays a risk. You are bound to be worn out from the long hours of work and the constant pressure coming from your business.

You get stuck working longer hours than your employees and are in constant fear that your business will stall in your absence. However, what you really need at certain times is to take some time away from your business to recharge.

Fatigue can interfere with your objectivity in decision making and to grow your business you need to always be looking at the bigger picture and not reacting to situations.

5. Quality vs. Growth

Balancing the quality and growth of your small business requires calculated moves. Even when your business is not dependent on you as the founder, a time comes when the growth experienced outweighs the quality benefits.

Whether you deliver products or services, you will soon need to sacrifice to scale up. It means you may not be in a position to directly manage every client relationship or inspect every single aspect of your business.

However, there is a unique level of personal engagement and attention to detail that you as the founder brings to the table that steers the success of your business. It is therefore not easy to let go of some aspects of your business to allow it to grow.

The balance between perfection and unnecessary obsession with quality makes all the difference. You need to navigate your problems and come up with business solutions that strike a compromise to allow growth and protect the brand.

6. Staying Passionate

In the daily grind of life, you need to be sure and steadfast, never lacking in zeal for your business. It is the only way you can protect your brand and maintain a high quality of products and services rendered to your customers.

So as you disentangle yourself from some aspects of your business to avoid founder dependence, your interest needs to remain or go higher.

If at any one point your customers have a sloppy experience, you will have inspired them to take your business elsewhere, and where else if not to your very competitors?

As your business continues to grow, you should engage in more business consulting and ensure you are as passionate about your business as when you approached your first client!

7. Hiring New Employees

So now that your small business is balancing growth and quality and operating independent of you, you are faced with a new problem: Hiring new employees.

It is one of the most common business problems. It is especially the case due to the involved cost.

Hiring new employees means you need to invest in more equipment, pay for more taxes and benefits. All these facets come into play and the cost of hiring new employees keeps rising even before you outline the salaries needed for different positions.

You need employees and an effective management team to run your small business successfully.

8. Turnover Business Problems

After you have hired a team of employees and management and your business is running independently of you as the founder, watch out for the turnover hurdle.

You need a fully functional and effective team to meet all your customers’ needs and keep your brand top notch.

The greatest threat is where your business is running independent of you but it is now dependent on your team.

So you need to build up a reliable management team since the highest turnover rates are directly linked to bad management.

9. Process Management

Your management team determines the best process for your team. It could be through dictating or building consensus. However, the decisions made determine what things get done, the value attached, and how they get done.

You need to enable and empower the strengths of your team to ensure they pick up the button, rhythm, and heartbeat of your small business and run with it. Your process management should be centered on the strengths of your team since this has proved to be significantly beneficial.

Adding heavy processes and bottleneck decision making through your management team only works to slow down your productivity. Proper process management is critical in product releases and timely customer issues resolve.

10. Unequipped Sales Department

The growth of your business needs to be sustained by a vibrant motivated sales department which determines how much you sell and in return how profitable your business is.

As you grow and tackle your business problems ensure your sales department is not just average. It is the surest way to attain and defend an unopposed position among your competitors.

Equip your business with an optimal sales department through necessary support. Your sales team will fail if you do not give them critical tools such as training and mentorship, customer service support, high-quality products and services, and a workable follow-up plan.

11. No Customer Retention Strategy

As much as you channel all your energies towards diversifying your client base and equipping your sales team, you must equally develop a customer retention strategy. One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is focusing on acquiring new customers and doing nothing about customer retention.

Now that you have a pool of customers giving your business a ready market for your products or services, you need to guard it relentlessly. Ensure customer satisfaction, deliveries within stipulated timelines, and never over promise and under deliver.

Your customers are the lifestream of your business so you need to retain them. It is better and cheaper for your business to retain its customers than lose them to acquire new ones.

Conclusion

Business problems are easier to tackle when you know exactly what you are dealing with. So do not be laid back enjoying the seemingly good of your small business, watch out for these biggest yet hidden problems.

Make a distinction between you and your business, manage your capital, remain vigilant, grow your team, acquire and retain new customers, and put in place a remarkable structure and process management system.

Avoid the hidden traps and give your competitors a run for their money!

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Work life balance is essential to ensure sanity, and long-term productivity and prosperity, not just for employees but for companies. Bright and wise leaders realize that poor leaders think that they may continue loading their staff with more and more responsibilities.

In this article, you will find out about 19 techniques that you can use to improve work life balance.

1. Establish Your “Work Life Balance Policy”

First and foremost, decide for yourself what is important for you. First, decide about the extremes – whether you live to work, or you work to live.

After that, determine what will be your “policy” or the overall approach to how you make decisions on whether to work or have a life. This may be as simple as “no professional calls after 5 pm”.

No answer is wrong, as it is your life and your decision. Sometimes, especially earlier in our careers, it is necessary to spend more time at work to gain competencies, experience, and expertise.

However, that shouldn’t turn into a blind habit, where we spend a lot of extra time at work just because “it has always been this way.”

Make a decision about what is important for you at the present time in your life. And communicate the decision to your family and friends to make sure that they support you.

But do keep in mind, that the time is precious, and you can’t get it back.

2. Have a Strong Willpower to Stick to Your “Policy”

After you have determined the rules for the work-life balance – you need to have strong willpower and stick to them.

If you slip once or make an exception once for your colleague who is begging for your help after hours, the overall system established by your work-life “policy” will lose its relevance.

The presence of after-hours calls, escalations, or issues that need to be addressed right away “or else the world will fall apart” are symptoms of larger organizational issues that you won’t be able to solve on that specific evening.

Rather, look at the types of systemic issues that you may have in your area, and rather than spending your 9-5 in firefighting, see if you can start to address the root causes that generated these issues proactively.

You need to be aware of small things that may creep into your work-life “policy,” such as a temptation to check office emails on your phone while at lunch. While this behavior may seem insignificant, it skews your “moral compass” that helps you to maintain adherence to your work-life balance “policy.”

3. Avoid Multitasking

Most of us think that we are great multitaskers. We praise ourselves for multitasking, on how many projects can we manage in parallel, and how many tasks we can accomplish. In truth, we are deceiving ourselves.

As per the study of the American Psychological Association, only 2% of people are good at multitasking.

The reason why we want to avoid multitasking is that in-between of every task, there is a switching time between one task and another.

While that time may be completely negligent and tiny, cumulatively – that time contributes to a very significant drain in productivity and an added pressure on our attention span.

Over time, switching costs can translate into hours and days of lost productivity, which you may be tempted to compensate for with your personal time and at your personal expense.

You shouldn’t do that on a one-off basis, but rather – go back and fix the root cause.

4. Beware of Cost of Time

Quite often, some individuals are not aware of their cost of time. They don’t think that their time outside of work has at least the same price as at work, or even higher.

If you are an entrepreneur – you can spend every minute of your day looking for attractive business ideas and working on implementing them to achieve profitability.

That tie with the profitability is missing quite often. Someone may drive for 1 hour to the store to return a $10 item and then drive for another hour back.

This has just resulted in their ROI being $5 per hour. And it is not even ROI; it is cost recovery.

Much the same way, if you are pursuing an objective that will bring you $100 dollars, and you have spent 1 hour on it and completed successfully – your hourly rate is $100/hr.

If you spent 10 hours to achieve that same task, your per-hour rate is $10.

When you value your time both at work and outside of work, you build a strong connection between the effort and the reward that comes as a result of that effort.

When you pay more attention – you will see that suddenly, tasks are not occupying all the free time for some unknown reason, but rather, you are in control of how much time you spend and on what.

And that decision is fully yours, that you can make based on your work or life priorities to achieve even better work-life balance.

5. Have an Up to Date Schedule

When you have many things on the goal, it often helps to have a good schedule. In your schedule, include all of your priorities and activities that have any time-related sensitivity.

By seeing all of your to-do items on your calendar, you know what exactly you need to do and by when. And this doesn’t just cover professional items; if you have a busy personal life – utilize the same technique.

Schedule your time, and you will start gaining clarity regarding what it is that you need to work on next. This way, ad-hoc tasks, requests, trips to the store, and many other items that have a habit of coming up without any notice will have a proper place in your calendar and the right time to accomplish them.

You will know when to work on “work” items and when on “personal” items.

6. Batch Things

Rather than accomplishing things one by one and having an either switching costs, or the travel time in between the tasks, see if you can batch what you do, and do it less often, but with a bigger size of the batch.

For example, you don’t want to visit a grocery store every day, but rather, build and maintain a list of what you need to buy, and do it once a week.

7. Master the Selective Ignorance

Prioritization itself is not enough to achieve successful results. Before you start putting everything you need to filter out the work as you do not have to work on all of the tasks that have come your way.

Not everything under the sun needs your attention.

The members of your team are fully competent to take care of the majority of the tasks on their plate, and they know the circumstances when they should reach out to you for help.

8. Be Organized

The opposite of being organized is chaos. When your workplace, your life, or your mind is in a state of chaos, not many good things can be accomplished.

That happens because every single distraction competes for your attention span, rendering you completely incapable of paying attention to all of them, let alone the main activity that you need to accomplish to get to your objective.

Organizing not only your workplace but your workflow will lead to improved productivity, and ultimately – to a better work-life balance.

9. Make Your Availability Clear

Make it clear for others when you are available and for what. Add some degree of structure so that you are not approached on an ad-hoc basis on all topics all the time.

You may want to establish Mondays as your escalation day, Tuesdays as planning day, Wednesdays may be your day for meetings, Thursdays – a day for the “open door” policy, and Friday – for team building and knowledge sharing activities.

10. Establish Boundaries

Let others know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in terms of their behavior.

This is especially important for contacts and escalations after work. Let your team about what kind of issues they can contact you for and which others should wait till the next day.

By establishing boundaries, you are controlling the external pressures, for example, when someone from your office is calling while you are having dinner with your family.

The first time, it may not be a big deal, the second time it happens, it may start bothering you, and the third time – you may be ready to boil.

Don’t get the interactions to the boiling point; communicate the desired behaviors in advance.

11. Socialize

When you are in social isolation, you may feel that the work is the best way and one of the only meaningful ways to fill your time. It is neither.

You have a lot more talents, hobbies, and friends around you to unconsciously dedicate yourself to work.

Go through your address book, is there a friend whom you haven’t talked to in a while? Perhaps it is time to pick up a phone and socialize with them a bit?

They may be in the same situation as you are, and together – you will make each others’ day a bit brighter.

Get into a habit of seeing people outside of work and outside of the professional circle. While social media provides a way to keep in touch, to socialize properly – you need to see them in person.

Think of something exciting that both of you can do together, that both of you enjoy.

By having a collective experience, your friendship will grow stronger.

One of the socialization pitfalls is, “let’s go for a beer with the guys from work after work.” You have limited time. Ask yourself if you want to bring work relationships into your personal life.

For some, you might, and some co-workers may become great friends. But that happens not because of the “beer after work,” but for other more profound reasons.

12. Be Clear in Your Communication

When you don’t have clarity in your communication with other people, they need to touch base with you and confirm what exactly you may want from them. When you communicate clearly, they don’t need to guess what exactly is it that you need from them and second guess how they should accomplish that.

When there is less rework, your productivity is higher, and there are fewer things that are creeping into your personal life from your work life.

13. Let Other People Know Your Communication Preferences

When you let others know how you like to receive the information, in which format, and with which frequency, you will have more relevant information on a more timely basis.

You will not need to spend as much time chasing down the information and those that are responsible for producing it.

This will also help you to draw a line between your personal and professional life.

14. Have Long Term and Short Term Goals

When you are establishing your objectives upfront, you should ensure that the objectives are achievable so that you can adhere to them.

Well-crafted objectives and activities will bring you closer to your goals. This remains true not just for professional goals but for your goals outside of work.

To be achieved, all goals must be planned well in advance; otherwise, they may occupy all of the available time while slowing down the progress to nearly a standstill.

15. Block Your Time

When you block your time in your calendar for personal or professional activities, you make sure that you have uninterrupted time.

This helps you to maintain sanity, mental composure, and during that time – you know that you will be able to focus on what is needed for that task, rather than being torn into multiple directions while unable to focus on one thing at a time.

16. Say “No” More Often

If you feel overwhelmed, and yet, more work is coming your way to upset a fragile work-life balance, it is okay to say “no.” You do not have to say it confrontationally, and you can use “no” with various modifiers, such as “not right now, but I can do it in a week.”

When you control the volume and velocity of the upcoming challenges that require your attention in the workplace, you are freeing up your schedule to focus on what is important.

17. Allocate Staff at 80%

If you allocate staff members to tasks, beware of their productive capacity. While they may be allocated at 100% to a task, quite often, it is not an actual time that they can spend on the task.

They may have team meetings, meetings with their manager (or you), various team-building activities, and many other tasks that take time.

If you account for all of that and allocate your staff that is available on a full-time basis at 80% of the capacity, you will see improved productivity.

18. Praise Others For Their Dedication to Family

Quite often, when my staff brings up family affairs, I like to say “family is the most important” for them not to feel bad as if they are asking for my permission to have family time on their mind, by emphasizing the importance of family and the personal aspect while at work, you create the environment where there is a focus on balance right from the start.

Within such an environment, team members will put forward their absolute best because they know, when they urgently need time to spend with their family – it will not be an issue at their work.

19. Ensure Consistency

When you don’t just establish the work-life balance guidelines for yourself once, but still with them until your habits are formed – you will anchor your behaviors.

That usually takes at least one month of consistency. Don’t expect the deeply rooted changes to happen overnight. They will, but your internal “wiring” (your mind and your body) need to be accustomed to how does it feel to have a new habit.

After you achieve consistency in making work-life balance choices, you will make the decisions in a way that supports your chosen work-life balance “policy.”

Conclusion

By establishing your overall approach, or a “policy” towards how you are looking at a work-life balance, you ensure that you are consistent with what is important for you at the present time in your personal and your professional life.

After you have established this work-life balance “policy,” stick with it, and build your own behaviors and communicate the expectations for others to know what is important for you, how do you want to be treated, and what kind of work-life balance would you like to have.

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Millions of ambitious and determined entrepreneurs have continuously emerged to start new businesses. Of course, some of them have been passed on through generations, yet looking at the multitudes of business reports and statistics, you will realize that more than half of them barely make it to their fourth anniversary.

William Augustus said, “The one man to whom the community owes most is the capitalist that the menu gives, but the man who saves and invests so that his property reproduces and multiplies itself instead of being consumed.”

What William meant was that the world has an ever-growing insatiable appetite for unique innovations and growth. The world believes that the finances are continuously accumulating, and being possessed by people are incomputable blessings for society to upgrade.

Without these accumulations, public developments and private businesses or enterprises would not exist.

Understanding how this fact applies to the reality of modern businesses is what defines the key principles on which you will shape business growth strategies to significantly improve your business outcomesimprove your business outcomes.

It has helped businesses like Amazon, Coca-Cola, Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft build economic moats that remain unfathomable to their competitors.

Business Outcomes and Growth Strategies

From a business perspective, outcomes are seen through the acquired results, which can be measured by contrasting the performance of the business. For instance, customer acquisition, retention, and return on investment.

With that being said, a growth strategy is “a policy of growth that maximizes gains, keeping risks and unbecoming consequences at their utmost minimum.”

Growth strategies outline the routes that any business must take to achieve the most profitable outcomes and enhance competitive advantages.

Growth strategies can be seen in action with how China calculated the potential business outcomes in the small fishing village of Shenzhen and set it as a special economic zone in August of 1980.

Nearly four decades have passed, and Shenzhen has subsequently evolved into a dynamic multinational metropolis.

The 17 Growth Strategies for Improved Business Outcomes

There are universal growth strategies which serve as principles governing each era of business, and we shall go through the 17 best growth strategies that will unapologetically help improve your business outcomes:

1. Improve customer experience

For any exchange of goods and services to occur, all transactions require proper mediation. In the 21st century, that mediator is a technology through the digital transformation, leveraging software applications as a means of improvingto improve customer experience.

With a wide variety of businesses today, if your customers do not like your service, it is highly unlikely you will see them again.

Customer experience is a prerogative for any business trying to profit from growth strategies, especially if you want to remain relevant in this ever so diverse digital economy.

Your business must be open to customer interaction, receiving feedback through customers expressing themselves.

Offer live support, and stay devoted to building a long relationship with your clients by understanding their preferences.

2. Be Creative

Keep in mind that your business is not the only business out there, and respect how constantly customer demands for better products and services are evolving.

Developing your services efficiently to give your customers a better experience not only ensures retention, but it requires mass creativity.

Creativity is a renowned fuel for consistent business growth strategies.

You can propel creativity by empowering your team to remain complex and evolving in nature, embrace and solve customer problems, allowing contributions from your team, inspiring your team members and company by nurturing and rewarding their creative efforts.

3. Unique Business Propositions

To achieve the best business outcomes, you must hold strong to the fact that being unique is more important than being first. You have to give your customers an extremely compelling reason to acquire your services and overlook your competitors.

