More than 1.9 billion people are conducting banking operations through digital channels. This number is projected to increase in the next few years, but the truth is, branches still play a pivotal role for customers. Therefore, bank branches shouldn’t be perceived as a costly overhead but as an important channel to yield higher revenue and enhance customer relationships. This article is about 7 keys to setting your bank branch for sales and service success .

7 Keys to Setting Your Bank Branch for Sales and Service Success

Bank managers should seize the opportunity that the shift in customers’ preferences creates and work to evolve branches to meet the new demands. Setting your branch for success is easier than ever if you leverage the right strategies. Read on to uncover the 7 keys to branch sales and service success.

7 Keys to Setting Your Bank Branch for Sales and Service Success

Make Client Security a Priority

Data is an invaluable resource, but its security is a topic of concern in banking. You need to instill trust in your customers by ensuring their data is safe. To do that, it’s wise to have a dedicated team that will keep up with security technologies. Additionally, you should implement forefront data security protocols like encryption, multifactor authentication, and transparent privacy policies.

Moreover, it’s also essential to provide data security training to customers to protect their data. This practice will not only reinforce data protection but will also present an opportunity to build customer relationships.

Train Employees to Serve Clients Better

To boost branch sales, the front-line staff should be good at capturing overall customer potential. Building a customer-centric team is the first and most important step. Assess potential hires with a focus on financial services sales aptitude. Then, train employees in sales interactions. Focus on getting them to be better at discovering and meeting the needs of the customers and building loyalty.

Consider encouraging customers to complete a relationship profile. This arms the salespeople with the needed information to deepen the discussion, provide contextual offers, and the right financial advice and guidance.

Reconsider the Service Delivery

If customers need to wait in queues for hours every time they visit your branch, they will eventually consider going to a competitor. Understanding wait time, lead time, interaction, and branch capacity can provide valuable insight in planning for peak time.

Consumer data can help you evaluate the amount of time spent in a customer-driven activity and adequately schedule staff. Consider tracking this information through an integrated queue and appointment system or video-based analytics.

Know Which Products Customers Like Most

Defining which products resonate best with your customers and focusing on cross-selling those is a great strategy to boost branch sales and service success. Pay special attention to the products and services that are unique to your institution and differentiate you from the competitors. Then, try to optimize sales strategies around them.

Additionally, you can start reaching out to customers to highlight these services and explain why and how they can be helpful.

Listen to Your Customers

Digital banking allows customers to open a new account or check their balance with just a few clicks. However, customers still go to physical branches and look for face-to-face meetings, especially for important life events and significant purchases.

With this in mind, you should focus on providing convenience to build loyalty and gain lifelong customers. To successfully do this, first-line workers should actively listen to what customers desire. According to recent data, people generally want convenient branch locations, ease of resolving problems, lower deposit interest rates, and a robust ATM network.

Leverage Technology

You can use technology to amplify customer engagement and satisfaction. You shouldn’t overlook the next-generation customer engagement systems. They can help you offer digital-first experiences for branch staff, along with more flexible processes. Additionally, consider deploying intelligent automation to relieve staff from doing repetitive tasks.

Moreover, technologies like machine learning can detect new patterns and offer valuable insight so that employees can understand customers’ needs with unprecedented depth. Last but not least, you can provide appointment scheduling to optimize the branch performance.

Create Targeted Campaigns

By tracking and evaluating customer data, you can understand the life stage of each customer and adequately inform messaging and ads placement. For instance, Gen Z-ers are just opening their first accounts and might soon need a debit or credit card. On the other hand, Millennials might need loans to buy their first homes or get married. Thanks to the advances in technologies, you now have great opportunities to create targeted campaigns to reach new customers.

In Conclusion

By empowering your branch with data, you can enhance customer satisfaction and boost sales and service success. That being said, be sure to review required activities on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. This will help you get valuable insight and tweak your strategies to continually get the expected results.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post 7 Keys to Setting Your Bank Branch for Sales and Service Success appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Successful customer loyalty can be a big boost to your company. It can increase your profits, improve sales, and help achieve the sustainable growth of your business. Let’s look a little deeper into what makes customer loyalty so important, and how you can achieve it.

