Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Spring Cleaning Tips For The Office

When you think about it, you spend more time at your office than in your own home, not counting sleeping hours of course. Consequently, the atmosphere of your office, whether it be neat or disorganized, will greatly affect you and your employees in a myriad of ways. Therefore, learning how to keep your office clean is important. Before getting to the cleaning tips, though, let's look at why a clean office is imperative.



A Disorganized/Dirty Office Is:



  • Unprofessional: If your office is cluttered, dusty, or generally disorganized, you will instantly appear less professional to clients/customers. You might say, "I'm too busy working to clean up after myself." Well, consider the appearance of your office as you would your own. Would you come to work in your bathrobe simply because it took more time to get dressed?

  • Less Productive: Running a successful business is all about productivity. Getting things accomplished is the end goal. If you spend an hour looking for a particular folder under piles of other files and perhaps old take-out cups, is that a productive way to do business? Of course, it isn't. By not having a place for everything and keeping everything in its place you are actually wasting billable hours.

  • Can Make You Sick: A dusty, dirty office can also cause sickness in a person who has a sensitivity to dust or allergens. Therefore, as a business owner, you might lose a part of your team to sickness simply because your work environment isn't healthy. This reduces productivity simply by cutting down manpower.

Spring Cleaning Tips



Benjamin Disraeli, an author who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 1800s, said the following about the importance of and commitment to cleanliness in all aspects of life:




"Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them."




This quote exemplifies the importance of cleanliness perfectly. It also reminds us that cleaning isn't always instinctual. That's why a checklist of sorts is as worthwhile as a guide on whipping your office into shape this spring.



Primary Focus Areas



There are three basic areas you should focus on when cleaning your office. These include your workspace, your paperwork, and your technology. There are, of course, more areas to think about, such as the floors, bathrooms, and such, but just getting these three basic areas organized will go a long way towards creating a more productive working environment.



1) Organize Your Workspace



This is relatively easy; it just takes time. Simply go through your desk and throw away the trash. It sounds simple, but it's amazing how many people don't do this basic step. Get rid of/recycle old water bottles, carry-out cartons, and drinks. Also, donate or throw away anything you don't use or that doesn't work. Why keep a calculator that doesn't function properly or hang on to a pencil that's too small to write with? Simply getting rid of all the stuff you don't need or use on and around your desk will help immensely.



2) Reduce Paper Work



As you know, paperwork is never ending, and if you don't have a great file/shred system in place, it can really get out of hand. Part of cleaning off your workspace should include going through and shredding documents you no longer need. If you do need to keep something, create an easy-to-follow filing system to get these files off your desk.



3) Clean Your Technology



This tip should be taken literally, as in taking your computer apart and dusting it with the proper tools, as well as metaphorically. Clean the inside of your computer by deleting old emails and archiving those you need to keep.It's also a great time to back up your server if you have one or update old software.



If you commit to putting things away at the end of every day, your office will never get as unorganized as it was. You might have to allow a few days for cleaning, but the increased production, as well as the creation of a more professional workspace, is well worth the time investment.




Friday, February 24, 2017

A City Built 900 Years Ago Can Teach Us a Business Lesson Today

Between the years 800 A.D. and 1130 A.D. something amazing happened in northwestern New Mexico. Without wagons or horses, no metal tools, and before the arrival of Columbus in 1492 or prairie tribes regularly migrated across the plains, a city existed in a place called Chaco Canyon. This small city (and the network of buildings and hubs) created architecture as high as five stories with trade networks stretching down deep into tropical Mexico. It was inhabited year round and included storage, ovens, living quarters, and plenty of protection from the high desert winter (the elevation is above 7,000 feet in most areas). Most amazing, the architecture involved using load-bearing timbers placed with an experienced eye and allowing multiple-level building structures made of three-feet-thick stacked, stone slab. It was not an accident how this ancient city was built and sustained.



Pressing On



The persistence of the ancient Chaco Canyon residents is an even more surprising fact. Many of the timbers and logs involved in the construction of the homes came from far away. The typical plant growth in the area of Chaco is essentially shrub brush and desert flora. There are no trees or forests. Further, the entire Canyon area is surrounded by mesas that are easily five to ten stories high. They are not at an easily climbed elevation out of the Canyon. In fact, the only flat exit out of the Canyon area is to the south, miles away. So how did all the timbers get there in the first place? Persistence. The residents of Chaco walked the timbers from up to 75 miles away from where trees and forest grew. Without horses, wagons, or any easy transportation, the residents of Chaco walked and imported every building material from the outer region fifty to one hundred miles away.



