Month: May 2021

Legal Branding

3 Best Practices For Sales Leaders In 2021

It isn’t always easy to guide a sales team and be an effective leader. However, when you have a strong sense of purpose as a leader, you can focus on the things that matter most. 

In many ways, the last year has taught us that you can lead your team by focusing on what is important. When you’re genuine in your leadership, it’s easier to stay on point and help your team focus—in any and every context.

Naturally, to be the best leader, it’s a time to lead by example. There’s never been a more critical time to model behaviors and align your values with your actions.

As you consider how to move forward in 2021, take a look at three core practices for great leadership. Ask and listen. Focus on practical solutions. Communicate with empathy.

Let’s explore these key best practices for aligning your values.

Alignment is something that great leaders focus on doing in daily life. Alignment is not just for a post-pandemic time while developing a new normal. It’s an ongoing process that shapes the way you lead, encourage, and support your teams. 

Ask and Listen

Great leaders are known for asking great questions – and listening closely to the answers. This is the heart of curiosity and expanding the strengths of your team. If you are seeking to get better at asking vs. telling, there’s one thing to do. Practice. 

  • Practice asking open-ended questions.
  • Practice asking and waiting for the person to answer.
  • Practice not finishing other people’s sentences.
  • Practice being curious.
  • Practice having an open mind while listening.

It may take a bit of work, especially if you are used to having all the answers. It can be a challenge if you’re used to commanding and telling. However, when you ask and listen, you’re doing more than meets the eye. You’re building a corporate culture of openness. This is worth its weight in gold. 

So, if you are struggling with how to do this, consider getting personal sales coaching to boost your leadership skills. Don’t waste another moment trying to muscle through this critical skill on your own. 

Focus on Practical and Tactical

When the world is in flux, business-as-usual is also in flux. In the last months, we’ve gotten familiar with things that we always thought were coming – but not yet. We’ve gotten used to remote working, virtual teams, and client interactions in Zoom meetings.

Smart leaders are focusing on the practical and tactical needs of their sales staff. This is a time to nail down the details of how to work in a turbulent environment. As people head back to offices, there are further issues to navigate. 

As a sales leader, focus on the structural processes that help you and your teamwork effectively. Consider holding virtual town-hall-style meetings. Ask your teams for input and suggestions. Find out what people need to stay productive, especially given the pressures of remote work, homeschooling, and care for extended families.

By focusing on practical and tactical needs, your teams can stay grounded, effective, and productive. 

Communicate With Empathy

There’s no question that communication is the key trait for exceptional business leaders. It’s the single thing that helps leaders and teams stay on an even keel. 

If you’re noticing that your teams could use some support, take the time to communicate with care. Show that you understand their struggles and challenges. Make an extra effort to open up your office hours to hear their needs. 

Many leaders find that by having an open-door policy, they can keep in touch with the current and emerging needs of their employees. 

In addition to appreciating and understanding your team’s challenges, focus on your communication style. Look for ways to build trust and strengthen rapport. 

Senior leaders may find that it’s easier to speak candidly in smaller groups. If this rings true for you, find ways to meet with individual team members and leaders. Set up a weekly Zoom meeting to communicate on process issues. 

Final Thoughts

Ask and listen. Focus on practical and tactical. Communicate with empathy. These three areas enable you to align your highest sense of purpose with daily behavior. With these three practices, you can guide, encourage, support, and motivate your teams to exceptional success.

This is a year when you can coach your teams to grow, learn, and thrive. As a sales leader, you develop your leadership coaching skills and transform your sales culture. Here’s to your success!

Digital Branding

Improve Your Sales Without Sacrificing Customer Satisfaction

As we turn the corner from all the challenges of last year, businesses quickly adapt to a newer way of conducting their business operations. 

Those adaptations include offering more and more remote work that decentralizes the office. However, one of the challenges of providing more remote work is the breakdown of inter-office communication and on-the-spot troubleshooting. 

That said, job satisfaction among remote workers reportedly is at near all-time highs, so it’d be wise for team managers to find a way to continue to offer remote work options, whether it’s solely a remote position or in some hybrid form. 

The main complaint that remote workers had was the lack of socialization that they miss from an office environment. Still, overall, respondents claim to be happier and more productive at home than the previous arrangement. 