What Attracts Your Customers?

The old ways of getting customers to be loyal to your brand are not as popular as they used to be. Around 95% of UK customers said they wanted customers to find new ways to reward their loyalty.

Surveys have shown that good customer service, a quick and easy returns policy, and fair pricing are now big factors in customers returning to a brand or finding another.

Another key factor is brand values. If you have values that a customer supports, they are more likely to continue shopping with you.

Before you can benefit from a loyal customer, you need to find out what they want.

What Makes Customer Loyalty So Important?

Once you have started building your loyal customer base, you need to keep them. But, why do you need loyal customers, and what can they do for you that other customers cannot?

• Loyal Customers Are Your Best Marketing Team

Companies spend millions every year trying to market their brand and products. While this is a good way to drive sales, your loyal customers will also do this as well. A loyal customer is more likely to recommend your product or service, and this word-of-mouth marketing is often more persuasive.

• Loyal Customers Answer Your Surveys

Surveys are a great way to see what’s working and to test out new ideas. Although you may get a few people doing your survey who aren’t loyal, the vast majority will be. This is because they value your business and want to help make it better. They can also provide valuable feedback on what works well and what needs improvement.

• Loyal Customers Fuel Your Sales

With a mixture of the first two examples above, you are already getting more sales and growing your business. However, these loyal customers themselves are also helping you grow by returning many times.

By nurturing customer loyalty and encouraging them to spread the word, you are making sure that your business is on an upward curve.

How Can You Build Customer Loyalty?

Companies use a myriad of ways to encourage customer loyalty. A loyalty rewards program is still a popular choice, though not as popular as it once was.

Customer service is another vital way to build trust and loyalty in your brand. Customers are 86% more likely to return to your business if they have a positive customer service experience.

If you have a number of loyal customers, try making a few of them brand ambassadors. These will be able to spread the word and actively promote your brand.

Conclusion

If you want to be a successful and growing business, you need loyal customers who can champion your brand and drive sales. Thus, by following these tips and tricks, you will be able to build the foundations for a future-proofed company.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post What Makes Customer Loyalty So Important? appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

All companies have inefficiencies. As long as companies are powered by humans, that will always be the case. Some companies make the mistake of trying to eliminate all inefficiencies. To do that, one would also have to eradicate the humanity from the business. The true beauty and uniqueness of art can be found in its minor imperfections. That is one of the things that distinguishes it from something extruded from a machine.

Your business should never feel like it has lost its humanity. Customers will not reward you for that. There will always be a balancing act between being so mechanized that you lose the human touch, and being so sloppily human that you start losing money. Here are a handful of inefficiencies that start out small but can hit the bottom line big time:

Warehousing

If you deal in bulky, less-than-pallet-load, and non-conveyable items like crates and oversized inventory items, they have to be stored someplace. There is no 100% efficient process that keeps you fully stocked and moves that inventory from the warehouse, kits it together, and sends it to shipping. This is especially true if you need to assign two to three workers to handle bulky, non-conveyable goods like refrigerators, furniture, and basketball backboards.

The Guardian XO full-body exoskeleton suit, 

is designed to boost productivity, minimize the risk of workplace injury, and enable employees to lift and move heavier loads by themselves. Engineered for heavy lifting, the suit utilizes robotics, sensors, and software to help workers move goods up to 200 pounds (90 kg) in warehouses and distribution centers.

According to the manufacturer, these tools “combine human intelligence, instinct, and judgment with the power, endurance, and precision of machines.” They also say this about the product’s capabilities:

Set to transform the way work gets done, the Guardian XO industrial exoskeleton augments operator strength without restricting freedom of movement to boost productivity while dramatically reducing injuries.

This is a great way to upgrade your warehouse operations.

Software

If you are not running the best software to help grow your business and cut internal costs, you are losing money. If you are running your software locally, you also need fast hardware to take full advantage of it. Without that hardware, each operation takes longer than it has to.

