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Tuesday, 24th May 2022 | Management

Why L&D, not foosball, helps attract and retain employees

It's becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to find and retain staff. Offering employees learning and development opportunities is being viewed by many companies as a benefit to both parties, although small business owners have been slow to adopt this strategy.

If you’re in business, you’re already aware that employers need effective strategies to attract and retain talent. The upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with other social and societal shifts has led many to change jobs or even remove themselves from the workforce altogether. In this environment, you’ll have to do better than providing arcade games or free muffins on Fridays if you want to find—and keep—the best employees. That’s why employers are increasingly offering learning and development (L&D) opportunities as a valuable job perk. Here’s how to make the most of an employee training strategy.

What’s L&D (learning and development)?

L&D opportunities are geared towards developing employee skills, knowledge, and capabilities which in turn fosters their personal and professional growth. These might include coaching, training, or mentoring. Learning and development is a strong way to value-add for everyone but small business owners are behind the trend. According to the Federation for Small Businesses, while 91% of business owners recognize the value of L&D, only 43% actually invest in it. If you’re among the more than half that are neglecting this strategy, you’re neglecting to use an effective tool. When you offer an L&D strategy, employees receive valuable training while employers get better-trained and happier staff. It’s a win-win.

Offering learning and development opportunities to your employees

Training, mentoring and coaching all sound great but one size does not fit all. Here are the steps to developing a training strategy that will benefit your employees and your business.

Create a plan

At its most simplistic, you need to figure out what you want your employees to learn before you can offer them anything. If you want to provide training that will help them in their jobs, write up a list of skills and knowledge they need and determine the gaps. If you’re looking to pair your employees with mentors or coaches, do your homework to figure out who would be the best matches.

Offer different learning styles

Some people are visual learners while others are hands-on. Some like to crack a book while others respond well to gamification. The good news is that there’s a wealth of different modules in various styles, and many of them are available online, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s worth your time to explore the best options for your needs.

Provide enough time for completion

An L&D opportunity shouldn’t feel like extra work. Make sure you set realistic goals that don’t overburden your staff.

Give incentives

Incentives are a fun and effective way to boost employee engagement. Consider a gift card or bonus on completion.

Set goals and measure success

No strategy is complete until you account for measurement. Set goals around what you want to achieve both for your business and your employees. Determine in advance how you will measure success. Use this data to improve your L&D offerings for future employees.

In a shifting work landscape, small business employers will need to respond to the changing priorities of workers if they want to attract and retain the best talent. When delivered right, learning and development opportunities can be a strong incentive for employees and a marked benefit to your business.

Customer retention best practices for your small business

In 2023, the business landscape will be more dynamic, with constantly evolving trends and changing customer demands. You can keep your customers engaged and returning for more with the right strategies. Here are some invaluable customer retention best practices to help you stand out from the crowd and keep your customers coming back for more:

Embrace Omnichannel Sales

The pandemic accelerated the shift to online shopping, and customers are now more comfortable than ever buying online. This means providing a seamless experience across all channels, from your website to social media platforms, mobile apps, and online marketplaces. Investing in innovative technologies such as AI and automation can deliver personalized and efficient products that set you apart from the competition.

Use Social Media to Build Relationships

Social media is a powerful tool for building relationships with your customers. You must use social media to build a community around your brand, engage with your customers, and create meaningful relationships. By actively listening to your customers and responding to their queries, feedback, and concerns, you can show that you care and establish trust. Furthermore, social media allows you to showcase your brand's unique personality and values, which can help you stand out from the competition. Sharing customer stories, testimonials, and reviews can also be an effective way to humanize your brand and build social proof.

Leverage Data Analytics

Data analytics can help you understand your customers better and identify opportunities to improve customer retention. You can identify opportunities to improve customer retention and create personalized experiences by tracking customer behaviour, preferences, and feedback. Investing in data analytics tools can help you make data-driven decisions and optimize your marketing and sales strategies to meet your needs.

Be Transparent and Authentic

Customers are increasingly demanding transparency and authenticity from the brands they do business with. Customers are looking for open and honest businesses about their practices, policies, and values. This requires being transparent about pricing, shipping, and returns policies and using authentic and inclusive marketing messages. Doing so can build trust with your customers, which is essential for long-term loyalty. Customers are also more likely to recommend businesses they perceive as transparent and authentic.

Focus on Customer Experience

Customer experience will be a major differentiator for small businesses. As a small business owner, providing exceptional customer experience across all touchpoints should be a top priority. This means investing in customer service training for your staff, optimizing your website for usability, and gathering customer feedback to improve your products and services continuously.

These customer retention best practices can help your small business to stand out from the competition, improve customer loyalty, and grow your business. By embracing omnichannel sales, using social media to build relationships, leveraging data analytics, being transparent and authentic, and focusing on customer experience, you can create a loyal customer base that will continue to do business with you and recommend your brand to others.

Sales ,Marketing ,Management

7 ways how AI empowers small businesses to achieve more in less time

What is artificial intelligence (AI)?

AI is a revolutionary technology that enables SMBs to automate tasks, predict trends, forecast demand, improve decision-making, streamline operations, and scale up. With advanced AI models like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and GPT-3, and the emergence of AI-powered products like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot, we can now utilize technology that was once considered exclusively human.

In this blog, we will explore the benefits of AI for SMBs and how you can gain a competitive advantage in your respective markets by optimizing operations and maximizing output with minimal resources.