Businesses today are often swamped with offers and promises that the next big technology, motivational program, computer hardware, commercial vehicle, or transportation plan will transform their company and produce huge new market rewards. While there's plenty of sales language involved, the real fuel that helps businesses break through challenges and grow more is pure, old-fashioned persistence. Things are easy when the elements of business are cooperating; what matters is what helps the business sustain itself and continue to succeed when times are tough.



Look Beyond Your Resources



Persistence is a skill that intelligently keeps things going when resistance occurs and requires smart thinking and ingenuity. Managers and leaders are frequently faced with problems and not enough resources; it's rare that a business leader gets to deal with a problem with the ideal amount of resources available. However, persistence shouldn't be confused with being stubborn and banging one's head against a wall needlessly. Persistence is focused but also capable of being redirected to work around an obstacle instead of only through it.



The people of Chaco Canyon are long gone, having stopped building their city by 1130 A.D. likely due to a serious drought and lack of any more resources being available. However, what they did produce for 300 years required consistent dedication in extreme conditions. Business leaders can take a lesson from history in what these early people accomplished. They figured out how to solve a problem and thrive in a desert environment that would otherwise work against them. Managers and company owners have to find a way to get above the weeds when faced with problems and define clear paths. It's not easy, but persistence is what makes the impossible very possible.




Tuesday, February 21, 2017

What You Need to Know About Facebook's New Mix Modeling Portal

We've written extensively in the past about how when it comes to digital and print marketing, you're not looking at an either/or proposition. Often, businesses of all sizes are finding great success embracing the best of both worlds - reaching out to the customers who are most receptive to print channels via traditional methods and using digital resources when they're most appropriate. We've even written about how you can take the lessons learned online and use them to make your print strategies even stronger.



We're not the only people who share this opinion; it would seem. Facebook has recently launched a mixed marketing portal designed to make it easier than ever for businesses to compare Facebook-based advertisements to television, print, and other types of collateral. While this does mean big things for people using Facebook as an advertising platform, what it means for print marketers is even more interesting.



What Facebook is Doing



The social networking giant's mix modeling portal for marketers is a significant extension of an existing partnership. Over the course of the past few years, Facebook has teamed with Nielsen (the people who tell you how many people watch the Super Bowl each year, among other things), comScore (the people who focus on digital, TV and movie analytics), DoubleVerify (a company that aims to "authenticate the quality of each digital media impression"), and others. This has all been done to provide clear metrics on how far a Facebook ad reaches, how many impressions it gets, its ultimate performance, and more.



For advertisers that rely heavily on Facebook, this means that they now have access to twenty-four different third party measurement partners to track the performance of their ads around the world, see how their ads are comparing against similar ads running in the world of print and more.



For print-based marketers, this also thankfully means that the reverse is true, too.



What This Means For You



Even if you don't heavily advertise on Facebook, this new model is still something to pay close attention to because of the metrics at play. It's another example of the ever-important concept of "pay attention to what is working online and use it to strengthen the foundation of your print campaigns." Thanks to Facebook, this just got a whole lot easier.



By giving advertisers the ability to compare a successful Facebook ad to other elements of their campaign like print, people who DO happen to be heavy print advertisers can essentially come in from the opposite angle and learn just as much. It's all a matter of perspective - the marketing mix modeling portal can be used to look at one of your successful print ads, compare it to ads that are running on Facebook and use that actionable information to feed back into the print campaign to help achieve your desired outcomes.



Print and digital advertising have historically been measured in very different ways, but thanks to Facebook we just took a big leap closer to a uniform standard that can be used in both situations. You can use the Facebook MMM Portal to see how impressions reach and other metrics translate into the real world and back again.


Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Why You Can Never Nurture Your Leads TOO Much

If you think that you can comfortably stop nurturing your leads as soon as they make that ever-important sale, you're only seeing one small part of a much larger and more important picture. The fact of the matter is that you can NEVER nurture your leads too much for a variety of important reasons.

Why Lead Nurturing is So Important

Lead nurturing is an essential part of any business, but judging by some recent studies, it may be more important than you think. According to Gleanster Research, as many as half of all the leads coming into your business may be qualified, but they're not yet ready to buy. Nurturing is perhaps the single best way to make sure you're able to convert as much of that 50% as possible into a sale.

