A Look Back, a Look Ahead

In times of crisis, adaptability is key to success. This article is intended for business owners looking to analyze and redesign their businesses, as well as start-up owners seeking to learn from these lessons. To implement these changes, it is important to prioritize strong communication and hold leadership meetings.

This article will delve into various strategies for success, including fundraising, managing people, creating a business continuity plan, developing revenue and turnover strategies, reducing costs, redesigning business processes, and creating a turnaround. Building effective communication is also a critical component.

A key takeaway is that leadership involves using personal power to create a community that works towards a common vision. This requires personal, interpersonal, organizational, and community effectiveness, all with the shared purpose of reaching a common goal.

Strategies to Increase your Business During Lockdown?

Are you looking for ways to boost your business during lockdown? In today's fast-paced business world, technology automation tools can be incredibly helpful in managing your team, analyzing customer behavior, and improving efficiency. Some of the most effective automation tools include CRM, Chatbots, and Dialers. With CRM, you can easily keep track of customer data, sales, and behavior. Chatbots can automate tasks like customer service and support. And Dialers can optimize your sales efforts by automatically connecting sales reps with potential customers. By leveraging these automation tools, you can streamline your operations, improve customer satisfaction, and increase profitability.

Another effective way to cut down customer acquisition expenses is to incorporate digital automation into your marketing strategy. This can be done through targeted email, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram campaigns. By reaching out to your desired target audience, you can generate more leads and increase your customer base.

However, it's important to prioritize training your team to enhance the overall user experience. By incorporating customer feedback and conducting thorough research, you can continuously improve your products and services. This approach can help you build long-lasting relationships with your customers, which is essential for success in the business world.

To achieve a successful marketing strategy, you must have a comprehensive understanding of your target audience. This involves identifying factors like age, gender, religious beliefs, lifestyle, and geographic location. By developing a personality profile for your ideal customer, you can gain valuable insights into their purchasing habits and preferences. This information can help you tailor your marketing approach to better resonate with your audience. Additionally, by analyzing your customers' behavior, you can identify common patterns and characteristics that can be used to identify similar individuals to target.

Finally, to build strategic partnerships, consider forming alliances with influencers, distributors, channel partners, franchisees, local political and social leaders, and celebrities. Remember to focus on your target audience and avoid being selfish. Think outside the box, use consistent language, and aim to 10x your creative content marketing. Test, analyze, change, retest, and create a process manual. Start a client appreciation program and promote through contests. Build scarcity by offering limited edition products and host webinars and seminars. Give new life to old data and network as much as possible. And remember that local media is always cost-effective. By following these strategies, you can optimize your marketing efforts and achieve greater success for your business.

How to Reduce Cost in Business?

Are you interested in reducing business costs? Here are some tips:

1. Obtain cheaper capital:

Consider borrowing money from the market through debt, diluting your equity, or having your customer become your investor. You can also consider borrowing from friends, family, or fools.

2. Buy in bulk:

Buying raw materials in bulk can lower costs. You can also consider making a contract with a vendor for a year to reduce costs, or keep multiple vendors.

3. Spread your risk:

Sharing capital with franchise/partner/distributor/retailer/investor/customer can reduce risk, as can re-insurance and sharing premiums.

4. Lower the cost of promotion:

Communicate with your customers through mobile apps, digital mediums, hunger marketing, guerrilla marketing, or low-cost marketing ideas.

5. Increase production efficiency:

Implement a "first time right" rule to increase productivity and reduce the cost of rework. This saves time, manpower, and finances.

6. Reduce logistic costs:

Utilize vertical storage to improve storage density and build multiple suppliers for logistic engagement.

7. Automate with technology:

Use IVR systems, CRM software, ERP, or chatbots.

8. Increase revenue and turnover:

Increase the number of customers in your business, build combo sales/cross sales, increase the frequency of transactions per customer, increase your prices strategically, or add a new product line.

9. Implement product pricing strategies:

Define your end consumer's profile, calculate your COGS, break down your decision-making unit, identify options available to your customer, price based on the lifecycle of your product, and drop the price at a later stage.

When naming your brand, it is important to consider various factors to ensure that your company's name stands out on the internet and becomes its most valuable asset. The name can make or break your business, so it has to be the best. Before finalizing a name, ask yourself about your brand values, target market, brand personality, the ultimate goal of your business, value proposition, problem you are solving, and how you want to be seen or perceived.

