Our research ninjas at Credit Suite smuggled out ten amazing business tips for you! Be fierce and score in business with the best tips around the web. You can use them today and see fast results. You can take that to the bank – these are foolproof! Jumpstart creativity and rev up your content engine. Plus nine more awesome tips to get your business humming all week!
The Hottest and Most Brilliant Business Tips for YOU – Jumpstart Creativity and More
Stop making stupid decisions and start powering up your business. Demolish your business nightmares and start celebrating as your business fulfills its promise.
And these brilliant business tips are all here for free! So settle in and scoop up these tantalizing goodies before your competition does!
#10. Explain it to Me!
Our first jaw-dropping tip is all about creating better explainer videos. Young Upstarts says explainer videos have their own rhythm and rhyme. They aren’t really short cinematic masterpieces. At least, they’re not meant to be.
Our favorite tip was to sell the lifestyle, versus the features. What an interesting premise. The concept behind this is to show how much more convenient, easier, happier, safer, whatever, the prospect’s life will be with your product or service.
For explainer videos, it works well to show the difference between the prospect’s current life and the improvements which are inherent in using your product or service. Talk about how to jumpstart creativity!
Sound, Visual, and Captions
It should probably go without saying that you need to be spot on with all of these. Why captions? Because a good half of your audience is likely to be watching without sound, as they might be in a crowded place without earbuds. Or they might prefer to multitask a bit and listen to a conversation or music.
Or they could be hard of hearing. If your buyer persona is over the age of 40 or so, you should consider this a very real possibility. Beyond that, caption files are the kinds of files Google will crawl – so add them!
And while visuals are certainly vital, please be sure the sound is great. Yes, I just got through telling you how many people aren’t listening to your explainer video. And that’s still true. But at the same time, for the other half, who are listening, give them a good listening experience.
Seriously. People will be a lot more willing to forgive less than stellar visuals than poor sound quality.
#9. We Gotta Hand it to Ya
The next awesome tip is about reliably handing off sales to service. Sales Hacker notes there can be a documented, formal process to this. And a documented process makes a lot of sense. After all, it can be a part of onboarding new employees in either sales or service.
A formal process also gives your customers a sense of what to expect. A great tip is to conduct an introductory phone call.
“It’s been great working with you; now Lisa will be happy to handle your future service needs. Lisa, this is our customer, Steve.”
It sounds kind of like common courtesy, doesn’t it? The beauty of this kind of hand off is it’s an occasion to set expectations. In our example, Lisa can tell Steve the hours she works, or how long it normally takes to deliver replacement parts or whatever. Steve now knows what to expect. And Lisa doesn’t have to contend with Steve calling when she’s off work, or complaining about the speed of delivery of replacement parts.
Pretty neat, huh?
If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Jumpstart creativity today and watch your productivity soar!
#8. Sell With Superlative Skills
Our following life-changing tip concerns the best sales skills. Mail Shake lays it all out for us. For most of us, it’s pretty obvious that a sales person needs to have the gift of gab.
But there are a number of other talents which will juice your sales team’s success percentages.
Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Sale
So, what does curiosity have to do with sales? Quite a bit!
Consider the curious person who learns everything they can about their prospect. A prospect will be a lot happier if they feel like you know them well. Can you anticipate their need, and fill it? Or are you just generally selling in the same way to everyone?
Curiosity also matters in terms of finding better solutions.
No lie, curiosity and laziness drive many inventions. Of course you shouldn’t be lazy! But curiosity is vital.
#7. Don’t Spam, Plus More Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
For our next sensational tip, we looked at avoiding email marketing mistakes. Business Knowhow says that your mission is to stay out of prospects’ and customers’ spam folders. Heck, yeah.
Vagueness is Kinda Bad
Get to the point in your from lines. Don’t be overly cute. Name your business and don’t hide. It’s a pretty surefire way to get your emails binned if the reader has no idea who you are.
And to go along with that, make sure your calls to action are clear. Vague calls to action do nothing but confuse people. Should they click? Call? Download? Fill out a form? And, more importantly, what will they get if they perform the correct task? It’s great to jumpstart creativity in this area. Just make sure people know what you’re talking about.
Measure, For the Love of All Things Holy
We’ve beaten this drum before, and it bears repeating. If you don’t measure your efforts, then you have no idea if they’re working. And if you have no clue about success, then why do this or that (or anything, for that matter)?
Now is not the time to jumpstart creativity. Rather, you need to measure what most any company measures. These are verifiable, helpful metrics such as open rates.
Inconsistency Stinks!
Make it so your customers and prospects know what to expect, more or less. This is another area where you don’t want to jumpstart creativity.
Certainly, you need to be creative and interesting enough. But at the same time, it’s the ultimate WYSIWYG. It has to be. Your audience needs to know your messages won’t be NSFW, for example. And they need to know the message will be about widgets, and they’ll be conversational, etc. If you want to say something different (let’s say your business is supporting a charity and you want to get the word out), you’ll need to explain that early in the email. Don’t just spring it on your readers.
#6. Look Past American Borders for Marketing
This tip is so cool, and it works! Startup Professionals tells us all about global marketing challenges.