Improved Sales Doesn’t Guarantee Better Customer Satisfaction

The fact that remote work has a higher level of job satisfaction is not news to any sales team. Most sales teams are out of the office during a workday or week, and popping into the office is a small obligation that the salesforce has in their job roles. 

As businesses look to pivot to include more remote options, improving sales will always be a point of focus. So how does a business entity rethink its business operation while still expanding its brand reach and overall sales?

One thing that shouldn’t be overlooked with a doubling of efforts to expand sales is that improved sales can’t guarantee one thing. Improved sales don’t ensure better customer satisfaction

In fact, just because you’re able to sell more units doesn’t mean you’re building better brand loyalty. Much like a popular band before “making it big,” the idea that as your brand grows, you may be losing early fans to your product. That’s because as you and your business grow, there’s a personal connection lost with customers. 

Too often, increased sales come at the expense of customer satisfaction, and as a business, you need to consider what makes your customer base enjoy your product and what will have them come back again. 

6 Ways To Keep Customers Happy 

To increase customer satisfaction, understand why they want to purchase your product.

  1. Uniqueness: Products that are unique and are identifiers are attractive on a psychological level. Being a part of a tribe is ingrained in us on a biological level, so having a product that a person can attach an identity to is an attractive thing. 
  2. Exclusivity: Everyone wants to feel special. That’s why exclusive offers have such a strong pull on our psyche. 
  3. Flexibility and Ease Of Purchase: People want to buy something the moment they make the decision. A good way to turn off a potential customer is to have a complicated sales system and delay receiving the purchased item. 
  4. Loyalty Programs: Making someone feel that they have value with your business is an excellent way to increase brand loyalty. We know that repeat business is worth more than finding a new customer, so creating a loyalty reward program is a good way to improve customer satisfaction with your brand.
  5. Cost: People want to get a deal on a product that they have an interest in. Sometimes paying a little more for an exclusive product can be an enticement, but in general, the best deal is the most attractive. 
  6. Benefits: Products that offer multiple benefits are most attractive to buyers and improve customer satisfaction significantly if those benefits add value, such as price. 

As we discussed earlier, the purchase speed and the ability to access the product are some of the best ways to improve customer satisfaction with your brand. One way to increase the speed from purchase to delivery of the product is to utilize a fulfillment option. 

If you’re wondering is FBA worth it for your business, consider the benefits that fulfillment options like fulfillment by Amazon offer the small business. 

In an FBA arrangement, you pay a small fee to Amazon to store your brand and type of product. They hold, pick out, pack, and ship for you every time a sale concludes, and the proximity of their FBA warehouse to your client will speed up the process from purchase to the product in hand. The quick delivery time is one of the most advantageous for your brand. 

Additional benefits of utilizing an FBA program are avoiding costly overhead such as lease costs for a warehouse, labor to operate, insurance costs, and shipping costs. These benefits save you money, allowing you to expand on your sales growth without sacrificing speed of delivery to your customers, and that definitely is one of the things that make me happy for it. 

Computer
Digital Branding

Best Software for Streamlined Marketing and Improved Customer Experience

Many factors help determine a company’s brand. However, two stand out: marketing and customer service. The way a business presents itself to consumers when trying to sell a product or service, combined with how that business treats its customers, is a potent mix that highlights its intentions and characteristics.

In order to establish a marketing apparatus and customer service system, modern businesses need software. But not just any kind of software. The following are five different platforms every business needs to have the best marketing and provide the best service to their customers:

CDP

The business world is getting transformed by customer data analytics. In order to amass that data and make sense of it, companies use something known as a customer data platform (CDP.) A CDP is preexisting software designed to help marketers and service personnel improve their operations on a customer-to-customer basis. Harnessing the power of predictive analytics and automation, a CDP assists companies in developing individualized approaches to outreach, assistance, and follow-ups.

CRM

It’s easy to confuse a customer data platform with a customer relationship management tool (CRM), so let’s outline the differences. While both types of technology collect and analyze customer data, the type of data is different. A CRM is a single-source database designed to keep track of customer interactions and automate the sales process. The key distinction is a CRM contains information already known to a company, whereas CDP is a collection of data gathered from outside sources, including CRM.

DMP

A data management platform is designed to organize and execute digital advertising on external marketing platforms. It’s an essential piece of kit for companies with active campaigns on social media, popular websites, and search engine services. Unlike the information accumulated with CDP and CRM, the customer data that goes into DMP is anonymous, making it helpful in detecting consumer trends and habits without getting clouded by individual traits and patterns.