Just look at how Amazon surpassed eBay.
Nancy Kress said, “A stereotype may be negative or positive, but even positive stereotypes present two problems: They are clichés, and they present a human being as far more simple and uniform than any human being actually is.”

Growth strategies of a business must bring to light uniqueness and make sure that your business maintains a safe distance from becoming a cliché.

Consider Amazon’s propositions of “sell better, sell more” for its marketplace.

4. A simple business

As a business, you must take note of the fact that to be in the lead across any industry, you must make life easier for your customers by providing products that are simpler in nature.

Google took the search engine market by storm with this technique, so did Amazon with eCommerce.

People like to save time, use less effort, and avoid stress at all costs. At the top of your strategies for business growth, produce goods and services that make life easier.

You can achieve this by using technology to your best advantage and making use of automation features, and keeping your interface user-friendly, for example.

An example would be Amazon’s Kindle, which makes books easy to read on the go.

5. Build a dream team

For every company that has emerged on top of the competition, there is an extremely brilliant team putting into play the best growth strategies to ensure the best business outcomes.

Pick out the best talent and blend it with your business. Having talented and committed employees will only help you deliver top tier products and services as well as acquire the best clientele.

You must find, hire, and training the best talent out there by creating an environment that attracts top performers. Use talent forecasts to help you define key roles and job descriptions.

6. Track your business intelligence

Simply put, business intelligence (BI) is the technical infrastructure and methods that your business will use to collect, keep, as well as to conduct analysis on the data that is generated by your organization’s activities.

Successful growth strategies always produce progressive results when matched with business intelligence.

Business intelligence stands relevantly strong as an innovative growth strategy to attain sustainable business outcomes. It enables you to understand customer behavior and decipher buying patterns and trends that emerge in sales.

Use BI to report your activities and measure performance in business trends. You will easily make informative actions with your management.

7. Market your content

Billions of consumers scour the internet looking for solutions to their problems. Help them find you, and you improve your business outcomes.

Research the best markets for your services and formulate a strategy to grow your business sustainably.

Incorporate channels like emails, blogs, infographics, and guides into your marketing strategies for business growth by using top tier marketing software.

Don’t forget a professional marketing team, and your business will have an extreme competitive advantage, which will bring fulfillment to customers.

8. Be authentic with your craft

People always desire quality and unique products, and craftsmanship is an unmatched source of sustainable power in business.

Especially in this digital era of mass production and questionable authenticity. In order to stay relevant, you must embrace the tradition of constantly creating products that are “one of a kind.”

Let quality and perfection be key drivers of your business growth strategies and showcase the authentic appeal of your products.

9. Be timely

People have an insatiable addiction to immediate gratification. Delays are heavily resented, and this aspect of human nature is permanent.

You can easily improve your business outcomes when you take advantage of timely-delivery as a strategy for business growth.

You must do anything and everything to make sure that your customers’ do not wait for you longer than they wait for your competition.

Use techniques such as instant marketing, instant support, and quick delivery. Continue the list as it applies to your business outcomes.

10. Embrace being reliable

People naturally only use services that they find reliable.

Making sure that customers are served reliably is key to maintaining a competitive advantage for business growth.

Help people to save time, money, and avoid stress with your service quality and integrity upholding team, then you will never experience worries about customer retention.

11. Create Significant Innovations

We know the saying, “nothing changes if nothing changes, ” or better yet, as Albert Einstein put it, “You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.”

For your business growth strategy, you must continue to research and transform your services into trending innovations that will help your business stand out from the crowd by perpetuating the products and services that consistently remain useful and bring new values to customers.

Tesla, Google, and Amazon are a few examples of companies that stay innovative.

12. Maintain a strong competitive advantage

When implementing your business growth strategies, competitive market research (made easy by the internet) helps keep track of what is actually working for the businesses within your industry.

You can monitor your competition and their services and marketing strategies by examining their content on websites, white papers, blog posts, and press releases, for example.

This is a good way for you to gain insight about what encompasses your industry as well asinto what encompasses your industry and identify possible market opportunities and give you the upper hand in building a moat around your competitive advantages.

Top companies waste no time in reaping the benefits of someone else’s failures. Consider how Google carefully capitalized on Yahoo’s mistakes.

13. Make sure your business is environmentally friendly

With all the talk on global warming, consumers worldwide have become aware of protecting the environment.

It bears significant business advantages if your customers trust that your business puts the environment before profits.

Customers are always ready to pay a higher price for services that respect environmental sustainability values. “Go green.”

14. Use global platforms to establish your reach

The internet has made it possible for any business to instantly grow and sell products and services across the worldworldwide. There are platforms like Amazon’s FBA to enable global reach for eCommerce businesses.

Rental businesses may take leverage platforms like Airbnb, or perhaps Uber for transportation.

This is a powerful means to implement growth strategies for businesses because these platforms are established and at your disposal without many investment efforts.

15. Valuable business partnerships

Building strategic business partnerships will give you access to numerous untapped resources and enhanced capabilities. Such collaborations help expand your customer base by helping you access new markets.

You must take into considerationconsider all possible strategic partnerships, whether financial, marketing, or communication, and technology, and see how well these can ensure strategic business growth by clearly defining your expected values and what you can offer your partners in return.

16. Build a solid reputation

Consumers usually hold strong to the opinions offered by others. A good business reputation establishes trust with loyal customers. Include building trust as part of your business growth strategy, and your organization will always attract and retain the best customers.

Manage your business reputation, and your business outcomes will be defined in growth with minimal risks, allowing you to penetrate new markets with ease.

You can achieve this by staying true to the principles of your business, upholding values of quality service, and respecting customer feedback and insights.

17. Certify your business

Companies like Apple and Microsoft continue to be recognized as top performers because they show great prowess in their industry, surely the competition can attest to this.

“Apple and Microsoft witnessed market capitalization increases of $469bn (42%) and $344bn (29%), respectively, from March to June.”

Conclusion

It is growth strategies like these customers’ insurance regarding who you are and what you can do for them.

Consequently, winning awards makes for a good source of free marketing for your business as you can easily attract new customers and top-performing employees.

It also boosts company morale and certifies customer loyalty.

Establish your strengths as a business and outshine the competition. Do not practice anything underhanded but illustrate how your product defines sustainability and confidence in service.

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When small businesses think of marketing, they think of it as an enormous expense that their small home or online business cannot afford.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth as there are exciting possibilities for your business to grow when you deploy the right marketing ideas, and guess what? It does not have to be expensive.

Marketing Ideas Do not Have to Be Expensive!

In this article, I will show that you don’t need loads of money to craft innovative marketing ideas for your small business.

With these strategies, you will execute innovative ideas that will also deliver results for your small business, and most of the marketing ideas and digital marketing strategies won’t cost you any money.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most thoughtful marketing tools because it allows you to talk to your clients; email marketing is key for establishing relationships with prospective customers, leads, current customers, and even customers you did business with in the past because it gives you the opportunity to engage with them, in their inbox.

Email marketing is also considerably cheaper than other marketing ideas, and small businesses can take advantage of cheap or free platforms such as Mailchimp, or MailerLite.

Email Marketing, coupled with the proper messaging, email can become your most impactful marketing channels.

Video Marketing

Videos are easy to understand format that provides our eyes a rest from the plethora of textual information online. This would be why the world watches 1 billion hours of YouTube social video per day.

Videos are also easy to produce, share, and yet, they are informative and entertaining. As a small business, videos can give a huge return on investment (ROI) through many channels.

According to a Cisco report. Over 80% of all traffic will comprise video by 2021. (Cisco)

Create Content

Creating content that speaks to consumers is an innovative marketing idea for a small business with less money to spend on Ads and seeking a genuine connection with its audience. while paid advertising is designed to get something from the audience( converting the prospect into a customer).

Content marketing is all about building value and giving something to the audience to build trust. Content marketing may be a long-term strategy that uses content to create a stronger relationship together with your audience, improve engagement and brand recall, or stickiness.

What small business owners got to realize is that 70% of consumers would rather study a corporation through a piece of writing over any advertisement.

Join a Professional Body

This often-overlooked marketing idea is important, perhaps because of the other pressing responsibilities a small business already has to juggle.

Professional organizations provide networking opportunities, offer exclusive access to valuable resources and information, support systems such as coaching and mentoring that members can leverage on for business growth. Small businesses can get to choose the one that is beneficial to me.

Leverage Social Media

Since your customers are on social media, so should you. Social media is an effective marketing tool every small business should use to grow their business. Using social media to grow your business helps you build brand awareness, increase your customer base, and connect with current customers.

Small businesses are always looking to find ways to get the attention of their target audience, and social media marketing, when done right, is an exceptional way to get your business noticed by the audience online.

You can use social media innovatively by incorporating creative use of hashtags, photo contents, using Facebook, and Instagram stories to send more traffic to newsfeed posts.

Differentiate your Brand

The best way to brand yourself and represent what you stand for is through a variety of social media channels.

If I see that you simply are on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and have a category on Skillshare or Udemy, and perhaps even a channel on YouTube, or a Podcast on iTunes, then I automatically know that you simply are serious about what you are doing, and are hooked into your business.

Create a Blog

A company blog crammed with useful posts for your industry and customer base is great for connecting with current customers and generating new ones.

For instance, my blog has helpful articles on business strategies and resources to learn more about business. Blogging is also a great way to share your knowledge of the category you play.

Use Customer Testimonials

Feature customer testimonials in your email campaigns when selling products to increase the likelihood that they click and purchase.

Don’t just wait for them to get to the product page and see them there.

Join in on Controversial Issues

Use your brand voice for good. This is a cheap marketing idea that is both powerful and effective. The world of small business has dramatically changed from what it was twenty years ago.

Businesses can choose to be impactful regardless of their size or whether they are run from the home. Adding value to customers is much more important than selling.

Offering information for free has become an industry standard that is wholesome.

Google My Business

A Google My Business account helps boost your local SEO shows you to the people who search your company’s name. Without this, you could show up on page 3 or even worse, page 6.

It’s a free service, thereby making it an at-no-cost marketing tool for small businesses as well, a must-have. Google My Business accounts also help improve your local SEO.

This marketing tool makes you discoverable. The search is online, so even if you are a brick and mortar store, be digital as a small business.

Customer Appreciation/Loyalty Programs

Appreciating customers is a way of acknowledging their contribution to your growth and a way of personalizing their interactions with your brand.

Ways a small business can appreciate its customers include handwritten thank-you note, remembering birthdays and anniversaries, a reward for referrals, offering refreshments when they visit your store or office, interacting with customers online, following online.

Create a Mascot

To create a mascot, decide if your mascot will be human, animal, or object-based. Also, creating the personality of the mascot and what it will do for your brand.

A brand mascot can help you create awareness about your brand, but if it does not execute the idea, it could do more harm than good.

When choosing a character, determine your objectives. Are you a personal brand or a company? What type of services do you offer? What industry are you playing in?

Find out more information about the distinct characters that you plan to use.

LinkedIn

Linkedin is where you find many decision-makers relevant to your business.

It is a multifunctional marketing tool that allows you to showcase both yourself and your business from networking to fostering connections and establishing alliances to generating quality leads, blogging, and boosting your brand awareness and visibility for your brand.

Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn is a professional platform designed to help you establish and nurture business relationships.

According to Sprout Social, businesses marketing on LinkedIn generate 277% more leads on average than those engaged in Facebook marketing alone.

Create a Business Card That Stands Out

Even though everyone is going digital now, the good old business card is still relevant and is an important part of your marketing.

Business cards provide business people with a professional way to share their contact details quickly and easily, regardless of age. It is thoughtful in that it doesn’t assume everyone is going to find you online.

To offer someone a business card is much easier and more professional than scribbling down your name and contact details or reciting your details aloud while they hurry to enter them in their phones correctly.

Beautifully designed business cards reflect your professionalism, helps create awareness for you and your business and show your preparedness how inclusive your business is because not everyone is on social media.

Also, have a top-notch online business card, and an up-to date email signature that tells others what you do.

Content Marketing

An effective content marketing strategy is perhaps the most sure-fire way to survive the stiff digital marketing competition every small business will face.

Knowing where to focus marketing efforts will help you succeed as a small business, And content marketing is the way to go. One piece of content can get to all corners of the earth.

A blog post, for instance, distributed across social media, featured in your weekly email newsletter, or repurposed as an attention-grabbing infographic can deliver what months and months of paid advertising may not achieve.

SEO

Small online businesses may not have huge marketing budgets. In that case, it is best to focus your SEO efforts to deliver results for you.

You can spend a lot of money perfecting your SEO strategy and still not succeed, but there are ways to make small investments in this marketing strategy for your small business.

A few things—like producing content that’s relevant, timely, and thorough to your visitors, making sure your headers are self-explanatory and readable, or simply optimizing your local listings—can help your small business get found on the web without you having to break the bank.

Coupon Deal Sites

Coupon deals are a way to promote your business by offering discounts, free shipping, or huge price reductions to customers to encourage them to buy or order the product you are selling. It’s also a way to reward loyalty.

To do this, create a planned program of continuous follow-up to your customer list.

Use new product catalogs, new product brochures, special sale flyers, invoice stuffers, preferred customer sales and discounts, customer loyalty appreciation events, more coupons

 Conclusion

You can use all of the innovative ideas above to improve your marketing position and let your customers better get to know you. Most importantly, these techniques do not cost you, yet they will attract many good customers.

With these techniques, you may not see the results right away, but consistency is important. It will likely take several months before seeing the results, but they will certainly come.

The return on these advertising efforts is not linear but exponential – at first, you will not see any customers, but then to your surprise – compounding will start occurring, bringing more and more customers to your business.

Need our help in vetting your business ideas and their implementation strategies?

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How to Start a Business?

To launch a business, no matter how small, can daunt even the bravest people.

But it does not have to be a scary prospect for you because with the right small business idea, you can set up your online or home business, well, right away. You can start with the skills you have, and your passions can morph into a business that amplifies your strengths.

Now 69% of US business owners started their businesses from home, thanks to internet technologies, it is now easier to start a business than it was in the past.

Your customers are waiting for you online, and you also know where to find them. With the right ideas and business strategies, that dream business can become a real success.

These suggestions will give you practical ideas on to start a business.

1. Web Developer

Web Developers work to style, create, and maintain websites and other web-based applications.

Many courses exist where you’ll learn the language of website creation and may study the small print, like the way to found out handcart systems, security concerns, etc.

How to attract business for a web developer

• Get active with your social media
• Start networking at events
• Create free content and distribute to your network
• Use lead magnets to attract your target audience
• Establish a niche
• Consider freelancing

2. Bed and Breakfast

Do you have unoccupied rooms in your house? Are you near attractions such as a tourist area, sports stadium, or venue for a lavish annual event?

Or is your range in the country picturesque and crisp fall nights that would provide a tourist a weekend of peaceful living?

Use what you have and produce a unique experience.

How to attract business for Bed and Breakfast

• Blog on your website
• Advertise in travel websites, Online directories, Pay Per Click advertising
• Get quality ratings and customer reviews
• Use social media to attract and engage your audience

3. E-Commerce Business

E-commerce stores are a great way to promote what you know how to sell from your home.

The dropshipping remains profitable in 2020 due to the number of eCommerce activities happening around the world. It is not only rewarding but interesting!

Ecommerce and drop shipping profits have reached over $4 billion, which is a 7 percent per year on year increase for the last 10 years. So it’s a practical home business idea to explore.

How to attract new business for an eCommerce Company

• Tighten your SEO strategy. SEO is still one of the most effective and measurable ways to get noticed on the web.
• Build high-quality links, use social media platforms
• Collect email lists
• Offer discounts
• Incorporate advertising into your Marketing Strategy

4. Graphic Designer

Companies are inevitably on the lookout for graphic designers to assist them with their brand image.

The opportunities are vast from designing publicity materials like banners, posters, and logos to designing landing pages and websites.

To begin with, you can leverage graphic design software like Adobe InDesign or Photoshop to establish the foundation of graphic design.

How to attract clients for a graphic designer

• Word of mouth
• Have an explicit, up-to-date portfolio—and market it
• Blog and create content
• Write for others
• Keep your LinkedIn up to date
• Keep other, industry-relevant social media accounts up
• Network face to face
• Even if you have a home business, start co-working so can you get to meet other creative individuals like you

5. Event Planner

Event Planners exist to order the lives of others and ensure they overlook no detail.

If you have impressive attention to detail, are interested in making sure planned activities go hitch-free, expect show stoppers, and a master preparer, then event planning is an area you can use your skills to help others around and make a reasonable income.

How to attract new business for an event planner

• There’s a reason people hire you to run their events: You are an expert at what you do.
• Show off your expertise by launching a blog or using email or social media to share tips, advice, and your perspective on news or trends in the industry.

6. Freelance Writing

Writing services are always in demand, and writers are in tremendous demand. This is also an online business idea you can start from home.

If you’ve got a knack for crafting engaging stories and writing articles, then you’ll turn your skills into a lucrative freelance writing business.

From web copy, ad copy, sales pages, blog posts, and email newsletters, the demand for good content is huge, and if writing is your interest, this is a good time to leverage the learning resources on the internet and start earning. Experienced freelancers get paid good money to write.

