It’s something that businesses, no matter their size, are constantly asking. While there’s a number of techniques you can employ to improve your conversion rate and convert more prospects into customers, one of the most effective ways of converting prospects into paying customers is to take the human approach, rather than leave it to software. 

Converting leads into paying customers is the ultimate goal of any business. However, it can be a daunting task, and many companies struggle to convert prospects into clients. In this article, we will discuss some tips and strategies on how to convert leads into customers effectively. It’s essential to understand the difference between a lead and a customer. A lead is a potential customer who has shown interest in your product or service but has not yet made a purchase. On the other hand, a customer is a paying individual who has bought your product or service.

The sales team should also focus on providing excellent customer service throughout the sales process. By delivering exceptional customer service, you can build trust and establish a relationship with potential customers, which can ultimately lead to a purchase. Your sales process should also be streamlined to make it easy for potential customers to buy your product or service. This includes simplifying the checkout process, providing multiple payment options, and ensuring that your website is easy to navigate.

Here are some methods that your business can use to convert prospects into customers.

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Build Trust 

Authors of the report note that trust is built on the back of both competence and ethics. In the context of business, this starts internally, and is then built upon in your interactions with the market. You should inspire your team with a mission statement and vision for the future, and aim to build a system that supports your team as they accomplish that mission. Once they’re prepared, they can begin to inspire the rest of the market with your organisation’s product or services. 

You should treat every customer with the opposite of the Wolf of Wall Street’s approach if you want to ensure they both return to your organisation, and recommend you to their friends, family and colleagues. Without this trust, your organisation will struggle to both attract and retain customers, and you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. If you’re known as the one offering in a certain market that exists to take customer’s money and ignore feedback, in the interconnected world of 2020, this model won’t stand the test of time. 

If, however, you’re operating to improve your services for your customers, they’ll trust your organisation and reward decision making in-line with their interests. Remember- customers vote with their wallets, and they often don’t open them in front of someone – or a business – that is untrustworthy. 

Discover our Guide to Net Promoter Score

Add Value 

Once you’ve built upon the bedrock of trust with your customers, it’s time for you to add some meaningful value. Interestingly, business ranked higher than the media, NGOs and government in terms of competence, and ability to add value to the lives of everyday citizens. 

Business was ranked highest in terms of generating value, being the engine of innovation and driving economic prosperity. In the same sense, businesses are one of the most effective ways of adding value to the life of a customer, and still represent one of the most useful vehicles of delivering meaningful change and value to that customer in 2020- and beyond. This is where management and CEOs should step into the picture and maintain a forward-thinking mindset that encourages experimentation and innovation within the organisation. 

If you can add value to the lives of your customers, it’s almost certain that they’ll add to the value of your organisation.

Maintain Integrity

Key amongst the findings of the Edelman report is that ethical drivers are three-times more important to company trust than their competence is. This is something particularly important to consider in 2020, where changing attitudes and a lack of consumer confidence is rife. We’ve come back to the example of the Wolf of Wall Street’s sales tactics, which come with a host of unethical considerations. While yes, you may indeed add customers to your books with this tactic, you’re likely to see any returns or referrals if your organisation does not behave with integrity. 

You should ensure that your organisation remains one of the market’s leading offerings in terms of its dependability, integrity and mission, which will inspire both your team and your customers. If you go out of your way to contact customers and see how your organisation could improve its services – specifically for that customer – they will trust your organisation more, and believe that you’re making key decision in-line with their considerations; this is invaluable in terms of creating customer trust and converting prospects into customers with reviews that add social proof to your claims of trust, integrity and value-adding services.  

Converting leads into paying customers requires a strategic approach. By understanding your target audience, identifying pain points, providing excellent customer service, streamlining the sales process, and leveraging social media, you can increase your chances of converting more prospects into customers. Remember, the key is to focus on building relationships with potential customers and providing value at every stage of the conversion process.

Thanks very much for your time, and I’ll leave you with the link listed above to our Guide to Net Promoter Scores, which is an absolutely essential tool to ensure your organisation is leveraging positive reviews to find future customers. 

Kobi Simmat, Director & CEO of the Best Practice Group. 

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“The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is the key professional and personal competency of our time.” Stephen R Covey.

How are you managing trust with your prospective and current clients?

While it’s true that lots of things have changed in the world, particularly in recent months, some things will always remain the same. Building trust was just as important 50 years ago as it is today; perhaps more so.