MDM

A master data management platform is an essential tool for IT departments working within massive multichannel companies. With MDM, businesses gather multiple customer identities and synthesize them into a consolidated “golden identity.” The data generated by MDM then gets incorporated into a company’s customer data platform.

MMH

Today’s customers are reached through a multitude of channels and clouds. These include email, text message, social media, and niche. A multichannel marketing hub keeps track of all these outreach efforts. Without MMH, successfully designing and managing marketing campaigns across multiple channels becomes increasingly tricky.

A collaboration of the software mentioned above is key to business success. By amassing a comprehensive suite of marketing and customer experience software, companies are better prepared to handle the complex world of digital sales and e-commerce. At the same time, these platforms prevent businesses from losing sight of the personal connections that remain so crucial for developing long-lasting customer-business relationships.

It’s also essential for readers to know the list above is not comprehensive. Data lakes, digital personalization engines (DPE), and data event distribution platforms (DED) are other standard components of modern marketing and customer service management. Business leaders are encouraged to reach out to consultants and advisory groups to determine the right combination of software to serve their specific needs.

Branding is everything today. But what goes into defining a company’s brand? The two most impressionable factors are marketing and service. One showcases what a business claims to be. The other reveals how they are in the real world. Put them together, and customers can develop an accurate assessment. With this in mind, it’s critical for companies big and small to utilize software to manage these elements as best as possible.

Digital Branding

Tips to Make a Mobile Friendly Website

Do you know that the mobile uses surpassed the desktop users in 2016? Due to the increasing number of the mobile users, Google recently declared they will look for a mobile version of a website for ranking and indexing purpose.

So, your website must need to be mobile friendly in terms of good ranking and user experience. This article will highlight some ways to make your website mobile friendly.

Before making any adjustment check how your website is performing in mobile device. You can use the below tools.

Google Mobile friendliness test tool: – By using this tool you can check your website is mobile friendly or not.

Uptrends: – Check your website’s opening speed in mobile from different location servers by using this tool.

Google Insight Tool: – Use this tool to get deep insights on your website’s mobile performance. And check the recommendation to fix the issues.

Here are the top three tips to make a mobile-friendly website:

1. Make it responsive

 A responsive website always performs well on different resolution screens. It displays the same content and element according to the screen size without breaking the design. In a responsive design, you don’t need to eliminate any part of the website for small devices. So, it’s very important for all web design company when designing the website about the responsiveness of the website on different screen

2. Take care of the CLS factor

If you check your website in Google insight speed test, you will find the time of cumulative layout shift (CLS). For a good user experience in mobile, it should not be more than 0.1 sec. Google has recently included a new ranking factor “core web vital”. CLS is one of the most import part in core web vitals.

CLS actually refers to the visual stability of your content. Sometime you noticed that you click a link but the click not works or the click placed on a wrong position. This is because of moving content when until the page fully loaded.

To fix this issue, don’t allow pop up ads inside content. Another reason can be not allocating the dimension for an image, video or content block to display. 

3. Make website speed your first priority

In 2018 Google announced that they will consider page speed as a ranking signal for mobile search. Also, your bounce rate will be increasing significantly unless the page opens within 3 seconds. So, a fast-opening speed is always important. You should take care of several factors to improve your page opening speed like,

Use of an AMP version: –

AMP stands for accelerated mobile pages. AMP works on several factors on a webpage. In a nutshell, AMP displays a lighter version of a webpage than the original one. Use can use AMP plugin in WordPress to enable this feature.

Compress images and CSS: –

Google encourage webmasters to use the lightest version of image and graphics that are called WEBP or WEBM. You can get the cheaper size of an image without losing the glossiness by using this type of image format. Compressing the CSS or removing the unnecessary CSS codes also improve the speed of a website.

A Good Hosting Plan: –

Nothing will work unless your hosting provides a good speed. Upgrade to a better hosting plan if you didn’t find enough support from their end.

Wrapping Up:

There are more techniques to make your website mobile friendly. You can use plugins like “NitroPack” for your WordPress site to optimize. Because a code level change is always not possible for every sites. Otherwise, you can hand over this task to a reputed company that provides mobile SEO services. Unless your website’s mobile version is not responsive other efforts can be in vain. So, try to fix the issues as soon as possible.