Turning the Tables: How to Evaluate Sales Prospects

Business

Knowing How to Evaluate Sales Prospects can make a big difference in your business

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Salespeople are accustomed to prospects evaluating them and may assume that is the sole purpose of their meeting. However, sales professionals should get into the habit of evaluating their prospects as well. This helps them determine the worthiness of each one based on how much time, resources, and attention he or she will require throughout the sales process. After weighing this against the potential return, the sales representative should have a better idea of which leads to pursue and which ones to thank for their time and move on.

Questions to Help Determine the Most Valuable Prospects

Both parties should ask questions of each other during the initial meeting. This is the only way they will know whether it’s a good fit. It can be more challenging for sales representatives to know what to ask since they’re usually the one answering the questions. Here are three questions to help them get into the right frame of mind for every meeting:

  1. What problem are you trying to resolve with the product or service my company has available? Most company leaders don’t even consider spending money until a problem becomes too significant to ignore. The salesperson should sense at least a little bit of desperation for a solution during the initial meeting. Without a significant problem to resolve, the sales prospect could be doing little more than window shopping. Unfortunately, this isn’t a good use of the salesperson’s time or resources.
  2. How have you tried to resolve this problem in the past? If the prospects answers that he or she hasn’t done anything about it until now, the salesperson may need to work a bit harder to find the ideal solution. By probing what hasn’t worked as an effective solution, he or she can steer clear of the same mistake and present a more targeted resolution. The sales professional should also ask the prospect to envision what would happen if he or she did nothing about the problem.
  3. Have you prepared a budget for this project or do you expect to soon? It’s a big waste of time to go through the qualification process only to learn that the prospect hasn’t been authorized to spend the required amount on the product or service. There’s nothing wrong with asking whether a budget has been approved or when the prospect expects to receive approval for the expense.

Create a Winning Pricing Strategy

All customers want to receive the best value for the lowest price. It’s the salesperson’s job to convince his or her prospect of the value in the product or service and minimize the focus on cost. A business that continually sells at the lowest price in the industry may not remain profitable for long. When considering selling price, company leadership needs to consider whether it encourages structures that ultimately prove unprofitable.

For example, selling at a volume discount brings in customers but not necessarily as much profit as the company would like. What sales managers can do instead is create incentives that align with pricing realities. Taking control through customer value-based pricing means looking at ways to reduce the cost to serve customers while still exceeding their expectations. Customers who don’t feel like they are getting their money’s worth may not say anything, but they will send a loud message by taking their business elsewhere.

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Recruit the Best Talent with a Virtual Office Setup

Business

Generally, talk about the virtual office set-up focuses on practical and logistical perks. While these benefits shouldn’t be underestimated, more information is needed about its impact on recruitment, particularly in Southeast Asia. With countries like Singapore now becoming magnets for entrepreneurs, it’s useful for businesses to know how to grab great talent.

Virtual offices and coworking spaces tend to a real draw for creative types and forward thinkers, as they provide plenty of opportunities for collaboration. Here, you’ll find copywriters, graphic designers, accountants, marketers, website developers, and more. Plus, you’ll benefit from a prestigious address and that, in itself, is a big attraction for professionals.

Keep reading to learn more about how virtual offices can help you connect with top level talent.

Dynamic Personalities

In a place like Singapore, where people from all walks of life meet and interact, it’s actually easier than you think to scout top-level talent. Servcorp virtual offices are full of diverse personalities, with a broad range of skills.

The tenants here come from all kinds of different industries, so hanging out at a virtual workspace is a chance to rub shoulders with artists, photographers, product designers, advertisers, app creators, and much more.

More Support, Less Cash

Plus, if you outsource, instead of recruiting full-time employees, you can save yourself a substantial amount of money. Obviously, if you need a job constantly doing, it’s best to hire a permanent employee. If it’s just a one off or finite run of tasks though, consider a freelancer.

Virtual vendors can put you in contact with a wide variety of contractors and freelancers. Alternatively, in some cases, they have in-house teams of their own. For instance, you might be able to outsource the design of a new website to the qualified staff at your virtual office.

Sitting In Top Position

Even something as simple as operating from a well-known location can make it easier to attract high-level recruits. Graduates and advanced job seekers have discerning tastes too. If they know they have valuable skills, they’ll prioritise brands which look highly successful.

To make sure that you’re one of them, claim the address of a virtual facility, particularly if you are yet to start renting a private office. It’s okay to be working flexibly, from home or other informal spaces, but you need that professional address to build up your brand.

Creating a Global Team

Perhaps the best thing about virtual offices is that they place no limits on the nature of your employees. It is entirely possible to build up a workforce of individuals who are spread out across the globe. In fact, this is an effective way to grow a business and infiltrate new markets.

