3 Tips to Communicate with All Types of Clients

When it comes to reaching your audience, a lot comes down to communicating with them in the language they will understand. We can learn a lot from Julia, a Pasadena ten-year-old. Julia is deaf; her new puppy, Walter, is as well. But, the two have found the ability to communicate with one another with ease. Julia has begun training the seven-month-old puppy by teaching him sign language. The dog knows the signs for sit, water, food and several others.

Julia’s mother, Chrissy, said that when her Julia was born, she couldn’t hear her mom and would smell Chrissy’s neck for comfort instead. The moment Chrissy picked up Walter, he did the same thing. “I remember just looking at him, and I knew that he was meant to be ours,” she said in a Humane Society video. Walter was the last puppy of his litter to be adopted, but the Humane Society did not give up hope.

The Pasadena Humane Society, which introduced the two, posted a video of Julia and Walter on their page. The reaction was immediate and positive. “Amazing!!” said one commenter. “This is my dog, Wyatt. He is also deaf, and he has no idea he is different.”

When we are communicating with our prospects and our customers, we can take some valuable lessons from Julia and Walter:

1. Different customers will respond to different communication.

Customers are not all the same. You will deal with Millennials and Boomers, urban and rural folks, and people from different income brackets and areas of the country. It is important to segment your marketing lists and create materials for each individual group.

2. Remember that each group does not think of itself as a segment.

Just like the dog Wyatt who thinks himself like any other dog, your customers just think of themselves as ordinary people. Talk to them directly and respectfully. Never talk down to a group. Don’t use slang that is not in keeping with your brand. This can feel false and off-putting.

3. Remember that consistent marketing is key.

Don’t just reach out to each segment once. Create follow-up emails and other remarketing opportunities. If you do direct mail, send a follow-up postcard to go out to people who did not respond to your initial offer. Just like raising puppies requires a long-term commitment, nurturing a prospect from initial contact to conversion takes patience, time and effort.

Marketing segmentation takes more time and attention than a shotgun approach. But, over time, you will find that it consistently increases your return on your marketing investment and helps you build stronger relationships with your clients.

 

The Art of Reflection in Business

The Art of Reflection in Business

Though you might not know the name Aaron Sorkin, you’re no doubt familiar with some of his work. He’s the brilliant writer behind some of the most critically acclaimed, successful shows on television in the last two decades including, “The West Wing,” “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” “The Newsroom,” and more. One of the constant themes in all of his different works is that the last episode of the first season of all of his shows all share the same title: “What Kind of Day Has It Been.” This repetitive title isn’t an example of a lazy writer who just can’t come up with something unique. It is Sorkin’s thesis statement. “What Kind of Day Has It Been” is a phrase he uses to indicate reflection. At the end of the season, he (and his characters) always look back and examine where they’ve been and how far they’ve come to get a better idea of where they should be going next.

This type of reflection isn’t just important in terms of prime-time dramas; it’s also a hugely invaluable tool in terms of running a business for a host of different reasons.

The Benefits of Periodic Reflection

At its core, reflection in the world of business is an attempt to take some of the critical experiences that you’ve had in the not-too-distant past and force you to think about them in a meaningful way. It’s an attempt to take both successes and missed opportunities and dive deeper than you may be used to. It gives you the chance to articulate the key lessons that your experiences have taught you, either consciously or subconsciously, and use those insights as the basis for every decision you make moving forward.

One of the main advantages that reflection like this brings to the table is one of increased confidence. Even if you weren’t able to achieve a particular goal, going through the process of breaking it down into the sum of its parts can still provide a valuable context as to why events played out the way they did. This, in turn, will help you harness the real learning experience that even less-than-stellar days can sometimes bring and create something positive as a result. Reflecting on the lessons you’ve learned throughout your career in this way can also make you more productive for the same reasons.

Remember that when you begin any journey in the world of business, be it to finish one particular project, increase revenue by a certain date, or release a new product or service to market, the road that you’re about to travel is one that is clouded by expectations. When you’re at the end of that journey, however, those hopes are gone. Taking a cold, hard look at everything that led you to this point can not only give you a chance to celebrate your successes, but it can also provide you with valuable insight into issues that you may have encountered or lessons that you may have learned. Reflection is the mother of course correction and that brief pause at such a critical time could very well be the moment of clarity you need to start your next journey with some much-needed perspective.

 

The Courage of Success

Setting goals to drive revenues and profits is part of doing business. We all strive to be successful in business and in life. When we are young, we look for careers that will make us successful to get the things we want such as a beautiful house, cars, and money. Most people define success as the ultimate goal.

However, there are other ways to look at success.

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” ~ Winston Churchill

Churchill defined success and failure as a journey instead of the end goal. How do you define success? If you look at success and failure as part of a journey instead of an end goal, life looks very different. Instead of always striving to seek the end, you are marking points along the pathway as measures of success and failure. None of these points is the ultimate goal, but rather, destinations that you can reach and surpass.

When you define success in this manner, it takes much of the stress away as you pursue your goals. While still working to create success, whether that is a monetary target or achieving other goals such as graduating from school, gaining particular skills, or training an employee successfully, you know that each point is not an end. In fact, each time you achieve success, it is a beginning of the next segment of your journey.

On the flip side, defining success as part of the path means that failure is also part of the path, and not a crushing blow. While no one likes to fail, you can take your failure as a learning opportunity to improve the next time you journey in the same direction. Breaking down the road to success into smaller, doable achievements can help you gain strength to pursue your goals and succeed multiple times.

Churchill said, “It is the courage to continue that counts.” Sometimes, we wake up in the morning and want to be anywhere except at work. However, a successful business person is the one who continues to work day after day whether they want to or not. It takes courage to persevere during the good times and bad, especially when you are not sure if you will be successful that day. When the economy is tough, and business is hard to find, it takes courage to keep looking for new customers.

