How do you keep your employees safe and happy while also keeping customers satisfied and your business thriving? Here are key guidelines. Many leaders are concerned about workers' "great resignation" in every industry and at every level, from hospitality and restaurant staff to corporate workers still absent from their physical workplaces. In addition, as a result of the current health crisis, employees are reexamining their priorities and leaving jobs that don't meet those needs. However, it's very likely this shift was always meant to happen, given the pace of technological development is reshaping what our workplace looks like. Consider how different work today is from the workplace of 50 years ago. The workplace as we know it is changing beyond the point of return – this isn't the first time and it won't be the last time leadership faces employment crises on a massive scale. As leaders consider the future of work, even as the current health crisis faces escalated threats in the coming months, how do you keep your employees safe and happy while keeping customers satisfied and your business thriving? Based on my nearly 30 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur, here are several guidelines I think will be key: 1. Listen and take care of your people and their families Your employees are the front lines of your business, regardless of sector or industry. Especially in times of crisis or change, focus on taking care of your people first. If you take care of your people, they will take care of your clients, which will take care of your top business needs. For example, Silicon Valley companies created campuses with full amenities to encourage employees to feel at home at the office and stay more focused on work. In the context of the current health crisis, this could mean leaders plan for new in-office resources and safety measures or provide childcare resources for employees who are parents and who may have a more challenging time finding childcare. My team sponsored a vaccination clinic for employees and their families at our office in India when vaccine access was a challenge, and we found that this was extremely effective in uniting and reenergizing our staff. Employee care can mean something different at every company, so survey your teams to get feedback on their current needs, whether it's bonuses, flexible office setups, various technology tools, or more perks. Early surveys and studies show clear generational differentiators that dictate employees' desires for their future workplace. For example, a June survey from The Conference Board found that 55% of millennial workers question the wisdom of returning to the office, a more significant proportion than older generations. A clear trend is emerging: Older employees are excited to get back into the office and return to their familiar routines, keeping work and life in separate spaces. Younger Gen Z employees are also eager to return to the office – they want to learn on the job and be part of the mentorship connections that naturally happen more easily in the workplace. In the middle, the generation of employees in their mid-life and mid-career stages largely relished working from home during the past 18 months. Many are parents of young children who enjoyed the extra time gained from no work commuting. A successful future of work plan should meet the needs of all three of these constituencies. Hybrid work plans, which many (but not all) companies have gravitated towards, can make it easier to meet the needs of each generational group. Yet, each workforce is different and these groups are weighted differently. Think critically about your people and figure out the right balance. 2. Make culture, innovation and community a return-to-work priority It's undeniable that employees have proven themselves to be very productive remotely in many workplaces, and innovation has kept pace. Remote communication tools have made leaps and bounds in the past year and companies were forced to address digitalization plans, whether they were ready or not. Keep that momentum to maintain your culture and high level of innovation in your return-to-office plans and beyond. Human connectivity is essential to keeping your teams engaged and coming back excited about work. Many large companies have internal interest groups, from special industry focus groups to committees to discuss race or gender at the organization or within a specific industry. As a leader, allow cultural moments at your company to happen organically and encourage them to become even bigger with leadership buy-in. When offices reopen, it will be just as important to create space and time for employees to connect — and reconnect. Allow your teams to re-form interpersonal bonds and properly welcome staff that joined your company entirely remotely. These seemingly minor moments of human connection make a significant impact on your team's longevity. 3. Lead with agility "Agility" has been a big buzzword over the past several years, but what does agility mean in the context of evolving corporate cultural trends? Leaders need to approach internal goals and benchmarks with the same speed and intensity as their business goals, and break these goals down into smaller, simultaneously operating chunks. Meet with stakeholders at all levels of your company and define what those goals are. Then, if employees need something, build it for them. If you can't start with agile leadership within your own company, employees will struggle to get on board with pushing for strong agility goals for your customers and clients. In other words: if you don't walk the walk, you can't talk the talk. 4. Be intentional about your future culture Leaders need to be thoughtful about approaching times of change to have the best success at keeping teams — and customers — steadily on board with your company, product or service. Maintaining your team's culture and level of innovation comes easiest when you can bring people back to the office as soon as possible. But first, listen to your people, show you're listening with intentional actions and put people's safety above everything else. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com
