Technographic data plays a key role in the success of any business. It’s among the essential technologies and tools companies should use for better operations and more effective processes. A great example of technographic data is the infrastructure and network tools they’re using to the applications they prefer and the adoption rate of these applications at scale. Technographics can include information about how and when your customers use a certain technology. Technographic data provides insights into the tools prospects use, what the purpose of their use is, how long they’ve used this technology, and other aspects. What is technographic data Technographic data is information that describes how certain technologies are used, what challenges they may cause businesses, and others. Technographics, which is the combination of “technology” and “demographics”, is the analysis of the technologies that a business uses and its ability in buying new technology. Technographics contain insights about the technology stack of your potential customers and how they use their technology. Without technographics, you have no insights into how the company operates, how it makes certain purchase decisions, etc. 71% of organizations say that closing more deals is their main priority. Implementing technographic data is very important, as it positively impacts lead generation and customer success activities. There’s a clear distinction between technographic data and social technographics segments. Technographic data is about the use of software, networking technologies, and hardware within the company. And the main focus of social technographic data is the company’s consumption and use of social media. It’s useful for a company’s marketing efforts. But it’s important to note that social technographic data as technographic data used for B2B marketing efforts. What is a technographic profile Technographic data offers companies useful insights into their target audience. A technographic profile is a summary of their technology usage. It can be a profile of an individual or a company. And understanding a technographic profile is key to learning more about their buying habits. When it comes to an individual’s technographic profile, there are six different types of profiles. These are also thought of as a ladder, from least to most active. The individual technographic profiles include:
Technographics data is very beneficial for tech companies and B2B SaaS companies. Technology characteristics are helpful for identifying ideal leads for companies like these. A company’s technographic profile is not about online engagement. It’s mostly about businesses’ hardware and software use. Importance of technographic data Technographic data provides valuable insights into how companies use technology. When you combine this data with marketing and sales activities, it offers useful insights to boost conversion rates. Here are some of the most important benefits of technographic data:
Technographics complement firmographic data and help companies better estimate customers’ will to buy technology. Conclusion Technographic data gives an overview of the technological stacks of a particular company. It helps companies to better understand their customers and assess more sales opportunities. Technographics is a market segmentation tool that can boost your lead generation by providing insights into customers’ buying and selling habits. Companies use technographic data to alight their marketing strategies and plans with their target customers. Source: https://www.finsmes.com/
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Operational efficiency doesn’t guarantee success in business. Nothing does. As an entrepreneur, you already know this — whether by direct experience or indirect observation. Efficiency can tilt the odds in your favor though. Take two otherwise identical businesses with only one difference — operational efficiency — and you can predict far better than chance which will be in better shape five years out. Efficiency is especially important in the earliest stages of your business’s life. When you have little or no revenue and you feel like you’re doing everything yourself (or actually are doing everything yourself), you literally don’t have a minute or dollar to spare. These seven tactics work well for entrepreneurs like you. Each offers a clear efficiency-enhancing proposition, whether it’s enabling faster scaling through effective bulk purchasing or automating key tasks that don’t by themselves generate any revenue. Implement them, stick with them, and chances are good you’ll find yourself in a better position than you’d hoped. 1. Begin Working With a Reliable Wholesale Platform Early On Forging relationships with makers is time-consuming work. As soon as you’re able, transition to a reliable wholesale platform that makes it easier to find and source from the brands you love. Choose a provider that understands the needs of emerging retailers. Let’s say you sell women’s clothing online or in-store. Choosing a women’s wholesale apparel platform with free returns ensures you can try out inventory before committing. Also, look for platforms with payment terms that work with your business’s cash flow. 2. Keep Your Physical Footprint Lean If your team can do its job remotely just as well as it can (or better) in a central location, why bother with a permanent office space? You’ll avoid the overhead costs associated with leasing and maintaining your own office, not to mention the competitive disadvantage of a long-term lease. If you do need some physical space for your back-office teams, look to coworking or professional flex space to serve those needs without locking in a long-term lease. Otherwise, keep your storefront and warehouse posture lean, adding space only as necessary to sustain your growth. 