Category: Business Insights

To trust others and to inspire trust in others is a top trait to look for when finding a leader for your team. It’s not an easy thing to learn; it is dependent on the ability to stabilize a precarious scale that can easily tip in one direction or another. For example, those that are too trusting can get duped very quickly, and those that don’t trust enough will lose the faith of those around them. Even great leaders have lost the trust of their followers at one time or another. However, the key is to know how to gain that trust back.

Personality Traits for Leadership

Many different personality traits make up a great leader. However, trust is among the most important. If you can get the handle of balancing trust just right, then you can become an inspiring leader.

The Importance of Trust

The first thing that a successful leader must do is be trustworthy themselves, which means that they must be able to inspire those around them to trust them. Being known as an honest person can help with difficult situations, especially in the event a crisis needs to be remedied at work.

Another aspect of gaining trust at work is that trust works both ways. Everyone around you won’t trust you until you believe in them yourself. You may have the reputation of a trustworthy person, but that is shot if you begin to show to your team that you do not trust them to make decisions or work on certain things. Managers who behave in this way are often overworked because they don’t believe in anyone enough to lean on them when the person in management has been given too much work for them to handle on their own. When a manager doesn’t trust his team enough to lighten his own workload, then he will become drained and begin to victimize himself. When a manager refuses to trust his employees with tasks, the work environment can start to tip unfavorably. The employees will become lazy or demoralized.

A More Effective Team

Leaders who can inspire trust will be much more successful. These people have an understanding of how to organize their work and strategize what is placed in front of them. They know their team members’ strengths and weaknesses which means they can delegate work tasks accordingly. These managers are well-liked by their teams because no one is afraid to approach these people with a problem. They feel like their voice is heard and that inspires workers to be more outspoken and excel faster since they are more comfortable at their job. Managers who trust others also learn about those that they work with. With knowledge of everyone’s abilities, these managers create the most cohesive teams. And the bottom line is that managers who inspire confidence and trust help build morale throughout the entire company.

The fine line between trusting and going overboard is thin, and those in managerial and leadership positions should be conscious of this. When a leader trusts their employees too much, the employees will often see how much they can get away with under this leader. All leaders must still do their due diligence in spotting the moments when an employee will take advantage.

Keep a lookout for managers and leaders who put too much intention behind being well-liked in the office. A manager must maintain a delicate balance between likability and being dominant.

When looking for types of managers who would excel in a leadership position, always look to those who are trustworthy and inspire trust. It is essential that the people you choose to lead your company are balanced and honest. These people must also be aware that trust can be broken. Again, it is all about balance when choosing the right leader for your company. They must understand that the reality is that although they might be a trustworthy individual, that does not mean that every person around them is as well. You must be able to decipher between giving someone the benefit of the doubt and letting them get away with something.

If you are looking to streamline the process in which you select your vendors, consider a Request for Proposal or RFP. An RFP is precisely what it sounds like, and it is a proposal that you can use to compare and contrast offers from a variety of different vendors. Once you are able to analyze your options, you can create a better picture of what is best for your business and for your customers.

Building Relationships with Vendors

Outside of RFPs, you can also have a more direct dialect with one or several vendors, whether that is in person or by reaching out through email or phone. When you build a relationship with a vendor, trust begins to burgeon, and you will start to feel more comfortable with the people who you are buying from and vice versa. These relationships help vendors to understand what their buyers want and need and therefore won’t need to offer a service that the buyers don’t need. This also allows buyers to narrow down their selections because they have already seen demonstrations. They can then move on towards comparing prices and quality.

Request for Information and Request for Quote

When you are interacting with your vendors, another way to approach the buying process is with a Request for Information and a Quote. These are less detailed reports of information that answer some frequently asked questions. This concise and to the point report is used to give enough information up front to where the buyer will then be able to ask informed questions and in return, get an informed response. These vendors target the specific needs of the buyer in question and then focus their energy on what the buyer has decided is important.

