Business Partner Magazine

Tips and advice for entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs

How Much is The Human Factor a Part of Your Business?

by Leave a Comment

Modern tailor working with customerHuman beings are the ultimate computers and represent the best of higher technology and advanced thinking. Everything that is created comes from the mind and/or actions of a human being. The systems that enable our bodies to function. The organs with their complex job specifications. The magnificence of our body parts. The greatness of our minds. This synopsis of our functionality is the basis for the conclusion that the human factor is essential in all areas of growth, productivity and progress.

How much is the human factor a part of your business?

This may appear to be a silly question but the heart of the business is still about people and profits. International trade and commerce or selling a few kilograms of potatoes are ultimately about getting people to purchase your product. They buy from you because they choose to have relations with you. An investor may understand your business plan, respect the rationale of your cash flow projection and visualise the potential of the product.

A thorough investor will also look at the person behind the product because they are also investing in you – the human being. One of the reasons brands such as Louis Vuitton are at the premier end of the buying experience is due to how they interact with the persons who patronise their stores. One is greeted then allowed to casually stroll around the store until help is requested. Prior purchases can be checked on the system and, if required, advice is offered as to future purchases. Excellent product knowledge coupled with professional yet friendly manners are evident from team members and a welcoming atmosphere enhances one’s shopping experience. A gem master specialist such as Living Stones Jewellery (UK) Ltd in Hatton Garden, London has a similar ethos within its corporate culture.

On another note – online shopping is both easy and convenient. It is also generally cost effective and reaches a wider audience. Poor reviews about a customer experience also spread very quickly by social media and often to an even wider audience. Negative publicity can result in reduced sales leading to lower profits or even calls to boycott the brand. There is real competition from similar businesses for the goods/services that you supply. You can distinguish yourself through your customer service.

When product quality and prices are more or less similar; the competitive edge comes from excellent customer service coupled with an overall positive experience. This brings us back to the importance of considering the human factor.

7 ways to enhance the customer experience:

  1. Responding to emails or complaints in a timely manner
  2. Developing a user-friendly website
  3. Training team members in effective communication and how to properly observe and interpret body language
  4. Engaging in cultural sensitivity workshops
  5. Seeing your brand/product or service through the eyes of your clientele
  6. Keeping abreast of global, national and local factors that affect your business
  7. Understanding how your product continues to add value to people’s lives

These suggestions are by no means exhaustive. They merely serve as a catalyst to help you focus on the customer experience in your business. People will pay for experiences and things they value. Price is relative once a value is ascertained. A handbag is a handbag and a gem is a gem. The value to the customer justifies the actual price they are willing to pay.

The positive emotion attached to the buying experience will make customers seek to repeat said experience with your business. This is applicable online and well as in person. A little friendly conversation at the point of sale, a dynamic advertising campaign or emailed updates about new / the same products or services will foster goodwill between your business and your (potential) customers. It’s often the little things that make a big difference. Being mindful of the personal or human factor gives you that extra advantage in this ever competitive business environment.

About the Author

Malik Muhammad was raised and educated in Jamaica, read law in London and is the conceptualiser of The Empowerment Mastery System.

Malik enjoys vegan cooking, quad biking, jazz and yoga. He is an after-dinner speaker, workshop facilitator and convenes international & corporate inspirational seminars.

Malik is the host of online talk show ‘Reasoning Sessions’ and specialises in sharing self-empowerment strategies with diverse and multi-faith audiences.

LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Make Money In Your Sleep With These Passive Income Generation Ideas

by Leave a Comment

Close your eyes and imagine this. You’re in Hawaii enjoying the sea. The sun is up and your bank account has started filling up. How? Because you have created a system, in fact, a couple of systems in place that is making you rich with each passing day.

How is it possible? Well, if you haven’t heard of passive income. Now is the time to read about it and do something about it. The future is near, and there is no room for robots that are just working 9-5 and catering things that are important for their boss.

It is now time to move forward with passive income. A stream of income that can help you make money even in your sleep. If you Google Passive income generation ideas, you’ll be bombarded with lots and lots of results and each result will sound like it is for you.

But, don’t make the mistake of doing whatever feels like good for you without doing some research on it. There are tons of ways in which you can make passive income, and if you are able to be successful in one way, you can try out other ways too.

Before that, you need to gauge the ways in which you can make most of the money. The ways in which you can make a maximum profit without the expense of your energy. Here, Branex – a digital agency from Toronto came up with an exciting infographic that can help you decide which method is the right fit for you.

It is not just about using any one method to earn money. The goal is to choose more than one method and make as much money as you can. Because in the end, it is all about how smart you can be in making the most amount of money with the limited resources you have.