3. Use Contract Labor When Possible and Practical, But Don’t Sacrifice Quality Work The idea of using contractors for everything is appealing, but it comes at the potential cost of quality, on-deadline work. A good rule of thumb is to outsource work to contractors when it’s clear that they’re going to do a better job at it than you and when you can’t get it done faster. For smaller startups, this often means important but non-core functions like HR, accounting, website design, and copywriting. You do need to hire employees; you can’t run your business as a sole proprietor forever. But do so deliberately and only as mission-critical needs arise that you can’t address on your own or with reliable contract labor. 4. Automate Employee and Contractor Onboarding Your employee and contractor onboarding process should be as friction-free as possible. That ensures the relationship gets off to a good start and doesn’t bog your team down with logistics that don’t directly produce revenue. On the contractor side, using a digital platform that matches businesses with contract labor is the obvious solution. The platform handles most of the heavy lifting so you can focus on the work. On the employee side, HR automation is the key. Use a human resources program that handles all the dull legalities digitally and securely, keeping email back-and-forth to a minimum and eliminating physical paper from the equation. 5. Automate Your Marketing Operation (And Control Your Spend) Your digital marketing operation needs to be low-friction as well. You’re probably aware that you can automate email marketing pretty efficiently, but you’ll also want to make sure you and your team need to pay as little attention as possible to your paid search and social marketing too. Automated marketing channels can quickly sap your budget if you’re not careful. Be sure to set a maximum monthly spending range (with a hard cap that you try to avoid hiding) to keep costs in check. 6. Develop Social Proof Through Local Word-of-Mouth Networks and Organic Social Media Marketing One way to make your marketing more efficient while controlling costs (the definition of cost-effectiveness) is to work on developing social proof through real-world word-of-mouth networks and online social media communities. You shouldn’t have to spend a fortune to get would-be customers to trust your brand. That should come naturally as you deliver actionable, informative content to them and cultivate a brand image that sells itself. 7. Answer to No One You Can’t Trust Is bootstrapping (self-funding) really the most efficient way to launch and scale a business? Self-funding does have obvious trade-offs and could limit your ability to scale as quickly as you’d like. But it has some undersold advantages as well. Perhaps most importantly, self-funding is the only way to ensure you don’t have to answer to anyone you can’t trust, be it a bank or venture capital firm. Eventually, you’ll need to accept outside investment, but why not bootstrap as long as you can until then? Duplicate Yourself, Not Your Effort It's been said before but always bears repeating. As an early-stage entrepreneur, you can’t afford to waste any effort. These seven strategies to start and scale a business more efficiently will reduce the amount of effort you waste as a new business owner. They’ll help you avoid costly duplication of effort and instead allow you to duplicate your company’s most precious resource: you. You have to follow through for these strategies to pay off though. You really do need to keep your physical footprint lean for longer than you’d like. You have to be comfortable automating business processes that aren’t part of your core value proposition. You need to leverage low-cost marketing tactics like word-of-mouth and organic social media even if they don’t come naturally. Do these things and you’ll find yourself several steps ahead of your competitors. And don’t wait; those competitors certainly aren’t. Source: https://smallbiztrends.com/ Image: Depositphotos
You may have heard about the recent Amazon docuseries titled LuLaRich, a clever twist on the brand name at the center of heated controversy: LuLaRoe. The company grew to an estimated net worth of $2 billion by selling "buttery soft" leggings largely via social media and through the controversial multi-level marketing (MLM) model. Many businesses struggle to make good decisions, and scaling any company poses challenges. Rapid growth can cause things to break down, such as backend processes and reputation management, but according to the docuseries, LuLaRoe made many poor decisions in a short amount of time. While fashion retailing and dietetics don't have much in common, the docuseries got me thinking about how online business owners in the food and nutrition space must take inventory of and reevaluate their current practices. Here are the main reflections I took from the series. 1. Define your ideal client. Successful businesses are well defined and differentiated. The first step all businesses must master is defining their ideal client and developing a sound marketing strategy to reach them. For better or worse, LuLaRoe did this exceptionally well. Since their target audience was stay-at-home moms, they leveraged Facebook to socially recruit people and sell. With a well-defined target market, LuLaRoe's profits soared — until things got a bit moldy. Literally. 