An even more concise report will come in the process called Request for Quote. RFQ is highly detailed and broken down by a list of the pricing of the object which includes things such as the number of licenses you will need and their prices. The RFQ works similarly to the Request for Information and a Quote because it’s the main focus to create communication between the buyer and the seller by allowing the buyer to ask questions and then receive a detailed response in return.

Keep Your Options Open

Don’t forget that you can also “shop around.” The internet offers a large number of cloud solutions for your company, and the sites typically advertise everything that is provided and what the prices usually come out to be. Websites often have a chat option, or at least an email and phone number which you can use to get into contact with these vendors. Once in touch, you can then ask more questions and get an even better idea of the exact pricing. Usually, on websites, they are true to what they are selling and if a vendor does not seem to meet your needs, making a phone call is typically a waste of time. If they had the feature that you need, it would be advertised on the site. There is a blind trust in using the internet to select your vendors because it is likely you will never meet the seller in person, which is preferable for some and a turn-off for others.

So which one of these options should you choose for your business? Well, that depends on some different factors of your business. Is your company large in scale? That could mean you would need an RFP or sometimes you can get away with an RFI/Q. You must also weigh the risks and complexities of your business as well. Can you trust a source that you have never met or are you concerned about security and fraud?

However, if you have a smaller business or a more straightforward business plan, then you can easily find a cloud-based solution online. You can choose on your own time when you will carry out your internet research where you can compare and bid on different vendors. This flexibility is great for smaller businesses and offers simplicity for your process. Plus, because the website often advertises its standard offerings and pricing, you don’t have to guess which one might be better for your business.

No matter your business, take your time to consider the best vendor for it. It could take weeks to months of research, but it will be worth it to know that you’ve chosen the best vendor for your company.

People who don’t set goals tend to get tangled up in minutia and begin to devote time to activities that do not help with long-term growth. Everyone has desires. Whether yours is getting a promotion, returning to school, writing a novel, or getting in better shape, it will never come to fruition if you don’t set goals.

When it comes to setting a goal, the first thing to remember is that it must be reasonable. If you set yourself a goal that is unrealistic, you will give up before you even get close to achieving it because you will be disheartened by your lack of progress.

With that in mind, here are three ways that setting goals can help you grow.

• Prioritization: By setting yourself a challenge to work towards, you are organizing your priorities. This will give you a clearer perspective, allowing you to set your more important wishes and desires apart from the less important ones. For example, if you want to write the first chapter of your novel, you will probably decide that sitting down with a pen and paper is more important than watching your favorite TV show.
  Once you have set your goal, you’ll find it much easier to steer towards productive activities and away from ones that are wasting your free time and blocking the path to your goal. Once you do away with distractions, you’ll find the path to your goal is much clearer, and you will soon have something to show for your hard work and determination.
• Movement: If you want to get into better shape, one of your first steps might be joining a fitness class. If your wish is to get a promotion, you might sign up for an online course to increase your knowledge of your field of business. If you complete your class or course, you can look back and see what progress you have made. You will also be able to easily identify any challenges or obstacles that made attaining your goal more difficult. This will allow you to make adjustments for putting your next goal into play.
• Motivation: Setting a goal is making yourself a promise that you will see it through to the end. This type of commitment helps you stay focused and motivated. If you begin to struggle with your motivation, break your long-term goal into a series of more manageable short-term goals, so you can pat yourself on the back when you reach each landmark. Because you stay motivated, you will avoid slipping into the swap of procrastination and getting bogged down by worrying about whether or not to set your goals in the first place.

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Goals

Short-term goals are markers on the way to reaching a long-term goal. It’s important to have short-term goals so that you can see you are making progress and getting closer to your ultimate desire. They can help you minimize distraction and stay motivated. Long-term goals can take a year or several years to accomplish. Your long-term goal may be to become a senior partner in your company, to expand your business overseas, or to retire by the time you are aged 50. Each time you reach a long-term goal, it is a culmination of all the short-term goals which preceded it. Over time, long-term goals may change or grow even more ambitious.

