Business Growth Strategies for Your Pandemic Quantum Leap

Business Growth Strategies for Your Pandemic Quantum Leap

Business growth didn’t go as planned this year, that’s for sure. It’s safe to say that no one could’ve guessed how 2020 would unfold. Not too far into the year, the pandemic rapidly changed how we live and do work worldwide. Many businesses took massive financial hits, and some of them didn’t survive.

But some businesses bringing in six figures or greater have experienced just the opposite. Jordan Valinsky’s “The Mercury News” article entitled Business is Booming for These 14 Companies During the Coronavirus Pandemic shares the following: “During this upheaval, some companies have been thriving because of dramatic shifts in consumer behavior.”

You feel fortunate as an entrepreneur because your company is one of the few that thrived, possibly more than ever, this year. You feel incredibly grateful because some of the seemingly most immune industries suffered major business growth setbacks as a pandemic-induced recession rocked the global economy.

Maybe you specialize in online creative services, outdoor products, or medical supplies or another industry that just went crazy in a good way this year. While you’re thankful for the business, you may feel overwhelmed by the customer or client demands you need to meet.

The most pressing question if your business is bringing in six figures, seven figures or more is, “What do I do now? What do I do today to meet that customer or client demand?” If those are your questions, we have some answers that may help. Specifically, you may want to seriously consider hiring a remote team to assist your business during times of such high demand. Here’s why.

Delegating and Outsourcing Without Lengthy Delays

You instinctively know now isn’t the time to hire a team and spend weeks and months training them if you have delegation needs today. It just isn’t realistic. You’d lose so much time and resources in the process. You also don’t want to heap unrealistic expectations on new hires during such stressful times.

That’s where hiring a remote team from a virtual assistant company can help. You get on-demand delegation power when you need it most. That allows you to meet the needs of your clients or customers more seamlessly. And that same excellent service will help to ensure that your customers and clients return.

Expert Help Right Away

As a business owner, you realize that building the right team can take months and years. It isn’t an instant-gratification pursuit. It takes patience and persistence. But what do you do when you can’t grow the skills of your employees in time?

Although there are a variety of strategies worth considering, one of the best is hiring a team of already established experts who will provide the skills you need at your moment of need. That’s what a remote team can do for you.

Experience Working with Businesses in the ‘Quantum Leap’ Phase

Even before the pandemic and resulting recession, our team regularly worked with businesses going through a boom.

We understand what it takes to help companies during high-demand times. We also realize how necessary it is that your business rises to the occasion when there’s a rush for a particular service or product.

Given our experience, you’ll gain a virtual team skilled in helping you navigate the good stressors of a booming business. That way, you’ll be able to focus more on ‘steering your company’s ship’ instead of existing in survival mode.

Would You Like to Maximize Your Business Growth During the Pandemic?

If so, Smart to Finish is here to make sure that, no matter how busy you are, you’re able to meet the increasing demand for your product or services brought on by the pandemic. We can help your six-figure business or seven-figure business to keep delivering the same stellar service your customers or clients have come to expect.

Regardless of whether you need a virtual assistant, virtual team or virtual manager, we can make growing a business a lot less frustrating. If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to us for a free 30-minute consultation to discuss the best business growth strategies for your company.

Your Hire Strategy: 3 Steps to Hire the Best Employees

Your Hire Strategy: 3 Steps to Hire the Best Employees

You’ve probably heard it all by now when it comes to developing a hire strategy. Some things you’ve tried have panned out great. Others? Well, quite the opposite. Every single business out there goes through similar challenges.

For obvious reasons, it’s wise to continually hone your hiring solutions. Few aspects of your business can increase revenue and deliver outstanding results as building the right staff can. The negative flip side of that is equally true.

Knowing how to hire will also have a huge impact on whether your staff are happy at your organization. If they feel valued by the team you build, they’ll stick around. If not, they’ll walk. In light of that, here are some things to look for when hiring.

Make Sure Your New Hire Will Be Compatible

Your prospective employee may be an uncontested all-star when it comes to their job performance and abilities. That doesn’t make them an automatic shoo-in for the position, however. You’ll also need to judge their compatibility with your existing employees. 

Think about how much it cost to develop the staff you already have. Now imagine if this newcomer frustrated your valued workers so much that they stopped giving their best, or showing up or to the point they called it quits. This is all the more crucial for supervisory positions. As the saying goes, “People don’t quit bad jobs. They quit bad bosses.”

If you hire the right person, you’ll add another reason for your employees to show up for work every day. If not, you’ll have created a dark cloud when it comes to morale. It’s best to work together as a team to decide if compatibility exists in a job candidate to get a balanced perspective when hiring.