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Ryan: Is it cheaper to sign a new customer? Or to keep an existing customer? Dwight: Keep an existing… Michael: [to Dwight] Shut, it. Can I… can I just do it please? [to Ryan] Uh, it’s equal. Ryan: It is ten times more expensive to sign a new customer. Michael: Okay. Yes! It was a trick question. In this classic exchange from The Office, Michael was wrong (as usual). And the figure, according to the Harvard Business Review, is that can even be up to 25 times more expensive to sign a new customer. It’s always in your best interest to earn your customers’ loyalty rather than to focus too much on getting new customers. And it makes perfect sense – when customers come back at a high rate, you don’t need to spend nearly as much on marketing costs. Also, happy customers are more likely to tell their friends or family about your goods or services. It’s quite simple – happy, loyal customers are better for your business. So how do you keep your customers coming back? Well, the first step to retaining your customers is to give them a great first impression. This starts with buying a domain name. Next, follow our 4 tips to keep your customers coming back. 1. Make it easy to work with you A great way to bring customers back again and again is to give them a positive impression the first chance you get. Think of it like a first date – if your first date goes poorly, you probably won’t get a second one, right? First impressions are the same in business. When you first interact with your customers, do everything you can to ensure it’s a positive experience. If it is, they’re much more likely to return. The first experience should be personal, interactive, and most of all easy. People tend to take the path of least resistance – not only in physical spaces such as walking paths but also when navigating user interfaces. If interacting with your brand provides a lot of points of “resistance,” your customers will be much less likely to return. If you conduct business online, your website will likely be your customers’ first experience with your brand. To give your customers a good experience on your website, remember these key considerations:
2. Listen to your customers Another great way to retain customers is to get feedback on what your customers like and dislike about your business. Then, you can do more of the things they like and less of the things they don’t like (duh). There are many customer survey products out there, but you really don’t need to get that fancy. The key is to simply give the customer an easy opportunity to share their feedback with you (whether by email, phone call, or app notification). Making this message personal shows the customer that you care about their feedback and are sincere in using it to improve your products or services. Gathering feedback from customers can also be a good way to keep a touchpoint on your customers by thanking them for their business or informing them of other products, services, or even promotions you’re offering. This leads to number 3. 3. Stay in communications with your customers Look at your existing customers as a major group to focus your marketing efforts. In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with hundreds to thousands of options for where to spend our money. Keeping your brand top of mind for your customers is essential. The best way to do this is through email marketing campaigns, promotions, contests, social media engagement. Another way to stay in your customers’ minds is to produce high-quality content in your industry. This one is overlooked by many companies – but it shouldn’t be! It is a real added value to your customers’ lives (and it’s completely free for them!) Doing these things might not lead directly to sales, but it will keep your customers engaged with your brand, and going to your website to potentially find out about new products or services being offered (or to remember why they purchased from you in the first place). With this tip and every other tip, always remember number 1 – make it easy! Every interaction you have with your customers should be smooth and as easy as pie. 4. Reward your most loyal customers Customers love to feel special, so make them feel special! Make them feel like they’re part of a club, and they’ll keep coming back. Some simple things you can do to reward loyalty:
All of these make your customers feel special – like they’re getting a great deal. And they’ll remember you gave them that feeling. Make Saw.com a Part of Your Customer Retention Plan As discussed above, the first step to retaining your customers is to give them a great first impression. And the best way to do that is to start off with a high-quality, memorable domain name. Get started on your way to keeping your customers happy by making that first step and buying a domain name. Source: https://www.business2community.com
As the leader of a growing business, you might be tempted to set your goals high and hold your employees to meeting them. You and your team likely have a ton of great ideas and are eager to pursue each of them, but aiming too high can actually be detrimental to your business's growth and success. Rather than setting unattainable standards for yourself and your employees, take your time when developing your business and each worker's path to ensure sustainable, measured growth. Below, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared ways to set realistic business goals that will still stretch limitations and build your team’s skills. 1. Review Your Historical Numbers Forecasting is an absolute art. Setting high forecasts that you can’t hit will be demoralizing to your team while setting low forecasts won’t push your team enough. Finding the balance is hard. Historical numbers and growth rates are the best way to get back into reasonable KPIs for your 2022 year. If your revenues have historically grown 30% YoY, but you have recently doubled your sales team, perhaps predicting 60% might be reasonable. No matter what assumptions you use to build your business goals, make sure to let everyone know that KPIs and OKRs must be malleable and should be reviewed quarterly to make sure they’re in line and achievable. - Cooper Harris, Klickly 2. Monitor And Scale Back As Needed Err toward aggressiveness in the beginning, and communicate that to your team. That way, if they hit the original goal, they’ll know they really knocked it out of the park. Monitor progress on the goal over time and scale it back a bit if necessary. That way, your employees will know that you’re aware of the progress toward the goal and are smart enough to know that it needs to be tempered back a bit. That will improve employee growth and they’ll most assuredly reach the secondary goal. - Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance 3. Start With Your Customers’ Needs Referring to your customers' needs is a solid way to set up business goals. Start by looking at your audience's pain points and what you need to offer to solve them. Then make a rational assessment of your skills, resources and the time you need to meet your audience's needs. In this way, you can come up with realistic goals that will keep you on your feet. Also, any business that is customer-focused will never run out of ideas or goals that challenge it. There are always ways to improve your product features, onboarding, communication, customer support and more. Just listen to your customers on social media or ask them directly for what they want using feedback forms. Their feedback and pain points will give you fresh goals that will push you to do better. - Blair Williams, MemberPress 4. Road Map Regularly Regular road mapping is an excellent way to set clear, measurable goals that align your team with your long-term vision and mission. By breaking your road maps down into monthly, quarterly and yearly road maps, you