For purely online companies, it’s important to consider how marketing works in everywhere from the Philippines to Bangladesh to Chile to France to ….
The article provides some great tips and ideas for what you might not have thought of. For example, consider protecting intellectual property. There really isn’t a universal global copyright out there, so you’d need to apply everywhere. And that’s expensive! So consider protecting your intellectual property selectively.
After all, if you don’t have much of a market in New Zealand (if any), then applying for copyright protection there is going to be a waste of money, at least to start.
Talk the Talk
And one more thing – translate your website! Yes, lots of people speak English these days, and that’s terrific. But it’s easier for nearly anyone to read and write in their native tongue. And here’s a pro tip – get a person to do this. While it may be easier and faster (and possibly cheaper) to get this done via machine, don’t.
Just, don’t.
After all, consider the Spanish word, guagua. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, it means bus. But in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, it means bus.
Taking a guagua could have a rather different meaning, depending on where you are and what you mean, eh?
#5. Get a Jolt of Mental Caffeine and Jumpstart Creativity
Grab this mind-blowing tip while it’s hot!
Jumpstart creativity today!
Word Stream says a blank page is one of the most daunting things out there for a writer of any sort – and this spoke to us 100%. God, yes.
So, they had a bunch of awesome ideas on how to get something, anything on the page so it doesn’t look like such a void when you sit down to write.
But they didn’t include two things we do – use templates and listen to music in order to speed up typing and really jumpstart creativity. That’s okay; there are still a bunch of great concepts here.
Write a (Lousy) First Draft
This, oh boy howdy, this. This dovetails well with another tip, which is to free write and not self-edit. But what do they mean by a lousy (er, they used a far earthier adjective here. But this is a family show, so we’re going more PG) first draft?
It’s exactly like in fiction writing, truth be told.
Writing a lousy first draft means you don’t self-edit. You don’t worry about flow, grammar, etc. You just write. This means you’ll need to edit more later. But at least you’re getting started! And that’s a lot easier than going completely from scratch.
You can’t edit a blank piece of paper.
If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Jumpstart creativity today and watch your productivity soar!
#4. Strategize Your Strategy
Check out this spectacular tip, all about executing your strategy better. The Harvard Business Review notes that these tips can work for pretty much any situation. Hence you can use these for your industry and even in your personal life.
Seriously!
Be Specific and Imperative
Vagueness still stinks (see tip #7). A strategy to just get better isn’t much of a strategy. A strategy to get better by 5% in 2 months is a lot easier to work on. It’s easier to measure, too.
The idea of making strategies imperative also puts a lasso around a task. Hence you want to tell people to ‘improve sales’ versus ‘start improving sales’. The former has a specific focus, particularly if you pair it with numbers. But the latter just feels like a continuing process. And while many tasks go on and on, that much should be understood.
The imperative to improve sales by 5% has an end. It should be a no-brainer to see the strategy in the future might be something like ‘improve sales by 10%’.
It may feel the same, but it’s not. You’ve given people a goal to strive for. This way, they know when they’ve won.
#3. Get Your Product or Service Front and Center So Your Customers Fall in Love With It
It’s not your imagination: this winning tip can help you better and more easily cultivate customer buy-in. Succeed As Your Own Boss tells us there are keys to cultivating repeat buyers.
Keep in mind, one of these tips is for products only (to use eye-catching packaging), but the others will work for either products or services.
Listen and Act
Being responsive to feedback will trigger what is essentially love and brand loyalty. But why? One reason is that the customer or prospect will see you care about what they think.
So here’s a fer-instance.
Let’s say your product is marketed to people aged 50 and up. If the print is too small, you’ll probably hear about that. So, what happens if you tell your customers and prospects to get lost and get a magnifying glass?
They’ll get lost. Permanently. And they will be more than happy to do business with a company which listens and changes the size of the font on the package as soon as possible. And if that’s not possible for the time being, that company should be telling its customer base – bigger print is coming, thank you for your patience.
So, listen to customer and prospect complaints. They just might jumpstart creativity to find a solution.
#2. Customer Service Will Save Your Business
Our second to last unbeatable tip can give you a new perspective on customer service. G2 reveals all about how excellent customer service should be every business’s secret weapon.
How and why do customers renew and reup? Service can often have a lot to do with it.
Accentuate the Positive Messaging
We truly adored this tip. Consider the difference in tone between saying, “I can’t do that.” Versus “I can do that in two weeks.”
They might, on balance, mean the exact same thing. But the latter pre-frames everything positively and opens up the relationship with the customer. There’s something to look forward to. But the former feels like a door is slamming shut.
Not a good look.
#1. Be Good to Your Employees, and They’ll Be Good to You
We saved the best for last. For our favorite remarkable tip, we focused on rewarding and engaging employees. Effortless HR says **
So which one of our brilliant business tips was your favorite? And which one will you be implementing now?
If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Jumpstart creativity today and watch your productivity soar!
The post Jumpstart Creativity in Your Business –10 Brilliant Business Tips of the Week appeared first on Credit Suite.