Personal Goals vs. Professional Goals

Personal goals could include losing 20 pounds, joining your community softball team, saving for an overseas vacation, learning to ride a horse, or improving a personal relationship. You need personal goals in order to feel fulfilled in life. It’s important to keep a balance between your personal and professional goals, if you satisfy one at the expense of the other you will not feel fully satisfied and may soon begin to feel depressed.

Professional goals might include advancing up the corporate ladder, starting your own business, changing careers, or going back to school to advance your current career. Everyone has a unique personal objective for their career. The important thing is to stay focused and motivated and remain on the path that is leading you to the achievement of your goal. Professional goals often have to be timed carefully, so that family and social needs are not neglected.

Whether you need to make some changes in your personal life or your professional life, setting goals is the way to get started. They will help you stay focused, avoid distractions and overcome procrastination. Remember, goals are markers to help you focus your energy in positive ways; they can be changed whenever you wish. You can drop old ones and add new ones as your life changes and progresses.

If you’re like 99 percent of business owners, you probably never turn off from running the company. You may feel like going on vacation is a waste of your time, you may take breaks but then end up working through them, or you may feel too guilty about leaving the company to take any time off at all. But one very important thing that you need to remember is that taking a break could be the best thing you ever did for your business and for your health.

Why You Need to Take a Break from Business

It’s an actual fact that your business is only as good as the person who runs it. That means if you don’t allow yourself to relax from time to time, you’re not doing what’s best for your company. Not only will a break from business to help your health, but having some distance will also give you a much better perspective of the company when you return.

Making the Vacation a Holiday

You’ve planned your vacation days for a whole year, just you and your family, soaking up the sun and relaxing by the ocean. But what about work; how will they manage without you at the office while you’re away, and how often should you be checking in? You don’t have to cut yourself off completely from the world of work while you’re on vacation, but try to remember that the purpose of a break is to leave business behind, have some fun and recharge your batteries. If you don’t unplug yourself, you run the risk of work-overload stress during the summer months, and this can lead to poor health and depression later in the year.

The Ups and Downs of Staying Connected

Obviously, you should be thankful to have a business and be doing everything you can to keep it running successfully. However, staying plugged-in during vacation time can lead to stress and frustration because you’ll never quite feel as though you can separate your personal time and your time as the company owner. This can mean that your long-planned summer holiday at that exotic beachfront destination soon turns into an extension of your office and before you know it, you are overwhelmed with input from work and spend less and less time relaxing and enjoying your leisure time. Don’t worry; it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not so hard to unplug from work without having to feel guilty.

Slave to the Gadgets

Technology is a fundamental part of business life. Cell phones, digital secretaries, and tablets make everyone all too easily accessible via email, texting, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and virtual voicemail. If you really want to take a break from your business while you’re on vacation, you have to be strong enough to unplug at least some of your gadgets. If you must take something with you, limit it to your cell phone, just in case of emergency, but don’t be afraid to turn off your phone, or at least silence the ringtone while you’re having some downtime, and by all means, don’t succumb to the temptation to check your voicemail every ten minutes. Should you really need to check in with your company while you are away, use time-based routing. Give your office specific days and times that you will be available so that they won’t have to encroach on your ‘you time.’

To Mail or Not to Mail

So you can’t survive without your laptop even on vacation; perhaps you want to upload your sunset photographs or check in with your friends on Facebook, but beware; the minute you start answering emails, you have opened the floodgates. One simple way to avoid the distraction of work emails is to have them forwarded to a temporary email address that you can check when you get back to work; another is to put your email account on hold until you return.

Unplugging is a State of Mind

Leaving your technological gadgets behind is not only about leaving work at the office, but it’s also about creating a state of mind. It allows you the opportunity to escape from data-daze and to fully recharge your mind. Without your gadgets you’ll find you have time to do many more different activities, like swimming in the ocean, reading a book, taking a walk on the beach, catching some sunsets, or visiting galleries and museums. Don’t forget your family members too, without the constant finger-tapping of Droids, iPhones, Xboxes and PSPs; you might actually have time to do something fun together.