You can read about real-world examples of how the right software can make a big difference, especially SaaS delivered via cloud computing. You would be surprised at how being able to automate little things like application completion can make a huge difference. There are secondary benefits beyond the initial speed. All sales teams are bad at paperwork. A certain amount of it has to come back for corrections. Sales can be lost in that process. When the paperwork is automated, it is less likely to have costly errors.

Training

A lot of the IT budget is spent on training new employees on a system with which they are unfamiliar. After the onboarding, things continue to go downhill because of user errors. There is also inefficiency whenever a person is forced to use the unfamiliar. They will be more hesitant. In many cases, this cannot be helped because of proprietary software.

That said, if workers are given a choice of PC or Mac, they can use whatever system they know best. Suddenly, onboarding is reduced dramatically. A worker can get up to speed much faster. And there will be fewer calls to tech support. Make work computing feel more like home computing and you will reduce a major pain point and inefficiency in your company.

No system is perfect, there will always be inefficiencies to deal with. And not all of them will cost you a noticeable amount of money. But keep an eye out for inefficiencies in warehousing, software, and training. These can cost you a lot more money than you think.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Here Are 3 Small Inefficiencies That Could Be Hurting Sales appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

When it comes to success in the digital world, both traffic and conversion rates matter. For every business, whether big or small, the ultimate goal of every marketing activity is to drive sales. In order to drive sales in today’s competitive marketplace, your business needs to have a strong presence online to avoid losing potential customers to your competitors. 

The average conversion rate for websites is roughly 2 percent, which means for every 100 visitors to your website, you can expect to get 2 customers. From there, you must try to increase your traffic in order to get more customers. This is not easy and there are many online businesses that just never manage to do it. 

If you are looking to improve the success of your online business, here are some tried and tested ways to gain more traffic and conversions online. 

Fix Your Website’s Technical Issues

Search engines and their algorithms are highly sophisticated. In fact, most websites with a large number of technical issues will perform poorly as search engine algorithms often check for technical issues first when scanning sites. As one digital marketing agency in Singapore explains, if your website has technical issues such as slow loading times or broken links, your business will be perceived negatively by site visitors and potential customers. This is a problem with many startup websites in Singapore and elsewhere because people attempt to make their business’s website themselves to save money.

In today’s world, building a website yourself for your business may seem like an easy task with various online services and templates to choose from. However, if your business’s website is continuously running into technical problems, it is best that you invest in hiring a professional website designer to handle your site. 

Create SEO Content

Trying to write and blog as frequently as you can is a good strategy to increase your website’s organic traffic. However, keep in mind that quality content should always be prioritized over the quantity of the content. As a general rule, the better your content is, the more chances you will have of generating organic and positive traffic to your site in the long run. 

Search engines prioritize website content that is authoritative and relevant and which best answers the commonly searched queries from internet users. Because of this, websites always strive to create quality content to rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs). With useful and interesting content, you can both place highly on SERPs and encourage visitors to revisit your website again and again. 

Pay Attention to Relevant Keywords

Keywords play a major role in how your website is ranked on the result pages. By using relevant keywords that most internet users are prone to search for, your website is more likely to be detected and positively rated by search engine algorithms. This will in turn increase your overall rankings. There are different tools you can use to search for relevant keywords that are applicable to your market niche. Additionally, analyzing competitors and the keywords they use on their websites are two common ways to find out what types of keywords are the most successful. 

Keep in mind that you should always try to use keywords that are specific to your products and services. The most popular keywords cannot just be added to your content randomly to boost your rankings. It is a common mistake that many websites make of targeting every keyword that is SEO-related. Make sure the content is relevant and well written.

Build Your Off-Site SEO

It is important for search engine algorithms to recognize your website as an authority in your field so that they can rank your website highly on result pages. Building backlinks on websites that are already recognized as authorities is one effective way you can effectively convince search engine algorithms of your website’s importance. 

If you wish to build backlinks, you can either reach out to relevant and authoritative websites so they will write articles with links to your website, or you can hire a professional company to help you build your links. Normally, websites with the largest number of quality backlinks will rank the highest on search engine result pages so it is worthwhile for you to look into link building. 