You can also throw in editing and proofreading work and use the newest grammar tools to help clients publish and upload error-free work.

Freelance copywriting allows you to earn money from this home business idea

How to attract new business for freelance writer

• Personalize your cold calls and emails
• Partner with other freelancers
• Volunteer your services
• Search for opportunities on freelance writing platforms such as Upwork
• Use social media for advertising about your skills and services
• Write for a niche blog

7. Virtual Assistant

As a virtual assistant, you can work as a remote staff, providing administrative duties. A virtual assistant typically operates from a headquarters but can access the planning documents, like shared calendars, remotely.

The skills needed for this business idea are both writing and speaking skills, word processing skill, time management skills.

They set this to increase with the growing demand for more skilled VAs as businesses worldwide move online.

How to attract new business clients for a virtual assistant

• Word of mouth
• Referrals
• Networking events
• Professional organizations
• Project and outsourcing bidding sites
• Job boards
• Social media contacts
• Online and offline advertisements

8. DJ Services

If you enjoy parties, after-hours events, and nightlife, then being a professional disc jockey business can be a fun way to earn money.

It offers a front-row seat to parties and all the fun. Individuals and venues hire professional deejays to supply lighting, sound, and entertainment on a small or large scale during various events.

Starting a DJ business involves commitment, but it can be an exciting home business.

How to attract new clients for a DJ

• Getting jobs is crucial to start this business; otherwise, it’s just you and the equipment you invested in.
• Promote services among your friends and associates, also important to create a business website.
• You can also join local groups (wedding-related business associations) that provide listings to entertainers and service providers like yourself, connect with events planners, and manage relationships with them, so they enjoy working with you.

9. Massage Therapist

To begin this business, start by looking into the licensing requirement for your city or state. Then invest in a massage bed that is portable for when you have to visit clients at their homes.

Massage therapy business requires getting certified. Most states regulate massage therapy, so it requires a certification to become a massage therapist.

How to attract new business for a massage therapist

• Update your website
• Potential clients will search for a massage therapy business local to them
• Share testimonials from clients. Your current clients are your branding endorsers, advertise on social media, share content and video tutorials
• Offer loyalty and referral rewards to clients for referrals

10. Daycare Owner

Childcare continues to be in high demand, and a good daycare is hard to find. You can open your daycare and fill a need in your community as well as running a business from your home.

And, as always, confirm you’re complying with your city and state’s zoning, licensure, insurance, and inspection requirements.

How to attract new business for a daycare

• Use the right messaging to communicate with your target audience online
• Your child care center is special, and you love what you do; show this
• Build a website and blog on your website
• The tried and trusted way to reach your desired audience is through social media, ads, flyers, and other sources
• Optimize for local searches
• Offer enrollment deals, network with everyone
• Hold a daycare open house, and ensure to advertise this event

11. Career Coach

If you have some experience counseling, put it to good use as a life or career coach. Many folks are trying to find guidance in our careers — and finding someone with the time to mentor us are often tough.

Life/career coaches don’t come cheap. Still, they will offer clients the intense and hands-on training and advice they have to form serious moves in their personal and professional lives., sometimes everyone just needs some uplifting advice.

How to attract new business for a career coach

• Position your business as a solutions provider
• leverage your experience
• Use video to engage clients
• Find and create opportunities to network with other coaches
• Communicate your brand message confidently
• Become the coach you would want to hire
• Focus on lead nurturing actions

12. Photographer

Photography is a small business idea that at first seems whimsical, like a hobby most people leave at that, just a hobby.

This doesn’t have to be so for you. You can grow your photography business by acquiring some skills in photography. There are many YouTube videos to help you.

You should also invest in a camera and other equipment.

A photographer is a person people trust with how good they appear in photos or to use visuals to communicate a brand’s message to its audience. Do not let your clients down.

How to attract new business for a photographer

• For this business, you have to deploy word of mouth marketing.
• Tell your close friends, colleagues, family that you are now the official photographer at all their events, ask them to tell others too
• Take your camera everywhere with you, well almost everywhere.
• Post on local Facebook groups
• Offer referral discounts
• Drop some pamphlets at an area kids boutique
• Offer to discounted photo sessions
• Offer to take pictures at the store launch of a popular brand in your town

13. Translator

Speak a foreign language? Start translation service. Your expert knowledge of another language can assist you to earn some money.

Translator jobs are always needed and in high demand, but high-quality translators are not easy to find.

You can land lucrative jobs if you recognize by combining your strong language skills with the simplest grammar checkers to ensure your written content is of the very best standard.

How to attract new business for a translator

• Do your footwork and promote yourself locally
• Sponsor small local events
• if your capital allows, advertise your translator services online
• Register at multiple translation networking websites, including Aquarius.net, Linguists.com, ProZ.com, or TranslationZone.com
• You can also start a referral program

14. Social Media Manager

Social media managers manage a company’s business and brand on social media. They answer comments, compile campaigns, and make content.

These experts provide both small and large businesses with the expertise needed to strengthen T their online presence.

You can start this business from the comfort of your home and deliver significant results to your clients through your discipline and good use of your skills.

How to attract new business for a social media manager

• Talk to friends and family–tell your story
• Use LinkedIn to connect with your ideal prospects
• Invite prospects to a free training session/ webinar on social media.

15. Baking

If you love to bake and come up with scrumptious treats, then starting a home baking online business is ideal for you.

How to attract new clients for a baker

• Tell others about your amazing recipes.
• Your first customers will most likely be those closest to you, friends, family, and colleagues.
• Use them to spread the word about your business by serving them professionally.
• Use local advertising to draw in people in your area as well. Advertising is usually well worth the expense, especially if you are doing it well.
• Create a pamphlet, you can also distribute it throughout the community, offer an opening special.

16. Accountant

An accountant’s primary function is to review financial documents for accuracy and completeness and to make recommendations based on a company’s or individual’s financial status.

Accountants can work from home, staying connected with clients via phone or email.

How to attract new business for an accountant

• If you are active with a local group, offer to handle their accounting tasks.
• Volunteer your services for a couple of hours a day or month at the local small business development center or similar resource. The more people get to understand you and your services, the better it’ll be to seek out paying clients.

17. Personal Trainer

Not only has online personal training landed within the digital space, but it’s also now the foremost popular service our clients ask us to assist them with.

People have fitness goals to achieve and will get help from personal trainers online.

How to attract new business for a personal trainer

• Ask for referrals
• Guest blog for local publications or fitness websites
• Send weekly emails with interesting and relevant information, such as sports nutrition, sports tips, and wellness
• Engage with clients through social media
• Offer a free trial or discounts
• Develop a working relationship or partnership with health professionals
• Do not forget post testimonials on your website.

18. Personal Chef

We all like to eat, but few folks have the time or energy to cook healthy, delicious meals.

Advertise your small business idea to businesses and families around you.

How to attract new customers for a personal chef

• Use social media to advertise your homemade dishes
• Create a website
• Share recipes and cooking tips
• Tell people about your cooking
• Offer a wide lineup of dishes to cater to different tastes, and establish your versatility

19. Tailor

Tailoring is an area of fashion that is wide, and each area is unique.

You can decide to be a pattern maker, sample maker, sewing online video courses, sewing machinist, cross-stitching, clothing alteration business, couture still finds fulfillment.

How to attract new tailoring business

• Use advertising to target your ideal customers
• Offer discounts & promotions
• Tailor your communication appropriately
• Offer unique & unusual amenities
• Leverage local events
• Use special events as an opportunity to cross-sell

Conclusion

We hope that our ideas will help you to establish a solid startup. Business is much like everything else – the most is making the first step.

You may not know everything as no one does, but along the journey, you will find a wealth of learning, amazing partnerships, and clients who are in desperate need of the product or service, just like what you have to offer.

Be considerate of your risks, and avoid making impulse decisions. When starting a business – give each step a rational thought, and base your judgments on actionable data.

We wish you well on your amazing journey!

PS: Do not forget to tune into our Business Podcast, which offers practical strategies and techniques to small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Need our help in vetting your business ideas and their implementation strategies?

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What Is a Competitive Advantage?

A competitive advantage is a sustainable advantage that a business has over competitors that enables it to succeed in the market.

Competitive advantage is achieved by several factors. Two of the most common sources of differentiation are when a business either has a cost advantage, where that business is able to produce its products at a lower cost than competitors, or the business has some kind of differentiation advantage where a business is able to differentiate its products from the competition so that customers get superior value and premium features.

These points are discussed in detail in the following section.

The problem with business strategy is that it is very difficult to implement. When you talk about the idea of competitive advantage, it sounds pretty simple.

In theory, all you need to do is identify the attribute that is driving the most profit for your business, but when you try to implement this, you realize that there are myriad options to choose from.

What you need to do is pinpoint the area where you have a sustainable competitive advantage. In layman’s terms, competitive advantage is an attribute that allows you to outperform your competition.

Mentioned below are a few strategies that will help your business sustain a competitive advantage over the competition.

1. Develop Cost Leadership

Cost leadership is a competitive advantage achieved by providing the lowest cost of operation in your industry. If you can become the lowest-cost producer in the market, you will definitely get a competitive edge over your competition.

Typically brands try to sell their product at prices lower than their competitors. This way, they will win price-sensitive customers.

Given that the price-sensitive customers are the absolute majority, they can win a sizable market share and sell a lot of units of the goods they’re selling. This generally means your business gets lower margins but does not necessarily have to be the case.

Many businesses use creative ways to lower production costs without lowering their profit margins.

One of the easiest and most common ways to lower per-unit costs is to leverage economies of scale. The more units you sell, the lower is its unitary cost.

Some companies excel at economies of scope. If they operate in more than one business, they can often achieve economies of scope, which pushes down their cost even lower.

Economies of scope consist of proportionate savings gained by producing two complementary products. The cost of producing the same goods under the same roof is lower than producing them separately.

Process design is another cost driver. You can reduce costs from a change in the way a process is being carried out.

If you can find a way to optimize that process or replace it with new ones, you might see a dramatic cost reduction.

You do not only have to differentiate your pricing based on cost leadership. You may consider a “blue ocean” pricing strategy, where you can identify market segments in-between “premium features” and “cost leadership.”

In these segments, you will have new customers, and you can price your products accordingly.

2. Establish Solid Differentiation Strategy

Differentiation techniques are attractive whenever the buyer’s needs and preferences are too diverse to be fully satisfied by a standardized product or service.

The main idea behind the differentiation strategy is to provide unique products or service attributes that a wide range of buyers finds appealing and worth paying for.

You need to study buyers’ needs carefully and behaviors to learn what they think has value and what products they are willing to pay for.

You must then include these features to clearly set yourself apart from rivals lacking such product or service attributes. Successful differentiation will allow you to command premium prices, increase unit sales, and gain customer loyalty.

You can pursue a differentiation strategy from several different angles like the unique taste, multiple features, one-stop-shop, superior service or design, reliability, and quality.

3. Enhance Your Competitive Edge

Once you have achieved a competitive edge, you need to spend some effort to enhance it further.

This way, you create an even bigger distance between you and your competitors. This strategy’s core use is to keep in place the competitive advantage attained by cost leadership and differentiation.

It makes sure that there is no real opposition from your business’s competitors and widens the competitive gap between your business and your competitors.

4. Establish Strategic Alliances

Companies in all sorts of industries have decided to form strategic alliances. To complement their accumulation of resources and capabilities and strengthen their competitiveness in domestic and international markets. A strategic alliance can be defined as a formal agreement between two or more companies to work cooperatively towards a common objective.

A surprisingly large number of organizations never live up to expectations. More than 60% of alliances end up in failure.

There are several causes for this high divorce rate between alliances, i.e., diverging objectives and priorities, an inability to work together, changing conditions, the emergence of more attractive paths, marketplace rivalry between one or more alliances.

5. Master Your Niche

In a constant battle to gain a competitive edge over competitors, many businesses make the mistake of doing too many things at once. They try to tap into different markets that are outside of their niche. This will do you more harm than good.

When you try to expand outside of your niche, you increase your chances of failure. You can’t jump into a different niche without any prior experience just because it seems more lucrative from the outside.

This can have a negative impact on your entire business, as failures will consume time and resources; that could have been used elsewhere.

Instead, focus all your resources and efforts on your niche and become a master in it. The key to success is tapping into a very specific target market.

This makes it easy for you to keep track of everything that is going on with your business and what your competitors are doing. You can focus on your target audience and develop a stellar relationship with your customers.

You need to concentrate on a narrow buyer segment or market niche and outcompete rivals by having lower costs and unique products.

This will allow you to service your niche members better than the competition.

6. Emphasize Your Unique Value Proposition

Your businesses’ unique value proposition is the basis for every message you’re sending out. If you own the only shoe repair service in town, your unique value proposition is being the only shoe repair service in town.

However, if there are fifteen shoe repair shops, you need to be the one that stands out in the crowd somehow.

Identifying your unique value proposition is not an easy task because it’s not just about value. It is about being unique.

Think about what it is that you bring to the table. Sometimes that can be hard to do; an outsider’s perspective is always helpful.

You can ask some of your best clients, people, that have done business with you, and know your brand.

Unfortunately, there is always going to a portion of the population that ignores you, no matter how good your unique value proposition is. In those cases, those consumers just don’t need what your company has to offer right now.

However, if you’re memorable, they will come back to you when it matters, or they might just end up being a surprise referral source in the end.

7. Build Lasting Customer Relationships

Like any relationship, the relationship between a business and its customers needs nurturing. Your customers play a main role in the success of your business, and naturally, they’re going to have some expectations.

You need to make sure that you deliver on those relationships and develop those relationships as our business develops. The point is to create a deep bond that lasts for a long time.

So that the customers keep coming back to buy your products and services, remember, it’s far cheaper to retain previous customers than to start from scratch with someone new. Plus, happy customers also talk about your products or services to their friends and family, which makes them brand advocates.

Long Term relationships are built with customers over time and through regular interactions and possibly with an emotional connection. These customers are die-hard fans who support your company for many years.

Loyalty programs are a great way to build long term relationships; they reward the customers for their purchases and make switching brands a bit more costly, so the customer returns again and again.

Gym memberships are notorious for this. They give you a discount for bringing in a friend, but to cancel your membership, you have to go all the way into their offices and do a bunch of tedious paperwork that nobody wants to do.

Conclusion

Winning a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals with any strategy generally relies on how many competitively valuable capabilities you have that rivals can’t match.

A company achieves a sustainable competitive advantage when a considerably large number of customers prefer its products or services over the competition.

Make sure that your managers are always willing to modify the strategies as new opportunities and ideas come along.

This is a never-ending process, and to sustain your competitive advantage for an extended period of time, you need to keep on coming up with new strategies that complement your business model and help you stay ahead of your competitors.

Need our help in leveraging your competencies, and enhancing your competitive advantage?

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Why Growth Strategies are Needed?

Whether you own a small business or a large business enterprise, in order to ensure its sustainability, you are required to create an iron-clad business growth strategy.

The most common reason for failure for new businesses within the first 3-5 years is the lack of good growth strategies.

Every business works towards some goals, and in order to achieve those goals, they need to design a growth strategy that is centered around the core vision of the business.

When businesses are in their initial stages, their success is dependent on the business plan they have created. However, sustaining that success over a longer period of time depends solely on how good your growth strategies are.

There will be roadblocks and bottlenecks along the way, and if you are to push through and take your business to the next level, you need to make sure that you have solid growth strategies in place.

The following section focuses on eleven different growth strategies that will take your business to the next level.

What is the Importance of a Good Growth Strategy?

Growth strategies play a massive role in the success or failure of a business. If you are running a growth-oriented business, you will always have the edge over your competitors.

You will be able to improve and expand your business continuously.

It will also help you build a great relationship with your customer base because a good growth strategy requires you to interact with your customers and find out their needs and wants and how you can fulfill those needs with your products and services.

Which Growth Strategies Should Small Businesses Employ?

When it comes to small businesses, it is important that they don’t try to do too many things at once. They should always start from the basics and try to build their way up. As a small business, it is better to start with your products and services.

Make sure that the products and services are catering to the needs and wants of the target audience and your audience is getting some value out of your propositions.

This will set you up to employ some of the more complex growth strategies like market penetration and diversification strategy.

1. Optimize Your Products and Services

For every business, their products and services are the main sources of their revenue generations and success. After a couple of years of successful operation, your business will likely notice a decline or lack of growth in sales rate.

To avoid this fate, you need to make sure that your products and services evolve with the market. They need to be improved from time to time to boost your sales.

For your business’s growth, you need to do market research to identify the gaps and areas of improvement for the products and services that you are offering.

Market research will give you an accurate idea of where you are lacking and where you stand compared to your competitors.

Businesses are required to have a proactive approach when it comes to positioning their products and services in the market among their competitors.

Bringing any new and unique features to your products and services that are not offered by any of your competitors can attract more customers, increase your sales, and win a large customer base.

Increased sales lead to increased profitability, which ultimately leads to business growth.