Experiential marketing is a strategy designed to promote products or services in an unconventional and memorable way by focusing on grasping the attention of the public through high energy and imagination. This approach allows prospective consumers to experience the product and connect with it tangibly. The company lets people experience the product in question.

Core values such as dependability, open-mindedness, innovation, reliability, consistency, creativity, loyalty, honesty, good humor, commitment, efficiency, compassion, spirit of adventure, passion, education, motivation, respect, perseverance, positivity, fitness, patriotism, optimism, courage, and service to others are crucial for any business to succeed.

Framework

Here are some important tips for managing teams during the current situation:

- Framework: Establish your Core Values, Compelling Story, and Navratnas (key principles to guide decision-making).

- Set five weekly milestones and actionable steps to achieve them.

- People Strategy during Corona: Understand your team's characters, motivations, and expectations. Treat them as volunteers and listen to them to understand their needs. Identify your allies and be clear on the direction and desired outcomes. Recognize the type of leadership needed by your team and build an emotional bond with them. Provide clear milestones towards the desired outcomes and recognize when team members are doing things correctly. Build your succession plan and ensure that you are dispensable in your organization. Provide reference stories for your team as best practices. Watch your tone of voice and body language when talking to team members, and always end the meeting on a high note.

- Considerations for Working from Home: Demand commitment from your team and set clear expectations. Define ownership, timelines, and document completion of work. Encourage your team to take scheduled breaks and build organization structures that allow for a senior person to be mapped for a group of people apart from the manager. Set a working ritual for the team, including a daily stand-up to set expectations and updates on previous day's achievements. Ensure maximum documentation for work, both performance and non-performance.

- Managing Meetings while Working Remotely: Send and encourage pre-reads for every meeting. Align members on the agenda and ensure meetings are inclusive, with silent voices not going unheard. Pause at times to engage and ensure everyone is on the call or if anyone has dropped off or is facing technical issues. Capture MoMs for every meeting and assign responsibilities in advance.

- Keeping Team Engagement Levels High: Schedule a morning call to gather updates from the team and ensure team rituals are followed diligently. Celebrate birthdays and team wins together on Hangouts. Provide timely feedback and do 1:1 chats to provide regular feedback. Incorporate creative fun elements to keep morale strong during Work From Home. Send out celebratory and appreciative emails.

- Staffing Considerations: Pause hiring and have existing team members agree to take on more responsibility. Identify roles that may have become less relevant and realign those employees to other roles. Push out the appraisal cycle or convert them to ESOPs. Another option is to have employees work on alternate days with a proportionate adjustment in their compensation for a stipulated period of time. Remember that things will get better and you will need your old teams back again.

How to Generate Quality Leads?

To generate high-quality leads, follow these steps:

Step 1: Identify your ideal client - focus your marketing efforts on attracting and serving your ideal client.

Step 2: Clearly articulate your unique serving proposition - differentiate yourself from competitors by explaining how you serve your ideal client in a unique way.

Step 3: Create a powerful headline - craft a headline that clearly communicates the value you offer and attracts your ideal target market.

Step 4: Develop an irresistible lead magnet - create a valuable solution to a problem your target market has.

Step 5: Highlight your product or service's features and benefits - focus on the benefits that are most important to your ideal client.

Step 6: Offer a guarantee - provide a guarantee to help convert more prospects into paying clients.

Step 7: Address objections with reasons why - use reasons why to build trust with your prospects and explain why you offer a guarantee.

Step 8: Use social proof - leverage reviews and testimonials to build credibility with your prospects.

Step 9: Have a clear call to action - encourage your prospects to take the next step towards becoming a paying client.

When it comes to managing your working capital, match outflows to inflow cycles as much as possible and ask for concessions if needed. Negative working capital can have many disadvantages for a business, including challenges with day-to-day operations and missed growth opportunities. During lockdown, businesses should expand their research, identify new markets, and analyze profitability. It's important to balance growth with profitability and to focus on execution excellence. Implementing cost-cutting measures and analyzing relevant data can help manage debt and increase profits. Finally, preparing a plan for post-lockdown can help businesses succeed in a global market.