can break lofty goals down into clear steps that can be achieved with the proper resources. In addition, building a road map with key contributors enables you to brainstorm, find and implement the best ideas to reach and exceed your goals. With key contributor buy-in, you're able to ensure your team is on the same page and ready to work toward lofty goals. If the plan isn't working or could be improved, the regular interval road map check-in allows for plenty of room to adjust strategy and keep you on track to reach or exceed your goals. - Fehzan Ali, Adscend Media LLC 5. Break Goals Into Smaller Steps To set realistic business goals that push you in the right direction, it's important to break them down into smaller steps. This makes them more achievable as looking at the end goal can make you feel exhausted and overwhelmed. When creating your goals, it's also crucial to make them as specific as you can. Following SMART goals is an easy way to create specific, measurable goals that help you grow a successful business. - Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms 6. Allow Ownership Over Goals Don't set goals for the sake of setting goals. Goals help give an organization and its workers an aim and direction. They are a good way to improve employee performance and that's that. This means goal setting isn't a completely rigid process. When executing, things change, and goals should account for that. Also, goal setting should involve employees as well. If you hope to develop talent with goal setting, then managers and employees have to be actively involved in setting them. People tend to perform better if they feel ownership of their goals and the means of achieving them. Add to that that individual goals of employees and departments should be aligned to an overarching company goal that helps everyone feel like they and their work matter. It's all about executing at the end of the day. - Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS 7. Understand The Purpose Behind Each Goal What is your purpose in coming up with the goal? Ask yourself who will benefit from the goal. If the goal will benefit just you, check your heart for if the goal can be changed to benefit more people. Come up with goals based on the data you have at the moment and not just wishful thinking. The goals should be realistic and guaranteed to happen and ready for a possible crisis in case of an emergency. They should also be rewarding for everyone and have a bit of riskiness to encourage more people to put their hearts and souls into accomplishing them. At the end of the day, it should be a mix of having unselfish goals and encouraging more people to push their limits to aim for having the best of both worlds. - Daisy Jing, Banish 8. Do A SWOT Analysis Complete a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. This will help you identify your challenges before you start setting goals. When you know your challenges, it’s easier for you to think strategically and come up with realistic goals that can help you solve your problems and overcome your challenges. - Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite Source: https://www.forbes.com
As the last couple months of 2021 approach, it's time to start thinking about how to reach even greater heights next year. One thing that never changes is the fact that having a great plan for your organization is essential. Even after you open your doors, you’ll continue to analyze, tweak and perfect that plan in order to improve operations. With the pandemic creating so much uncertainty, building a plan for 2022 may feel more difficult than in the past. However, there's some good news. Sticking to a few key points will take some of the edge off. 1. Identify your assumptions and biases Most business plans are built around at least a few assumptions. For example, you might assume that you have to follow a specific set of regulations or that you’re the right person to run the organization. One thing I’ve learned in the investment world is that even though cycles repeat, nothing ever goes strictly to plan. What you assumed will happen can be very different from what actually happens. Take a look at your assumptions from the previous year. What held up? What didn’t? More importantly, why didn’t they hold up? If you can answer that question, then you can avoid repeating the same mistakes. If you’ve never built a plan before, then try to identify the biases that could create problems. In either case, give yourself some breathing room and remember that life happens. 2. Look at your results Sometimes, your results are very different from expected. This is not necessarily because you did something right or wrong, but it can be because there are so many moving parts involved. Look at what you ended up with, and let those results give the business some direction. For example, if you find that people bought twice as much of a product as you thought they would — and market conditions and attitudes haven’t changed — then it would make sense to invest more into that product for the upcoming year. Be discerning about what actually caused your results to know whether they’re anomalies or real, long-term trends for the company. But don’t start blind. 3. Create some projections Projections tell people what you’re committed to. For instance, you might say you’re going to spend $500,000 on advertising or $1 million on Project A. That’s very attractive to investors and shareholders who want to know that you know where you’re going. In one of the companies that I started, these kinds of projections helped me find partners. If you’re both honest and bold enough, your projections can mold your circumstances and influence the support you get. Projections also acknowledge foreseen issues and anticipate circumstances to keep you prepared. To demonstrate this point, when I started a small business in the FinTech sector, I didn’t project that I’d need more funding. I didn’t look at what would happen if the stock market really took a dive. I just assumed that everything would work. When venture capitalists asked how it would work financially under different scenarios, I didn’t really have an answer for them. When trouble hit, I had no plan for how to survive and the business went under. If I would have outlined what to do in different scenarios, then I might have been able to keep my doors open. Always look at your best and worst-case scenarios, work with different people across departments, and create projections that paint a realistic picture of the company. Business plans have to be somewhat fluid because both the market and the world change incredibly quickly. Be ready to respond and pivot. You can apply these same three points every time you need to create a plan for your organization. Just start early, define who you are, and make your commitments. The sooner you can clarify your identity and intentions, the faster great things can happen. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com
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