2. Leverage Your Core Competencies In New and Innovative Ways

Knowing your business’s core competencies is a preliminary step before you take on creating your business growth strategies.

It may come as a surprise for many businesses that not every business has a core competency on the basis of which they can differentiate from their competitors.

However, if you’re looking for continuous growth, a core competency is a must because it gives you a competitive edge by making your business stand out among your competitors.

It can be the unique features that you offer in your products and services; it can be quality or customer trust.

In the long run, you need to strengthen your core competencies to make sure that you maintain your competitive advantage over your competitors.

As long as you provide your customer with a product or service that your competitors can’t offer or replicate, you will enjoy a loyal and devoted customer base.

3. Strengthen Your Value Proposition and Make it More Attractive

A value proposition is a value that you promise your customer. It is considered as one of the most effective business growth strategies as it defines how much your customer values your products and services.

However, many businesses fail to come up with a good value proposition, which reduces the interest of new prospects in their products and services.

A value proposition needs to be relevant to your customer. It should give a precise explanation of how it can solve the customer’s problem.

It also needs to have a quantified value, which means it should identify how your product or service is going to benefit the customer.

Lastly, you need to tell the customer why you are the best option for them and why they should choose you over your competitors.

In order to create your value proposition, you need to indulge in getting to know the wants and needs of your customers and how to resolve their issues.

Only when you are aware of what your customers’ pain points are and what they are looking for will you be able to create a value proposition.

4. Expand and Diversify Distribution Channels

Most businesses are selling their products and services through traditional distributions channels. However, with every passing day, that is changing. Some of the most commonly known distribution channels are online, traditional shop/market, Social media platforms, partnership, and much more.

In order to expand your distribution channels, you need to explore new channels where your targeted audience is active and can be reached more effectively.

By increasing the distribution of your products and services into new regions, channels, and markets, you will see a boost in your sales, which will lead to higher business profitability and, ultimately, to business growth.

To analyze the effectiveness of expanding distribution channels, you need to look at the statistics (Datasheets and graphs) to help you identify the channels that require new marketing strategies to engage and reach more customers.

Expanding distribution channels will also improve brand/business recognition, which will bring in more customers.

5. Serve Underfulfilled Customer Needs

No matter how successfully and flawlessly your business is running, there will always be some areas that you could improve.

Identifying your customers’ needs and wants through surveys, customer feedback, face-to-face interactions, or social media engagement can help you understand where you are lacking and what areas can be improved to improve your customer experience and appease your customers.

Performing an analysis through these sources can not only make it easier for you to bring improvements in your products and services, but it will also provide a clear image of your position in the market among your competitors.

Once you get an accurate understanding of your customers’ wants and needs, you can base your business model around them, ultimately resulting in your business’ success.

6. Enhance Your Product Offering

There’s no doubt that the market is full of opportunities for every business in the world. After a few years of operating successfully, many business owners feel the need to work on a market expansion strategy for the purpose of business growth because without finding a new market or developing new products for the current market, it is virtually impossible to grow your business.

The market expansion strategy can be helpful in the form of product expansion or new product development. If you have successfully identified your customers’ needs and wants, you can easily develop new products or expand.

Some small businesses use product expansion as a growth strategy by expanding the existing product line to cover the market’s bigger share.

In contrast, large businesses can perform multiple expansions and can develop new products as they have greater financial margins at their disposal.

In order to operate successfully with high revenue generations, you can add new features to the existing products, expand the product line, or develop new products to tap into a new market and a different customer base.

7. Focus on Customer Benefits

If you want your business to grow, you need to make sure that your products and services benefit your customers in some way.

This means that you need to make your customers the focus of your business planning. You must be aware of what they are looking for, their problems and pain points, and how your services can provide them with a solution.

Make sure that your products and services are benefiting your customers directly or indirectly. Plus, your proposition needs to be relevant to your customer base so that your customers buy your products based on that.

If the main focus of all your products and services is to benefit the customer, you will rapidly grow your business.

8. Adjust Your Pricing

Market penetration is a process through which you can statistically analyze the size of market share your business owns with respect to the potential market.

Once you know the size of market share, you can create your business expansion strategy for growth and acquisition of a larger portion of the potential market, which results in increased customer conversion rates and higher profits.

When you’re dealing with stronger competitors, you can increase your sales by reducing the prices of your products and services to attract customers.

You can look for multiple options to reduce the actual cost of your products and services without affecting the quality.

Offering your products and services at a price lower than your competitors will have a magnetic effect on new and old customers. A higher customer rate will ultimately lead to improved profits and business growth.

At the same time, for your premium products, which have higher markup, you can increase your pricing and position the change as the result of you making additional investments into your products.

As a result of both pricing strategies, your profits will increase.

9. Accept More Risk

A diversification strategy is a high-risk business growth strategy, but if it’s successful, then your business will grow by leaps and bounds.

A diversification strategy is no child’s play; you have to conduct market research to create new products, identify your new targeted customers, identify their needs and wants, identify your competitors, and much more.

As entering a new market for any business needs a lot of work and capital, not every business can do it.

If you successfully create new products or services that align with your customers’ requirements and are unique compared to your competitors, you will see your business grow within a matter of months.

10. Consider Merger & Acquisition, or Partnership

When you enter the market as a small business, there are going to be many existing competitors who have been around way longer than you. Such businesses can make it very difficult for you to compete in the market.

Most small or large businesses use mergers and acquisitions as a growth strategy. Businesses look for their weaker competitors in the market and offer them a merger or acquisition, keeping in view some of the core competencies that can be developed stronger later on.

This is a win-win situation for both businesses.

This strategy not only helps your business to expand its business operations but also contributes to reducing the competition in the potential market.

At the time of a merger, businesses should be careful about how they will integrate their operations that will help them achieve their business goals. Also, while acquiring a business, your vision must be very clear about what you need to achieve through this investment.

11. Franchise Your Idea, Product, or Service

If your business is limited to a specific region while the potential market is greater than your business’s current operational market, working on a franchising model can be applied as a growth strategy.

Franchising will grow your business operations, existences, and awareness among its targeted market.

This strategy can be somewhat risky and complex, but it’s very effective if you want to cover the bigger portion of your potential market and generate higher revenues.

Most of the successful businesses worldwide have worked on this model as a growth strategy and gained higher profits over time.

Conclusion

No matter if you are a small business or if you are a large enterprise, you can use the growth strategies above to improve your profitability and scale up your business.

Any of the growth strategies may not be implemented overnight; therefore, it is necessary for you to consider your next steps, conduct thorough research carefully, and, based on the evidence – make some adjustments that will undoubtedly lead you to improved profitability and business growth.

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What are the Disruptive Technologies?

Disruptive technology is an innovative technology that creates a novel market and value system and will eventually disrupt established market-leading firms, products, services, and affiliations. It is a technology that establishes an easier way to do things.

Disruptive technologies are technologies whose application significantly affects the way a key market or industry functions. When people think of disruptive technology, they tend to think of technologies like Uber, but this is wrong.

While Uber correctly is a phenomenal innovation, it’s not a disruptive technology. Instead, it’s a sustaining innovation, invariably meaning that Uber ostensibly represents only an incremental improvement on the existing taxi industry.

The fundamental principles of disruptive innovation allow companies to take a step back and analyze their current products and services and determine which areas can be meaningfully improved.

Here are 9 disruptive technologies to be on the lookout for in the next three years.

1. Digital Twins

A digital twin is the virtual double of a product or service. The physical/virtual duality brought by the digital twin would make it easier for project owners to solve problems even before they happen and forecast accurately by simply using simulations.

Product owners moving to the sophisticated level of digital transformation maturity will realize regenerative product design or predict product performance using Artificial Intelligence.

Through its replica, the digital twin feeds information back to the product designers so they can understand if the features really fulfill the end user’s requirements, allowing what was designed to improve and innovate better to assist them in providing impeccable products.

2. Invisible Computing

With the rise of innovative technologies like voice, advanced machine learning, the far-fetched promise of devices that seamlessly integrate into our lives will finally become a reality. This will lead to advancements in machine learning.

Computing devices are already a significant part of our activities. We feel at a disadvantage and lose efficiency when we do not have technology devices. Slowly but steadily, diverse technologies are converging, each with the limitless potential to appreciably reduce this mental capacity overhead: Virtual Assistants, Artificial Intelligence, Natural User Interfaces (such as VR and AR), and Ubiquitous Personal Information.

Eventually, invisible computing will completely alter how computing devices are part of our everyday lives, progressively reducing the amount of ‘mental computation’ we need to operate them and hence freeing our minds to focus on the things that matter.

Invisible computing devices will probably first become apparent at the key intersection of XR (AR/VR/MR), next-generation speech interaction, Machine Learning, and other related technologies.

3. Quantum Computing

According to Science Daily, A quantum computer is any device for computation that makes direct use of distinctively quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data.

Quantum Computing is a theoretical concept born in the early 1980s.

Quantum computing will naturally offer unprecedented opportunities to those who grasp it while raising increased threats to those who cannot access it. Its considerable advantage remains its ability to execute some types of Quantum algorithms exponentially faster than the most attractive classical computing alternative.

This new form of computation power will bring exponential computing capabilities, graciously allowing some complex, even intractable, computational problems.

4. Bio Computers

Biocomputers are computers that use systems of biological molecules like DNA to carry out computational calculations that include storing, retrieving, and processing data.

They leverage the operational capabilities of living beings, relying on nanobiotechnology to engineer biomolecular systems that amply provide computational functionality.

Biocomputers may offer an alternative to silicon-based systems that are potentially faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient for some specialized problems, potentially offering massive parallelism, massive storage, and elevated Artificial Intelligence levels alongside low-waste and low-energy usage.

They may additionally provide a whole new field of a key innovation in healthcare and life sciences, such as for detecting cancerous activity within a cell and releasing an anti-cancer drug upon diagnosis.

5. Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Privacy Enhancing Technologies are innovations that are protecting or masking personal data (whether employees, customers, or citizens) to comply with data protection legislation and sustain customers’ trusted relationships.

This technology not only secures very sensitive data, but they also shield the very personal information such as purchasing habits, interactions interest, social connections, and that online users are careful to keep private.

You can typically use PETs in several scenarios like commerce, finance, telecom, public services, and healthcare.

Also, any specific domains where customers leave sensitive personal data, social networks — also domains where customers share selected data to a selected audience and personal employee data.

6. Cognitive Computing

Cognitive computing is a knowledge representation that positively enhances human performance on cognitive tasks.

Cognitive computing might produce a transformative impact in every kind of organization. It may allow machines to take over mundane activities, transforming jobs, companies, innovative industries, markets, and evolving economies.

This redefines the nature of the relationship between people and their increasingly pervasive digital environment and also opens the door for unprecedented opportunities and business models around cognitive modeling, human touch interpretation, and more.

Longer-term, cognitive computing paves the way for intelligent machines with reasoning abilities analogous to the vulnerable human brain.

Cognitive computing is presently gaining traction with many cloud-based services, providing the essential building blocks that allow companies to integrate this capability in their business systems quickly.

7. Swarm Computing

Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence.

The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems.

Swarm computing is also referred to as the emergent collective intelligence of groups of modest agents exhibiting self-healing characteristics, self-configuration, and self-optimization. It is a group of similar elements (the swarm) behaving through mutual interaction to realistically achieve a successful outcome as a collectivity.

Swarm computing is a concept and reference architecture. Swarm will provide value in use cases requiring dynamic alliances among rich IoT devices, Edge, and Cloud computing.

8. Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles are an emerging field arising from the interaction of vehicles and robotic capabilities, like, context awareness and autonomous decision-making using AI.

These self-driving vehicles typically rely on these innovative technologies to drive themselves while sufficiently recognizing and invariably responding to their surrounding environment.

Introducing self-driving technology will transform the design options for all vehicles, giving rise to new vehicle categories that don’t exist today.

Besides personal transportation, including the autonomous and semi-autonomous cars created by the big technology companies, autonomous vehicles carry out a key role to play in industrial surveillance and transport along with urgent, specialized transport — especially in harsh, wide, or difficult to access environments like mines, pipelines or traffic jams.

9. Blockchain

This is an application of distributed ledger technology that’s has been the rave over the last few years. It’s set to disrupt most modern industries worldwide.

They developed Blockchain through its initial application, Bitcoin, to disrupt the banking industry, in which ledgers are, by definition, highly centralized in a bank or consortium of banks.

Blockchain served the specific purpose of sufficiently establishing a trustless economy through its cryptographic and decentralized components, accurately rendering the possible need for third parties of traditional financial transactions useless.

The Block chain’s three key features are decentralization, transparency, security.

These three features aimed to make financial transactions more secure while reducing fees levied by banks.

The goal was to facilitate faster transactions, free from control, and the risks of a sole point of authority.

Blockchain is a potential game-changer for efficiently conducting business with parties without prior trust relationships or where a trusted third party was previously required.

It not only provides a completely transparent and secure alternative to a centralized ledger maintained and controlled by a single trusted entity but also enables the emergence of industries where a central ledger was needed but very difficult to put in place – including industries where a very great number and considerable variability of peers are required to conduct business.

Blockchain has no unique point of failure and will not be shortchanged, making the digital information stored within it both reliable and secure document Blockchain can be used in almost all of the IT business verticals from, but not limited to, mobile payments, bookkeeping, and cryptocurrencies to securing virtually any types of records and transactions: intellectual property, and digital identities.

Blockchain equally applies to fraud management, payments, identification-authentication, claims management, and M2M security (IoT), where it significantly reduces cost while meaningfully improving economic security.

Which of these disruptive technologies will affect your business in the next three years?

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The modern business world understands the importance of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. Whether it is a start-up or a multinational company, almost every business is pouring in plenty of resources into innovation.

Some companies have hired chief innovation officers and are paying them a lot of money for managing the innovation processes of their company, while some are relying on modern technology.

It is common knowledge that in order to keep your business afloat, there is a never-ending need for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.

Despite spending ample money and resources, innovation remains a matter of concern for most companies.

What is even worse is the failure to figure out why so many businesses either fail in their innovation initiative or have a hard time sustaining their performance.

Here is the quote about innovation in business from Peter Drucker:

“Marketing and innovation are the only two functions of a business.”

The idea of innovation might seem quite simple, but the devil is in the details. The fundamental reason for the failure of innovation initiatives is the lack of an innovation strategy.

Here you will learn nine innovation strategies for your business that will facilitate game-changing innovation.

1. Encourage Intrapreneurship

An intrapreneur is similar to an entrepreneur; the only difference is that they don’t start their own business when they get an innovative idea; they bring the idea to their organization.

The organization takes the raw idea and refines it into an implementable and marketable idea by using organizational resources.

To encourage intrapreneurship, you should give your employees the freedom to freely share their ideas by employing a “no idea is a bad idea” policy.

Make it easier for them to pitch their ideas to the decision-makers, so they feel valued and heard. Provide all your employees an incentive by rewarding the ones that bring innovative ideas that benefit the organization.

2. Establish Open Lines of Communication

If you want your employees to create an abundance of exceptional innovative ideas, it is important that you establish an open communication channel between the management and the employees.

This will allow you to keep everybody in the loop and aware of what the organization is going through and what is required of the employees.

An innovation example from Southwest airlines will give you a better idea of what an open communication channel will do for your organization.

During the gulf war of 1990-91, fuel costs skyrocketed, and Southwest Airlines was faced with a difficult situation.

Throughout this ordeal, all the employees were kept in the loop and were asked to come up with innovative ideas to deal with this problem.

The pilots found a way to reduce fuel usage while ensuring that safety and service don’t get compromised.

This is a great example of how the organization’s confidence in its employees paid off, and the organization saved millions of dollars.

3. Reduce Bureaucracy

The organizations that are focused on bureaucracy more than the end results have a hard time when it comes to innovation. It is a well-known fact that organizations with highly complex bureaucratic systems have a low productivity level.

They require the employees to go through complex and tedious channels to get their work done, and ultimately the bureaucratic processes outweigh the actual work done.

In such a work environment, the employees have little or no creative freedom and what’s even worse is that they have no time to come up with innovative ideas for the organization. To ensure that your employees don’t get stuck in tedious bureaucratic steps, eliminate as much bureaucracy as possible.

Develop a culture where employees are focused on the end result more than the process.

This provides a lot of room for creativity from your employees, which is the goal of increasing innovation in your organization.

4. Develop a Sense of Ownership in Your Staff

If the interests of your employees are aligned with the organization, then everyone will not only have a great incentive to come up with new and innovative ideas, they will also be motivated to work harder and go that extra mile when required.

You need to make sure that every employee knows how their individual efforts are going to help the organization and what the long-term benefits are going to be for that employee.

Stock ownership is another great way of motivating your employees because it directly aligns the organizations and the employee’s interests.

This means that the employees will put in extra effort outside of work hours to come up with innovative ideas that can help the organization and ultimately increase their own profits.

5. Overlook Trivial Failures

When you give your employees the freedom to come up with innovative ideas, there will always be failures and errors. Everyone doesn’t think the same way, and there are certainly going to be some employees that don’t think the same as you.