This kind of setup requires careful management, but entrepreneurs make it work all the time. The right virtual vendor will provide all the support you need, in the form of premium communications software, receptionist services, secure mailboxes, and low monthly rates.

Where to Find the Best Virtual Vendors in Singapore

There are six highly respected virtual facilities in central Singapore. They all have impressive corporate addresses, with places like the Metropolis Tower and the PSA Building coming top of the list for most business owners. If you’re interested in becoming a tenant, all you have to do is find your local office and request an onsite tour.

This is a great opportunity to meet current users, check out the tools and resources on offer, and ask any questions you might have. Virtual vendors are committed to serving the needs of their clients. Unlike traditional landlords, they allow tenants to make changes to their corporate packages and access schedules if it suits.

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3 Traits Every Good Accountant Has

Business

Being resilient in the face of work is one of many Traits Every Good Accountant Has

Whether you are just starting your career in accountancy or you have been an accountant for a long time, there are always ways to improve your work and give your clients the best experience ever. Even the best accountants can become complacent and with ever improving technology, accounting is becoming a different world than compared to 20 years ago. Being an accountant isn’t just about calculations and clients want people they can trust. Below are three of the main traits every good accountant has.

Communication

This is by far one of the most important skills needed to be an account. With so much competition out there in accountancy nowadays, clients are looking for accountants that stand out, who they can relate to, and who can go the extra mile. As an accountant, you need to give clients complex information in a way that they understand. Being able to understand your client and communicate effectively with them will improve your relationship and ensure the client knows exactly what is happening with their finances. Being able to talk to your client may help you understand them and therefore tailor your advice to them accordingly. Getting to know a client can mean regular business and a better service.

Resilience

Accounting can be a very time consuming and fast-paced job, working to deadlines, and perhaps working with clients you may not always get on with. There may be times where you have deadlines you don’t know how you will complete and this can be very stressful. Being able to do your job despite all of these pressures is what makes a good accountant. Being resilient means starting from the bottom of the career ladder and working your way up no matter what your career throws at you – if you stay positive you’ll find yourself where you want to be and you will attract clients with your can-do attitude.

Adaptive

Technology is ever changing therefore so is the way accounting works. A good accountant must always keep up-to-date with the relevant training of new programs and ways of working in order to keep up with clients. There are many ways you can improve your accountancy knowledge and whether you attend work training sessions or you want to improve your knowledge vastly, then a masters degree in accounting could be what you’re looking for. An online masters degree in accounting means you can carry on working alongside gaining a masters. This will show both clients and employers that you are willing to learn and you are adaptable to the way accountancy is changing, as you will gain the most up-to-date knowledge and skills.

Learning new skills and getting a masters is a great way of showing clients and employers that you are up to speed with relevant training and that you are serious about your role as an accountant. There are many other traits that a good accountant may also have but these are a good building block in improving yourself and your career positively.

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Tips to Help You Avoid Business Failure 

Business

Being in business is about striking a balance between your desire for success and your commitment in the avoidance of failure, focus too heavily on one or the other and you may find yourself in difficulties. Both striving for success and watching out for failure can be done best though looking at what successful and failed businesses have done in the past and how you can learn from it.

Success may come and go but failure is forever and this is one area which should in all honesty, keep you awake at night, especially if you want to avoid it. Let’s take a look at some of the recipes for failure and how you can make sure that you do not fall foul of them.

Financial Mistakes

Behind every failed business on the planet is finance, lack of it, the mismanagement of it or the careless attitude towards it and if you want to avoid catastrophic failure for your business you should ensure that you are focusing on every cent that comes in and goes out of your company. Equally you must make sure that whoever is looking after the finances is a professional and can give you the best service possible. Your role as the leader is to understand the finances, not do them so you should ensure that you are not getting lost in the detail.

Reputation

Reputations can be incredibly frail, they are hard to build and hard to maintain, yet surprisingly easy to destroy. If you want to look after your reputation in the best way possible then you should consider hiring a reputation management company such as reputationmanagementconsultants.com who will work on your behalf to ensure that the company’s reputation is the strongest which it can be and continues to instill confidence in clients and customers. Many businesses fail to understand the importance of a strong reputation and in today’s world of stiff competition, the truth is that a reputation could very well be the difference between the success or failure of your company.

