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This is a guest post by Derrick Hayes
How did I get here? Why do I do the things I do? These are two important questions that we sometimes never look into. Are you a freshman in business trying to avoid the sophomore or jinx that could arrive.?
No matter who you are or where you are in life, we all have to make transitions to new positions. The way in which you move forward will impact lives for generations to come.
From this day on I want you to take a look within and search for greatness. I was inspired to present you with a 6 step process called S.E.A.R.C.H., so that with every transition you will be placed in a better position.
The S is for School. One of the greatest transitions that you can ever make is when you decide to go to school. You have the chance to not only choose a college or university, but also to declare a major. The more in life you learn can increase what you earn. There are two things that people will always pay, and they are what you know and what you show. Take it upon yourself to learn as much as you can and give back even more.
The E is for Experiences. The second transition that you can make is to get some experience. Don’t wait until you get out of school in order to see if you have chosen the right career path. While competition is fierce for internships and co-ops you can find great opportunities by networking with friends, family and alumni. The knowledge you have gained only becomes powerful when you place it in the right occupation that can make the most of your abilities.
The A is for Adjustments. After you take what you learn and apply it you get to truly find out what you are good at. Make a mental list of your strengths and weaknesses in and outside the classroom. See what adjustments you can make now and the ones that you can make later so that you can improve. Success in life is about making adjustments.
The R is for Resume. One of the biggest mistakes that we can make is not to resume what we started. Making adjustments are important but staying focused and never quitting has even greater significance. Resume your life. Resume your education. Resume your career. If you stand still long enough your opportunities will begin fill with dust and rust. If you ever find yourself in this position, give that complacency a shake off so that you can take off.
The C is for Confidence. When you keep moving in life and don’t let the little things turn into big things it will give you confidence. The opportunity to believe and be successful with each transition is available to you right now. Ask the people around you what makes them successful? If you see that no one around you is successful then you need to socialize with some new people. When you have confidence doors will not just open, but stay open.
The H is for Happiness. Confidence breeds happiness. When you are happy and walk into a place people will see a smile on your face. Have you seen the movie The Pursuit of Happyness? In the movie the father tells the son, “Never let anyone steal your dream.” Most of us give our dreams away.
What makes you happy and what can you share to make a difference? S.E.A.R.C.H. for the answers and your next transition will lead you to a better position
Derrick Hayes is the Author of 1 WORD Is All It Takes, Creator of Derricknyms, Developer of the app Motivation To Your Mobile, Nominator of Today’s Honoree, and blogs at the Encouragement Speaker.
Retailers know how crucial the holiday season is to their success. It can make-or-break 2011 – and set up 2012 for failure or triumph. With only 13 shopping days until Christmas, what can a retailer do to boost sales the rest of December, as well as keep momentum going into 2012?
To do this, both online and brick-and-mortar retailers can think about these four strategies:
#1 Market Holiday Promotions on Social Media
These campaigns are great because they’re easy and free – words to retailers’ ears. Additionally, they also increase a retailers’ customer reach beyond the holiday season. For example, retailers can create a promotion that promises a discount worth “X percent” the day before Christmas after they receive “X number” of Facebook Likes. After the holidays, the retailer can continue to promote and share marketing information on the Facebook user’s News feed.
#2 Work with Check-in Programs to Build Loyalty
Chances are, the next customer to walk into a store is either putting away their smartphone, on their smartphone or about to get on it. App vendors are offering some great retail check-in solutions to help retailers connect with smartphone-savvy customers. ShopKick, for example, allows retailers to place sensors throughout their store and actually incentivize customers to walk to specific sections. Apps like this will keep customers coming back after the holidays to get more loyalty points.
#3 Offer Free Shipping, Reduced Shipping or In-Store Pickup
Customers love free shipping. In fact, a recent study by comScore found that 78 percent of online holiday shoppers rate “free shipping” as something they actively seek out – or will determine whether or not they make a purchase. Retailers should offer free or reduced shipping, and heavily promote this across their online properties. Additionally, retailers can also offer in-store pickup. This is a great tactic because some customers don’t want items shipped to their house. Additionally, it allows the retailer the opportunity to make additional sales to the in-store customer. Store experience and familiarity will also increase the likelihood the customer will return to the store later.
#4 Extend Return Policies to Encourage Gifting
Because many customers aren’t purchasing for themselves, loosening the return policies will increase the likelihood of that extra purchase. Already have a great return policy? Promote it. Customers that see you have a have a large return or exchange window may be more likely to make a “risky” purchase.
Michael Koploy is an ERP Analyst, and frequently writes on his company blog about trends in the retail industry and small business POS software. He can be reached at michael@softwareadvice.com or @POSAdvice.
I have a client that is using CVENT for their surveys and event evaluations, so when I saw this article about how to keep surveys present, but unobtrusive, I took a closer look.
Many companies opt to do customer surveys at intervals — rather than keeping them always open. But giving your customer the ability to give you feedback when THEY want to give you feedback is one of the most important things you can do.