2. As your company grows, revisit your brand image. In LuLaRich, getting weight loss surgery sounded like a common practice. This is a clear, harmful stance to take for many reasons. For decades, companies have been sued for discriminating against and fat-shaming staff. In the nutrition world, this practice has unfortunately been carried out all over — from famous registered dietitians to private practices. Being mindful of diversity, equity and inclusion practices can help your business make sound decisions and serve as a role model for staff and clients. As an entrepreneur, you get to define your brand image. 3. Traditional recruiting methods are being replaced with social media. LuLaRoe nailed social media recruiting by getting people excited about products, friendship and selling the "dream of financial freedom" via Facebook Live sessions. LuLaRoe put time and effort into recruiting teams with a social media funnel to get people to pay $5,000 upfront to become a retailer. They added urgency by creating a waitlist and making some women so excited that they left their bachelorette parties to take the call confirming they got a slot to become a seller. While LuLaRoe ultimately used these tactics to defraud thousands of women, adopting a similar strategy for your legitimate business works. By increasing visibility via social media consistently, dietitians become seen and heard. Simply showing up on Instagram landed me 1K followers within weeks of using the platform. 4. Develop necessary leadership skills but don't be afraid to ask for help. Scaling a company requires leadership acumen, meaning the business owner must sharpen their skills and learn how to listen. Some of the best ways to develop leadership skills include networking and asking for help. When lawsuits came into play, it was clear LuLaRoe lacked an advisory board or any outside help with coaching or consulting. Narcissistic leaders are known to not prioritize ethics or seek outside help. This mindset can create a toxic environment because when you're going somewhere in business that you have never been before (with billions of dollars at stake), you need to seek help from someone who has been down this path before. As dietitians in private practice, checking in with your leadership skills, asking for help and taking responsibility will support the mission and vision you stand behind. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) has standards of practice with ethics, and you must create your own version to follow in your online business. 5. Budget budget budget. In the series, the person in charge of LuLaRoe's marketing (who was also one of the founders' family members) said he had no budget to coordinate events that brought in big names like Kelly Clarkson. Healthy businesses have budgets for departments such as marketing and staff, and team members must follow the checks and balances to manage cash flows and projections. Dietitians often feel scared of numbers. After all, in school, we learned about the Krebs cycle, not the sales cycle. Now is the time for dietitian business owners to take charge of their budgets, read their balance sheets thoroughly and learn what profit margins mean. 6. Develop and implement the right processes. As a company gets more clients, the staff needs to continue developing key processes and following them to get a company set up to scale. In the series, when the office administrator talked about how everyone plugged away responding to a quota of tickets, he did not mention if they followed any specific process with customer service or if they received any guidance on how to respond to customers or internal staff. Dietitians have the opportunity to document and manage their processes or hire staff to manage them. Thus, dietitians can steer their online business in the direction they choose in order to serve thousands of clients a year. 7. Weigh your business decisions carefully. Despite over 50 lawsuits, LuLaRoe is still in operation. While LuLaRoe has somehow managed to survive, "cancel culture" is a real possibility for many businesses. When leveraging the power of social media, dietitians must be aware of how their brand values and virtual presence impact society. There is a huge divide among different nutritional philosophies and belief systems, largely because nutrition is such a personal topic. Always be conscious of how your message is coming across to your audience. As dietitians, when reflecting on our brand, keep in mind that helping more people involves developing a clear social media strategy. Most dietitians are familiar with AND's ethics and are aware their credentials can be removed if they no longer follow guidelines from the Commission on Dietetic Registration, the governing body for dietitians, but learning how to become differentiated is new for most. We have the chance to shape how we want our businesses to look and feel and the impact we want to make as the top experts in the space of food and nutrition — don't let it go to waste. Source: https://www.forbes.com/ Image credit: Getty
If you or your employees exhibit toxic personality traits like procrastination, micromanagement, or knowledge hoarding, your business could suffer. Let me set expectations right now: this isn’t a quiz you can take to find out what TV show or movie character you are. And no, it’s not an article that’ll help you find out why your relationships are going wrong. Here’s what it is: a business article. Because, hey, business is full of different personalities working together. And if you’re a business owner, you don’t want certain toxic personality traits to turn away employees, customers, investors, and other owners. I’m not here to judge personalities. But what I am here to do is share what I’ve seen work and not work from business leaders and co-workers. Toxic personality traits in business If you or your employees have any of the following personality traits, you could