There are going to be ideas that don’t work for you, but you need to appreciate the effort, tolerate the failure, and move on.

Make sure that you don’t discourage your employees. Let them know exactly what went wrong and how they can improve future ideas, but never put them down.

There is always some risk involved in innovation; if your employees are afraid of failures, they wouldn’t want to take the risk.

Failures are a part of growth, so make sure that everyone learns from their failure and moves on.

6. Get Rid of Redundant Processes

As you innovate and develop new ways and processes, the old processes will become redundant. Make sure that you get rid of those redundant processes right away, or else they will keep siphoning organization resources that could be used somewhere else.

This creates room and frees up resources for new projects and processes.

The quicker you realize that there is no use in holding on to old practices, the better. Otherwise, you will keep squandering the invaluable resources of time and energy on redundant processes.

Plus, when your employees have to spend their energy on processes that are not benefiting them or the organization, they will start losing motivation, which you will see in their work.

To maintain a working environment that is conducive to innovative ideas, make sure that old processes and projects are eliminated and are replaced by new practices and processes that increase productivity and innovation.

7. Establish an Effective Reward System

Anyone who has some knowledge of human resource management will understand how important an effective reward system is.

When you want to sustain a creative environment that encourages innovation, it becomes even more important.

It determines whether your employees are going to stay motivated and keep coming up with new ideas or not.

It goes without saying that when someone comes up with an innovative idea that benefits the organization, they need to be rewarded. However, it’s not that simple.

If you reward the individuals only for big ideas, the smaller and less dramatic ideas may get discouraged. If you opt for team-based rewards, it can create a competitive environment that can be counter-productive, especially when it comes to cross-team collaboration.

Although sometimes competitiveness can have a positive effect on the productivity of employees, it has more cons than pros.

Thus it is best if you nurture a collaborative environment rather than a competitive one. An effective reward system is one that takes all of this into account before rewarding an individual or a team.

8. Encourage Your Employees to Take a Break

People in America get fewer vacation days compared to other first world countries. The sad thing is, they don’t even utilize the limited amount of vacation days they do get.

Many people are addicted to work and forget how important vacations and breaks are.

Besides the uncountable benefits to physical health, a vacation has thousands of psychological benefits.

If you want your employees always to be 100%, encourage them to take vacations. Encourage them to take some time off from all the hustle and pressure of work once in a while and spend time with their families.

This will help refresh their minds and increase productivity. Fresh minds mean more new and innovative ideas.

9. Be Progressive

There is nothing better than a progressive leader to encourage innovation in your company. As a leader, you should lead by example and serve as a role model for your employees.

When you are fulfilling your roles and responsibility as a leader, you will be able to expect the same from your employees.

Remember, good leaders don’t try to micromanage their employees; they give them creative freedom, which facilitates innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.

Optimism and innovation go hand in hand. Try to be an optimistic leader because optimism is contagious.

Your optimism will start rubbing off on your employees, and before you know it, all your employees will start working with new optimism and motivation.

Conclusion

There are a million different ways you can bring innovation to your company, but you need to understand that change takes time; nothing significant was ever achieved overnight.

Remember that your employees are your assets, and in order to maximize their capacity for innovation, you need to facilitate them in every way possible.

Follow the above-mentioned strategies, and you will see that innovation is not as difficult as it’s made out to be.

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The Importance of Business Planning

Planning can be arduous, but it is necessary to ensure the survival of any business. Business planning became popular in the 1990s.

It is a detailed map that is used to attract investors or partners as well as give direction. Business plan also helps companies to formalize objectives, and efforts to achieve sustainable growth.

What is a Plan?

A plan can be an intention or a proposal for accomplishing a goal. Business planning is the act of composing a guideline to help you define objectives and successfully fulfill them.

Why is Business Planning Important?

A business plan is a tool to help you bring your vision to life. It gives you a greater understanding of finances, product services, and who your intended audience is.

Tips to Sharpen Your Planning

A plan is a road map to achieving your goal. Making a business plan will determine if your business will make it past its first year or tenth year.

Business planning for startups requires a delicate balance.

To create a business plan for your business, whether a continuing one or a start-up, take a look at these winning tips.

1. Use High-Level Marketing

High-level marketing plans can create adverts on a budget.

They are created every year and are used to conduct marketing and branding campaigns and for promotional purposes.

High-level marketing is an excellent way to test a few new tactics to see which one will attract more business.

Social media is a budget-friendly form of high-level marketing that can be used to pivot your business in a new direction.

2. Revisit Your Business Plan as You Grow

Another business planning strategy is to revise your business plan as your company grows. Goals are set, achieved and new ones set as your business experiences growth.

You need to update your business plan to guarantee that you steer your business towards success.

It could be to open a new branch or introduce a new product to your assembly line.

3. Secure Your Capital

We can all see why it is important to have a rainy-day fund. COVID has caused many small businesses to close doors because they could no longer afford to stay afloat.

It is imperative that you know the daily, weekly, and monthly costs within the organization.

If you follow the cash flow, you will be able to ensure that the bills are paid, and you can find cash for your rainy-day fund.

4. Organization and Management

Your business planning basics should include the organization and management of all aspects of your company. The organization and management is an integral part that defines your business.

Mishandling and neglecting any facet of your business opens a loop that drags the overall performance.

You must clearly define how you want your business to run, its culture, and decide on the best management practices.

The way of doing things should help you reach an undeniable leadership position on your industry’s competition map.

5. Perform Market Research

Market research involves collecting information about consumer demands and choices. Market research will help you test the validity of your product.

From the information obtained from your market research, a grand opportunity avails itself.

You are now able to design or rebrand niche-specific products befitting your target audience.

6. Know Your Limitations

No business is perfect. Bumps are inevitable, but with proper planning, you can always maneuver. It is paramount that you identify the weak links in your business planning steps.

Identifying and covering all the loopholes safeguards you from unpleasant surprises.
Get a permanent solution.

If your accounts are always in order, whereas your social media awareness lugs behind, it is time to hire a social media marketer. You must maintain a stable balance between strengths and weakness tips off the scale in favor of your business.

7. Use Your Business Plan to Communicate Intentions

Your business plan should tell your story even in your absence. You need to incorporate best practices into your business planning steps. The most important face of your business is what defines it. It’s what you promise always to deliver and never disappoint.

Your best practices should act as a blueprint to keep your employees focused on the main goal. At any given point, what your business is all about should take priority.

Whether it is to give permanent solutions, deliver in good time, or putting your clients’ needs first. Your vision and brand should resonate with everyone in your business.

Creating a business planning strategy is the key to the survival of your business. It is an asset that provides numerous benefits.

Business planning will help you determine your limitations and help with the longevity of your business.

To sharpen your planning skills and grow your business requires deliberate, consistent effort on your part.

8. Know Your Product and Your Target Audience

The specialization will do the magic. Focus your energies toward specific products meant for defined target audiences. It is definitely easy to plan and manage your business planning for start-ups with a clear end goal.

When you know your product and your intended audience, you can focus on perfecting your product and marketing it to your audience.

There is nothing wrong with expanding your brand; gradually adding new items to your brand using the high-level marketing strategy every year or quarter is great for business.

You just need to be strategic with projective growth.

9. Know Your Competition

It is important to know your competitors. Knowing who your competitors are and what they offer can help you to differentiate your product and service.

You can look for key differences between your products and use those differences to boost your marketing and capitalize on the shortcomings of your competitor’s business.

10. Set Goals

Define what you are working towards both long term and short term. Set your goals for each business year, 5 years, and ten years.

When a company sets goals, it helps to make the vision clear. It shows employees which tasks to prioritize on and what needs to happen over the next quarter.

It keeps everyone’s actions in check; performance should be weighed against achieved progress in keeping with the set goals and their predefined timelines.

Conclusion

As the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Planning brings the future into the present and makes it possible for you to do something about it now.

You need to put it down on paper. Consistently checking out your business planning and sharpening your skills guarantees your business growth.

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What is Culture?

Culture has existed since the dawn of civilization. It is the foundation of our society.

Culture is defined as a set of values, beliefs, and traditions specific to a group of people.

What is Corporate Culture?

Corporate culture refers to the values, beliefs, and behaviors that define the nature of an organization and governs how it interacts with its members both within and outside.

Corporate culture is engraved in an organization’s goals, structure, approaches, and strategies to the investors, clients, employees, and the greater community.

Why do You Need a Great Corporate Culture?

Corporate culture draws a line between what is acceptable for your organization and what is not. It is the source from which numerous aspects of your organization spring from.

It defines the dress code, turnover rates, problem-solving techniques, hiring and firing decisions, and interactions between employees and clients.

A great corporate culture ensures your organization achieves high levels of client satisfaction.

Satisfied clients are the fuels that fun your business and create a perfect business environment.

Creating an efficient corporate culture will differentiate your business from others. It gives you a competitive advantage.

Let’s delve into these amazing tips on how to create a great corporate culture.

How to Create a Great Corporate Culture

1. Define Your Mission Statement and Core Values

A mission statement is a summary of what your company’s goals and values are. Core values are a collection of ideas and customs that teach you how to manage or carry yourself.

Your mission statement and core values should resonate with your organizations’ goals and visions.

It puts your business in one conspicuous basket. It tells your potential clients what is your business heartbeat.

Values associated with your brand paints a picture of your business culture.

They tell your investors why you started this business and why they should entrust you with their resources. They tell your employees why you hired them.

To create a strong culture, you must clearly define the purpose and core values of your business.

One way to do this is to create an employee handbook. The employee’s handbook will include the business’s mission, target audience, and dress code.

It should also define the roles and responsibilities of every employee.

2. Combine Top-Down and Bottom-Up Management

In the top-down management style, senior leaders of the organization determine the corporation’s projects and goals. One advantage of the top-down style management is that it is the most common and effective tool used to manage businesses.

Employees are probably most familiar with this management style.

However, this may result in disconnects between the employees and the goals you hope to accomplish. Constant disconnects could potentially affect your retention rate.

Bottom-up management happens when goals, projects, and tasks reflect employee feedback. Employees can take part in establishing goals and projects.

One advantage of this style of management is that the employees are assured that their voice counts.

One drawback of the bottom-up model is that employees lack access to top-level information like goals and projects.

If the employees cannot identify the current or future business goals, then they cannot offer feedback.

A combination of top-down and bottom-up management will ensure that you develop a strong workplace environment and allow the employees to feel like their opinion matters.

3. Set Up Your Hiring Process

You need to make sure all your candidates are compatible with your organization. The people you hire will not only affect your business but also reflect its culture.

To optimize your hiring process, you should:

• Make sure your potential employees understand and appreciate your vision. Discuss the employee handbook with them. Make sure that they understand their role in the workplace.
• Utilizing an interview will ensure that you pick the right candidate for the job. Although it can be time-consuming, multiple interviews will help you have long in-depth conversations about the candidate’s skills or experiences and see how they will fit into the culture of your business.
• Choose attitude over experience. A bad attitude can negatively affect your organization, especially if they have the power to persuade others. During the hiring process, you should consider the potential employees’ future in the workplace. Do not hire just for now, hire for the future!

4. Cherish Your Employees

Most employees feel neglected. They are constantly looking for a better job. In such cases, resentment builds in the workplace and destabilizes an effective workflow structure.

Acknowledge all the hard work that goes into running your organization from your employees.

It is easier to assume that you do not need your employees as much as they need you. This is where most organizations lose it.

A team committed to the success of your business beyond their job description will turn around your business and create a tremendous corporate culture.

A reward system motivates your employees to not only do their best but to always have the vision and goal of your organization in mind.

It fosters the kind of teamwork that moves and shakes the competition. The best employee of the month, an employee of the year, or just an appreciation dinner will go a long way in fostering a remarkable work environment.

When your employees feel valued and appreciated, they go out of their way to achieve set targets.

Your corporate culture flourishes in the hands of your employees’ morale and productivity.

5. Recognize Employee Feedback

Whereas most companies have a feedback channel, the transmitting channels do not send the signals to the intended destination.

You need to fill up all the feedback loops. All input and feedback from your employees across the board should reach your desk through the right channels.

Messages moving up the chain need to reach senior management.

If you want to develop a great workplace, you must act on employee feedback. Acting on this feedback will change the culture of your work environment.

It brings a totally different perspective to aspects of your organization that you may otherwise never notice.

6. Create a Language Within Your Work Environment

The language used to frame your company should exude excellence. The used language will determine how you treat your employees, how they treat each other, and how they will treat the customers.

Keep an eye out for the language that is used between employees and customers. Adapt the language to fit the culture of the organization.

Your language tells your story, defines your corporate culture.

7. Outsource Help

It is imperative that you receive help from outsiders like risk management advisors. Risk assessment involves performing an analysis of the workplace environment to identify the hazards and liabilities within your company.

Risk assessment managers can help your business stick to its goals as well as offer new ways that may help to create the climate of your workplace.

They can also develop a control plan or plan of action to reduce the identified risks.

Conclusion

Your Corporate Culture sets the limit of your growth, makes or breaks your business. A perfect work environment steers great work relations that boost your success.

You need to consistently work towards creating and maintaining a great corporate culture. It is a shared way of doing everything within your business with devout passion.

Use these tips to create a business culture that will definitely help your business thrive.

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What Are the Leadership Traits of Great Leaders?

The essence of great leadership traits lies not within the authority but the influence. As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

In business, leadership must inspire others to dream, learn more, become more, and do more.

It creates a bearing and road map towards achieving desired goals and set targets.

What Makes a Good Leader?

A leader is an individual who accepts the responsibility of providing an example for others to follow.

Being a good leader requires courage, bravery, and good communication skills. We have all seen the effect of good leadership traits and bad leadership.

One thing is for certain, for your organization to flourish, you must possess great leadership traits.

Why Do I Need to Be a Good Leader?

You need to strive to be a good leader because it is an essential part of your business that helps you determine your goals and accomplish them.

Leaders will develop your vision and put it into action. Employees that work with good leaders tend to be happier, more productive, and develop a stronger connection to the organization.

How to Become a Better Leader?

1. Define Your Vision

A good leader will always be looking towards the future. Without a clear vision, your entire organization will crumble.

A good leader will assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats to the organization.

This leader will then use these tools to create a vision that will move the company forward.

2. You Must Be Honorable

Honorable leaders uphold integrity at all costs. Telling the truth promotes positive communication.

Information will freely flow up and down the chain of command. This goes a long way in creating a positive work environment.

A good leader has a clearly defined moral compass. A set of virtues they follow even when it does not benefit them.

They are concerned with their employee’s or customer’s welfare and treats everyone fairly and respectfully.

3. Be Confident

Confidence inspires strength and courage. A good leader believes in their ability and their team’s ability.

You must be confident and certain of your ability to lead. At times you may feel uncertain about the next course of action, but as a leader, even in such cases, you should retain your Composure.

Feeling, remaining, and appearing in control is an effective leadership trait.

Leadership provides a sense of direction. Solutions need to spring from your foundational leadership traits to any difficult situations that arise.

Confidence asserts your problem-solving skills. Since your team members and employees look to you for solutions, you have to assure them that they can trust and follow your lead.

A confident leader is secure. You do not need to micromanage your employees for them to perform. As a good leader, you must train your team until they are able to function independently of you.

Nobody enjoys having their boss looking over their shoulders, watching their every move.

As a leader, you want to see your plan executed but, if you do not give your team space to carry out the task, you are only going to derail them.

As a leader, you must remind yourself that you have handpicked the employees, and they can do their jobs well. Trusting your team will increase productivity.

4. Lead by Example

You must lead from the front. Your conduct should be such that, if everyone in your team behaved as you do, your organization would experience profound growth.

You must exercise the same values you want to see upheld throughout your organization. Set the rules and follow them.

That way, you exert your moral authority. Nobody has an excuse to not deliver on the required goals.

Effective leadership traits are evident when you, as the leader, know the way; you go the way and show the way.

Employees are more likely to respect your leadership traits if you have a hands-on approach. The most effective leaders have a high consideration factor. You must really care about your people.

When an employee calls in sick, you should offer the necessary help as a leader. Jump on the line whenever you are needed. In every situation, act like you would want your best employee to act.

5. Always Be Willing to Learn

As human beings, we are always evolving. The day we stop growing is the day we stop learning.
A leader should always be willing to learn. Leaders who have an I know everything attitude exudes arrogance.

Employees will never respect an arrogant boss. Just because you are in a leadership position does not mean you give up the ability to learn something new.

If you are always willing to learn, you will encourage others to learn as well.

You will also promote a climate where your employees can come up with creative solutions to a problem you are trying to solve.

6. Be Compassionate

Compassion is a two-edged sword. The first component of being compassionate is listening. People want their feelings and concerns to be acknowledged.

Affirm your care for your employees by carefully listening to their thoughts and feelings.

Actively engaging in conversations with your team members on their concerns shows your outstanding leadership skills.

7. Keep Your Cool Amid Crisis

In the event of a crisis, your leadership traits are put to the test. When the ship is sinking, you must remain afloat and offer guidance.

