Contributed Post | Mike McRitchie | Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer | Telecom Marketing Content Writer

Why No Health & Safety Will Sink Your Business Strategy

May 21, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

When planning new business strategies, many small company or startup owners have a tendency to focus on the glamorous parts. It’s easy to see why. After all, when you are dreaming big it’s not hard to get too carried away, and there will be many areas of your strategy that you will leave to one side. However, there is one particular area that you simply cannot afford to ignore. Yes, that’s right – it’s everyone’s least favorite subject: health and safety.

Like it or not, health, safety, and employee wellness can have massive ramifications for your business outcomes. And in this guide, we’re going to explore some of the many ways that ignoring this particular challenge when developing your strategy and setting out your goals. Let’s get started right away with some of the basics.

It’s the law

OK, so everyone knows that businesses have a responsibility to provide a safe and healthy workplace for their employees, right? Well, you would certainly think so, but there are a surprising number of companies that seem to forget. Sure, it’s a big obligation and when you are just starting out with a new business idea, it’s easy to be negative about the costs. But when compared to the costs of compensation claims by employees, they soon pale into insignificance. If you want to remember about health and safety, just remind yourself that employers are paying almost $1 million every single week to workers. And the vast majority of those payments are wholly unnecessary if you follow the law and regulations.

People die

If the money doesn’t help you smell the health and safety coffee, perhaps your good nature will. According to statistics, there are 8,000 workplace accidents every single day in America. And even more tragically, there is an average of 18 deaths every day, as well. If you haven’t covered your responsibilities and made sure you have the relevant health and safety processes in place, you could end up with one of these many tragedies occurring on your premises – and pick up the compensation bill, too.

It can destroy everything

Pretty much every workplace you will ever visit is packed to the brim with flammable equipment and materials. Sure, in the event of a fire, business insurance might pay out, but if you are found to be negligent and at fault – it’s your responsibility as the owner, remember – then you won’t get a dime. So ensure you have regular fire drills. Learn more about the different fire sprinkler systems you can get and choose one that best fits your business. And make sure everyone is aware of how they should be handling dangerous substances or hazardous equipment. Never mind your business strategy – all it takes is for a loose health and safety policy to encourage bad behaviors, and your entire business could be up in flames within minutes.

It’s expensive

As we have already established, plenty of business owners are sued on a regular basis for failing to take on their health and safety responsibilities properly. And given that money is likely the driving force behind almost everything in your business strategy, it’s not hard to see how it will have a negative impact. If all of your profits end up going to an injured worker, where will you find the money to fund your growth? Many businesses – especially smaller ones – can even go out of business completely due to the enormous costs involved.

It’s not a good look

Your business strategy will also include many ideas for marketing your company. But if you are found guilty of carelessness or failure to look after your staff in the right way, you might as well rip it up and start again. A serious accident in the workplace or proof of an unsafe environment are both PR disasters, and no matter what industry you are in, there will be a long history of companies just like yours who have felt the effects when bad news gets out and their ideal market abandons them for a health and safety conscious competitor.

It’s unproductive

It’s not just employee accidents you need to watch out for as a business owner – it’s also employee health. Lack of care in the wellness department can leave your strategy plans in tatters. Employees who get sick all the time take days off, meaning you will miss deadlines and never seem to hit your time goals. If you don’t maintain a safe and healthy workplace environment, your employees will feel like they are a means to an end rather than part of a team – which has a direct impact on their morale and productivity. And finally, someone who is worried about being hurt or picking up an illness at work just isn’t going to put their heart and soul into the job.

It’s terrible for recruitment

If you run a hazardous ship, do you really expect your employees to keep it to themselves? Word gets around pretty fast in the bars and clubs where workers go for drinks at the end of the week. And guess what? You will soon be subject to all kinds of stories if you don’t take your health and safety seriously. Word will spread – it’s that simple. And if your strategy is reliant on filling available roles with the very best people, it’s going to be difficult to achieve if your reputation goes against you.

It’s a big mistake

It’s easy to understand why so many small businesses and startups don’t think about health and safety in terms of strategy. When you are starting out by yourself or with two or three others, it’s OK to assume that everyone will look after themselves. But if you don’t include health and safety in your plan now, when will you? The reality is that putting a focus on safety right from the very start will mean you begin as you mean to go on.

As you can see, it’s a no-brainer that health and safety should be an integral part of your business strategy. And if it isn’t, you are opening yourself up to multiple problems that could ruin everything in one fell swoop.