Over Expansion

It is vitally important that your business understands its scale and whilst you should always be looking towards future growth, you must also understand when it is right to do so. Far too many businesses try to grow up too soon and they will expand their business dealings before they are attracting the revenue which they need to pay for it. If you want to ensure that you are growing at the right time then seek advice, plan carefully and take everything in to consideration before you opt for expansion. Success never happens overnight, you must take it in stages and grow to the demands of your business. Bigger premises, bigger ad campaigns and bigger staffing numbers is all well and good but not if you cannot afford to fund it, do this at the wrong time and you could be facing big trouble.

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These are the Areas Where Businesses Always Need to Focus 

Business

There is a great focus today by businesses on making sure they present themselves properly in the marketplace. They devote lots of time and energy to social media marketing, building their website and keeping up with the latest marketing trends. Business experts like Chip Paige, President of Pacific Aviation Holdings, know that these are no doubt important areas of focus for business success, but there are others that should never be overlooked. They include:

Cybersecurity

Cybercriminals are a consistent and never-ending scourge of businesses today. Their targets include businesses of all sizes and locations, including internet security companies proving that no one is immune. Oftentimes cyber-criminals attack those businesses feeling most confident, perhaps too confident, in their abilities to ward them off. This over-confidence sets up the perfect conditions for the cyber-criminals to strike.

The need for securing a company vital information has never been more important or complicated. To be effective in this area a business must have all of its employees involved and make sure that their IT department is fully aware of the current and evolving wave of data breaches that are threatening companies. These will always include: malicious programs, unauthorized access into the systems, ransomware, and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that individually and collectively threaten the livelihood of the company.

The great news is that companies can engage strategies and utilize software tools that can keep cyber-criminals away from their valuable data. Companies need to create and institute company policies around how data can be disseminated by employees and procedures around how to utilize the internet and particularly email and communications sites like skype, where many of the cyber-attacks occur. Further employees must be prohibiting form connecting non-approved devices to the company network. These devices can harbor rogue software and other dangerous programs that employees are unaware of and can infect the company’s entire network.

In terms of software, today there are ways to keep these cyber-criminals out, recover any stolen data and even recover files encrypted by a virus. Companies should be vigilant about purchasing this software and making sure it is updated with the latest protection protocols. Being vigilant will keep any company safe.

Making the Business About the Customer

It is perhaps the oldest business axiom, to always put the customer first. Many businesses find this approach at odds with their goal of being as profitable as possible. However, when you operate your business properly both of these goals con not only co-exist, they propel each other to bigger growth and higher profits.  A business should always be customer-centric and fully focused on what the customer needs to thrive.

To be clear, focusing on the customer may mean that you have to put aside some short-term company desires for long-term and sustainable gains. Companies must reject those ideas that work against their best interests, and their best interests begin and end with the best interests of their customers. The most successful businesses today continue to demonstrate that this is the best and most sustainable business model.

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The Best Ways to Improve Employee Satisfaction

Business

When it comes to getting good results for a business, any good business owner knows that keeping employees happy at work is the key to success. When your employees are not happy in the workplace and dissatisfied with the experience that they are having, then they are much less likely to stick around and work hard to gain good results for your brand. Employers who don’t invest time and effort into employee satisfaction often have to deal with high staff turnover rates, increased complaints, and low results when it comes to productivity. On the other hand, investing in employee satisfaction truly pays off; employees who are satisfied and happy at work are more likely to deliver the best results for your company and be loyal to your brand. Here are some of the top ways to improve employee satisfaction in your business.

#1. Invest in Training:

For the most part, employees don’t tend to be happy with simply turning up to work and never making any progress. Whilst some staff members, for example those who are there on a temporary basis, may be happy with simply having a job, many employees will want to know that they have the chance to learn more, improve their skills, and be in with a better chance of getting a promotion. Offering training and options to gain qualifications such as a bsb50315 diploma of customer engagement, for example, will give employees something to work towards and help motivate them in work.

#2. Listen to Employees:

Just as you must come into work every day, so must your employees. Because of this, it’s important that you lend a listening ear to your workforce and allow them a voice when it comes to letting you know their likes and dislikes, and even offering their suggestions on how they feel the workplace could be improved for them. Bear in mind that when employees have their views and opinions taken into consideration, acted upon and respected will always be much happier in the workplace since they know that they are valued by their employer. Employee surveys, suggestion boxes, and focus group meetings are all just some of the best ways of making sure that your employees have a voice.

#3. Encourage Fun and Friendship:

Whilst everybody knows that the main reason for going to work is for working and earning money, this doesn’t mean that the workplace can’t also be a fun and exciting place to be. As a company owner or manager, it’s important that you respect the fact that work is the one place where your employees will spend most of their time during the day and week, so it’s important to make sure that they have an enjoyable experience there. For example, you could hold ‘bring your dog to work’ days, or encourage other fun games and activities amongst employees to strengthen relationships and get people talking to one another. As a result, the team will only become stronger! It could be any sport activities.