It also takes courage to change with the times. No matter how long you have been in business, change is inevitable. These days it seems to come faster than ever. However, success means the courage to make the changes that will help you continue to grow in business. In fact, your successful business influences the world around you. As your business continues to flourish, you add to the economy and help bolster the lives of everyone that you touch.

Your courage to continue along a successful pathway creates a ripple effect. By setting an example for your employees, your customers, your vendors, and your family and friends, you show everyone the true meaning of success. You have the courage to continue moving forward.

 

 

Protect Your Business While On the Move

Even if you’re not working for an organization that requires you to travel on a regular basis, there is still a high likelihood that you will work from home at some point during your week. Giving people the ability to work remotely not only increases worker productivity but also drives efficiency, lowers stress, reduces employee turnover, and more. However, all of these benefits come at a pretty significant cost: giving employees the ability to work while on the move also increases the chances of a cyber attack pretty profoundly.

Organizations that want to leverage the power of modern technology with as few of the downsides as possible would do well to learn three specific letters as quickly as possible: V, P, and N.

What is a VPN?

Short for “virtual private network,” a VPN is exactly that – a private network that extends across either a public network or a larger, global network like the internet. Think of it as a lane on a highway that only you and your employees are allowed to use while on your way to work. Sure, there are other cars out on the road trying to get to various destinations, but YOU are the only one who gets to enjoy that one, special lane.

This may be a bit of an oversimplification, but this is largely the idea at the heart of a VPN. It allows users like yourself to both send and receive information over public networks like the internet with all of the privacy and security they would expect if they were connected to a smaller private network in their office.

Many businesses use VPNs to help increase security as more employees work remotely. Using a VPN, remote users can connect back with the head office, or regional offices can connect with one another, without worrying about anyone with malicious intentions intercepting their traffic.

Why is a VPN So Important?

For business professionals on the go, VPNs are important, thanks to one simple, little word: security. While connections to the internet are a dime-a-dozen, SECURE connections are much harder to come by. If you hop onto the Wi-Fi network at your local Starbucks to send some important files to a client, anyone on that some network could potentially “snipe” that file out of the air and gain access to it if they know what they’re doing. This is because Starbucks’ network was designed to be public so everyone could use it, which unfortunately means any and all traffic going over that network is essentially up for grabs.

However, if you used that same Starbucks Wi-Fi connection first to connect to your VPN, the kid with the laptop three tables over trying as hard as possible to read your emails can “hack” all he’d like, but he won’t be learning your trade secrets anytime soon. VPNs allow businesses to extend the security of their local intranet while located out of the office, allowing remote employees to be as productive as they need to be without worrying about something like a data breach.

These are just a few of the key reasons why VPNs are so important for today’s modern business world. When dealing with something as inherently volatile as the internet, the security and privacy benefits alone are more than worth the investment, even – and before you begin to think about the added level of protection this gives to employees working out of the office. In an era where data breaches are all too common, and concern with data privacy is at an all-time high, virtual private networks are one of the single, best ways to remain protected and productive at the same time.

 

Travel Tips for the Tech-Savvy Professional

For many professionals, finding themselves on the road (or on an airplane) has quickly become a way of life. With more and more jobs requiring extensive travel regardless of industry, staying productive while away from the office has become of paramount importance. Luckily, technology has stepped up to answer this particular call, and things like the cloud have made it easier than ever to get all of the work you need to get done regardless of location – even if you’re halfway around the world away from your office. As with most things, however, this does require you to keep a few key things in mind.

There’s File Sharing, and Then There’s Secure File Sharing

In the last few years, file-sharing solutions have become a lifesaver for anyone who needs to remain as productive as possible even if they can’t physically make it to the office to do so. More and more traveling professionals are turning to cloud-based providers to do everything from collaborating on documents to sending files to clients for approval and more, all while on the go. The most important thing to consider in this regard, however, is security. This is particularly true because as a traveling professional, you’ll likely be spending a great deal of time on public Wi-Fi networks.

While a cloud-based file-sharing provider itself may be secure, your connection is most certainly not. All it would take is someone connected to the same public network that you are with a little knowledge to pluck every kilobyte of data you’re sending and receiving out of the air, exposing you and your enterprise to harm. If you’re serious about file sharing, invest in an FTP (file transfer protocol) solution for your business.

You still get all of the file-sharing benefits you’ve grown accustomed to, but you get the added benefit of both at-rest and in-transit encryption. Even if someone were to intercept an important, confidential file you’re working on or transmitting, the data inside would be impossible to access without the encryption keys that only the sender or the recipient have.

Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, is something that tech-savvy traveling professionals should look into if they’re serious about doing as much work as possible on the go. IaaS takes the same concept as file sharing only it extends these benefits to EVERY last part of your digital life – from the software that you use to the hardware you use it on and more. All of your mission-critical services are delivered in an on-demand capacity over the internet, meaning that the program you use to get work done in the office is the same one you use to get work done while on vacation.

Because everything is hosted online, you don’t ever have to worry about creating a file in one version of a program that turns out to be incompatible with the one you use when you get back home. This also removes the reliance on a single operating system from the equation, turning EVERY computer or mobile device into essentially a carbon copy of your work computer at any given moment.

These are just a few of the tips that the tech-savvy traveling professional can use to remain as productive and as proactive as possible while on the go. Technology is a great thing, but it is NOT a magic bullet – you still have to be careful so that you don’t find yourself on the receiving end of a data breach due to lax security protocols (or worse – user error). As long as you understand that “productivity” and “security” are two terms that will always be closely related, you’ll find that geography is no longer your biggest inhibitor of productivity any longer.