In the B2B world, when clients trust their suppliers, they begin to depend on them, listen to them, give them access, and spend time with them. This is the kind of client relationship we want, right?

Why is trust important with a client?

In the world of business, customer trust is a vital component for success. Building and maintaining trust with your clients is an essential aspect of any business strategy. The importance of customer trust cannot be overstated, as it plays a critical role in increasing customer loyalty, positive customer reviews and testimonials, and ultimately, increasing revenue.

Showing your clients that you value their trust is crucial in today’s highly competitive market. Customers want to feel confident in their purchases and know that they are making the right choice by choosing your product or service. Positive customer experiences and feedback can lead to increased customer loyalty, which can drive business growth and success.

HOW DO YOU BUILD TRUST WITH CLIENTS?

While there are a number of CEOs and managers out there that try to quantify ways of accelerating the trend, the reality is that trust is something that takes a long time to foster. Establishing trust takes a little bit of empathy and respect…finding out exactly what it is your clients’ value. Putting yourself in their shoes can provide some simple – but valuable – insight into what you need to change in your organisation.

One way to build trust with your clients is through effective communication. By communicating regularly and effectively with your clients, you can build strong relationships with them. This can lead to better customer service and increased customer satisfaction, which can result in positive customer reviews and testimonials.

Another critical component of building trust with your clients is your marketing strategy. By creating a marketing plan that is focused on building relationships with your customers, you can establish your brand as one that values customer trust and satisfaction. By showcasing customer reviews and testimonials on your website and social media platforms, you can build trust with potential customers who are researching your product or service.

Social media can also be a powerful tool for building customer trust. By engaging with your followers and responding to their inquiries and concerns, you can demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction. This can help establish a strong reputation for your business and increase customer loyalty.

Trust is built around four factors: capability, dependability, integrity, and intimacy.

Capability

Everyone thinks they’re capable – amazing, even. But they’re not. What does this mean for trust? We need to be conscious of not overestimating our capabilities. Potential clients are more sceptical when it comes to lofty promises.

Trust in our team’s capability means that prospective clients believe you can do what you’re saying you can. We’re not talking about trust in the product or service, but trust in the salesperson, the offering, and the company. Prospective and current clients need you to bring ideas to the table, help them find solutions to problems and give them sound advice. If they don’t trust your capability, they won’t accept the advice.

Demonstrating your capability in the following 3 strategies goes a long way toward establishing trust with your clients:

1. Be an expert. Too many prospective buyers of services/products report that they don’t trust those selling to them because the representative doesn’t know their stuff. You need to know your buyers’ industries and businesses, competition, marketplace, full set of customer needs, and more—inside and out. Your business needs to be a source of knowledge in all of these areas.
2. Know your impact model. You need to offer compelling solutions for your clients. The key to making solutions compelling is a concrete return on investment. You need to be prepared to discuss, in concrete terms, what results your clients can expect to achieve. If you don’t know how you can impact your buyer’s business – those wise buyers will not trust your business case.
3. Develop and share a point of view. Let’s say a buyer says, “Ok, so what should I do?” If you don’t have an answer for that, or if you’re unwilling to develop and share a point of view, they won’t see you as a trusted advisor. Part and parcel of being a trusted advisor is, you know, advising. If you know your stuff, and you know your impact model, buyers will start to trust your competence. 

dependability

Honour commitments.  Successful companies and their teams build trust by showing up and honouring their commitments consistently. Deliver on your promise – and do it well. Make sure the people you are dealing with have clear expectations of how you operate.

Integrity

Everyone has been sold something and not gotten what they were promised. You may think your integrity is off the charts, but those buying have been burned before and are suspicious before they even meet you. It’s up to you to demonstrate you have integrity. People won’t just assume it.

You have to demonstrate moral principles. Successful companies and their teams always do the right thing, even in morally ambiguous situations. This can mean turning down business, suggesting alternative (and less profitable) solutions, or referring business elsewhere. Buyers trust sellers who have their best interests in mind.

INTIMACY

Create shared experiences. Shared work experiences expose those in the market to your thinking, your work style, and your service/work product. Also, the more time you spend with someone, the more they tend to like you, developing a long-term trusting relationship.

Be a real person. Don’t be afraid to connect on a personal level.

Why is trust important in a client relationship?

Some important things to keep at the forefront of your mind in this context are an emphasis on customer service, being socially active and visible, improving your security, underpromising and over-delivering on your product or service, and finally, having a high level of communication. You need to make your organisation appear as though it’s always available to help its customers.