Check Their Social Footprint

Digging into someone’s online social activity when hiring isn’t considered “creepy” like it once was. Heck, people even check someone’s social footprint before going on a date. And these days, who can blame them?

Take a close look at your potential employee’s social activity. It’s entirely possible that a minute’s glance will tell you to move on to the next candidate. However, it’s equally possible you won’t want to move on to the next candidate after doing some searches.

Asking personal questions won’t get you anywhere, and could be awkward and uncomfortable for both parties. Rather, you or your human resources team should be analyzing the candidates’ presence on social media,” says Steve Olenski in his Forbes article entitled, “6 Tips for Hiring the Right Employee.”

Assess Their Ability to Persevere

Sure, you need someone with the right skills who’s a fast learner but you need more than that. You’re looking for a candidate who can handle setbacks and adversity. Because sometimes one’s workload can knock the wind out of them on the bad days. 

You need a staff member who’ll keep going when things get tough. Challenges are inevitable but can be overcome by a worker with persistence. What are you specifically looking for? More than anything after you have the correct skillset, you’re searching for a positive attitude.

This skill isn’t taught in any school yet is, nonetheless, essential. Perseverance only comes about through disappointment and setbacks. Failures are inevitable for everyone. The choice to continue the trudge to success despite failure is what separates the truly successful from the rest of the pack. 

Find someone who’s determined and who won’t give up while maintaining their optimism and you’ll have a winner. Hire them quickly before someone else does!

Could You Use Some Extra Help with Your Hire Strategy?

A good hire doesn’t just happen. Recruitment and the hiring process are a painstaking process well worth the effort. Knowing how to hire is only half the battle, however.

Sometimes your current staffing demands make it hard to devote the time needed to add to your team. If this struggle sounds all too familiar, Smart to Finish can help you with this process. Our team has experience making sure your next hire is the smart hire.

We know firsthand that the right staff makes all the difference in a successful business. That’s why we’ve learned how to recruit and pass that good hire on to you. After all, when you’re successful, so are we.

Do you have additional questions about how we could help to make your hiring a big win? We’d love to interact more with you through a free consultation.

Work-life Balance

Work-life Balance

“You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.” – Heather Schuck

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is a crucial element to both business success and personal happiness. For entrepreneurs, this is often easier said than done. Work time tends to spill over into personal time, and the line of separation between the two becomes blurred. Surprisingly, the key to managing both can often be boiled down into two simple words of advice

Schedule it

As a successful business owner, you likely already plan out much of your work day in advance. Whether you maintain your own schedule or delegate projects to a virtual assistant (VA), the simple act of carving out time for necessary tasks sets you up for effective time management.

Although this seems so basic to essential business functioning, it is often lost when it comes to planning our personal lives. Grocery store trips, exercise, relaxation, or time away is not treated with the same level of priority (or may feel silly to schedule on a calendar).

We make the mistake of assuming we will find the time to handle these functions as they arise. For an already stretched-thin business owner, that time can be few and far between!

 “You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”

Charles Buxton

Creating time

For personal health, family, fun and relaxation is essential for a healthy work/life balance. Regardless of its appeal, this notion can feel intimidating (or impossible) to an entrepreneur who is already bogged down with more than they feel they have time to manage. They may wonder “how can I commit to scheduling personal time, when I am short on work time the way it is? What about the spontaneous challenges that are bound to arise?”

If you find there are simply not enough hours in the day, perhaps it’s time to consider hiring an assistant.  

“You can do anything, but not everything” – David Allen

As a business owner, giving up (some) control of the reigns can be the most difficult – and most profitable – decision you make. By allowing yourself to focus on your strengths, you can increase growth and profitability while delegating everything else to your VA. A quality virtual assistant or team of virtual assistants can handle anything from marketing and growing your business, social media, SEO, administrative tasks, customer service, accounting, website design, and more. While you maintain control over all executive decisions, your VA acts as your right hand: keeping everything running smoothly.

By freeing up space on your calendar and scheduling times to focus on personal health, relaxation and family commitments, you are able to keep a properly balanced life – offering your best self to your clients, business, colleagues.

Exciting Announcement: We’re Simplero Certified!

Exciting Announcement: We’re Simplero Certified!

We have been utilizing Simplero for some time now, and can attest to its ability to bring ease
and profitability to our clients. By packaging multiple systems into one source, Simplero
provides a software program that delivers all the Sales and Marketing functions an information-
based business needs. At Smart To Finish, we’ve assisted several of our clients to integrate this
service into their business – and we are delighted to announce that we are now officially
Simplero Certified!