be costing your business time and money. Not to mention, these toxic traits could increase employee turnover or customer churn and risk investment opportunities. There are many different toxic traits that can creep up, but these are the ones I tend to see most impact businesses. The procrastinator Procrastinators tend to wait until the last possible minute to accomplish something. If you or your employees have this trait, you or they might put off finishing projects, answering customers, doing training, etc. I think it’s safe to say everyone has procrastinated at least once in their life. In fact, 95% of people procrastinate occasionally. I’ve noticed that many procrastinators are hard-working perfectionists that wait until the last minute so something can be, well, perfect. Unfortunately, the procrastinator personality type isn’t just toxic—it’s also costly. The average worker wastes 2.09 hours per day on the job (yikes!). And you could directly cost your business money if you start procrastinating certain tasks. Take payroll tax deposits and reports, for instance. You procrastinate sending those to the IRS, and you could wind up with some hefty failure-to-deposit penalties. Long story short, if you or your employees have procrastination tendencies, you could end up with wasted hours, messy processes, extra expenses, and some pretty disgruntled parties. To combat procrastination, try to focus on one task at a time, get more sleep, and try out new ways to motivate yourself (e.g., exercise during lunch). The yes-man/woman A strong business needs leaders, not followers. It needs creativity and innovation, not more of the same. And, it thrives on different viewpoints, not like-minded robots. And that, dear readers, is why “the yes-man/woman” is a toxic personality trait in business. The last thing you want is employees who are so concerned with kissing up to you that they don’t contribute any ideas of their own. And what’s the point of hiring your own personal fan club? So if you see the yes-man/woman personality creeping in your business, squash it. Encourage your employees to speak up, have strong back-and-forth dialogue, and even get into friendly debates on why something could or couldn’t work. Before my accounting software and payroll company, Patriot Software, went remote in 2020, I always had a literal open-door policy. This still stands, although the communication may be through Zoom or email. This way, my coworkers know they can come to me with their ideas and tell me why they disagree with mine. True teamwork builds off of ideas; it doesn’t applaud stagnation. The always right So, we’ve covered the yes-man/woman. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the worker who’s always right. If an employee (or you!) thinks they’re always right, how can your business grow? It can’t, which is why “the always right” personality is dangerous in business. An arrogant personality in your business can:
To put it bluntly, someone who thinks they’re always right can really put a wrench in your business plans. If you want to combat this type of personality, encourage leaders in your business to listen to their team and be willing to try new things. And of course, one way to encourage this is to lead by example. The micromanager Do this. No, not that. More like how you had it before. Oh, do you want me to just show you? That’s the sound of a micromanager. Not really conducive to employee growth, autonomy, and morale, is it? The micromanager is someone who has to either:
A micromanager can be frustrating to work with. Not to mention, they can stifle creativity and business growth. If you have a micromanager (or are one yourself), encourage them to let go and give employees more authority over projects. The knowledge hoarder Employees hoard knowledge for all sorts of reasons: job security, recognition, promotions. Before I started Patriot Software, I worked at a company where many employees hoarded knowledge, either accidentally or in order to get ahead -- myself included. Fortunately, I now know how detrimental knowledge hoarding can be for a business and its success. A knowledge-hoarding employee won’t always be around. What happens if they take a vacation, have a family emergency, or even quit? Encourage your employees to, as I like to say, crumple their paper empires and share knowledge with one another. After all, you need team members who are willing to work together and grow leaders.To encourage knowledge sharing, you can give employees an accessible knowledge base and get everyone involved in training new hires. Here’s what you DO need from yourself and your team Business success doesn’t follow a simple recipe. Yanking out toxic traits alone won’t get you and your team where you need to be for success and growth. But when it comes to personality, there’s one key trait that contributes to the success of your team and your business itself:
I often talk to my co-workers about how important it is for everyone in my company to have a servant’s heart. What does that mean? That we are attentive to everyone around us—customers and fellow co-workers. This kind of selfless attitude is what sets leaders apart from followers and creates a work culture where employees thrive and customers’ needs are put first. And it all starts with humility. I aim to exercise humility in each aspect of business and encourage my co-workers to do the same. Humble employees give their time, care about those around them, and kick arrogance to the curb. That’s what I look for in my co-workers, what I expect from myself, and what customers need from a trusted business brand. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com
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