Organisations can achieve this by echoing Theodore Roosevelt’s message in his famous quote: “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”. This emphasis on adopting a customer-centric – rather than a money-centric – approach to doing business, ensures that in every possible transaction or thread of communication between your company and a potential customer, their concerns are at the forefront of your decision-making. This establishes a high level of trust.

WHY IS TRUST IMPORTANT IN BUSINESS?

The one thing, that separates organisations from the rest of the pack in this context is trust. Organisations need to turn their attention and resources towards building customer trust through valuing their great customers. Positive and effective communication with your client is crucial, meaning that customer complaints, feedback, and general communication need to be dealt with appropriately. The speed in which you reply to a customer’s email is a pretty clear indicator of how valued they are, and if you’re not setting the standard high in this regard, you’re missing out on one of the most simple ways of ensuring your organisation is developing a trusting relationship with the client. An effective way to manage this is by implementing a quality management system in your organisation.

Client trust is important in business as clients are the core of business operations. Without clients, ultimately there is no business. Therefore, building trust in your small business can allow you to become a better business leader and grow your business.

While it might take a long time to gain your customer’s trust, the harsh reality is that it takes mere seconds to lose it indefinitely. Focus on building trust not only with clients but with your employees. Without employees’ trust, it is difficult to extend that trust externally to clients. Turn your attention to your clients and build trust through a range of avenues including direct communication, word of mouth, and social media.

So, focus on these things when considering how to improve your organisation’s standing. Again, empathy is a key buzzword to refer back to throughout the process, and it will help you identify new ways to improve your services and see how the transaction can be improved as you move into the future.

Ultimately, customer trust is important for any business looking to succeed in the long term. Building trust with your clients can lead to increased revenue, positive customer reviews and testimonials, and a stronger relationship with your customers. By valuing customer trust and prioritizing customer satisfaction, you can create a business that is built to last.

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It’s estimated that the AI industry will be worth more than $247 billion by 2027. This staggering growth rate is due to the fact that businesses around the globe have increased their deployment of artificial intelligence by 270% in the past four years alone, and that 90% of the world’s leading businesses have made sizeable investments in AI. 

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The result for us, as humans, employees and managers are that the speed and complexity of tasks we can tackle in a day is set to increase exponentially. 50% of businesses deploying AI are already reporting added productivity, and 44% have said they’re saving costs thanks to AI. 

As technology continues to evolve, adapt and innovate, these numbers – and the benefits – for businesses will explode. But before we get to that point, it’s working unpacking 6 of the myths surrounding artificial intelligence so we can paint a more accurate picture of how AI will continue to revolutionise business-as-usual. 

AI is considered by many to be an essential element of the future of work. It is predicted that tech companies will heavily adopt artificial intelligence in the workplace, helping with tasks such as human resources and customer service to provide a better employee experience. One of the most obvious ways that AI can help in a workplace is by automating repetitive tasks. This can include tasks such as big data entry, scheduling, and even monitoring and responding to emails. By automating these tasks, AI can free up employees’ time to focus on more important, strategic work. Additionally, because AI is able to work around the clock and make fewer mistakes than humans, it can often complete these tasks more quickly and accurately.

Artificial Intelligence Will Make Human Labour Obsolete

Last year, we reported on a release from the World Economic Forum stating that as many as 50% of work tasks completed by humans would be replaced by robots by 2025. The flip side of the equation, though, is that in the process of replacing 85 million jobs, they will actually create 97 million jobs, providing a surplus of 12 million positions. 

Rather than make human labour obsolete, AI looks as though it will shift human labour away from certain industries – where simple, repeated tasks can be performed by AI and robots – all the while creating new industries, and making existing industries so productive that they can, in theory, hire more staff.  

AI Systems are Inherently Unfair 

One of the major criticisms of AI and decision-making drawn from machine learning is that the systems are unfair, and fail to take into account the impact on human lives. At the core, there are issues surrounding the biased decision-making that many believe AI will deploy if they are in charge of important calls. According to a post from Google’s AI department, human decision-making often results in unfair outcomes for vulnerable groups, and if AI Is trained in the same way, it could replicate these biases. 

In order to tackle the potential for unfair decision-making, Google says that “well-designed, thoroughly vetted AI systems can limit unfair bias, and may even help us to identify and combat bias in human decision-making.”  Organisations that are looking to implement AI can look forward to the benefit of having tasks completed in real-time. This can make tasks such as posting information on social media much easier and less time-consuming.

AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning Are the Same Thing

In spite of the fact that artificial intelligence is the most widely used term by the public, there is actually no agreed-upon definition for artificial intelligence, considering how deep the field of study is. Instead, researchers say it’s helpful to think of artificial intelligence as the process, or science of making things ‘smart’, which is achieved through things like a machine and deep learning techniques. 

Machine learning refers primarily to a series of computers learning to identify patterns from a predetermined dataset, without being programmed with specific rules. Deep learning, on the other hand, is a form of machine learning, that is “based on neural network technology, an algorithm whose architecture is inspired by the human brain and can learn to recognise pretty complex patterns, such as what ‘hugs’ are or what a ‘party’ looks like,” according to Google. 

Artificial Intelligence is Approaching Human Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is no doubt an intellectual force that demands respect, however, researchers say that it is extremely limited when it comes to certain aspects of human creativity. While AI has approached, and in a number of cases, surpassed human intelligence at certain tasks like a game of chess, “they remain narrow and brittle, and lack true agency or creativity.” While AI might not necessarily replace humans and human jobs in the immediate future, AI-powered workplaces and digital workplaces are becoming increasingly common.

Artificial Intelligence Systems Are Only As Good As the Data 

Researchers say that while data is no doubt the key ingredient that allows AI to learn and develop, they have had to adapt to “imperfect datasets” that provide low-quality, unbalanced or scarce data. Through careful problem formulation, targeted sampling, factoring-in constraints or using synthetic data, they have managed to find a way to continue AI innovation and development in the absence of good data. 

AI Systems are Less Explainable Than Non-AI Techniques

In the same way that traditional business processes in the real world can be both incredibly simple and complex to explain, AI systems work in the same way, according to researchers. Explainability is something that AI developers say changes with the context and complexity of the AI system, and as they work through this problem, it can actually shed insight as to why the AI system makes certain decisions. 

Google’s researchers say that “explanations for human decisions, for example, may not accurately reflect their influencing factors or unconscious biases. In fact, even if every individual decision made by some AI systems cannot be fully explained, we may be able to understand how they make decisions, in general, better than we understand how humans make similar decisions.”

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As I’m sure you know, the business world continues to move at an exponential pace- it’s indeed a difficult feat just to keep your organisation’s head above the water at times. In the face of that challenge, there are two types of organisations: expansionists and conservationists.

Each has its respective pros and cons, but ultimately, expansionists prepare themselves for growth while conservationists are more accepting of the status quo. Whatever your businesses desired outcome, you need to ensure that you have the necessary processes and workflows implemented in order to properly maintain the businesses performance and achieve the goals that you’ve set for yourself.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the mindset of the leader and decision-makers in the organisation, whether or not they’re prepared to experiment with new things, make investments in the organisation and staff, hire and fire when it calls for it, make tough decisions when circumstances dictate and continue their commitment to keeping up the momentum even in the face of extremely challenging times.

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It’s not an easy feat, which I assume is why I’m observing an increasing number of organisations become complacent and adopt some of the more conservationist principles: carefully calculating each move, more stringent management of resources and a more by-the-books approach with policies. It’s worth mentioning that circumstances change, and at times, a conservationist approach is probably the most pragmatic approach if you’re facing tough times in your organisation. However, if you’re looking to expand your operations, speed is a prerequisite, so you’ll – at some stage, at least- be forced to forgo your comfort zone and start experimenting with new processes and agile practices in your organisation.

On that note, experimenting is an absolutely key part of this process, so long as you maintain a commitment to your customers that they won’t be collateral damage in your experiments. Ask any scientist and they’ll tell you that it’s both a labor of love- and that things more than often go wrong- that’s the scientific process. They observe the experiment, log the data and hypothesise how they can turn this result around in the next round of their experiments.

Experimenting with new business processes can help streamline your workflow as well as evaluate the effectiveness of key areas of focus for the business. This can assist in eliminating existing processes that are no longer needed or can be completed by an automation tool, helping to improve workflow and work process.

How To streamline your work processes

It’s the process of trial-and-error that brings scientists to make breakthroughs, and they’re a great analogy in this context when we’re talking about hacking your organisation’s speed. If your organisation is looking to adopt the expansionist mindset, you need to ensure that the organisation itself will pay the price for a failed experiment, and not the customer. When I say that the organisation should pay the price, I don’t mean your staff members, either. By adopting that expansionist mindset, you’ve made an explicit promise to try new things, and your staff shouldn’t necessarily be punished for trying something new in the name of making your organisaiton more agile.