What exactly is Simplero?
We think Simplero sums themselves up best when they say “Simplero gives you everything you
need and nothing you don’t”.

Some key features include:

  • Comprehensive email marketing
  • Tools for creating and selling infoproducts (PDF e-books, webinars, audio, video)
  • Built-in member sites
  • Fully customizable website (includes shop, blog, etc.)
  • Create landing pages, invoicing, affiliate programs, and more

Trying to decide if Simplero is right for you? Let’s talk! As certified Simplero consultants, we can
help you determine the best options for your business!

5 Tips for Choosing Effective Marketing Content For Your Blog Or Newsletter

5 Tips for Choosing Effective Marketing Content For Your Blog Or Newsletter

Content marketing is the best way to get information to your clients or customers. This is also the perfect way to gain the trust of your customers and increase your sales.

The problem is choosing the most effective type of content and presenting it in an attention getting manner.

Here are some tips on choosing the most effective content for your content marketing.

  1. Point out the competition’s mistakes. People, in general, want to avoid painful experiences as much as possible. Pointing out all the ways your competitors fail to make life easier for your potential customers works to your advantage. Top ten lists on this kind of thing such as “10 most common mistakes” or “10 things you don’t want to do” are especially effective in driving people to you, rather than your competitor. I’m not saying you should specify or point fingers at specific competitors here!!  That’s not professional (or nice). Instead, use general statements and point out what makes your company better than others.
  2. Give out industry “secrets.” They are not really secrets but if you let people think they are then their trust in you grows. Create content with bulleted lists showing how to do things faster and easier or how to make something work better. People love lists about things because lists are easy to filter through and pick out those points that pertain to them specifically. They also help people retain the information.
  3. Organize it for them. One of the biggest hurdles for some people is the organization of certain things. Do the work for them by giving them plans and ways to organize things to make their life simpler. If you can make something straightforward and easy for someone, they will appreciate it and repay you with their business.
  4. Answer common questions. When you’re discussing a common problem or situation, people tend to have the same questions. By providing the answers before someone even asks the questions, you make them feel more comfortable. It gives them the impression your company truly cares about them and their needs because you’ve taken the time to learn what they want or need.
  5. Latest trends reports. This is a way to help your clients and customers keep up to date with the latest information from your company. This type of content lists the newest information or technologies and explains them in an easy to understand fashion.

Effective content marketing is all about continually giving the client or customer whatever information they deem useful. It demonstrates to prospects your company is paying attention to the needs of their clients and responding in an resourceful and expeditious manner. If the frequency and/or quality of information begins to slow down, your client base will begin to find another source of information, taking their sales dollars with them.

Making use of a virtual assistant writing service is a good way to fulfill the needs of consistent and effective content writing. By using writers to help create your content, you can easily continue to provide fresh, new content. Once you have the articles, reports and other documents, offer them to your customers freely through email or a blog. Not only will your customers thank you in replies and comments but, more importantly, with their continued loyalty. The Smart to Finish team can help you create content and update your blogs and newsletters. Let’s talk 🙂

Four Ways To Use Webinars To Grow Your Business

These days, companies are finally starting to see the benefits of using webinars to grow their small business. Not only can webinars be used to generate revenue for themselves, but they can also increase awareness, minimize costs, and build trust with their audience. Below we’ve included four simple things you can do to get the most out of your webinars.

1. Build Brand Awareness & Trust

One of the best ways to build trust and show the real value of your company is to use live video in webinars. While content is great, it’s often one-sided. Webinars allow your customers to get engaged in the conversation live – giving them the opportunity to build rapoir and trust with your company.

2. Grow & Clean Your Mailing List

One of the most simple ways to grow your mailing list is to host a webinar. You can create new mailing lists from those who attended your webinars. If they attended a webinar of yours, they are more likely to engage in follow up content you send via email, making these mailing lists more responsive.

3. Increase Conversions On High Ticket Items

Using webinars to sell big ticket items has been proven to be extremely effective. During webinars, customers are given a chance to get to know you and your company. Building this relationship before asking them to spend a lot of money with your company will ultimately give you a better chance of selling them down the road.

4. Co-Host & Interview Authority Experts

A great way to become an expert in your field and draw in potential clients is to co-host and interview other authority experts in your field. You could do this at a sponsored event as noted in our 5 Simple Networking tips for Small Businesses, or turn it into a virtual webinar. You could even stream your live event, so those who are not in your area can join as well.

Need some help running your webinars? We do it all the time for our current customers. Shoot us a note and let us know what your needs are – we would love to help build up your webinar experience!