Would you like to add any suggestions of your own for improving employee satisfaction? We would love to hear from you in the comments.

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Secrets of the Virtual Office: 4 Things You Might Not Know about Flexible Workspaces

Business

 

Image: https://image.freepik.com/free-photo/business-team-using-laptop-to-work_1098-1847.jpg

In recent years, the popularity of the virtual office has soared in Hong Kong. It makes sense in a lot of different ways. For one thing, space is at such a premium in a city this densely populated that it’s no surprise to find businesses eschewing traditional work environments.

Rent costs are on the rise, it’s getting harder to find great offices, and there’s no real evidence to prove that a fixed workspace is more productive. So, entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small business owners are deciding to ‘go virtual’ and keep their options open for longer.

The question is, how exactly do virtual offices work and why are they such a big asset for businesses in Hong Kong? Keep reading to find out more.

Virtual Offices Are Real Places

If you haven’t used virtual facilities before, you can be forgiven for thinking that they exist only as a concept. This is a misconception. It is true that they are designed to be used as distance resources. Check out www.servcorp.com.hk/en/virtual-offices/ for more details on this.

However, the best virtual facilities also offer full access to a physical office and a range of IT, secretarial, and administrative tools. The idea is that tenants use telephone lines, mailboxes, and other services to support flexible working arrangements at home or other locations.

The Telecoms Tools Are Local

It might seem like a trivial detail, but something as small as having a local area code for your telephone lines can make a big difference to how your company is perceived. It conveys a sense of stability and longevity which can be hard to obtain when you’re working from home.

Furthermore, high-end virtual providers in Hong Kong offer a range of telecoms services to suit all kinds of needs. So, if you want to set up a customer helpline, you can appoint a qualified receptionist to man the phones on your behalf. You choose how the information is passed on.

You Don’t Have to Stay in One Location

Another common misconception is that, once you sign up with a virtual provider, you can only use the facilities at the original sign up location. This is not usually the case. Most providers operate a number of facilities across Hong Kong and you can visit any of them.

It is a great asset, particularly for small businesses. Though you may not have a traditional, full-time office yet, it doesn’t mean you can’t focus on building up your market presence. It is perfectly possible to visit multiple locations (even in different countries) and continue working.

There Are No Long Term Contracts

Asking tenants to sign a long term, unchangeable agreement would go against the ideas and principles that a virtual office is trying to foster. When you register with one of these facilities, you may be asked to sign an agreement, but this is usually to allow services to ‘roll on.’

So, in other words, unless you cancel or tweak your terms of use, you’ll pay a fixed access fee each month. This can be terminated at any time. Some providers charge a slightly higher rate for the privilege of using any of their virtual offices, anywhere in the world.

Where to Find Out More about Virtual Offices

If you would like to find out more about virtual workspaces, talk to a provider directly. There are a number of high-end facilities in central Hong Kong. They include offices at the Two International Finance Centre, the Hong Kong Club Building, and at One Peking Road. If you head over to any of these locations, you’ll be able to chat with an onsite team.

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How to Motivate Your Team to Success

Business

Motivation is a tricky thing to master in business. It requires that you dedicate your efforts to create compelling reasons for wanting to reach a particular goal. When your goal is to motivate your team, you need to tap into the reasons why they might want to accomplish the goal you put in front of them.

This takes an understanding of what is important to them and how you can get them to put aside what they might want personally so that they can focus on giving you what you want. Leaders like successful real estate construction entrepreneur Lloyd Claycomb II align the goals they have with the individual goals of their team members so each team member can be motivated toward the reaching the goal, for his own reasons.

At the core of any motivation strategy must be the correct demeanor and attributes of the leader. How this person acts will determine in large part whether the team member will buy into the goal and be sufficiently motivated to go for it. Here are the characteristics of the leader that is most likely to get people motivated.

Infallibly Passionate

Reliability is a core quality needed to get people motivated. Teams need to know with 100% surety that the person who is asking them to commit is also committed all the time and that he or she is consistent in their thoughts, beliefs and conversations. This individual needs to demonstrate over time that their demeanor will not change during hard times or good ones in regards to the quest for the goal, and that he or she can be relied upon to offer the same level of enthusiasm about the goal throughout the journey.

Consistently Reliable, Prepared

Team members will check to see how important the goal is to the motivator before they will commit. Does the leader get to meetings early and stay late to answer any questions team members have about the goal? Is the leader fully prepared when discussing the goal? The level of seriousness regarding the goal will be communicated by the behavior of the leader, so he or she needs to be reliable and prepared.