You cannot join in with the waves like everyone else.

No matter how thorough the situation gets, you must exhibit Composure and confidence in your team’s ability to sail through the storms.

Critical situations are inevitable. You must protect your focus not to get distracted. Exhibiting great leadership traits requires capacity and Composure.

Check out this article I wrote on How to keep your Composure when leading teams. (Suggested Hyperlink)

Conclusion

Whereas scholars argue on whether leaders are born or made, what your business needs are effective leadership traits!

Leadership skills are made better through training, perception, and experience.

You must continually seek out ways and opportunities to help develop and make you a better leader.

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Focus on More Rewarding Work

Productivity is a result of the commitment to excellence, great planning, and focused effort. You must have the intent to do some rewarding work, develop a plan, and execute it.

A productive life is made up of countless rewarding days that do not just happen. It takes the calculated steps.

What Defines a Rewarding Day?

Rewarding means something valuable and satisfying that yields a reward. A rewarding day is made up of experiences and actions that give you satisfaction and bring you benefits.

Your most rewarding day comes from achieving the most from your productive efforts.
At the end of a rewarding day, you are fulfilled and content.

You go to bed with the impression: there would have been no other better way to spend my day. Every opportunity to make your day more rewarding is a gold mine worth seizing.

What Do You Need to Do to Make Your Day More Rewarding?

1. Revitalize

To be up and running at your optimal performance tomorrow, you need enough rest tonight. You must start your journey to your amazing day with the night prior.

Get enough rest and prepare for your day. Wake up fresh and rejuvenated in anticipation of your best day ever.

2. Wake Up Early

You cannot afford to hit the snooze button. You factored in the extra 10 minutes by sleeping enough last night.

Avoid the unnecessary pressure of almost getting late or missing deadlines. You cannot exhibit your leadership by storming into appointments late gasping for air.

Get up early. It will allow you enough time to get ready for the day and remain in control: a wholesome, healthy breakfast, and quality time for your morning routine.

3. Get a Good Morning Routine

One of the best assets that will earn you a rewarding day is creating and maintaining a good morning routine. Great leaders and CEOs have one thing in common.

They get up early, exercise, enjoy a good breakfast, and skim through their inboxes to find the most urgent tasks.

You could read a piece, write something down to warm up your mind for the day ahead. No matter what works best for you, creating a good morning routine.

It will go beyond granting you a positive mental attitude to making your day more rewarding.

4. Plan Your Day

After a winning morning routine, it is time to plan your day. You cannot let your day unfold without boundaries and a planned layout. It only encourages disorientation at the expense of disciplined objectivity.

Identify the tasks which must be executed within the day. They could be individual tasks or continuous ones that lead up to a project.

5. Prioritize

You must keep the main business the main business. Rewarding work demands that you protect your focus.

With so many intertwined tasks and upcoming updates, it is so easy to get distracted.

Avoid building up pressure from feeling there is so much to do that you do not know where to start.

List everything you need to do and prioritize the tasks in order of importance and urgency.

Clear the most pressing issues first. You will earn yourself a productive day.

6. Complete Mini-Projects

What project are you working towards this month or quarter? Divide it into mini projects by week goals and subdivide this into daily tasks.

A few hours to finish one creative endeavor every day will bring you satisfaction.

Strengthen your skills and make your day more rewarding by adding mini-projects into your daily routine.

7. Check Off One Task at a Time

Focus on One thing at a time. You can start and finish your mini project in a short period of time, or it could require a long-term commitment.

As difficult as it may be, your leadership is enhanced by sticking with a heavy project.

It makes your days more fulfilling when you break down the big project into manageable tasks and check off one item from the list each day.

8. Get Yourself a Happy Break

Now that you do not spend your days in a relaxed state of bliss give yourself a break.

You give your best efforts to ensure your days result in rewarding work that earns you those coveted business and professional rewards. You work hard, so take a break.

You do not have to wait until you’re feeling drained.

As energized as you may be, take a moment to unplug and breathe. Grab a coffee, step out for a nature walk, or take a power nap!

Whatever clears your mind, just do it for you.

9. Manage Your Time in an Effective Manner

In a rewarding, oddly satisfying day, you do not have free time. You have structured free time to unwind.

Whatever most people call free time is actually some unstructured time that is wasted.

Achieving so much in less time is what tips off the scale to earn you a rewarding day characterized by loads of rewarding work.

After allocating time slots to your pending tasks, use the breaks effectively. Increase the quality of your low-intensity time.

You can read the news as you grab a coffee or make a personal call as you take a walk.

Make every minute of your day count; that is the secret of making your day more rewarding.

10. Celebrate and Reflect

Regardless of what defines rewarding work and a productive day for you, take time to celebrate what you have accomplished.

Get yourself a reward to keep you motivated to continue doing the great work. A reward system is a remarkable motivator.

Before you revitalize for the next day, reflect on your day.

Identify what worked for you and what didn’t. It will increase your future productivity and give you time to clear your head.

Conclusion

Now that you know just how to make your day more rewarding get to it! It will require deliberate effort and discipline on your part.

A strategy for dividing, prioritizing, and completing tasks while retaining control sets you on the right path.

With proper planning, scheduling proper time management, you will enjoy rewarding work and get things done faster and better.

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What is Composure?

Composure is the state of being calm, feeling in control of oneself. A repose of mind; it makes you feel confident and seem peaceful.

Simply put, it is maintaining your cool under situations of extreme pressure when leading teams.

You Must Develop Some Muscle!

Have you ever been under so much pressure that you snapped? You must have been dealing with difficult projects, leading a team, chasing after a deadline or a difficult team member.

Guess what? You could handle much more and remain sane, keeping your cool. This is how you keep your composure when leading teams.

As Warren Buffet put it “You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you.

True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you, that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass”.

Why Leadership Composure Is Important?

As a leader, the buck stops with you. The success and effectiveness of your team and projects is your responsibility.

You will inevitably come across enormous challenges, and under such circumstances, you need to exercise restraint and remain objective.

You need to possess an air of modesty to produce high-quality work and drive higher performance.

Your composure as a leader goes beyond affecting your state of mind. It inspires confidence in your team members. When others see you calm, they are likely to relax and feel confident.

If a problem occurs, your reaction as a leader sends signals. Your composure will help your team make a bad situation better, instilling in them an affirmative, can-do spirit.
Leadership composure ensures that the signals sent to your team showcase confidence.

You need to offer the signal that you can get through this and succeed by making the best of the situation. If you want your team to remain calm, rational, and on top of their game, no matter what, you need to be a composed leader! It’s a remarkable path to team building.

How Do You Keep Your Composure as a Leader?

1. Keep Your Emotions Under Control

You must not wear your emotions on your sleeves. Leadership demands heightened levels of emotional self-control. When the going gets hard, you need to lead, not to yell. As animated or as disappointed as you may be, you have to keep your cool.

Seasoned leaders know to keep their emotions under control. You need to exercise emotional self-control such that even your body language does not give you away.

A composed leader is not raising their voice and hitting their desk in anger or frustration. On stormy seas, when everyone is in panic, you must hold your paddle steady.

2. Take a Break

It is not easy to maintain your cool in the heat of the moment. When you feel a reaction is building up, pose, and take a step back. Do not give an immediate response. Buy as much time as you can before making a final decision.

Hold that email for a while. Let the caller know you will call them right back. Put your computer to sleep and head out for a cup of coffee, and to take a deep breath of fresh air.

Wait as long as you possibly can before giving your response. A moment may be all you need to consider the right amount of perspective.

You may just realize that the situation does not warrant a reaction. When you pause, you are able to reflect and evaluate on the best decision.

Cooler heads will prevail and this curbs your immediate visceral reaction. You will realize there is always a better solution that does not involve something you will have to take back later.

3. Remain Positive

Your team is always watching your actions, behavior, interactions, and overall demeanor. When turbulent times come, your team is always reading your narrative.

It needs to be one that tells of your confidence in their ability and steers business growth. During uncertain times, your employees feed off your attitude as a leader.

You need to set the right tone for your organization. Your positive attitude will go a long way to neutralize chaos and enable your leadership to progress beyond any negativity.

Keep a positive mental attitude. It will not only keep your team inspired and hopeful but also build positive momentum for the betterment of the entire team.

4. Take Responsibility

The most composed leaders are made during times of crisis. It is the firm resolve to solve the problem that makes the difference.

As a leader, appreciate that no matter whose action or reaction caused the problem, it is your sole responsibility. You cannot remain confident and feel in control by shifting blame.

Be accountable. Make a decision to assume responsibility and lead your team to take the necessary steps towards solving the problem.

A situation will always arise due to courses of action by different parties. Who did or did not do what was expected. But it is your responsibility to neutralize the problem and lead your team towards achieving the desired goals past the obstacles.

5. Don’t Show Doubt

To attain composure, you must respond to situations decisively. You cannot afford to show your team members any doubt. You need to speak with conviction, confidence, and authority.

Regardless of occurrences and troubling situations, you should remain on top of things.

Your answer is the way forward. With your delivery alone, you must give your employees the impression that everything is under control.

Whether you know the answer or not, you must take the lead. Inspire confidence and a sense of direction because after all is said and done, you are the go-to person.

Conclusion

Leading with composure means understanding that crisis is inevitable and keeping your head through it all. It is a critical leadership quality that will ensure you experience business growth through all the changes of life.

You need to be confident, positive, self-controlled, accountable, and to calculate your moves under situations of extreme pressure and uncertainties to remain composed as you lead.

You are the lighthouse that shows your team the way, so you must keep your head when all your team members are losing theirs.

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Why is Project Estimation Important

Project estimation is of primary importance in project planning and management. It makes sure that your actual project costs do not exceed your budget and that the project changes happen as desired timewise.

Project estimation can be quite complicated because it is a multivariate task. In layman’s terms, it is an estimated measure of how much resources, effort, and time a project will take.

In this guide, I will cover how to perform better project estimation, and make sure that your estimates will stand the test of time.

If you’re not sure how to prepare an estimate that will lead to success, stick around, and you’ll find out everything that you need to know about effective project and cost estimation techniques.

Top-Down Estimation

Many businesses use the top-down estimation technique. With this technique, you start by setting a budget that you likely have at your disposal and then divide that budget between different project components, which could be stages or groups of activities of your project. You need to ensure that a sufficient budget was allocated to each project component.

This technique will help you identify whether your client’s budget is enough for the project and whether you’re going to make a profit or not. You must consider your profit during the cost estimation for the project and make sure that the estimation rates reflect not just the raw costs of your employees but also – include the profit that you would like to make.

This technique is very basic and simple, giving you a rough idea of whether your client’s budget is enough for the project. However, this technique has a few drawbacks: it is not very accurate because you’re assigning the budget to different tasks purely based on your guesses.

You are also not taking future changes into account, which can negatively affect your cost estimation accuracy.

It would be best if you always validated top-down estimates after they are completed, and see whether the allocations made at the lowest component of the project, be it an activity or task, make sense for that task.

Bottom-Up Estimation

This technique is the reverse of the top-down estimation. Just like the top-down estimation strategy, it is based on your project’s different stages and tasks.

To create estimates using the bottom-up estimation technique, the tasks are identified at the lowest level, and effort estimates are created for each task. Then the estimates are multiplied by the cost of those who will be working to accomplish the task.

Cumulatively, the task estimates will be combined into phase-specific estimates, and in turn – those will be combined into the overall project estimates.

This technique is detail-oriented, which makes it reasonably accurate and effective. It provides details about each phase and task, enabling you to compare the estimated and actual cost and time later on during the project to ensure you’re on the right track.

However, the bottom-up estimation can be very time-consuming because it is accomplished at the level of each task. Every task must be analyzed very thoroughly, ideally by the resource who will be accomplishing it, to come up with an accurate estimate, and all of that takes time and effort.

Analogous Estimation

Analogous estimation comes from the word “analogy.” In this technique, you use a similar project that may have been completed to estimate the time and cost of your new project.

For example, if you did a flooring job for a similar office building a few months ago, and if the floor space is nearly the same, you can assume that your project will take a similar effort, cost, and duration. It is an assumption-based strategy, which means that it may not be entirely accurate.

This technique is based on your team’s historical information and expert judgment, as even though two projects may be very similar, they will never be identical. It is best when you are looking to get a rough idea of how much time and resources your project will take.

It doesn’t require you to gather detailed information about each phase of the project, making it very quick and simple.

However, at the same time, it doesn’t account for the nuances that come with the different projects, which means that this technique may not be accurate in some areas.

Parametric Estimation

When it comes to finding a ballpark project cost, parametric estimation is the most accurate estimation technique. It is similar to analogous estimation in that it is based on a previous similar project.

However, it is more accurate than analogous and the bottom-up estimation techniques because this one accounts for the variables in your new project.

For example, you wrote a 1,000-word article on Business process engineering for $200. Your new project required you to write a similar article, but it has to be 3000 words long. Your new project is three times bigger than the previous one. This means the cost will be increased by three times, $200 x 3= $600.

This technique will give you a very accurate estimation as long as the underlying data can be easily manipulated, but as the project’s complexity increases, this technique becomes less accurate.

For example, you designed a portfolio website for $400 that took you one day; your new project requires you to design an E-commerce website, which is not only going to take a lot more days, it is going to be way more complex.

You can’t simply multiply the previous cost by the extra number of days to find the final cost. You also need to account for the complexity and several other factors to arrive at the final estimate.

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How To Increase Project Success

With modern technological advancements in all facets of life, we see projects becoming more complex and detail-oriented. This evolution has prompted a need for new and modern project management strategies to help cope with bigger and more complex projects.

You will learn nine project management techniques that will help you make proactive decisions and give you a competitive edge.

1. Appropriate Selection of the Project Lifecycle

Before you start a project, you must determine which project lifecycle your project will follow. You can either stick with the traditional waterfall methodology, which typically has four phases of a project life cycle: initiation, planning, implementation, and closeout.

These phases of the waterfall methodology outline to your potential client how the work will be accomplished.

The project life cycle identifies what needs to be done to complete the project, the milestones that your team needs to work towards, and the completion criteria. These steps will set the foundation for your project and help create a work environment that is conducive to success.

Alternatively, you may want to use agile or iterative methodologies to deliver your project.
Selecting the most appropriate methodology for your project based on its specifics will significantly increase the likelihood of your project’s success.

2. Stable Project Scope and Requirements

It is of paramount importance that you define your project scope and requirements early on in the project life cycle. All the requirement gathering needs to be completed during the first phase of your project life cycle.

You need to discuss and finalize the project requirements and scope with all the stakeholders so that your team knows exactly what is expected of them and what they are working towards.

Well-defined project scope and requirements will help everyone understand what needs to be done, what the project will look like once it’s done, and also what may be the impediments along the way.

 The team will get clarity about their goals, success criteria, deliverables, and priorities. All things considered, stable scope and requirements are very important prerequisites for successful project management.

3. Robust and Effective Team Structure and Project Governance

Every team member needs to have clarity regarding their role. Each team member has a specialized function, and they need to know precisely what their function is, what their responsibilities are, and how they contribute to the overall success of the team.

You need to break down your project into small tasks, estimate how much time and effort each task will take, identify task dependencies, and figure out a way to complete them.

Consult the team in figuring out the estimated time of each task, combine the estimates, and based on them – create the milestones for the overall project.

Define the governance structure in your project, which outlines how the decisions will be made.

Finally, ensure that your Project Sponsor agrees with the overall governance structure.

4. Formalized Quality Expectations

The high quality of the end products is one of the main objectives for any project. You need to make sure that your team is working according to the required standards and success criteria from day one; otherwise, the project will have a weak foundation, and you might not be able to make adjustments later.

Ensuring that your team and all the stakeholders are on the same page regarding quality expectations is of paramount importance.

This doesn’t mean that you should start micromanaging your team; your team needs to have some creative freedom to work.

All you need to do is review all the work to avoid future problems and steer your team in the right direction if need be.

You also need to implement formal quality acceptance criteria and the quality control process so that your team members know what kind of quality is expected and how the quality will be verified.

5. Comprehensive Project Charter

A highly comprehensive project charter is one of the prerequisites for successful project management. It outlines all of the key parameters of the project.

A thorough Charter helps you establish who your team members will be, what resources will be required to complete the project, how the process can be streamlined, and a communication channel between your team and stakeholders, a budget that you have at your disposal, and cumulatively – the overall structure and approach of your project.

A well-defined and thorough project charter has nine key components: highlights of the project business case and expected benefits, project stakeholders, project scope, project goals and objectives, deliverables and their delivery sequence, high-level schedule, tasks assignments, likely risks, and risk management approaches, and the project governance structure.

6. Periodic Variance Analysis

Variance tracking and analysis is a technique that helps to uncover differences between what is planned and what actually happened. It helps identify why variances popped up in the first place and how to deal with it, and ensure that and ensure the estimates are not exceeded in the future.

If, during the execution of the project, exceptions are uncovered, variance analysis will help to detect them and make sure that the course adjustments are made before these changes start getting out of control.