Technology To Work From Home Successfully & Build A Digital Business

If you are seeking ways to work successfully from home and build a digital business during the Corona lockdown, you need to track employee productivity and manage your business remotely. To help you achieve this, here is a framework:

Date: 8 AM - 8 PM

Team member attendance and achievement

Tasks:

- Write content for all videos

- Contribute 20 posts daily to social media campaign

- Manage studio to create content for all problem-solving courses during lockdown

- Create content for product videos

- Create content for SEO blogs on website

- Convert video content to vernacular language

- Collaborate with on-boarding team to start first stage of speaker assessment (sample video)

- Shoot the final course within a stipulated time limit

- Provide feedback to post-production team on quality of videos

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track:

- No. of speakers rejected in screening vs. no. of auditions done

- No. of videos shot vs. no. of videos targeted

- No. of videos rejected vs. total videos shot

- No. of courses gone LIVE vs. no. of courses shot

- No. of courses gone LIVE per month

- No. of speakers rejected pre-screen test vs. no. of tests submitted

To work more effectively from home, try these technologies:

- Google Hangouts: Connect with your team via video calls by downloading the app.

- Google Suite (Google Spreadsheet): Work on spreadsheets with multiple team members in real-time using these tools.

- Canva: Create social media communication, infographics, and other marketing materials easily with this design tool.

- Chat Bots: Consider using chat bots from companies like Haptik to reduce the cost of sales and customer service.

During these challenging times, it's important to invest in your marketing communication to help you build a thriving digital business while working from home. Here are some useful tools and frameworks to assist you:

If you're a business owner, you may find Whatsapp for Business helpful. It's designed specifically for businesses and enables you to upload a list of your products, services, or solutions for customers to view. You can also use it as a chat bot for small business owners. The app is available for Android at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whatsapp.w4bb and for iOS at https://apps.apple.com/app/whatsapp-business/id13864129856.

To maintain and measure efficiency while working from home, you need a to-do list app that consistently reminds you of your tasks. TODOIST is one of the best to-do list apps in the world and can also act as a project management tool. It's available for businesses at https://todoist.com/businessii and for individuals at https://todoist.com/home.

Basecamp is the world's easiest and most effective project management software, designed to help you run your business remotely. You can easily get started with Basecamp by registering at https://basecamp.com/g. It's also available on mobile devices and on Mac.

As a busy senior executive or business owner, it's important to have an assistant. Google Assistant is a virtual assistant that you can use on your smartphone, smartwatch, smart speaker, or even in your car. You can use it as a business automation tool to remind yourself of events in your life, schedule car maintenance, or automate other important areas of your work. Best of all, it's completely free!

Additionally, here's a list of 133 chat bot developers located in India that you may find helpful: https://clutch.co/in/developers/artificial-intelligence/chatbots.

A helpful way to maximize the use of Google Assistant is by assigning repetitive tasks in your business to it. For example, if you need to send a daily reminder to your sales head to share sales numbers, Google Assistant can handle that task for you effortlessly. To download Google Assistant, simply use the following links: Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goo and iOS https://apps.apple.com/in/app/google-assistant/id1220976145.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are a crucial yet often overlooked growth strategy for any business, regardless of its size. Investing in your employees by implementing an LMS is essential. The primary objective should be to establish a process that enables employees to acquire new skills and competencies.

Contrary to popular belief, investing in your employees' personal and professional growth through an LMS does not lead to them leaving for better opportunities. In reality, it has the opposite effect. In the knowledge economy, employees tend to stay with organizations that invest in them. An LMS can significantly impact employee retention in your business. Some companies even use an LMS as a hiring strategy by highlighting their well-trained employees, with, for instance, 100 hours of training annually.

It is vital to ensure that your LMS is mobile-ready since most people consume content when they have time, and mobile devices are always at hand. The best way to implement an LMS is by partnering with a content company that provides valuable content and technology for your employees. There is no need to create an LMS from scratch. Instead, consider white-labeling content and technology from a company that already has it.

How to Transform Traditional Business to a Digital Business?

Are you looking to transform your traditional business into a digital one? With the COVID-19 pandemic changing the way the world operates, it's essential to embrace the future of digital entrepreneurship. By implementing technology and reducing operational costs, businesses can automate their operations and see faster results. In this session, we'll discuss the technologies you need to transform your business.

