Businessbug Blog

Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category

Environment pollution and it’s protection is undoubtedly the biggest and the most sensitive issue of this century. The growing concern for the environment has made so many giant corporate companies go green and consider environment before taking any major steps. An environmental good will has a positive effect on the image of the company. Even the tobacco companies have taken major steps in resolving the issues. The corporate companies now very keenly participate in anything that concerns environment protection. Most of the companies have chosen the betterment of the environment as a part of their CSR or corporate social responsibility. The whole idea behind this is to capture an image of environmental revolutionist
Environment friendly strategies popularly known as green strategies have worked wonders when it has been adopted as a marketing strategy. So many talented marketers have realized the unlimited potential of green marketing strategy. The reason behind green marketing being so successful is that, it serves two purposes together. To start with you are promoting your company and product, and the strategy being green produces a good will and positive image of the company which in long run pays off brilliantly with interest. Companies spend billions of dollars and years to earn the positive image. But with green strategies you can earn it easy and simple. Apart from the business profits, moral issues of giant businessmen also play a major role in inspiring a company to go green.
One of the ways of letting people know that your company is a part of green revolution is to gift people green and environment friendly products as promotional gift items. Now so many companies are ordering items like eco friendly t-shirts, coffee mugs or key rings to the dealers and producers. These items can be gifted to both employees and clients. For employees it will work as a motivation to be environment friendly and for the clients it would be a base to build the company image on.
The prices of these items will vary depending on the quality that you are asking for but sellers will give discounts if you buy in bulk. So if you are looking for promotional items make it eco friendly and serve more than a single purpose.

The year is about to end. You are probably taking a look at the number of sales made this year and the number of sales you expected to make. Some of us will be overjoyed as they have exceeded the expected amount and some of us would be disappointed as they are way behind their target. I would like to congratulate those who made it and would like to say one thing to the people who could not make it and that is, I will help you so that during the next Christmas you can have a big smile on your face.
There are a few ways that you will have to adopt in order to make it happen and reach your target.
To start with, communicate with your best sales people. Take them to a lunch. Try to know what the secret of their success is. Take suggestions from them and share it with the ones who are yet to hit their target.
You need to know the people who are potential enough to buy and try out all your new products. So make a list of 150 most potential prospects. You need to make sure that, this list is really effective. I mean the people must really be potential. Make your salespeople target the 20% of the most potential prospects of your area.
Prepare a script for cold calling and make sure your salespeople use that. Include the features and more uses of your product, openers, probing questions objections and ways of handling those objections. If you can do that, your sales people will be able to gather essential information.
Make it a habit and compulsory task to put every customer detail on the record. Be it a sale or be it not. Record the details even when the customer said, he is not interested to your services within last 5 years. People tend to change their mind with time and you need to contact those customers and you will have at least 20% of those people going for your service.
You need connect with your prospect customers. Write them thank you notes and make sure it is hand written. It will have a positive effect as far as your sales are concerned. Follow it up with a warm phone call and reassuring that the customer appreciates your letter and ask his whereabouts. You are highly unlikely to make a sale on the very first call but if you stick to it, you will get it.

In the world of business your company survives as long as you keep on impressing your target market. And the only way to impress the customers is to provide them with the service and make sure that your product is of use to them and they are satisfied with what it has to offer. It is obvious that you have to let your customers know about what you have to offer and create interest and faith in you and your product. The best and the most efficient way to do this is through promotional offers and items.

The gifts and items that are given as the promotion are given with the idea that it will help to create a bond with the company’s target market and in reality it turns out to be exactly like that. Through promotions the company introduces the product and let the customers know what is in offer and along with that they create a good will that influences the customer to try the product. You might think that if I am giving away my product for free, I am losing money. Well you are actually investing money and you can expect multiple returns to your investment. Giving out gifts means creating a brand image for the customers. If you gift a nice coffee mug to your customer with your logo, the customer has got the nice coffee mug imprinted in his mind as the image of your brand. And these images create brand loyally in customer’s subconscious mind.

You might think that why should I go for promotions when I have my ads running all over TV channels? Well for one thing, not all the business firms are large enough to spend big on marketing. And many firms have a certain target market at a particular location. For them promotions are the best equipments to bond with the customers. And for big companies even if you have your ads in TV or radio promotions are a way to get a bit close and personal with the customers and create the bond of loyalty with them.

When it comes to promotional gifts you might choose key rings, mugs, pens, t-shirts, caps or may be a bit sophisticated electronic items that could be used in day to day lives.

With the right product choice and the right quality, the correct target audience, and good after-service, your business can surely take wings. Conventional advertising has always involved commercials on television and print advertisements in newspapers and magazines. However, not all businesses work on a scale large enough that would allow them to invest highly in marketing. Many successful businesses operate regionally and their target audience is localized. However, marketing is essential irrespective of the scale. Promoting your business through gifts offers the best cost-effective solution to the above concern. Just make sure that you have your company’s name and logo imprinted on the gift. And it is even better if you can promote a cause like forestation or stop global warming or world peace etc. this also gives your company a positive image.

There has been an argument about the motivational factors of the employees of a company as long as companies have existed. So many theories have been put forward and so many objections have been there. But one thing has been a granted truth. That is employees are the most important part of an organization.

There has always been a huge debate about the idea that money can be a motivator. In so many famous and respected theories of employee satisfaction you will not find money as a motivating factor. Again so many managers of good companies have admitted the fact that money does motivate some of the employees. We also find another factor that motivates employees and that is job satisfaction and happy employees.

The idea that money motivates employees is not completely true again it’s not invalid. Actually it varies person to person. If you have 500 employees in your company then you might find 200 of them are motivated by money and other 300 are not. The mind set and requirement of those 200 are different from the 300. Also the level of motivation will differ within those 200. That means if you increase the salary of 200 people by $3000, you will see a different level of increment in production among them which means same money motivates them differently. Some are highly motivated and some are just motivated. Another set of scholars say that, there are two types of factors such as motivating factors and demotivating factors. Money can reduce demotivation but cannot motivate. So it can be said as the neutralizing factor. But that is not all. But before going to that, let us talk about the other factor that motivates the workers.

Employee satisfaction or employee happiness is unanimously accepted factor of motivation. An employee is likely to be more productive if they are happy and satisfied with their job. There are ways to make them happy with the job. Giving them importance, respect enough space, a chance to have a say in important decision making process and incentives can work wonders in motivating the employees and make them more responsible and sincere to their work. When it comes to incentive, you will have to make the employees feel that they are appreciated for their effort. This can be expressed by giving them some gifts. May be a holiday at a great destination at companies cost. It can be money but it does not have to be money. Read the mind of the employee and find out what would satisfy him more and go with it.