Accessible

Leaders need to be available for team members when needed. This means making sure everyone has direct access to the motivator via his phone, e-mail and other contact information. When the leader receives communication from a team member, he or she needs to respond timely with either an answer to the question or comment or a specific time when it will be answered.

Good Listener

A good leader is always prepared to listen. Enthusiasm is great, but what is better is to let a team member know that his comments and questions are appreciated and important. Not every question will be a good one, but every question will be an important one so the leader must listen and give a thoughtful answer. This not only builds confidence in the team member about the goal but also gets team communication flowing which will aid to reaching the goal.

To keep everyone on your team motivated takes time and commitment. Be prepared to spend a lot of time on motivation because it is at the core of every project’s success story.

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Wireless vs. Non-wireless Card Solutions

Business

There are a lot of wireless card solutions out there

Finding credit card solutions that work for a unique business is crucial to maintaining a healthy profit margin. But, before a business owner can decide on a system and equipment, they’ve got to know the fundamental differences between different types of payment terminals.

Here’s a breakdown of the differences, and similarities, between wireless and wired credit card processing:

Free to be Wireless

A wireless credit card and debit machine involves very different equipment and processing than a wired terminal. First, wireless terminals do not require a direct link to a phone jack or Internet connection. Instead, a wireless terminal transmits card information to a radio tower, which then transmits the information to a credit card processor.

The benefit of wireless credit card processing services is obvious; business owners can take payments anywhere, which gives them more freedom and flexibility to grow their business.

Similar to wired terminals, wireless processors have features including a magnetic stripe reader, display screen, and keypad. However, wireless terminals are typically more expensive than wired options and may suffer connectivity issues should the device be out-of-range of a radio tower.

Wired to do Business

Wired credit card processing relies on phone or Internet connectivity to transmit data. More importantly, these terminals are not designed to work outside a store.

Wired devices that connect via phone line are typically less expensive and slower than devices that connect to the Internet. Depending on the nature of the business, this may be something important to consider.

For example, a credit card machine hooked up on a phone line may have to share the line with other equipment. This congestion could slow payment processing and discourage customers from returning.

Terminals connected to the Internet process faster and may be more reliable if the business has peak periods for customer transactions.

Now that you understand the basic differences between wired and wireless credit card processing, it will be easier to pick an option that works best for your business.

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What Is Customer Engagement and How Does it Help?

Freedom Channel

It is now known that customer engagement is a hugely important element in the success of a business. This is why companies like Webio, who enable businesses to capture and increase customer engagement, are now so popular. Customer engagement is something that is seen across three distinctive elements of business, and it is important to understand that, so that you can appropriately measure how successful you are being. Let’s take a look at the three areas of customer engagement, as well as at some ways to measure this.

Advertising

According to the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) engagement is best described as getting a prospect interested in a new idea by introducing them to the context. In other words, it describes how various viewers, readers, or other customers interact with a newly presented advertisement. There are different schools of thought about this. The old fashioned idea was a stepped approach:

  1. Catch the attention of the customer.
  2. Stimulate the desire interest of the customer.
  3. Drive the customer to make a purchase.

Today, however, things have changed. Now, the focus is on combining the message of the advertisement with symbols, associations, and metaphors.

Within advertising, a customer is considered to be engaged when they interact with the specific advertisement. This means they have purchased the product, decided to purchase the product, or recommended the product to others.

Website Analytics

Customer engagement is also very important in website analytics. This is one of the newest forms of customer reengagement. It describes how customers interact with the website of a brand. The goal of websites is to attract traffic, and to turn traffic into customers (conversion). However, there are different forms of conversions within website analytics, including:

  1. Making an online sale.
  2. Gathering new email addresses for the newsletter.
  3. Encouraging people to sign up for a free trial.

There are numerous metrics used to define engagement. A popular one is to calculate how long someone stays on the website, but also how many pages are viewed on average per visitor, or how many comments an individual makes on social media platforms.

Marketing

Finally, there is customer engagement in marketing. This describes the level of engagement with a specific brand. Very often, marketing customer engagement speaks of things like customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction. This is because the focus is strongly on how attached an individual is on the long term to a certain company. The result of high engagement is usually seen in an increase in customer advocacy and word of mouth advertisement and referrals. A lot of companies focus strongly on changing their customer engagement strategy with a focus on marketing. This is because a lot of research has demonstrated that there is a direct link between marketing customer engagement and elements such as share of wallet, ROI, stock price, and profit levels.

In an idea world, customer engagement is about all three things. Being aware of this makes it more likely that you will also be able to truly increase the number of customers who feel engaged with your brand.

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