Before you can move outward, you need to look inward. You need to take stock of what your competitors are doing, and how you can out-compete this offering. Could you try something seemingly radical, but might have a receptive audience out there? Are you analyzing your customer feedback through the lens of empathy to ensure that your customer journey is already optimised? Are you setting lofty goals for your marketing and sales teams?

These are some of the questions you need to make sure are answered before you even move on to the more important issue of improving your organisation’s speed; there’s little point in trying to expand if you’re not completely on top of in-house issues like these that will ultimately hinder your efforts to speed up the organisation. Using software tools such as management software can help project managers allocated and streamline work for their staff. This can improve your organisation’s speed as it reduces errors for work management and can lead to a more streamlined business process.

Now, to the more pressing issue at hand: streamlining your organisation to become more competitive and responsive in the face of a challenging business environment.

Play to your strengths, and use this as the bedrock of your expansion, similar to the principles of appreciative inquiry. Empower your staff, and if you’re in a leadership position, it might be time to relinquish a tight grip on the reins and let your staff make decisions. Streamlining your operations is the most basic, yet impactful means of speeding up your organisation, however, it’s often hindered by egocentric managers, leaders and CEOs that feel as though they need to give the official tick of approval.

In 2023, at times there just isn’t time for this. Your organisation needs to be agile, and one of the most fundamental ways to facilitate this is to have staff that feel as though they can make a decision when they feel it is in line with the organisation’s vision and in the best interest of the company. A leader is there to instill the vision and the direction of the organisation, and everyone else is there to make this possible. The same goes for meetings; ditch them. It’s important to catch up, for sure, but if it’s becoming more of a tedious formality, this is in the best interest of the organisation.

I’m interested in expanding upon this topic in future posts, so please give me any input and feedback in the comments section that we can cover in future articles. Remember, adopting an expansionist mindset requires commitment from everyone in the organisation, but there are important considerations that need to be in place before you can go out and experiment. Don’t let your customers – or staff – pay the price for these experiments, either. Get them excited about your organisation’s mission, and ensure they feel empowered enough to make a decision on the fly that could potentially transform your orgainsation into a more agile, speedy beast.

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Plotting out a customer journey map is an invaluable experience when done right, as it informs you and the organisation on a lot of the “what ifs” in relation to new strategies you and the team have brainstormed. It’s something that allows you to flesh-out ideas and their implications on the customer, your suppliers and inside your own organisation, which is under-appreciated at a time when competition is fierce, and customers are increasingly raising their expectations on the final deliverable.

Auditing and understanding your customers journeys with your organisation can enable you to refine it so that it is more efficient and includes less pain points in order to reduce potential friction with the customer base. It also allows you to increase customer satisfaction which in the long term can help to improve customer behaviour.

An effective customer journey map takes into account things like personas of your customers, timelines, emotions, touch points and channels- essentially where these interactions are taking place. It uses analytics tools to conduct a detailed customer journey analysis, reviewing how the customers interact with an organisation at all levels. Customer journey analytics might include customer data such as customer lifetime, customer engagement, social media conversion rates and how they might contribute to the overall business outcomes. This can help other areas of a business such as marketing teams with customer segmentation and bringing more leads to your business.

There’s a number of other steps for an organisation to take in order to map this out effectively, and it all starts with reviewing the goals for the organisation as a whole, and then narrow the focus down to that specific product or service that you’re putting under the spotlight. From here, you gather the relevant research, like customer interviews Fand surveys, customer support logs, analytics from everything you’re doing online, as well as some competitive intelligence; what your competitors are up to.

Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos once said in regard to the customer journey: “the first thing I know is that you need to obsess over customers. I can tell you that we have been doing this since the very beginning, and it’s the only reason Amazon exists today in any form. We’ve always put customers first, when given the choice of obsessing over competitors or obsessing over customers- we always obsess over our customers.”

“We really like to start with customers and work backwards. That is the key thing that I know, and it covers a lot of other mistakes- if you’re truly obsessed over customers, you’ll cover a lot of errors. Any company that wants to focus on customers and put customers first, any company that wants to invent on the behalf of customers has to think long-term.”

The next stage of putting together your customer journey map is to generate the list of customer touchpoints, and then this will help to shape your organisation’s empathy map. The empathy map should take into account those customer personas we mentioned earlier, and how customers with different temperaments would react when passing through the journey with your organisation when purchasing a product or organising a service. This will help you to brainstorm with a different set of lenses, for you to shape some improvements in your organisation that takes into consideration things like the brand’s values that customers are attracted to, or specific areas that you can’t afford to let deteriorate- as they’re essential to the customer’s interaction with your organisation. This can also help you and the team analyse a problem in a different way; posing new and innovative solutions simply through looking at the organisation through a different lens.