Take a break from the business even if it’s only a couple of days now and again. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how much better you will feel when you return. So stop feeling guilty and book your next vacation now; your life will be better for it.

Good communication skills not only improve your interactions with your peers and colleagues, but they also strengthen your relationships and help you gain the respect of those you interact with. Successful communication entails more than just talking to someone. If your conversation skills are lacking, don’t worry, there are things you can do to improve them.

Better Communication Makes for Better Relationships

If you come across as being cold and distant, arrogant, or lacking in empathy, the person you are talking to will be tense and may not communicate the information you need or may not want to talk to you at all. Whatever your role in the workplace, building patient relationships should be an ongoing practice from the outset, and the way to do this is through improved conversation skills.

Tips for Improving Conversation Skills

Pay attention to how you communicate with others. Be honest with yourself and ask yourself if there are areas in which you could improve your conversation skills. Here are some tips to help you:

• Establish Rapport: When you talk to a co-worker or employer, make them feel comfortable. Open the conversation by asking them how their day is going. By giving them a chance to relax at the outset, you are setting up a healthy relationship. This means they will feel at ease conversing with you. Don’t be tempted to interrupt or rush them along when they speak. Give them time to explain what they want to say in their own way and listen carefully. Do not interrupt them. In this way, you will get to know your team members and how you can work together.
• Use Polite Language: Avoid judgmental or insulting language. The last thing you want to do during a conversation is to offend or hurt the person you are talking to. This will cause communication to break down and may lead to aggression. Be aware of any language barriers you may have with your co-workers and act accordingly.
• Be Aware of Your Nonverbal Communication: When you are having a conversation, be aware of your body language. Don’t look around the room, stare at your computer screen or phone, or fold your arms across your chest. Make eye contact and show the person you’re speaking to that you are being attentive and open, otherwise, you will convey negative messages.
• Collaborate with Your Team Members: Ask your coworkers what they need from you and explain what you can do to help. Determine how they feel about the joint project you’re working on, and if they agree with the way it’s moving along.
• Be Flexible: Don’t have a rigid conversation style: what works for your close friends won’t necessarily work for your co-workers or your boss. Learn to judge a situation so you can use your conversation skills to your best ability.
• Be Concise: If someone asks you for some information, don’t tell them things they don’t want to know. Focus on their question and keep your response pertinent. Otherwise, they will think that you have not been listening to them.
• Be Empathetic: When you are having a conversation, the other person or persons should always feel comfortable expressing their opinions and concerns and they should feel confident that they will receive understanding and helpful advice. By expressing empathy, you are showing that you understand what your co-workers are feeling.
• Be Aware of the Details: Someone with good conversation skills notices the little things that the average person fails to see. When you bring such details to the conversation, by pointing out interesting things, it impresses the person with whom you are talking.
• Eliminate Negative Thoughts: When you’re about to talk to someone, don’t think negatively. Avoid telling yourself that you’re bothering the person, or that you will mess up if you try to start a conversation.
• Emphasize Similarities: This doesn’t mean that you have to mimic everything the other person says or does, it simply means that pointing out commonalities can help you make a firm connection with another person and start the foundation of a healthy relationship.
• Get the Other Person Talking: A surefire way to start a good conversation is to get the other person to talk about something that interests them. Make sure you listen intently, and you will get to know a lot about the person.
• Maintain a Balance: If you want to keep a conversation going, don’t try to dominate it. Give the person plenty of space to talk. On the other hand, you don’t want to be a non-contributor, either.

Improving Your Ability to Communicate

No two people are the same, and there is always room for improvement in your communication skills. Be mindful in your communications and observe not only those you are communicating with but also how you interact with them. This will give you valuable insights for enhancing your conversation skills and improving relationships.