Regular reports and meetings of the project team will help keep all the work in sync and the team on track.

7. Project Course Adjustments

When you encounter a variance from the original plan, you need to make course adjustments to get back on track.

You always need to make some tradeoffs and be able to catch up some lost time or recover from the loss of some resources. For example, if your tasks are taking longer than anticipated, than you might have to push the deadlines a bit further, or you might have to decrease the scope to save time.

It is impossible to anticipate all the roadblocks and bottlenecks that your team will face, so you need to be prepared to make reparations when that happens.

It also helps when you plan for failure. This way, you will have more space to maneuver once you are in a position when you need to make course adjustments.

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The Importance of Leadership Skills

If you are reading this, then the chances are that you want to become a better leader, and we’ve got you covered. In order to become a great leader, you need to have a vision and be able to build your team and inspire them. Achieving your organizational goals requires plenty of planning and delegation.

However, to become a great leader, you need well-balanced competencies that would place you at the steering wheel. Granted that not everyone is born a leader, but everyone can learn to be one.

The path to good leadership comes from the foundational competencies that you will read below, the humble outlook at life, and the ability to believe that someone may have a better point than you do.

Great leaders surround themselves with individuals who are much smarter than they are so that when combined, all such individuals complement each other’s strengths and seem unstoppable.

Here, the seven skills that can make or break a leader are read ahead to find out all the dos and don’ts that can make you a charismatic leader.

1. Having a Vision

Having a vision or lacking it can make or break a leader. Keep in mind that just because you’re in an authoritative position, that doesn’t mean that you are also a good leader. I’ve seen successful companies go down in flames due to lack of leadership, and new businesses excel beyond expectations due to exceptional leadership. Now, which one you ought to be is up to you.

Having a vision of where you want to see your business and how you want to grow is essential to a person with good leadership. If you start a business without a clear vision, you have a high probability of failure.

Not only should you have a vision but also a contingency plan for likely worst-case scenarios. Vision and far-reaching outlook are the characteristics of a great leader. A clear vision will set the stage for many months or even years for your entire team and help your entire organization buy into it, support it, and make it happen.

2. Exceptional Communication and Management Skills

Exceptional communication skills are native to any exemplary leader. No one listens to a leader who has no control over their employees, let alone can’t articulately express what is on their mind or what they need from their team.

A good leader knows his ways with words and can read between the lines to the ideas and concerns of members of his team. Effective two-way communication with your employees is an essential trait of great leaders.

In addition to good communication skills, a leader needs to have exceptional management skills and competencies that we are covering later on.

3. Long-term Planning Outlook

Long-term planning helps you critically analyze the situations, market trends, and related economic changes happening worldwide.

Leaders should be great at long-term planning and have the management skills to ensure that the work gets done by their team. If a leader can’t get things done, sooner or later, they will be replaced.

Leaders are always ready to learn new things and have the urge to analyze data and, based on the objective evidence that they see, take the best possible path forward.

To get good at that, one should develop problem-solving skills and an in-depth understanding of the business context as the long-term planning and strategic planning differs between organizations due to their specifics.

It would help if you were flexible and adaptive to changing trends in order to give your best to your business.

4. Team Building

Team building is a skill that great leaders need to master. As a leader, you should know that it requires top-notch management skills to get your team to put forward their best and achieve the organizational goals you have established in line with your expectations. It would be best if you learned to support your team, guide your team members, and build them to become stronger, and with the combined forces, your team members will accomplish the overall objectives.

If you’ll provide consistent guidance and mentoring to your team, they’ll require less supervision in the future. Good leaders build their trust with their team members and appreciate the team members for putting their best performance, and they keep their team members motivated along the way.

5. Sharp Focus

Everyone with a successful career is a person who somehow managed to stay focused on their goals with a positive attitude. As a leader, it is expected of you to be focused on the task at hand. Like Stan Lee said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” You are in a position where you have to lead by example.

Your sharp focus won’t let distractions come in the way of you or your team. When you apply sharp focus, you and your team need to put forward a lot less energy to accomplish what is needed.

6. Solution-oriented Approach

Projects are always full of challenges requiring high-end management skills to tackle them without affecting the project planning and scope of the project.

Leaders should also be critical thinkers in case of any sudden setbacks; they need to look at the big picture and figure out the long-term consequences of any mishap before it happens.

This is one of the most important skills, leaders having a solution-oriented approach manage to successfully resolve the issues and think systematically to get to solutions rather than being stuck on problems.

7. Being Innovative

A great leader is a person who is full of creative ideas and is open to others’ opinions. They let their team members share creative ideas that can help to achieve their goals.

Staying open to new ideas, points of view and shorter or more optimal paths result in the overall organization taking on new ways of doing things, and ultimately, getting ahead by becoming more innovative and competitive.

Many people have innovative ideas on their minds, but it’s a leader who has the communication skills to draw these ideas out, and the confidence to take the risk and implement the best of those ideas.

Leaders need to have the potential to encourage their teams and themselves to push their boundaries, be open and try out new ways, and ultimately – achieve and exceed organizational goals, leading to organizations becoming bigger and better in the long run.

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How to Have More Effective Team Meetings

Why do most people hate team meetings? Why do so many meetings end up becoming boring and tedious? We see so many business leaders and professionals asking these questions every day.

Generally, team meetings often lack structure and creativity and do not focus on innovation and creativity. They are so repetitive that, at times, they lack a human touch. Sometimes, meetings are held whether they are needed or not.

As a result, they become so regurgitating that the attendees and the business no longer get any value out of them, and they simply become a waste of time.

Productive meetings and productive meeting rhythm are rare, but they are essential to achieve breakthroughs in your business.

We will introduce you to the qualities of effective and productive meetings. You can use these techniques and start having more productive and effective team meetings conducive to business success.

A Well-Defined Team Meeting Agenda

An effective team meeting always starts with a well-defined agent. They are always structured and organized. Walking into a meeting without an agenda is not only counter-intuitive; it’s counterproductive. It will waste everyone’s time.

Remember, if your meeting does not have an objective, there is no need for the meeting in the first place.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is that they schedule meetings just for information transfer. That is not what meetings are for; we have email, chat, and intranet to collaborate and exchange information.

The purpose of a meeting is to collaborate, brainstorm, and make decisions. So, structured and planned meetings with a well-defined agenda are the key factors for effective team meetings.

Relevant and Engaging

When a meeting has a well-defined agenda, everyone comes into the meeting with a certain expectation. You must keep the meeting relevant and engaging to meet the attendees’ expectations.

One way to keep the meeting relevant and engaging is to keep it short and concise. Invite the people who will either get value from the meeting or add value to the meeting.

This way, everyone stays engaged, and the meeting stays relevant. Start with some casual team meeting ice breaker so that the attendees feel at ease, and you develop a creative and engaging atmosphere around the room.

Another way to increase engagement is to employ a strict, no notes policy. Some people like to take notes on their laptops and tablets, which can be quite distracting for the rest of the team. Plus, there is also a chance that they’re just using Facebook and not paying any attention to the meeting.

What you can do is have one person take notes and share them with the whole team later. This will save everyone a lot of effort and keep the whole team engaged at the same time.

 Remote-Friendly Team Meetings

Nowadays, many businesses have international employees, which means you’re will have people joining in from all parts of the world.

You need to make sure that your meetings are held at a convenient time, or at the very least reasonable for your whole team. This means you can’t announce last-minute meetings; all the meetings need to be scheduled in advance so that the entire team can join.

No one likes to be the giant face on the screen in meetings. In order to level the playing field, you should have your team join in virtually. Even if most of the team members can join the meeting in person, to accommodate virtual team members, adding an online meeting bridge is a great idea.

We often see the virtual team members getting cut off and neglected during meetings; an online meeting will lead to equal participation from all the members.

 Shareable and Implementable Results

You know that meetings take a lot of work. You put a lot of effort into crafting an agenda, defining meeting objectives, and facilitating your team. Now you need to make sure that you get the results because an effective meeting always provides shareable and implementable results in the end.

Ensure that you stay the course and don’t let anything change the course of your meeting. If someone shares an idea that is unrelated to the current discussion but might be useful in the bigger context, you can write it down on your white and circle back to it in the end.

This is an effective way to keep the meeting moving along in the direction you planned.

If your meeting’s purpose is to make a decision, you need to make sure that you direct your team to make a clear cut decision so you don’t get stuck in maybes.

A Powerful Closing of the Team Meeting

If you’ve achieved your objectives by the end of the team meeting, you know that the meeting went well. Now all you need is a powerful closing.

A powerful closing has a great effect on your employees. It leaves your team with excitement and clarity about what they need to do next.

They leave the meeting, knowing how each member needs to work towards team goals.
It is always a good idea to ask the attendees for feedback in the end.

It doesn’t necessarily need to be written feedback; you can ask each attendee to verbally share their takeaway from the meeting and how similar future meetings can be made more effective and productive.

This will identify all the positive and negative aspects of the meeting. You can double up on the positives and avoid the negatives in future team meetings.

Conclusion

Meetings no longer have to be boring, redundant, and regurgitating. If you follow the tactics mentioned above, you can easily make your meeting productive and efficient. Make sure that you don’t digress from your team meeting agendas and direct your team to get towards the desired outcome at the end of the meeting.

Remember that cooperation and communication are a very important aspect of any business environment. To achieve cooperation, there is no better way than well-organized and well-planned meetings that finish on time.

In a business setting, a meeting isn’t like any other social gathering; some rules and conventions need to be maintained. Though many businesses are opting for a more casual work environment these days, applying the core principles that we outlined will undoubtedly lead to more productive meetings, and ultimately – to better business outcomes.

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How to Start Your Project Coordinator Career

If you’ are reading this post, you already know who a project coordinator is and what they do. For those who are new and are looking to find out a bit about this career, I’ll introduce you to project coordination basics.

Project managers have major responsibilities in leading the organizational change initiatives and the organization’s project teams. With some of that work, project managers rely on project coordinators, who also have an equally important role.

Their work is directed by the project manager, who oversees the entire direction of the project, and is responsible for resolving all of the project issues.

In a nutshell, a project coordinator makes sure that the project manager accomplishes their objectives and that all the projects they are responsible for are completed within the specified scope, budget, and timeframe.

This post will introduce you to some practical techniques that will not only help you sharpen up your project coordinator skills; they will also help you jump start your career as a project coordinator.

1. Become a Problem Solver and a Multi-tasker

If you wish to become a successful project coordinator, you must learn to multitask. As a project coordinator, you will have to juggle several things simultaneously, and you may be under extreme pressure and stress.

If you’re not a multi-tasker, you may melt under pressure, and the whole team will suffer. You also need to be a problem solver so that the team can depend on you for the team to be on track with its deliverables.

So learning to deal with multiple tasks at a time and being an efficient problem solver is a prerequisite for a project coordinator.

2. Develop Soft Skills

No matter how qualified and experienced you are, if you don’t have good soft skills, you will may a very hard time finding a project coordinator job in the first place, and even if you find a job, you’re going to struggle miserably.

Hiring managers look for people who have soft skills because they tell you how a person will communicate and interact with your team, and as a project coordinator, that is one of the most important parts of your job.

Another reason why employers look for candidates with outstanding soft skills – is because team momentum and great team culture are contagious.

If the project coordinator has great soft skills, then those they interact with will start embracing the same dynamics, which creates an environment conducive to success.

3. Develop Impeccable Time Management Skills

When you have many things on your plate, you will need excellent time management skills to know where things are, not just for you but also for others, and ensure that they are done well.

Effective time management is all about spending the right amount of time on the right tasks.

Time management helps us to make sure that we have enough time to dedicate to what is needed. Your time management skills will always help you to know what needs to be done and by whom and meet your commitments.

Responsibility for your words and actions are a must, especially when it comes to project coordinator entry-level coordinator jobs.

Are you looking for a job? Attend our Job Hunting and Interviewing Strategies Masterclass!

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CRM Definition

During various stages of business growth, companies face different challenges and different categories of challenges.
While small companies may be looking to scale up what worked well and formalize their processes, medium and already established companies may have process fragmentation and numerous process improvement opportunities.

Those, of course, need to be taken first. When working with my clients, I often call it the “back of the napkin” approach. After the initial prototyping, processes need to be implemented and only then automated.
Without this, with the help of technology, any problem will not be resolved, but quite often – magnified.

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When looking across your entire business process – from the generation of brand awareness to fulfillment, what are your weakest links?

In my coaching practice, I coached hundreds of clients from Fortune 100 to Small and Medium Enterprises. For most of them, the biggest problem, especially nowadays, is fragmented data and fragmented business processes. They have different tools acquired at different stages in their lifecycle. Some tools talk to each other, but a majority do not.

Such incompatibilities result in two outcomes. They either stop the information flow or are unacceptable to business – require a manual, often tedious workaround.

There are some integration services, such as Integromat , which allow multiple applications to “speak” or to exchange data. But much better if all of that happens in one application.

These issues are especially painful in acquiring new customers, where new or even worse – existing customers can be lost due to various internal issues. That does not just cost businesses money, but may even have reputational impacts.

To automate customer acquisition and customer management aspects, one would need a CRM, which is a Customer Relationship Management.

What does a CRM system do?

CRM system helps to store all of the customer data, which includes interactions of the company with business leads and interactions with the existing customers. This information is often shared across employees of organizations to avoid unnecessary repeat contacts with customers.

Why is CRM important?

Good CRMs do not just store all of the data about interactions with the potential and existing customers, they also help businesses to leverage that data, and ultimately – improve business profitability by providing a 360 degree customer experience.

What Does CRM Stand For?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and refers to software used to acquire and manage leads and convert them into customers.

Rather than just telling you what the CRM definition is, I should show you.

Recently I came across a very interesting and promising application – Agiled. . Up to this point, I thought that this level of configuration is present only in custom-built or very heavy enterprise applications, which are far too cumbersome to meet the needs of small and medium companies.

Agiled is not just the CRM; it has several modules. I would rank it as a top-tier application for small and medium enterprises with exceptional and highly tailorable functionality. And not just that, it has one of the most impressive sets of integrations that I have seen in a CRM platform.

CRM Definition: What should a CRM do?

Rather than exploring the definition of the CROM, let’s dive in and see what kind of CRM modules should any CRM software have. And for that – let’s use features included in Agiled as an example.

CRM Module Itself

CRM module can be used to track clients and leads. This module offers pretty basic functionality, and unfortunately, users can’t hide fields that they do not need. However, this is common across several CRM applications, so major points are not deducted here.

HRM, or Human Resource Management Module

HRM module allows managing various human resource aspects of the team. It could be great to those companies who, as a bonus of the integrated solution, want to automate teams and management of HR-related items, such as attendance, holidays, leaves, and tracking of the payroll. This module doesn’t yet allow support for the management of vacancies and job posting, but available in a specialized HRM software, such as Applicant Tracking Software. If Agiled had that functionality, it would be completely priceless!

Projects Module

The projects module offers basic project management functionality, including adding projects, project tasks, and a few other tweaks. An exporting project to Excel is a welcome feature. Projects can be organized in categories and created based on project templates. When projects are created, they can be mapped to clients, which will enable client-specific billing. There is also a Taskboard functionality that provides users with convenient Kanban view functionality. Yet it has two minor drawbacks. Tasks entered within the Kanban board have mandatory fields of start and end dates, as well as few other mandatory fields, which may make it difficult to enter tasks quickly in a brainstorming style. Secondly, the Kanban board is global. In other words – it shows tasks from all projects. It would be great if each project would include a Kanban view. However, a welcome feature – is that one can add custom Kanban boards, and is not limited to just three states of a task like some other project management software.

Finance CRM Module

Finance is really powerful and is one of the very important and distinguishing features of Agiled. It offers functionality to create and send estimates. After the client receives estimates, they can easily pay them with just one click via PayPal. Invoices, payments, and expenses – that could be tied to specific projects are managed within this module. If the improper payment is made, we are not stuck – Credit Notes can easily issue refunds.

Contracts Module

This is another very powerful feature of Agiled, which by itself, warrants the use of the software for any business. The contracts module allows the creation of professional contracts in Agiled. When the contracts are created, they can be sent to clients to be signed electronically, thereby eliminating the need for a digital signature solution.

Proposals Module

The proposals module is another extremely powerful software. It allows users to build client proposals. You may say MS Word can do it. Indeed it can, but with Agiled, you are getting an amazing library of drag and drop modules that can easily be used to create amazing proposals. But this is not all. Proposals can be saved as templates and reused the next time when they are needed.

Timesheets CRM Module

This module allows users to track the time that staff spends on a project, and based on the actual time, create an invoice for a client.

Tickets Module

The tickets module automates the handling of the support tickets.

Chat Module

The chat module enables support chat with customers and clients, which is an incredibly useful feature.

Events Module

This module enables the basic scheduling of events and shows a shared team calendar.

Announcements Module

Announcements can be sent to either teammate or clients. Team announcements can target a specific team, but it looks like the Clients assignment is global. It would be great if it is targeted to a specific client.