Create a User-Friendly Website

It is understandable for visitors to be overwhelmed and have a negative experience on websites that have a lot of distractions. Remember that a positive user experience and a user-friendly interface are essential if you want visitors to stay on your website longer and come back again in the future. Therefore, your landing page should be easy to navigate, with a clear and concise layout. As a good rule of thumb, if something is not important and essential, do not include it. 

Common things you can consider putting on your website are headlines, subheadings, benefits, testimonials, reviews, and key details about your products and services. 

Use Social Media Effectively

All successful websites know how to increase their organic traffic by effectively linking their websites to their social media pages. If you are not using your social media pages, you should consider creating a business page on popular platforms that your target customers will most likely be on to create and update your content regularly there. This will give social media users a chance to get to know your business or get in touch with you.

On social media platforms, you can take steps to increase audience engagement and drive organic traffic to your website by creating interesting content with high appeal in the form of posts, videos, photos and by setting up events, giveaways, and live-streaming shows. Remember that publishing high-quality and engaging content is always better than publishing a lot of poorly made content that isn’t interesting for potential customers. 

After investing in high-quality content and improving your website, it is crucial for you to analyze your results and use this insightful data to make adjustments and improve your website in the long term. Successful businesses drive sales and lead by increasing their traffic and by improving their conversion rates from existing site visitors. By focusing all of your efforts in digital marketing into doing both, you will soon reap their benefits and ensure the sustainable growth of your business.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Ways to Gain More Traffic and Conversions Online appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity for growing sales and business, and you have just enough time to prepare your business for it. People often think of it as a cheesy celebration. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Check these tips and improve your offers and boost your sales.

Check Last Year Situation

If you had your business for more than a year, you should look back at your previous Valentine days and gather data from it. Look for what people were looking for last year, and take care of it in advance. This way, you can calculate your expectations and be prepared for increased demand.

Upgrade Appearance both Online and Offline

There are some people that can’t wait for Valentine’s day to come. And there are others who remember it only the night before. So to remind people about this day, upgrade your business appearance. It would be best if you did it both ways: offline (in the office or shop), and online (on your website and social media).

Arnas Stuopelis, Chairman of the Board of web hosting provider Hostinger, says: “Little details can go a long way. You don’t have to pour rose petals all over your website design. Just add a subtle hint to remember a loved one and an additional gift suggestion at the check-out, and it can do the trick.”

Fast Delivery

To help those who tend to forget the day, but still want to show attention to their loved ones, offer fast delivery. People might remember the need for a gift or flowers at the very last minute, and the same-day delivery is the selling point at situations like this.

Forbes highlight the fact that small businesses have the upper hand when Valentine’s demand is so high: “Local and smaller businesses can win Valentine’s Day by offering something that online companies can’t — whether it’s an in-person experience, same-day availability or customizability.”

Special Offers

In addition to trying to be original, you can always work with special discounts. They might seem predictable, but the important thing is – they work. You can offer exclusive sales for Valentine’s sets with several items in it. This way, you are providing the discount, but at the same time, the customer ends up with a bigger order.

Unexpected Offers

Valentine’s day is all about love, but love can be found in unexpected places. For example, National Retail Federation reports that a quarter of adults under 35-year-olds love to love on their pets and are buying Valentine’s day gifts for them. This data shows that Valentine’s day is a good day to think outside the box and see the love in various forms.

Anti-Valentine’s Specials

When thinking about Valentine’s day, don’t forget those who can’t take it. Just because they don’t want to celebrate doesn’t mean that they don’t want to buy anything. Take care of singles or those sarcastic couples. Offer them something that would help to get away from Valentine’s day. It can be a blanket to hide under or an extremely unromantic movie that would help to forget all those cheesy vibes.