Account Based Selling And Sales Incentive

May 20, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Marketing and sales are not one in the same but they operate in complete tandem. Or so you would think so. The general thinking behind the marketing tactics was to get to the customer first, bombard them with as many things they might like as possible, all running on the keywords they searched for. Now fast forward to the modern era in 2018, you now have to make the customer feel like what they really are, an individual. How do you expect to grab their attention when they can easily sense that the advertisement and sales pitch they experience is basically a copy and paste? And here lies the ultimate battle that businesses have to fight non-stop, how can you reach out and make an impact in the quickest and most efficient way possible? Technology has risen to a point where account based selling is now more effective than ever. It’s by no means a new concept, but since more B2B customers are willing to share their information, sales teams can better target individuals that present a higher chance of responding more positively.

Selecting the right leads

Account based selling is all about personalizing the approach to the accounts that you have. For a business to intrigue another business, it’s no good relying on the overall big machine to respond so effectively. Rather than target leads that apparently show no interest in your business, reach out to the staff who run the business and who do offer you their interest. The issue for B2B marketing and sales is that even though you have the right kind of people in your database, they won’t all be interested in you. Selectively targeting leads by using specific linguistic knowledge about their industry and aims of their company, is how you convert them to customers. Picking the right accounts is what account based marketing is all about. Don’t waste time and resources with a broad approach, personalize the experience and target customers on your database that crop up in your analytics the most often.

Sales compensation

The incentive of compensation

Accounts based marketing is always going to require more effort on your part. The rewards are great so it’s worth the effort and plus, you’ll be laying down the foundation for a much stronger B2B relationship. However, give your sales team an incentive such as seller’s compensation. As Jozef Opdeweegh explains, “The success of the sales team should not only be measured in terms of new revenue but should also hinge on the profitability of the sale, the overall customer retention levels, and the Net Promoter Score.” The retention of the customer is almost always pegged to who they speak to and how well their conversation went. Top sales teams need to be given a push to go the extra mile, log more data, speak to more customers for longer and gather as many good leads from the ever-growing database as possible. And what better way to motivate someone than paying them more for going above and beyond their set targets?

Some of the best techniques in the B2B marketing world are ones that treat the person of the account like a human being and not a profile on the database. Target leads through a personalized approach and use the linguistics of their industry to understand their company determinations.

Efficiency In The Office: How To Get It Done

May 18, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

There are hundreds of different ways that you can run an office and there are a hundred different pieces to the puzzle of the office itself. You’ve got to work out a balance between the supplies that you use and the frequency that you order them, dealing with suppliers and vendors and managing payroll. There are a lot of organizational plates that you will be spinning when you run your own office and while you’re balancing them all, you have to run the office, too. It’s busy, it’s stressful and that’s life for the business entrepreneur.

Keeping your office running as smoothly as possible is vital to the success of your company and the continued good use of your office budget. You see, if your business is running smoothly, you are smoothing out the inefficient processes and making your budget healthier all at once. Below, you’ll find some great tips on making your office efficient and streamlined.

Keep your office running smoothly

Be Organized. It takes time as a new business to get organised, but it’s something that you are more than able to do. Make sure that you take the time to get everything into order quickly when you move into your office, so that you can cut out the time it would take searching for pieces of equipment. You can avoid clutter this way, and you should ensure that your employees know all the ways to keep things organised, too.

Self-Sufficiency. Where you can, get your staff involved in being as self-sufficient as possible. You have to manage the office but that doesn’t mean micromanaging your people. Everyone should be picking up after themselves where possible and you should be overseeing this, not making it your priority to clean.

Go Green. Reducing waste in your office is far easier when you use companies like www.papersave.com to convert your paper documents into an online management system. The less paper you use, the less money you spend on stationery and the less time that you spend trying to manage folders and files. Not only are you saving money you’re saving the environment, and that is nobility for you!

Be Positive. Office management isn’t easy, even when you have experience at it. You can bring on an entirely new person to manage your office for you if you aren’t confident in your abilities to do so yourself, but more than anything, you need to remain positive. Positivity breeds excitement and motivation instead of stress and tension.

Automate. A great way to streamline your processes is to learn how to automate all your functions. Email alerts, social media posts and recurring supply orders for your products are all going to be far easier to manage when the computer is doing it for you. Don’t waste your time with these processes if you don’t have to; you have a profit to make.

