The new year means that it’s time to reflect on your business so you can assess what is going right and what aspects need a little work. Maybe you’re looking to set new goals for your company like a percentage of growth, an increase in net worth, or the number of clients you take on. Whatever the goal, you should sit down, make a plan, and execute it. Here are our tips to make sure that you and your small business start the new year off strong.

1. Pick great employees

Finding amazing employees isn’t always an easy task. First, you have to put up job postings on sites like Angie’s List or hope internal referrals bring in top-notch talent. Then, you have to sort through dozens, maybe hundreds, of resumes. Finally, you’ll have a batch of promising candidates who you’ll interview in person.

When those potential employees come in for an interview, this is the time to try to get a feel for their character and if they’d be a good fit at your company—both professionally and culturally.

Another important aspect of this process is properly screening your applicants. An employment background check helps to weed out people who are liabilities because of credit issues or a criminal history. This is an important step that can save you the hassle of having to fire and then re-hire.

2. Bundle your services or products

If you’re looking to increase your profits, bundling your projects can be more attractive to prospective clients. Customers may view bundles as savings, and even if the actual amount of money they save with a bundle isn’t very much, perception is everything. If you can afford to be flexible with what each bundle offers—for example, if you can swap out products or services—you may find more customers interested in buying what you’re selling.

3. Ask for referrals

Do you have a lot of happy customers? It’s time to tap into that valuable resource! Don’t be shy about asking your current and past clients for future customer referrals. In addition, you should also be regularly asking for reviews. Good reviews can be used as testimonials on your website or on marketing materials like brochures. Just make sure that you ask their permission first before using any quotes.

4. Up your social media game

If you don’t have social media for your company, make it your goal to get things going in the new year—it might just help you boost your sales. You don’t have to sweat about getting just the right hashtags or posting a photo with a particular aesthetic, you just have to get your name and brand out there.

Focus your social media strategy on four three concepts:

• Consistency: try to post one post per week at a minimum. Make sure you use both hashtags and a geotag.
• Follow similar businesses: one great way to build followers is to find people who are in the same industry. Who knows? Maybe it’ll lead to a collaboration of some sort.
• Tell a story: nobody is going to want to follow you unless you share stories important to you and your company. Focus on a narrative when you’re posting. Maybe introduce key employees via social media posts.
• Engage: ask questions, engage with customers, and encourage comments. Don’t forget to follow other accounts and comment on others’ posts as well.

If you don’t have a full-time social media strategist and don’t have the budget to hire one, consider hiring an intern to help out.

5. Have a promotion or sale

Having a sale might seem counterintuitive when you’re trying to raise your profits—after all, how are you going to make money by lowering the price of your products? You may be surprised to learn that sales can lead people to buy more than they would otherwise. Even if you’re offering a small discount, your product or service might seem more attractive to clients who are hesitant to bite the bullet.

Final thoughts

The new year brings forth a renewed sense of purpose when it comes to your small business. Use this time to invigorate your business with fresh ideas, innovative customer solutions, and maybe even some new employees. With these tips and tricks, you’ll be well on your way to a successful and profitable 2019.

If you own a rental property, you’re probably aware by now that being a landlord isn’t always as glamorous as it’s made out to be. This is especially true if you own multiple units, with multiple tenants, who have all sorts of needs. Whether it’s a flood at two in the morning, or a broken HVAC air conditioning unit during the dead of summer, maintenance issues can be difficult to attend to. Multiply that with tenant turnover, filling vacancies, scheduling showings, and soon you can find yourself severely overwhelmed.

When it comes to making money from an ecommerce shop, setting up the shop is only half the battle. To maximize your sales, you must take consistent action. Let’s take a look at some things that you can do to boost sales for your ecommerce shop.

1. Build trust during each stage of the buying process.

When potential customers visit your site, you must show them that your business is trustworthy. If you are requesting an exchange of their hard-earned money for your goods, it is the least you can do.

One thing you can do to foster trust is provide actual customer reviews of your products on your site. This action shows your visitors that your products are worth buying.

Another thing you can do is install a live chat feature on your site. This provides each visitor with a low-risk way to interact with your site. When visitors see the chat feature, they know that you are serious about providing responsive customer service.

2. Simplify the checkout process.

Have you ever tried to purchase something and the process was so complicated that you left the store without buying the item? Unfortunately, this happens a lot on ecommerce sites. Visitors become confused and abandon their shopping carts.

An easy way to reduce the number of abandoned shopping carts is by making the checkout process as simple as possible. Here are a few things you can do.

• Allow visitors to make purchases as guests instead of signing up as members of your site.
• Eliminate unnecessary form fields on the checkout page.
• Install a checkout progress bar that enables visitors to see the steps in the transaction.

3. Implement email marketing tools.

If you have a customer list, you can use it to send marketing materials to their email addresses. Email is an inexpensive way for you to share company news, information about sales, or upcoming events.