To make things more interesting, research from InsideSales.com shows that between 35% and 50% of all sales go to a brand that responds to a customer FIRST. This means that even if you know you're working with a qualified lead AND you know that they'll eventually be ready to buy, they may not buy with YOU at all if you don't have a timely presence in their life.

That, in a nutshell, is why lead nurturing is so mission critical to your organization. If you're not nurturing properly and using timely marketing collateral to help usher someone down the sales funnel, you may be doing little more than perfectly setting someone up to make a purchase with one of your competitors.

NSN: "Never Stop Nurturing"

Consumers want to be loyal to a brand. However, they're also loyal to themselves and their own situations first and foremost. If you think that just because you've ushered a lead down the sales funnel and convinced them to make a purchase that you'll have them forever, you're sadly mistaken. And, unfortunately, this is one mistake that you're likely to pay dearly for.

Remember that "making a sale" is NOT the only benefit of consistent lead nurturing. According to research, leads that have been nurtured experience a 23% shorter sales cycle than those who have not been. Nurturing over time (as opposed to just in the beginning of your relationship) can even increase your revenue over the next six to nine months by as much as 10% or more.

Remember that a constant and consistent nurturing gives way to perhaps the biggest benefit of all: retention. According to one study, it costs 500% more to bring in a new customer than it does to keep a current one. Likewise, the cost of bringing a new customer up to the same level of profitability as one of your old ones is up to 16% more. All of this is to say that by adopting the mantra of "I can never nurture a lead too much" today, you could be saving yourself a tremendous amount of money tomorrow.

Nurturing a lead to the point where you've made a sale is important, but this is not the point where your story ends. Consistently nurturing your leads even AFTER a sale will continue to pay dividends over the lifetime of your relationship with that person. The benefits of retention versus bringing in new customers alone should be more than worth the effort you'll need to make.

Friday, February 10, 2017

How to Combine Your Passion and Profession to Make Your Life Purposeful

You have likely heard the adage, "Choose a profession you love, and you'll never work a day in your life." Although the thought of this has merit, sometimes, if a person's passion isn't something they can easily transform into a money-making endeavor, it can be a little unrealistic. Thankfully, there is more than one way to combine your passion with your profession to create a purposeful life.

Use Your Passion to Generate Income

We all seem to know at least one person who bought a professional camera and began making money by becoming a photographer. Their profession, of course, was combined with their passion for photography and is now generating income. Another good example of this is someone whose passion is music. They have many options when it comes to transforming that into a career. They can become a music teacher at a school, play an instrument in their local orchestra, give private lessons, or even play at places of worship, parties or weddings as a way to produce an income. These are just a few examples of passions perfectly suited for generating income. There are countless others, and we can all agree that "it's a beautiful thing when a career and passion come together." If you have a passion like this, congrats! Unfortunately, not all passions are equally conducive when it comes to generating income. There isn't an obvious way to create a career out of every passion.

What to Do When Your Passion Doesn't Easily Translate to a Profession

Let's consider an example of a passion that would be less than ideal as a career. This could include being passionate about running, biking, or being focused on giving to the homeless, third world countries, or charities. Often, these are hobbies/passions that are practiced alongside a career and don't ever become the career itself. Of course, there are some ways to use these passions to generate income. However, it's not easy to make money working for a charity or by giving to the homeless. It's also hard to get someone to pay you to cycle or run. That doesn't mean you aren't allowed to live out your passion, though. You just might have to get creative with how you go about doing it.

Companies That Have Successfully Combined Their Passion & Profession:

An excellent example of this principle in action is the TOMS Company, which has been in business for going on eleven years. The concept they came up with was revolutionary at the time. When they began, TOMS was virtually the only company doing something like this. (There are more now.) TOMS started by selling shoes and advertising a one-for-one system. Their customers bought a pair of shoes from them, and then TOMS donated a pair to a needy child. Therefore, every customer got to get in on the giving action. Customers loved the product but liked the fact that their purchase helped a child in need even more. Today, TOMS has branched out to sell coffee, bags, and eyewear along with their shoes. As of January 2016, TOMS has given away more than 60 million pairs of shoes. TOMS is an excellent example of how you can combine your passion, in this case, helping children in need, with a profession that began selling shoes in a unique way.

How to Get Started

TOMS showcases an ideal strategy to combine your passion and profession. Of course, you don't have to sell shoes to give back. You can also use the assets you acquire through doing business to give back. The idea isn't to get this perfect. It's to attempt to combine your passion with your profession in some way so that you will live purposefully. Remember, starting somewhere will get you where you want to go quicker than sitting still!