Different people approach Valentine’s day in different ways. It means that your business can do the same. First, check the date from the previous years and get some insights into what people expect from your business. Put some visual reminders of the upcoming day in your store and on your website. Offer Valentine’s special sale for sets of gifts. Don’t forget that people love their pets as much as their significant others, so Valentine’s gifts can be aimed at pets. And finally, show some empathy for those who hate Valentine’s day by suggesting goods that would help to escape the celebration.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post How To Boost Sales On Valentine’s Day appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

The entrance of distributed computing and parallel processing has caused a revolutionary paradigm shift in the marketing industry. This has been achieved by incorporating data analytics and integration of this data to enable huge profit margins.

Data can now be deduced, patterns detected and predictions made; in essence, businesses can anticipate the customers’ needs, concerns and even future complaints. This level of customer interaction in the modern markets is essential.

As a matter of fact, a company in this age must be driven to understand its customers’ needs to be successful. The implication is that the business can stay in race with trends which are rapidly evolving and develop products proactively in response.

This was the case in 2012 when Walmart restocked up to 7 times more strawberry port tarts than normal just before Hurricane Frances. The New York Times states that Walmart had been at the forefront of using predictive technology and in fact had used data worth trillions of bytes worth of shopping history that contained information of patterns obtained when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier.

The implication of such occurrences is that companies have to take a data-driven stance if they are going to gain a competitive edge over rivals. It helps that such data is readily available, which means that its usage is no longer restricted to elite companies at the forefront of data science. Even SMEs are bound to benefit from it.

Why is Big Data Analytics Important for Sales?

Analytics have always been a crucial part of any business’ existence. Data collected over the course of operation helps to explain who buys which product and, hopefully, the data-crunching experts can try and figure out why.

This information can also be used to gain useful insight into seasonal demand and keep on top of trends. Questions that can be answered include what is trending on the market? Why are you gaining or losing customers? What do you need to do to stay competitive?

In areas that encourage consumer engagement, loyalty or help to boost confidence in your brand, the availability and usability of good analytics data is incredibly important. Brands like Ververica (https://www.ververica.com/) provide what’s known as stream processing – lots of data running consistently in real-time for business-orientated access.

Improving your pricing strategy: Whenever a new competitor enters a market, their go-to way of gaining a competitive edge is through pricing. Rival organizations then attempt to retain their dominant position via price-matching. On this front, the SMEs are unable to compete because they can hardly shrink their way into profitability anymore.

According to McKinsey, a 1% increase in price for the average business translates into an 8.7% increase in profits. But if it were that simple, every company would do just that – increase their prices to the point consumers can no longer bear.

Big Data analytics is incredibly useful for businesses that want to explore new methods of pricing their products. Dynamic pricing takes into account any number of factors that are fed into it – demographics, time, season, supply, demand and even competitors’ pricing information – and gives suggestions on how to price your products. If needed, these can then be reviewed by humans and published on the market.

Improving brand and product engagement: Along the same rein, big data can also be used to identify and process brand sentiment. For example, it’s possible to use Twitter’s API to scrape data on which phrases occur most often when your brand is mentioned. After which, a brand sentiment score can be generated.

This data can be thought of as a form of feedback for your product, and the insight gained can be used to improve in areas where the company is thought to be weak. Understanding consumer sentiment helps to understand barriers present in the market and increase sales.

Taking the Twitter example a bit further, the company has become an absolute behemoth in the social media space, handling over 70,000 GB of data every second. Access to most of this data is open to the public or, if you’d prefer to gain insight in real-time, subscribe to the company’s enterprise program. Processing such a massive amount of data calls for a big data platform like Hadoop or Spark.

When looking at Hadoop vs Spark, they are pretty evenly matched. Spark gains the upper hand on Hadoop when you need to process real-time insights on this data and send back a response to the customer’s device.

For instance, if you need to strengthen the security checks on your cart and checkout pages, since no customer wants to be kept waiting for ten minutes. Hadoop works better for data you’ve been saving up for years and perhaps you feel you could gain some valuable insights into your current or past consumer behavior. According to Woopra, customer analytics can give you the information that you need to make important product changes.