The best part about email marketing is it has a ROI of 4300%. Although creating an email marketing campaign takes careful planning, the results will be worth it.

4. Show the benefits of your products.

Your ecommerce site should show your customers ways in which your products will be beneficial to them. Instead of focusing on product features, your product descriptions should contain information about the benefits of owning your products.

Will the products help your clients lose weight? Or will the products help your customers save money? Don’t be shy about telling your customers how your products can revolutionize their lives.

5. Upload quality pictures of the products.

The importance of having good pictures on your sight can’t be overstated. An attractive picture can convert a site visitor into a customer. Conversely, a photograph that shows your product in a bad light can ruin a sale.

Do you need a few tips on how to take better pictures? Here are a few things you can do to improve the quality of your photos.

• Use natural lighting.
• Hire a photographer.
• Get an attractive backdrop.

Boosting your ecommerce sales is as easy as getting qualified for vehicle title loans in Miami. By applying these tips, you can increase your ecommerce sales.

Paper usage for conversations are now extinct due to the advent of smartphones. As reported by Salary, 37 percent of the employees’ time is spent in meetings. Most feel that text-based conversations can save time on meetings but that is not the case. Mobile devices are extensively used for texting to save some time, but they lack a degree of personalization. It is one of the reasons why video conferencing is gaining immense popularity in the IT sector.

Impersonal Communication is Ineffective

One of the core purposes of talking to other people is to solve issues and build a relationship in the IT world. If the conversation is impersonal, it lacks effectiveness. You can’t build a great relationship without having any eye contact. According to an article in Psychology Today, almost 55 percent of the discussion is nonverbal. You can build better relationships when people observe emotions and understand the nuances of conversing with other people. If you want to foster productivity, establish better teams, and increase collaboration, then there is no better tool than web chats.

It Allows for Flexibility

Online conferencing for IT like Blue Jeans allows face-to-face interaction with clear visibility and offers more flexibility to interact with people. Observing with a sharp eye makes all the difference in understanding your people. You have to be dynamic and interactive to be effective. Many people would like to ask questions and expect answers relevant to their issues. Written words can lack the same dynamism. Video discussions can help people interact well as well as satisfy their curiosity and doubts. A study with thousands of communicators highlighted the importance of audio-visual means of chatting as shown on the Study website. It shows how moving visuals could make it easier for you to get your message across, as it can increase their engagement and improve feedback considerably.

Visual collaboration also helps companies promote innovation by fostering team communication. Interactive audiovisual means can be utilized to address issues in a small group or large audience. It is found that 90 percent of businesses actively focus on increasing collaboration among personnel with 67 percent focusing on improving their productivity, according to Global Employee Engagement Trends for 2015. Better collaboration brings about synergy, which can expedite the business’s growth exponentially.

According to research by Speechly Bircham and King’s College, 62 percent of the organizations surveyed felt that employee engagement is their top HR priority. Engaged personnel have strong emotional attachment to the company. Increased engagement improves productivity, collaboration, retention, and reduces absenteeism.

As recorded by CMO Council, it was found that 87 percent of the young executives preferred to work with companies that invested in online multimedia systems to facilitate discussions, while 89 percent felt that video would improve the internal processes of the company in medium and large sized corporations.

Five Ways to Utilize Video for Effective Communication

• Welcome New Members. The CEO of a company can make onboarding of staff more engaging by delivering a personal message to the new members, which will make the recruits feel more enthused, proud, and be more committed to their job.
• Build Better Relationships. A company can plan a celebration for specific personnel on special occasions like birthdays and work anniversaries by wishing them well through the internet. When you greet them on their special occasions, they will feel more connected and involved.
• Inform. You can use this technology to keep all the staff and teams within a particular project or across the entire company updated on relevant news and business progress. Sharing your company’s achievements and their results along with its vision can keep your people motivated. It will give them the direction and energy needed to contribute to the results.
• Motivate. Companies should take the time to recognize individuals for their achievements and give them the drive they require by celebrating their success and rewarding them promptly. When a CEO or someone at the top congratulates them directly, they will feel much more motivated to work hard to deliver results.
• Training. Last but not the least, IT companies can train their staff and provide necessary education to face the market successfully. Continuous professional improvement is required to stay up to date with fast changes in technology and ways to deal with it in the marketplace. If they are busy working, they may not have the time to keep them updated. It is the reason companies should use these networks to brief them about the latest advancements and train them in a better way to approach the market in a successful manner.

Online video platforms can be utilized to improve internal discussions apart from external connectivity. The changes that simple interventions of conferencing technology bring about to the company’s performance can be phenomenal. Companies should embrace this technology for the best results. It is revolutionizing the way companies do business, and you should not miss this opportunity to exploit its benefits.