Business intelligence is the term used to refer to any form of technology, practices, and applications which enable and enhance the collection, analysis, integration, and presentation of business data. The main purpose of biz intelligence is to improve business decision making.

Whether your business is small, a start-up, or a global enterprise, you will need tools to enable you to leverage the power of big data. Smaller businesses can now accomplish this thanks to a wide range of available business intelligence tools that can quickly and easily make sense of big data. These software solutions can collect, collate, and convert information into efficient and understandable reports which can give you valuable business insights, which in turn, increases profits.

Best Biz Intelligence Tools

Let’s take a look at some of the best available biz tools for small and large businesses.

Tableau

Tableau by Sisense will help your business to visualize and gain a deeper understanding of information. It also allows you and your partners or colleagues to share data easily using your PC or tablet. Once logged in, users can create a dashboard that will allow them to publish and share information with colleagues. The interface does not require any programming knowledge. You can import data from various sources of information.

Features include:

• Embedded dashboards
• Highlight and feature data
• Data notifications
• Dashboard commenting
• Translate queries to visualizations
• Metadata management

BDxtra

BDxtra by Advisionario is a stand-alone platform which enables team members to create interactive dashboards and web-reports in just a few minutes, without any programming knowledge. This is the only tool you will need to organize project and data reports.

Features include:

• Financial reports
• Marketing reports
• Ad hoc reports
• Graphical data presentation
• Creates alerts
• OLAP

AnswerRocket

AnswerRocket by Answer Rocket was named the cool vendor in analytics by Gartner in 2017. This software solution provides a search-based analytics tool which uses natural language. Users can ask questions in everyday language and get results in just a few seconds. It allows you and your team to make business decisions quickly and efficiently.

Features include:

• Natural language processing
• Chatbot
• Machine learning
• Multi-language
• Predictive analytics
• Virtual assistant

Salesforce

Salesforce by Analytics Cloud is suitable for every business user, no matter what the size of your company. The software enables you to pull together your choice combination of data, procure instant answers and share with your team, quickly and easily from any devices, wherever you are.

Features include:

• Marketing and sales leads
• Communities for sales
• Approvals
• Workflow
• Real-time visibility
• Forecasting

Cyfe

Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard you can use to collect and collate data from your existing services such as Google Analytics and Salesforce. You and your team can review real-time information, so you are always ahead of the game. Data can be shared instantly and securely.

Features include:

• Auto email reports
• Business KPIs
• Branded client reports
• Custom visualizations
• Historical data
• Multiple sharing options

SimilarWeb Pro

SimilarWeb Pro is designed for any size business. Use it to extend your website’s reach. As well as keeping track of marketing expansion is will also enable larger companies to record their acquisition and merger activities. The software can produce in-depth data analytics related to the performance of your competitors’ websites.

Features include:

• Competitor website traffic analysis
• Engagement metrics
• Keyword research tool
• See traffic share according to channel
• Visual charts and graphs for KPIs
• Mobile app industry analysis

Clear Analytics

Clear Analytics is designed to help your business retrieve information from multiple sources and record metrics within Microsoft Excel where users can access data and create extensive reports. There’s no need to call on IT professionals because the software will extract all the data for you. Reports are all organized in layers by version, so they are easy to find.

Features include:

• Performance metrics
• Report generation
• Dashboard creation
• KPIs
• Problem Indication
• Predictive analysis

Report Plus

Report Plus enterprise-grade software is designed to enable you to create a centralized record of business metrics which is easy to share with your team. Not only does it provide users with real-time dashboards and interactive reports, but it also allows them to choose from more than 30 visualization types, to inform data-driven business decisions.

• Broad Variety of Integrations
• Real-Time Data
• Deployment Concierge
• KPIs
• Metrics
• Revenue and Profitability

If you’re not already, you should be using biz intelligence software. The benefits far outweigh the investment you will have to make. It can enable your business to garner information, so you can resolve business conflicts, affect growth, collect and analyze marketing data quicker, and anticipate future outcomes. This way, you can always be at least one step ahead of your competitors.