Generating and retaining leads: Big data serves as an important source of insights into how users interact with your website and brand. It’s possible that the majority of your site’s visitors originate from a social media platform like Twitter. Normal analytics can be useful for shedding light on aspects such as number of visitors, but it takes a lot more information to understand the connection between key pieces of data.

For example, in order to understand that visitors from Facebook spend more money than those from other sites, you’ll need access to a big data platform. Further, maybe visitors sent to your site from a backlinked blog prefer a certain product over the rest. For normal data platforms, generating such links is going to be a difficult task.

Understanding and influencing consumer behavior: A lot of people make purchasing decisions for similar reasons. Buying a keyboard and a mouse together is perfectly natural, after all. It may surprise you to know that, for a computer, gaining such insight is a lot harder. It doesn’t possess the same kind of intuition that allows you to deduce that, after all.

Big data creates an opportunity for businesses to create a sort of intuition for their platform, and takes it a step further. Some insight is notoriously difficult to come across and takes more than intuition to deliver. Walmart’s realization that ‘pampers are often bought together with beer,’ despite being little more than an urban legend at this point is a great example of the same.

This is an article provided by our partners network. It does not reflect the views or opinions of our editorial team and management.

Contributed content

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post How Can Big Data Analytics Benefit Your Sales? appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

If you’re an entrepreneur that’s just starting out, you will soon realize just how many things you need to take in and soak up in order to do well later down the line. Essentially you want to see yourself as a sponge. You want to take in as much information as you can, even if you don’t feel like it’s relevant to you yet – you will soon come to realize just how relevant every minor bit of information actually is. As they say, knowledge is power, so don’t cut yourself short because you’re too eager and want to get stuck in right away. You may end up missing out on a lot as a result.

Once you’ve made your initial plan and have an idea as to what you want to do and where you want to go with it, then you can start thinking about the plan of action.

Here are some of the most important areas to focus on at this stage.

The manufacturing

When you have a product in mind and you’re sure that that’s the direction you want to take things in, then you’re going to have to have them manufactured so that you have a large enough stock to keep you going for a while (assuming you’re able to make enough sales). But first you will need to have the right machines to do that for you, so you’ll want to have a look at machine manufacturing companies that offer the best machines available, as well as full support and service if ever you need new or spare parts along the way.

The sales

Everything in business boils down to securing that sale, moving your products, and making money. As you probably already know, you need to have a fair bit of money to start up and get on your feet, so most entrepreneur’s goal in the beginning, is to make back the money that they put down, and then start making a real profit. This is when you know that it’s all been worthwhile and your idea has paid off (literally!). Ensuring you get a sale, you need to cater to your target audiences needs so that they feel as though they can’t live without your product.

The marketing

If you don’t start marketing, then no one will even know that you exist. It’s important that you use as many platforms as you can, like social media for example. This is great because not only does it allow you to reach out to the masses, but it doesn’t even cost you a thing. You need to make sure that you post exciting content that draws people in, and from there it’s down to you to form a connection and turn those leads into real sales. You can’t go wrong with the occasional offer too, as people will always take advantage of a good deal to get the most out of their money. So try offering a discount like twenty percent off, or free next day delivery.

This is an article provided by our partners network. It might not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of our editorial team and management.
Contributed content

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Walking Your Way Through Business appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

How to Excel at Value Based Interview

Performing and preparing for a value based interview

Value based interviews (VBIs) are increasingly being adopted into recruitment processes to ensure that organisations hire staff that fit into their ethos and culture. Particularly in organisations where client, customer or patient care is critical to success, value-based interviews have become a popular technique to gain insight into the way people think or may make decisions.

Over the last few years, both public and commercial organisations, such as the NHS¹ and Nissan^2, have invested in value-based methods of recruitment to find the right staff.

With this in mind, Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment has collated some essential tips for preparing and performing for a value based interview:

Preparation is key

Like any interview, preparation is half the battle. However, in the case of a value-based interview, you’ll probably need to go beyond rehearsing why you think you’d be a good fit for the role or where you’d like to be in 5 years time. Thoroughly research an organisation’s values before the interview, as this will give you clear insight into the type of questions they may ask you. It can be a good idea to go through the company’s ‘About Us’ page on their website, to give you any valuable details about their mission and vision.