About the Author

Muhammad Osama is a SEO specialist at Branex Canada.

What Is a Sales Opportunity?

by Leave a Comment

“To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.” — Benjamin Franklin

Of course, before you put your gym shoes on, you need to step back and look at your sales process. Does your sales team know what distinguishes sales opportunities from leads? Are they prioritizing their time and channeling their efforts where they get the most returns?

It is important to define what a sales opportunity is. As basic as this sounds, your definition becomes the qualifiers that move people from lead to opportunity. It gives your sales reps guidelines to follow so they can manage their leads consistently with the rest of the team. And, in turn, you get forecasting accuracy and a true picture of where people and accounts are in your sales pipeline.

Leads VS. Sales Opportunities

Simply put, sales opportunities are people or accounts that have been qualified. You’ve called these contacts and talked about their needs. You’ve assessed their fit. They’re in your pipeline and are in touch with you. You feel good about the possibility of closing the deal.

Contrast this with leads. A lead is just a contact that you have minimal information about. It could be a marketing-generated lead, which is inbound and top-of-the-funnel. The contact might have downloaded content or filled out a form. Or, it could be a sales-generated lead, gathered through efforts of your outbound sales team or SDRs.

Communication lies in between. You need to talk to your leads and gather enough information to help you qualify them. Do they share the top characteristics typical of your sales opportunities? Can you justify devoting more of your time and effort to nurturing these leads?

Top Characteristics of Sales Opportunities

“Find your trigger. Find the qualities that make a lead more likely to convert, and focus on those leads.” – Brian Kardon, CMO at Lattice Engines, a B2B cloud applications company.

In time, you will notice similar characteristics that are shared by leads who convert to sales opportunities. Take note of the top three: need, interest, and fit. These characteristics help you come up with an accurate profile of your ideal customer. You can then focus your efforts on nurturing leads that more or less fit into this mold.

Need: This pertains to the common pain points shared by your ideal customers. Your qualified sales opportunities experience a similar problem. The primary motivation to buy is to fix this problem and lessen the pain. Your sales rep’s job is to help identify the pain and frame your product as the best-fit salve.

Interest: Having a need for your product – or a pain point that has to be resolved – is just the start. Need does not always translate to interest. For instance, a start-up might need a CRM software. But, if they’re set on using MS Excel for their client management needs, a CRM system is going to be difficult to sell.

Fit: Here, you need to consider your product and how it fits into your lead’s current business and its capacity. Because, as much as you are able to lessen pain points, a SMB is not a good fit if your product is enterprise-scale. A business with a few hundred bucks to spare will not be able to buy your million dollar solution.

How to Manage Your Sales Opportunities

“It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right.” – Mark Hunter, author, speaker and lead expert at The Sales Hunter

In a lot of ways, the line between closed deals and lost sales depends on how you manage sales opportunities. Here are some things to consider:

  1. Accurately qualify your leads: There may be cases wherein you promote your leads to sales opportunities prematurely. It could be that the lead needs further nurturing, and is not yet sales-ready. When you inaccurately qualify your leads, you end up devoting your efforts on opportunities that take longer to close.
  1. Know your buyer: It takes trust and rapport when you want to develop business relationships with your sales opportunities. To get to this point, you need to know your prospective buyer like the back of your hand. So, do the groundwork and understand your prospect’s business, their buying processes, needs/ motivations and the decision-making team, among other aspects.
  1. Know your prospect’s obstacles to buying: There are always perceived risks when buying a product or solution. Understand what might keep a prospect from making a purchase and address these issues.
  1. Track the deal’s progress: Once a lead becomes an opportunity, it becomes more important to track deal milestones, instead of monitoring activity levels. A prospect’s time on your website, their downloads and all that are still good indicators of interest. However, you need to focus more on where they are in the decision-making process and their requirements to move this process along.
  1. Don’t be afraid to disqualify: Not all sales opportunities move to the next stage. Some of them become lost opportunities due to something that you discover as you engage with them. When this happens, don’t be afraid to disqualify. This is ultimately better than devoting your time to opportunities you can’t close.

This article first appeared on Tenfold

Other articles you might like:

6 Sales and Marketing Tips & Ideas to Grow Your Business

7 Useful Tips for Developing Your Sales and Marketing Strategy

What Is the Meaning Of Pipeline in Sales and Marketing

How to Identify a Gap in your Market

by Leave a Comment

business man drawing pie chart

Spotting a gap in the market gives budding entrepreneurs the opportunity to be innovative, which is necessary for business success and growth. Unfortunately, one great business idea isn’t enough to rival the competition, and so companies are forced to continue innovating to adapt in fast-paced industries.