1. Automating Repetitive Tasks

AI-powered tools can automate time-consuming tasks such as data entry, invoicing, and email management. This frees up valuable resources that can be redirected toward high-value activities, such as strategic planning, customer engagement, and product development.

2. Improving Customer Experience

Chatbots and virtual assistants can provide customers with quick and accurate responses to their inquiries, improving their overall experience with your business. Additionally, it can analyze customer behaviour and preferences to personalize marketing efforts and provide targeted recommendations, further enhancing the customer experience.

3. Improving Decision-Making

SMBs are frequently required to make critical decisions that impact the trajectory of their business. AI-powered tools can enhance your decision-making by providing real-time insights and analytics. For example, an AI tool can analyze sales data and identify trends, empowering owners to make data-driven pricing, promotions, and product development decisions.

4. Predicting Trends and Forecasting Demand

AI-powered tools can help you predict trends and forecast demand. By analyzing data from various sources, including social media, sales history, and online reviews, AI has allowed you to identify emerging trends and help your SMB adjust strategies accordingly.

5. Enhancing Marketing Efforts

AI can also help enhance marketing efforts. Analyzing customer data that will identify the target audience, create personalized marketing campaigns, and predict which marketing strategies will most likely be effective.

6. Enhancing Cybersecurity

With the rise of cyber threats, SMBs can use AI to strengthen their cybersecurity measures. AI-powered tools can detect and prevent cyber attacks, identify vulnerabilities in systems and networks, and provide real-time alerts to potential threats. This helps SMBs protect their sensitive information and prevent costly data breaches.

7. Improving Decision Making

Lastly, AI can help improve decision-making by providing data-driven insights. AI-powered tools can assist you, and your managers in making well-informed decisions regarding crucial aspects such as hiring, resource allocation, product development, and pricing.

Marketing ,Management

What is a bad debt expense, and how to calculate it?

What is a bad debt expense?

When a buyer doesn’t pay in full, you can make a note of the amount you’re unable to recover in your business’ financial record. This is a bad debt expense.

Unfortunately, dealing with non-paying buyers is a common problem among small- and medium-sized businesses in Canada. The best way to protect yourself is to accurately record your losses to contain the damage.

Why should I keep track of bad debt expenses?

When you invoice a buyer for their purchase, it’s recorded as a sale in your books. If you’re not paid for that transaction, your overall revenue is actually less than indicated by your accounts–and you have to pay tax on your revenue. When you record unrecovered income as a bad debt expense, you officially remove all or part of that sale from your revenue which means that you won’t have to pay tax on it. This is entirely fair and legal–you don’t pay tax on income earnings you never received.

How to calculate your bad debt expenses

There are two ways to calculate bad debt expenses: the direct write-off method and the allowance method.

With the direct write-off method, you simply charge the amount of the unpaid invoice to the bad debt expense. This removes the amount from your accounts receivable, reducing your taxable income. This is the simpler method and the most commonly used by Canadian businesses.

Accounting

5 Strategies for Growing your Business

What can I do to start developing a plan for growth?

Deciding to grow your business is a big step, so take a moment to congratulate yourself. Now, let’s get to work. The first thing to do is to develop a plan, and these five strategies can help.

1. Take care of your cash flow

Just for everyday operations, businesses need to have a steady flow of capital coming in and going out, but the importance of your cash flow intensifies when you’re planning to expand.

Survey your income and expense reports to determine your current cash flow, and identify trends so you can estimate how much you’ll have in the future. Don’t stop there. Make sure that you return to this information regularly to ensure you remain on the right path.

Should you find yourself in a cash flow crunch, you can consider a business line of credit so you can continue to take care of your responsibilities. Alternatively, you can take out a small business loan.

2. Invest in marketing and sales

It’s common for sales and marketing costs to fall to the bottom of a small business’ priority list, but they’re an absolutely crucial investment, especially if you’re expanding. Bear in mind that marketing and sales strategies and tactics can be tailored to your business’ unique needs, so you’ve got a variety of options to choose from–all with different budgets. Consider your audience, sales goals, and business forecast to build regular (think monthly) marketing efforts into your long-term plan. Marketing your business is an investment in its success.

3. Attend to your core audience while attracting new customers

Expansion often involves courting new customers, weather from different market segments or simply additional regions. It’s important that during the growth process resources and attention aren’t stolen from your core customers. They’re the ones who got you here, after all.

One way to give everyone the attention they deserve is to break your audience (and marketing dollars) into distinct segments and sell each according to their wants. Be open to different configurations. For example, depending on the situation you might want to serve everyone under a single brand, or develop distinct brands for different segments.

4. Confirm your supply

Few things can turn customers away faster than hearing you don’t have the products or services they need. Supply chain issues and slow delivery since the pandemic have put an increasing number of businesses in a precarious position when it comes to meeting customer demands, so your expansion plans should include the establishment of relationships with multiple reliable suppliers. Your efforts in advance demonstrate good business practices and respect for your customers. Plus, positive relationships with multiple suppliers can help you with your expansion goals.

5. Ensure quality and consistency

It should go without saying, but the last thing you want to happen when you expand is to have your quality or customer experience decline. Plan against this by establishing production, operations, and customer service standards. .

You have a better chance of expanding successfully if you plan carefully in advance. Attend to your finances, marketing, suppliers, and customers in advance to make sure you’re growing on a solid foundation.

Speak to an iCapital advisor about small business loans or lines of credit to ensure steady cash flow during your expansion process.

Marketing ,Accounting ,Management