Match an organisation’s values to your experiences

After collecting a list of values from the available information you have about an organisation, think about experiences in your professional life where you have shown each value. Write down a list of the top 5 values you think could come up during the interview and think back over everything you’ve achieved in your career so far that could show how you meet these values. These experiences may need to be discussed during the interview to ensure they are anecdotes which could reasonably be conversed in an interview environment!

Rehearse these values

Type up each experience before the interview and rehearse how you would tell an interviewer about the experience which shows a particular value.  It can be a good idea to use the STAR technique (situation, task, aim, result) when discussing an experience to properly structure your answer and give an interviewer the full picture of how you demonstrated a value. Don’t be afraid to rehearse your answers in front of the mirror! Practice definitely gets you closer to perfect.

Ask value based questions in return

It’s good practice to have questions on hand to ask at the end of an interview to show your enthusiasm and interest in a role. If you’re in the situation of a value based interview, why not ask a value based question in return to show that you’re serious about working in an organisation which has a clear vision and workplace culture. By asking “Can you tell me about the workplace culture of the company?” or “What are the long-term ambitions of this organisation?” it shows that you’re a serious candidate who knows the type of company they want to work within day-to-day.

Robert Scott, Managing Director at Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment said: “Value-based interviews can often be daunting as they follow a different format to the traditional interviews which people are used to. Despite this, as long as you’ve prepared and practised thoroughly, there’s really nothing to be concerned about. Thorough research before the interview is the key to success – it can be a good idea to trawl through company documents online, or if you already have contacts within that organisation ask them the values which the company has expressed to follow”.

Contributed content

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Hints From Recruitment Agency for Excelling at Value Based Interview appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

To be successful in today’s current market, you need to have a laser focus on who your customer is, and why they will want to buy your product. This is something you can do by using demographic research and targeted marketing strategies both things you can get more information on in the post below.

Demographic research.

Demographic research or market research as its know is still alive and well. Of course, it has changed dramatically in style from what it once was. In fact, in the past market research methods use to favor heavily call centers making outward inquiries and event door to door canvassing for opinions.

Looking at the right data can help you target your business.

Instead, now market research is most often done by analyzing big data and site analytics. Although, it is possible to outsource the primary methods of data capture mentioned above to a professional company if you so choose, as well as use an online survey company to mine for valuable insight for you.

Of course, it is vital that market research is completed because without this insight you will not know how to fulfill best the needs of your customers, something that you have to be able to do if you want your business to be successful and viable over the long term.

Use a platform that gets you direct access to your desired demographic.

One way to ensure that you put your demographic research to good use is to find a platform that appeals to and interacts with the market you are looking to crack.

An excellent example of this is something like this Hub Services Provider that provides a service to patients and so has their ear when it comes to making product and therapy decisions. Something that ensures your product will be offered directly to the people that need it most.

Use personalized advertising.

Another targeted marketing strategy that your business can use is to use personalized adverts online that are designed to appeal specifically to a particular group.

By doing this, you can then ensure that the correct message is matched to the exact demographic you are aiming for.  Of course, the advantages of purchasing from you will also be clearly stated, an action that should lead to an increase in sales conversions.

Help to create a specific group that has strong brand loyalty.

Lastly, while it is possible to identify and market to a particular demographics, another method that is being used to great success in the current market is to create a group that can be appealed to directly.

Something that is most often done via the creation of superfans of your product. People that are so enthused by you and your offerings that they wish to be kept in the loop about all of your new developments and give the opportunity to buy such products first.

Of curse, the advantage to creating a group of superfans like this is that they not only act as an almost guaranteed line of sales but can also help to promote your product to others like them and act as brand ambassadors. Which can serve as another way to garner more attention and sales from people that are not yet aware of the advantages of your brand.

This is an article provided by our partners’ network. It might not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of our editorial team and management.

Contributed Content 

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Laser Focused: Target The Right Demographic To Increase Sales appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.