When identifying a potential business idea, it’s beneficial to explore foreign markets to see what types of business models are thriving overseas. Looking beyond your own surroundings and learning about alternative industries, that perhaps haven’t emerged in your area yet can spark inspiration and creativity.  A great example of how manipulating external markets can fuel a great business idea is price comparison website Compare and Choose.

The company’s founder, Alan Lynch, launched the website whilst living in Australia, after noticing an uplift in comparison sites in the UK. He tells us:

“Whilst the comparison market was not mature in Australia when I set up Compare & Choose, I was initially planning on focusing on car hire, however, I knew that this industry was saturated. Identifying this, I realised that confining the company to one niche would limit the market, so I set out to compare everything from campervan hire prices, to insurance policies. Since the launch of Compare and Choose 4 years ago, it has grown to operate on a global scale. 12 months ago, we set up the UK site which is already impacting the market.”

Launching the site in a less-competitive market and gradually expanding into populated locations, like the UK, has ensured continuous growth. Whilst Compare and Choose doesn’t operate with an entirely unique business model, by placing a slight tweak on an already strong market, the company’s founder has successfully answered the demand for a ‘one stop shop’ comparison site. Whilst Compare and Choose is still in its infancy, the business is seeing consistent growth and continues to break into new industries, having most recently added a hotel comparison to their rising bank of tools.

Many companies respond to what’s trending to fuel new ventures, as keeping an eye on what’s relevant is key to innovation. If you approach a new market, whilst it’s fresh, you have potential to reach-out to customers at the right time, which is likely to improve engagement and brand loyalty – a critical part of business growth.

Answering to the demand of the market is something that young entrepreneur Stuart Bramley knows all too well. When working in a gym, whilst studying, Stu noticed an overwhelming lack of style amongst members. With a goal to bridge the gap between workout-wear and leisure-wear, UP Clothing was born. Stuart says:

“When I first set-up UP Clothing, I designed contemporary ‘street style’ clothing at a lower price point. However, after receiving customer reviews, it was apparent that this was not in keeping with our consumer values. Taking this on board, we rebranded the company to reflect the ideals of the market. We now offer contemporary designs using high quality materials and put performance at the forefront.”

UP Clothing offers a perfect example of how companies must continue to adapt to the needs of the consumer, even after pin-pointing a first-class business idea. Listening to customer feedback can help you to better your product, or service offering. And what’s more this feedback can often help you to develop new business ideas, to expand your company. Regardless of whether you are looking to launch a new business, or to grow your current venture, identifying a gap in the market is essential to ensure success.

How Airtrack Factory Can Boost Your Earnings as a Personal Trainer

by Leave a Comment

You’ve started your new career as a personal trainer. You have completed the training, written your business plan and transitioned from full time employed to self-employed. According to your plan, you should have more money and more time to spend with your loved ones.

However, as you have probably discovered, working as a personal trainer is not always plain sailing. Getting a steady flow of customers is easier said than done. Once everyone has given up on their New Year’s resolutions or shed a few pounds for their holidays, it can be excruciatingly quiet, leaving you struggling to meet your monthly bills and to fill your time. Or perhaps, everyone expects you to help them for free or to pay ‘mates rates’.

Whatever you expected, you didn’t expect it to be this hard! Don’t give up yet!

The following tips provide suggestions for additional services you can offer as a personal trainer whilst building your list of regular paying clients. It also demonstrates how airtrack factory products can help you to do so.

Tumble Tots

Parents are always looking for ways to entertain their children and develop their motor skills.  Use your skills to work with toddlers to develop body awareness and increase coordination. Equipment such as the airtrack factory inflatable gym mat makes it easy to take your service from one location to another.

Kids Clubs

Offer activities to children after school or during the school holidays and encourage them to get fit. There has been a huge surge in the interest in “Parkour” as seen in the spectacular chase scenes in movies such as The Bourne Legacy and Casino Royale. Parkour offers a full body workout and involves jumping, swinging, running and climbing. The airtrack factory slip and slide allows you to minimize impact when teaching the basic gymnastic tumbles, jumps, and somersaults.

Exercise Sessions for Senior Citizens

There are so many benefits to keeping fit in later life. With a growing elderly population, you will not have a lack of clients.  Walking clubs, Yoga, Tai Chi or seated exercise clubs offer gentle muscle strengthening activities whilst also boosting flexibility.

The above are just a few suggestions to diversify your activities and to help provide a steady stream of income.  Take some time to research further activities that you could offer as a personal trainer. Airtrack factory US will be able to provide you with many inflatable products that are portable and can be used in multiple locations.