One crucial element is having a website. If your business doesn't have one, it's essential to create one. A website is not only necessary for businesses, but also for consultants and individuals. If you need to set up a well-designed website in under 60 minutes, consider using WordPress. It's a free content management system used by 27% of websites worldwide.

To host a WordPress-powered website, you need to follow a few steps. First, purchase a domain name from a hosting website like GoDaddy. Then, buy hosting and upload a version of WordPress to your CPanel. Once you've installed WordPress, install a free theme from WordPress.org, and start entering content on your website. If you have a budget for website design, consider hiring a local website design agency or a freelancer from websites like freelancer.com.

It's essential to ensure that your website is mobile-ready and responsive, meaning it can be easily viewed on mobile devices or tablets. If you're a consumer-facing or direct-to-customer business, consider developing a mobile app. Financial instrument sales companies, food delivery apps, online shopping apps, and utility services apps are some great use cases for a mobile app.

In today's modern world, mobile devices are increasingly vital for businesses, especially B2B companies. It's recommended that B2B companies have a mobile interface, for example, ICICI Bank Online Banking for Businesses, PayTM for Business, and WhatsApp for Business. Field sales professionals can also benefit from attendance tracking mechanisms on mobile devices. Although there are online platforms available for designing mobile apps, it's advisable to hire a mobile app design agency. Designing and maintaining a mobile app is usually more expensive than creating a basic website.

Building a successful mobile app involves several steps, starting with customer relationship management (CRM). CRM technology is a powerful tool that's essential for all businesses, whether B2C or B2B. The CRM helps businesses understand their customers better, build customer funnels, and automate marketing. It also creates a dashboard that provides business owners with insights into customers and revenue. Examples of CRM tools include Zoho CRM for startups, small businesses, and mid-size companies, Salesforce for large, complex operations, and Hubspot for fast-moving internet or product-based companies.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is another essential technology that helps business owners automate all processes across the company and provides a clear, in-depth dashboard showing the company's actual health in real-time. ERP can be used by small, mid-size, and large businesses alike. For example, Amazon warehouses use several ERP systems to manage their operations, while logistics companies rely on ERP systems to allocate delivery personnel to tasks.

Processing payments online is crucial for businesses to transform into digital businesses. PayTM for Business, Razorpay, and PayUmoney are the easiest apps for individual consultants, startups, and small businesses to use to accept and receive online payments. Large businesses use online banking and respective banking apps to accept and receive online payments.

Cybersecurity is a prime concern for all businesses, regardless of size. To protect against phishing, hacking, and other data theft, it's essential to use original antivirus software across the company and train team members to be aware of cybersecurity. The top five antivirus software programs for 2020 are Norton, Bitdefender, Panda, TotalAV, and Bull Guard.

E-commerce is the future, and leveraging the power of selling to customers via e-commerce is key for businesses to transform into digital businesses. Small businesses can create their platforms, although existing platforms like Amazon and Flipkart are available. If you want more control over your sales margins and customer experience, having your own platform is the way to go. To start your own self-branded online store, use a platform like Shopify. By signing up with Shopify, you can create your online store with ease. All technology and integrations with distribution partners will be taken care of by Shopify, leaving you with the sole responsibility of providing your customers with the best products, prices, and service.

Facebook ads have become the most powerful advertising and customer acquisition platform for small and mid-size businesses. If you feel that your customers are on Facebook, running Facebook ads can attract them to your business even when you're sleeping. To start with Facebook ads, create a Facebook page for your business and select advertising on top of the page. The Facebook advertising platform helps you target potential customers not only from a demographic perspective but also based on deep interests. For instance, a 20-year-old male might be more interested in music and playing online games, making him a perfect target for a gaming company. Similarly, a 25-40-year-old female might be interested in contemporary fashion, making her an excellent target for fashion brands. The most important consideration for success in running Facebook ads is the ad copy. Ensure that your creative design and your ad copy are beautiful and to the point. Announcing sales and offers can also attract more potential customers.

Summary:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has become prevalent in various industries. This shift has made working from home the new normal for businesses worldwide. To achieve several benefits such as tracking employee efficiency, reducing operational costs, enhancing customer experience, and becoming a digital business, organizations must adopt technology. By embracing technology, businesses can not only adapt to the current situation but also thrive in the new world.