There’s nothing like having an office that is running smoothly and falling into place. It makes your business feel good, and when your business is booming, so are you.

What’s Letting Your Business Down Right Now?

May 18, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

When you know that you’re business is struggling, it can be tough. During this period, you’ll often find that you tend to do one of two things. You’ll either dwell on it and find yourself struggling to cope, or you’ll find that you just stay in denial and don’t tend to do something about it at all. But both options don’t really do you any good. Instead, when you kind of realize that you’re not doing as well as you want to, you need to take action. If you don’t do anything at all, you will fail. It’s as simple as that. The best thing is, that no matter what kind of position you’re in now, you can turn things around. But to do that, you have to work out where the issues lie.

1) Lack Of Direction

First of all, you may find that you’ve just lost your sense of direction. And this happens. Sometimes, you get to a point where you’re doing okay, but then you don’t know where you need to go next. And it’s this stage that lets you down the most. Because you can’t always see what you need to do to move forward, so you stagnate. So, when this happens, you have to strip everything back and think about why you’re doing what you’re doing. The next point can help you here too.

2) Inability To Listen

Next up, if you’re someone that isn’t listening to your customers, you’re definitely going to struggle. You will find it hard to be able to move forward or create any kind of engagement, because you’re just not giving your audience what they want. You have to really listen to their needs in order to grow. If you are someone that lost direction, listening to your audience can also help to get you back on track.

3) Non-Existent Branding

From here, if you don’t have a brand in place, this is going to affect you. It’s important that you’re able to come up with some branding that will allow you to look professional, and showcase what your business stands for. When you have strong branding, you can often connect with your customers easily and you’ll find that your marketing is reinforced too.

4) Lack Of Organization

So next, you may find that you’re just not organized enough. If you’re struggling to stay organized, you need to get software, like Strategy Overview, that can take care of that for you. The more organized you are, the better your business will be able to perform.

5) Insufficient Funds

And finally, a huge issue that can affect a lot of people is not having enough money to do what you want to moving forward. Sometimes, this is a huge issue. But it doesn’t have to be anything that really stops you. Instead, you just need to be a lot more aggressive about how you take action. You’ll need to find an investor to overcome this, and if you have a great idea, then you should be able to secure the funding you need to find success.

Why You Need Your Opposites To Help You Succeed

May 18, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Hiring Complementary Staff

When you first start out in business, you’ll often do so alone. And that’s often the best way to get started. It’s just you and your ideas and you’re excited to make waves with what you’re doing. However, before long, you’re going to realize that you can’t do everything alone. As you start to grow, you will find that you need to bring in some support. But as you do this, if you’re new to hiring, you may find that you start to look for people that you either like, or that you’re similar too. Because that’s the thing with looking for staff, you’ll often have a personal interest in the process. But what you need to do is the complete opposite of what you think you should. If you’re creative, you won’t always need more creatives around you. Instead you’ll want to find people that are strategic, and vice versa. And here’s why…

You Can’t Do It All

First of all, you have to realize that you just can’t do it all. You’ll think that you can, or you’ll want to (particularly if you’re a type A), but you just can’t. Not if you want to grow. You need to make sure that you’re focusing on the things that you can do, and then bring in others to take on other areas.

You Need To Play To Your Strengths

As you start to realize that you just can’t do it all, then you need to focus on the things that you can do. If you’re great with marketing or sales or networking, then do that. If you love strategy and finance, do that. You need to focus on your own strengths, and this has to be something quite narrow, because at the same time, you need to push the business forward.

It’s Better To Let The Experts Lead The Way

So, when you’re focusing on your own stuff, you then need to bring in experts to take on the stuff that you’re not so great at. And these are your opposites. Whether that’s strategic technology consulting or financial experts, you bring them in and let them influence what you’re doing with their skills and experience. On the flip side, if you’re strategic, then you can hire in the creatives to do their thing.

You Need To Absorb Fresh Ideas

One thing to really note is that if you’re working on everything yourself or with like-minded people, you’re really limited. So, by working with your opposites, you get to bring in some really different and exciting ideas. And yes, they’re going to be fresh.

It Pays To Surround Yourself With Smarter People

And finally, you need to make sure that you’re always working with people that are smarter than you are. Don’t just hire interns or people that you can educate, because they’re not always going to bring anything to the table. Instead, when you hire people smarter than you, they are going to really add value. And this is how you’re going to really push things forward.