In this article, Cynthia Spitalny gives several great tips on how to keep your survey open on the web without upsetting your web visitors.
- Keep the link or icon for the survey in an unobtrusive spot. Ensuring that your customers have the best user experience while on your web presence is important so having them take your survey – while very important to you – should be secondary for most of your customers. Keep the link or icon in a discrete but confined space.
- Remove the link or icon if a customer opts to not take your survey at any point. Like most company surveys, you ask your customers if they would be willing to take your survey. If customers opt to not take the survey and those customers can be identified when they log back into the website/portal/etc, then be sure to remove the link. No means no, and you want to keep your customer base happy.
- Offer appreciation and gratitude for those who take your survey. Customers are bombarded by so many things these days that for someone to take the time and complete your survey, this is worth thanking them. Be sure to acknowledge those who completed your survey and offer gratitude and thanks for helping you get closer to achieving your objectives.
It’s business planning time and I, for one am taking a serious look at restructuring my business, bringing on more virtual team members and becoming more efficient and more profitable.
Small Business Trends has pulled this list of useful links in the area of delegation. I’m checking them out — you should too.
From social media to almost every other aspect of your business, tasks can be delegated or outsourced as needed to improve productivity. But when you delegate or outsource your operations, be sure that you keep an eye on quality and that you manage the key components of your business effectively. Delegating responsibility for certain tasks does not mean ignoring your business or letting it be run by someone else.
Thoughts on how to delegate. This post is about delegating social media efforts, but it could be about delegation in almost any part of your business. At some point you will most likely need to get others to handle some of your tasks as your business grows. Make sure they can handle those roles. SEO and Social Media Marketing
The key to small business success. Small business success, like success in so many other things, doesn’t mean avoiding mistakes and doing everything right. Instead, the key is to understand that when things go wrong you must not quit. Maintaining momentum is what’s important. The Frugal Entrepreneur
How to outsource needed projects. From Website design to research projects, you may need work done for your business that you don’t have time to do yourself. No problem. Here’s a simple video overview of how to outsource where required. ScottFox
Promoting from within. Another way to delegate workload is to ask your current employees to take on different roles and perhaps take up more of the slack, but beware. Asking for more work out of existing employees will cost you more, one way or the other. Bloomberg Businessweek
Building the virtual team. Creating a virtual team is another way to expand your business while delegating responsibility over a larger group. But creating an effective virtual team takes effort. Here are some things to consider. Startup Professionals Musings
How to get started. No matter what business you operate, it’s important to understand the basics. You can delegate many aspects of your business and outsource much of the work that needs to be done, so long as you take care of what’s important. Yahoo! Small Business Advisor
I was on Melinda Emerson’s Tweet Chat (#SmallBizChat) yesterday with Anita Campbell and David Langton — authors of the new book Visual Marketing.
We spent the hour talking about the most effective ways to build your visual brand. When it came to design, there were opinions across the board. One thing we could all agree on, however was that good design was imperative an dif we could get it for a good price (like free) that would be even better.
Well – the folks at CopyBlogger have a great deal for YOU – check it out.
67 Elegant, Effective and FREE Website Graphics for Serious Online Publishers
There are currently 67 stunning icons, banners, backgrounds, and buttons waiting for you over at studiopress.com to download and put to use on your site, right now.
I love this great list of tips for creating successful email campaigns.
Creating an effective email marketing campaign is not always an easy task. However, there are a few things to keep in mind that may help take some of the fear out of launching your own campaign. Not every campaign will be successful but if you’re good about analyzing results, admitting shortcomings and making changes, who says you can’t learn from your mistakes?
John Jantsch hits the nail on the head again in this wonderful post that came through via my RSS feeder this morning.
He asks us to go beyond measuring dollars and profits. Now before you go all crazy on me thinking I said NOT to measure dollars and profits – go back and notice that I said – go BEYOND it.
I was so inspired by this idea that I wrote an article over at SurveyAnalytics and QuestionPro blogs about HOW to actually measure customer engagement and loyalty — which in turn can be extrapolated to mean trust. You can check those out here:
http://blog.surveyanalytics.com/2011/10/26/measuring-customer-engagement-as-a-predictor-of-profitability/
What are you thoughts on this?
For most businesses the primary measures of marketing success are more sales, more profits and greater brand recognition.
sahlgoode via Flickr CC
That seems like a pretty obvious, logical and healthy way to view marketing doesn’t it?
What if, however, the real goal was to build trust? What if marketing decisions were made with the best interest of the customer community first? What if the ultimate measure of marketing was a committed customer?
“The number of bricks he used in a particular area directly corresponds with the volume of people moving in and out of those areas. In other words, the taller the stack of bricks, the more people in that area.
I guess you could say this is like a 3D infographic.”
from http://www.bitrebels.com/design/incredible-3d-infographic-lego-map-build/
In his new book “The End of Business as Usual” Solis explains to CEOs who haven’t embraced social media – how their connected customers are changing how business is done.
Mark Anderson has done it again – made me giggle and laugh and think about all the silly meetings I’ve been in where the conversation went around and around about nothing.