Forms

One can also create a new form and completely customize its look and feel. After submission, forms can result in creating a lead, creating a client, creating a ticket, or having a general entry. After successful submission – forms can be redirected to a URL, or clients may see a message.

Shopping Cart

Agiled even offers a shopping cart functionality where various items can be created and sold to customers.

Reporting

The reporting module offers basic business and usage reports, nothing fancy here.

Settings

Under settings, pretty much everything about Agiled can be configured – from the custom domains and complete white labeling to different settings that allow customizing what an admin would see, what a teammate will see, and what clients will see.

Integrations

Settings module enables plenty of integrations, including:

• Hubspot
• Automizly
• Sendofx
• ActiveCampaign
• Mailshake
• Moosend
• Plutio
• Freshbooks
• TimeCamp
• Asana
• Freedcamp
• Lemlist
• Zapier
• Integromat
• Intercom
• ClickDesk
• Gist
• BoldChat
• LiveChat
• JivoChat
• Tawk.io
• UserlikeChat
• Zendesk Chat
• LiveAgent
• HelpScout
• Continually

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What are the differentiation strategies?

Your company may be in a competitive market. There may be many companies like yours, which are likely to have plenty of similar products or services. On the one hand, your customers have their wishes, wants and needs, on another – you have your company with your products and services. You may be thinking – how can I get through all the distractions that my customers may have, and become a top product on their mind when they are thinking about a specific need that your products fulfill.

To be able to stand out from the competition, your product or service needs to have at least some distinctive features that will look attractive to a prospective customer. At best, your product needs to be authentic and unique to make the competition irrelevant. Such products have a much higher chance of being noticed by your customers.

Differentiation strategies help you to set your business apart from the competition. The more authentic and unique your products are, the higher are the chances that your customers notice them.

Differentiation strategies help you to select and implement specific ways of how your business, product, or service will be different from the competition.

What is a competitive advantage?

When your products are authentic, they will have a higher chance of success with your customers. The more customers notice your products, the more sales you will achieve. Sales will lead to your company’s prosperity, and with time – will help you get ahead of the competition.

This is precisely what the competitive advantage is – being able to get ahead of the competition.

To achieve a competitive advantage, you need to have all the right ingredients in place. These include:

• Practical and achievable business strategy.
• Products that solve the pains of your customers.
• A sustainable way to manufacture or source your products.
• Effective sales and marketing practices that will help to connect your customers with your products.

These ingredients ensure that you can deliver on your promise to your customers. By themselves, these ingredients do not establish the link between what is on the mind of your customer, and their decision to buy from your company.

Competitive Advantage Example

To achieve that, we need to look at the entire spectrum of their very specific need. For example, if someone is hungry, there is a wide range of choices ranging from high-end restaurants to authentic restaurants from many cultures. On the other side of the spectrum, you have faster foods, such as takeouts, deliveries, and fast-food restaurants. The choice could seem overwhelming, yet the need to eat is straightforward.

Our hungry friend may choose to eat an authentic, healthy salad, and an ABC Healthy Salad Company may immediately jump to their mind. How exactly did it happen? An ABC Health Salad Company made a specific choice to differentiate itself and focus on the healthy salads segment of the food market.

For ABC, it happened because they chose to focus on a specific segment of the market and differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition. Differentiation strategies that they have implemented led to our hungry friend noticing them, and buying from them, and ultimately, many customers later, to a competitive advantage in the healthy eating space.

Without a competitive advantage, your company may be left behind.

Differentiation Strategies to Achieve Competitive Advantage

Let’s now look at what kind of differentiation strategies you can use to become more authentic, more competitive, and ultimately – get ahead of your competitors, and achieve competitive advantage.

1. Selective Approach

The first differentiation strategy – is to have a selective approach. Rather than focusing on all aspects of pain that your customer is experiencing, you can choose just one pain of your target customer segment that you are really good at alleviating or addressing.

And after that, you can show how you are addressing it, and highlight that you are much better at it than your competition.

You can emphasize specific features, characteristics, or components of your product. You can also show how effective is your surgically sharp focus in addressing specific pains that your customers are facing.

Do not forget to publish case studies of your past customers, their testimonials, and success stories that describe how effective you were in addressing their pain points.

2. Progressive Improvement

Another differentiation strategy is if you are offering the same product or service that others do, you can be much better than your competitors in gathering your customers’ feedback and enhancing or tailoring your product or service based on the feedback received.

For example, if you own a boutique pizza shop, the chances are that there may be few other pizza shops on your street. Have you been making a few of the same pizza recipes all along, or have you implemented a consistent way to ask your customers for their feedback?

Have you considered the right incentive for the customers to provide their feedback, for example – an extra topping or a free dip that will cost you very little in the context of the value you will get from your customers’ insights?

If this model doesn’t work for you, how about a giveaway? What may your customers want to win in exchange for the most insightful idea or feedback that could help your company improve?

3. Pricing Differentiation Strategies

There are several pricing differentiation strategies that you can consider. The most obvious strategy is price leadership, which is offering lower prices, and competing based on price leadership.

Give it a thought – would it be possible for you to slightly reduce your product’s price to make it more competitive and make up in volume what you may have lost based on price?

Another approach to product pricing is to offer premium features of the product. Think Lexus (as compared to Toyota), we perceive this brand as being premium, even though the same company is making both the premium product (Lexus) and the mainstream version (Toyota). With the premium product, you can emphasize luxury, premium features, exclusivity, and other advantages of owning your product.

There is also a “blue ocean” strategy which establishes a new market segment “in between” cost leadership, and premium features. Such a market segment will have some premium features, perhaps ones that are most required by the customers for a fraction of the premium product’s cost.

Yet another pricing differentiation strategy is to offer tiered pricing. For example, your products may be priced as follows:
Barebones product: $100
Barebones product with some additional features: $300
Ultra-premium product package: $900

The key is to have a significant jump from the midsize product to ultra-premium. Do you see the jump of $200 between the barebones package, and $600 to the ultra-premium? This is it!

When you have this kind of tiered pricing structure that you show side by side, you can cover different segments of your customers who may require different features of your product, and at the same time – reduce price-related objections. If you had priced your product at $100, a few of your customers would have had objections, or hesitation to spend $100. When they see that the premium version of the same product, with some bells and whistles, costs $900, suddenly the price of the base product looks like a steal.

You may also offer convenient payment terms, or pay as you go options with the ability to cancel at any time. These are also excellent types of pricing differentiation strategies.

4. Product or Service Composition

Your product may become even more distinctive and different based on what goes into your product or service. For example, if you are consulting your clients, you may offer them better research than your competition.

You may also give your customers a better choice. For example, if you are in consulting, and your competition typically comes up with the 3 implementation options and 1 recommendation, you may come up with 5 options, and emphasize that you offer a more comprehensive approach.

Such extra mile will give your client a better understanding of their current state, and the roads that will lead to improvement. You will show your customer more optimal paths about how they can get to where they would want.

You may also want to examine your product’s composition and its features and include some features that may cost you next to nothing while being incredibly important to your customers.

5. Product Distinctiveness

What exactly makes you different from your competition? Does your product have authentic or distinct features, or merely a different packaging or a style of packaging? When looking at your product on the shelf or online, will your customers know right away that the product comes from your company?

For example, if you sell coffee, you may offer it in black bags with bright shapes of objects, such as flowers, animals, places, or landscapes that would differentiate one kind of coffee from another.

6. Product Branding

Yet another differentiation strategy – is with product branding. What kind of branding do you use for your products? How about colors and fonts?

Are you using a very distinctive and unmistakable combination, for example – like Telus – white background and colored pictures of animals?

Are you using very specific images, with consistent post-processing, for example – adding a blue tint to make them appear more distinct?

Does your stationery, or swag (which is your company merchandise given to its clients) have different shapes? Does it come in unique shapes, or perhaps unique colors, such as neon or pastel?

7. Taking Riskier Choices

Your company can also get ahead by taking riskier, less common, or non-mainstream choices or approaches. Don’t just play it safe, and do what everyone else does in your field.

Typically, if your customers have a problem, there is more than one road that leads to the resolution of that problem. Some roads may be shorter; others could be longer. Some roads may be much riskier; others may be nearly risk-free.

If, for example, you are providing services to a financial services industry – the status quo of all the players (both the solution providers and financial service institutions) may be in the risk-averse territory. However, if your client is smaller and has more aggressive growth plans – they may be willing to take riskier choices.

Formulating a product offering highlights if the product can get your customers to their destination faster, perhaps with slightly higher risk exposure.

If you are providing a service, in your option analysis, at least give your customers an option to take the shorter path, and at the same time – show how you will help them along the way to complete that path with the lowest possible consequences.

8. Disrupt the Pattern

You may have a common way in your industry how all competitors are approaching business development, addressing customer problems, or positioning their value proposition. Can you disrupt that, and do something differently?

For example, you may be an investment advisor, and you may feel confident about your abilities to make money in any market condition.

The pattern in your industry may be to meet the client, speak with them for a while about the market, types of investments, levels of risk, and many other factors.

This may be one reason why quite many of the customers are turned off when someone is mentioning that they are a financial advisor. A client could be thinking about the pain of sitting through the meeting, listening to all of that, not as useful information, while all they care for is to see that their money is multiplying.

Under such circumstances, do something differently. For example, tell them that you can take $50 of their money, add to that $50 of your funds, and invest this mini-portfolio over the next few weeks. And after that, you will show them specific results, and even let them keep your contribution if they sign up for your service.

Which other patterns exist in your industry or how your customers are accomplishing what they need in their business or personal lives? Can you approach it from a clean slate, and accomplish things more innovatively, leaving your competition far behind?

9. Buy-in Based on Customers Relating to Who You Are, Your Values, or Your Mission

Your customers may believe in the same thing that you do, and they may have the same values.
Under values – I mean the moral framework of how they see the world, more specifically – what is crucial for them about their choices.

For example, it may be necessary for your client to help or support lower-income families, newcomers, homeless, or any health-related causes. Much the same way, your clients may desire to reduce environmental impacts or have any other values.

Much the same way, your customers may have significant respect for the school that they went to. For example, if you are just starting and see a client who went to the same school as you did – your client may be more inclined to do business with you to support their fellow alumni, even if your competitor may be slightly ahead of you.

Another product differentiation example – a professional services company may mention that they spend 10% of their revenues supporting the homeless and lower-income families.

You may also emphasize that you use environmentally-friendly packaging for your products and the extra mile that your company goes to ensure that your products are organic, ethically sourced, or created without harmful chemicals. This will likely resonate with many potential customers who are conscious about the environment and their health.

10. Quality

For some clients, quality may be a deciding factor in their product purchasing decision. With them, your differentiation strategy could be based on the quality of your product. Alternately, you may also highlight the quality or maturity of your processes, as those will translate into product quality.

That is why some companies are obtaining ISO certification and mentioning that they are ISO certified. For some industries, such as auto parts, specific quality targets are an absolute must. For other industries, such as food distribution, ISO certification may not have as high value in practice but may be perceived by their clients as necessary.

You do not have to go as far as to differentiate your product based on its quality. You can simply highlight a few extra things or an extra mile that your company is making to ensure that your products or services meet or exceed quality targets and quality expectations.

11. Ease of Transaction

You can achieve further differentiation by making the transaction with your customer easier.
Things like unconditional satisfaction guarantee, 30 day no-questions-asked return policy, or Costco-style return policy of 90 days will make the transaction a no-brainer.

Your customers do not want to be “sold” to. They don’t want to be left helpless with the product or service that doesn’t meet their expectations, yet with which they are stuck, and can do nothing.

Quite a few of the customers who purchased $10 item that they no longer need, may spend an hour or two returning it. They may need to drive to a store that is not that close to them, spend some time in the store, speak, or even argue with the manager as the sales staff may not want to accept the return, and driving back to their residence or an office, perhaps spending some time in traffic.

When they want to return an item, they are clearly driven by other factors, not just the recovery of the purchase price. If we look for the transaction on the basis of price, for an hour or couple of hours, they would have spent at least $100 worth of their time. Yet, the amount of the refund would be 1/10th of that cost.

What will be driving your customer towards such a behavior? For example, a customer may think that by refunding an utterly useless item, they make their voice heard. They may also be thinking that they are taking a vote with their wallet of not supporting a company that may create inferior quality products. For some, this may be worth an hour of their time.

If customers are not satisfied with the transaction’s specifics, they may also go the extra mile to punish the company intentionally. They can accomplish this by leaving bad reviews or creating a complaint.

That is why it is crucial to make the transaction easier, almost to being a no-brainer to acquire your product. And most importantly, avoid your customers feeling trapped with the item they don’t need or can’t use.

12. Extended Warranty

Extended warranty, more favorable warranty terms, or even a lifetime warranty, may be other exceptional ways to differentiate your product. Combined with the Ease of Transaction, both differentiation strategies offer customers more peace of mind while acquiring your products.

If something got broken with your product, even if due to the customer’s fault, you may want to send the replacement to them at no extra cost.

Why would you want to do so? With the ever-increasing competition, it is important to look at the cost aspect. How much did it cost you to acquire your customer and nurture the relationship with them to the current level?

Will their mishap (that may have happened due to their fault) with the tiny widget of your product that costs you next to nothing, in fact, cost the entire relationship with that client? Very likely!

Will the client satisfaction increase, nearly exponentially, likely leading to even more purchases, if they receive a replacement of what they have broken while knowing that it was their fault? Almost definitely!

13. Clearly Showing the Benefits

When you show the benefits of your product, it is very important to highlight how its features and characteristics will help address the pain that your customer is experiencing. It is also important to describe the pain using the language that your customer is using.

Many of the companies, even some of your competitors, don’t do a great job highlighting benefits. Sometimes, features of the product are not linked to the pain of the customer that hurts. At other times, there is an emphasis on assuming that customers buy based on their needs rather than their wants. There are many other pitfalls, too, of how my former coaching clients describe the benefits of their products and services.

Take a look at how good of a job your competitors are doing when showing benefits. Can you do a better job? How about much better?

14. Reward Your Customers

If you already have a customer base, reward them for being your customer! You may differentiate on how exactly you are doing it.

Treat your customers royally. By selecting your product, they have given their vote of confidence to your company. And to get that vote from a new customer, and sell to them, will likely be 10 times more difficult than selling to an existing customer, who may already be a vocal advocate of your brand.

Give your customers something to reward them for their loyalty. One of the mainstream ways – are the points that they can accumulate. The more your customers buy, the more points they collect.

You may also want to explore some of the more unique ways of rewarding your customers, such as having a sale of your products that is open only to your existing customers or offering your partner company’s products or services at a discounted price. Likely, your partner will not have objections if quite a few of your customers will acquire their products at a discount.

What else are you doing to reward your customers and prevent them from even thinking about dropping your products, and breaking the product-based relationship with your company?

Are you taking such measures incrementally and strategically? Are these measures resulting in your customers becoming the most reliable and most vocal advocates of your brand, who will passionately argue for their friends and colleagues’ benefits?

15. Leverage Exclusivity

Give your existing or new customers an ability to feel somehow special.

For example, you may offer your existing customers an ability to preview a new product that you are launching as a thank you for their loyalty. You may also wish to emphasize that such an offer is not available to anyone, but they have deep and sincere gratitude for their loyalty.

What kind of unique or interest-based club can you create? Even if you create an email address or a group with the word “VIP,” they will still feel very special.

How can you provide to your customers something that will not be available to them otherwise? Can you offer them a library of solutions, publications, or case studies? Can you offer them some other products that you may be selling at a steep discount? Can you foster and support interactions, collaboration, or networking among your customers that will help them to learn from each other’s mistakes (at the very least – with your product), and as a result – will they have additional benefits?

Customers are paying large sums of money to feel special and exclusive. How can you leverage that in your business?

16. Differentiation Based on Specific Core Competencies

Core competency is what you are really great at. It may be another one of differentiation strategies that you can use.

By virtue of your experience, background, and how you have set up your product or service, what kind of differentiation can you achieve? For example, your company may have spent an extra effort to achieve a faster time to market. As a result of focused measures, you may have achieved incredibly fast turnaround time from the product idea and product composition to product implementation and launch.

If that is, in fact, the case, then you can position your product or service as the link that will take the least amount of time between the present-day realities and pains that they experience, and the target state, when they are happily using your product, and reaping its sizeable benefits.

Do you have really fast customer support, where with the help of technology and outsourcing across several time zones, you have an ability to offer support 24×7?

What are the other competencies that you have? Perhaps, you may take another look at some of the competencies that you may be taking for granted.

17. Offer Your Product or Service In Increments

You do not have to offer your product or service in its entirety. You may want to split it into parts, offer different licensing models, product increments, or the same product with different tiers, or increments of product features.

For example, let’s look at the product differentiation strategy of DropBox (cloud storage provider), and several factors that led to their explosive growth:

• First, Dropbox offered a free tier of service of several gigabytes of free storage.
• Dropbox meticulously highlighted the service benefits – encouraging users to invite their friends, family, acquaintances, and colleges to use their service.
• They have rewarded both the person who extended the invitation, and those invited with the same increment of storage space added for free.