From here, you can more accurately plot out the customer journey, and fill in the blanks with accurate information, rather than guesswork.

Steve Jobs, the iconic leader of Apple posed a question in relation to the customer journey. “What incredible benefits can we give to the customer,” he said. “Where can we take the customer? Not starting with let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and how we’re going to market that.”

And then there’s Richard Branson, the founder and CEO of the Virgin empire, who said that “when we started Virgin Atlantic thirty-years ago, we had one second-hand 747 competing with airlines that had on average 300 planes each. Every single one of those airlines has gone bankrupt because they didn’t have customer service,” he said. The importance of empathy and optimising the customer journey is plain to be seen from Branson’s quote.

“Everything in the end comes down to customer service and the people who are serving you and whether they’re proud of the company and the only way you can actually have people working in a company that are proud of it is if you give them the tools and give them every little detail.”

As always, it’s important to ensure that if you are experimenting with new ways of operating, that your customers don’t pay for your mistakes; nor should your employees for putting their hand up and proposing something different. There’s a chance that suggestion could dramatically transform how your organisation operations, but there’s also a chance it might fail- so make sure your contingency plan in the case it doesn’t work out keeps the damage in-house, and your customers are oblivious; ignorance is bliss after all, right?

Thanks for your time, and I’ll see you in the next piece.

Kobi Simmat

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Signs that layoffs are coming can sometimes be glaringly obvious

As we know, getting laid off is not always your fault. You might’ve even recently had a positive performance review and met all of your targets but your organisation suddenly starts the process of going through a merger or acquisition in which your roles is no longer required.

If you’ve found yourself in that position in the past weeks and months, this piece is for you. 

We’re going to talk about some of the best strategies you can implement in your life to remain proactive on your search for new employment, as the economy begins to chug along once again in its post-pandemic recovery. Regardless of the context in which you’re reading this, some of these points are essential to retain for the rest of your professional career, and are sure to return a healthy dividend on your investment of time, resources and energy. 

Before we jump in, just a reminder that this piece is aimed specifically at those that are being forced out the door, and that the decision is all but made from the managers. If you’re still in the job, of course, you should do everything in your power to demonstrate the value you can offer to the organisation, and have frank conversations with your managers. 

If the decision looks set, these are the things you should be preparing as you hunt for new employment. 

Update Your CV 

If you’ve been in a job for long enough, it’s likely that your CV has a gaping hole in the middle. Even if your CV appears to be up to date, there’s always improvements to be made. While it might seem unethical to be working on your CV while working for an organisation, there’s nothing unethical about preparing yourself for sudden events, particularly global events like the recent pandemic. Those with up-to-date CVs and relevant references have a better chance of being called for an interview when applying for a new position, so consider investing even a small amount of your time to update your CV. 

Learn a New Skill 

The pandemic, with all its negatives, has fast-tracked the adoption of remote learning and online courses. There’s a wealth of resources available to you to sharpen your skills, a huge number of which are completely free to partake in online. Adding these credentials to your CV will make you a more attractive candidate, and it will also psychologically buoy your spirits as you learn new things, and keep your brain’s grey matter active. 

Network, Network and Leverage Social Networks

Quite often in life, the difference between success and failure can be measured by who you know, and not what you know. While we don’t advocate this as a means for recruiting the best people in your organisation, it’s proven time and again that those that are effective at networking themselves and advertising their skills and passions are often atop the list of interview call-backs. If you haven’t already, create a profile on LinkedIn and upload a recent CV, and begin building your online network with current and previous employers, colleagues and prospective employers. Find out what they’re reading, find out what high-level organisations preach, and connect with people you’re interested in finding more about. Share content, relevant photos or credentials you possess, and don’t be afraid to advertise yourself to the world wide web; you never know what connections you might make that can materialise in a job, or invaluable pieces of advice. Those that leave this until they’re fresh out of a job often have a profile that lacks depth and engaging content, so consider investing a bit more of your time on LinkedIn and advertise yourself shamelessly. 

Clean Your House

Something mentioned in a piece on Forbes on this topic mentioned the importance of cleaning your house. This is a concept introduced by Jordan B Peterson, who talks about the psychological benefits of setting your house in order, and removing any of the chaos from your place of safety. If you’re operating from home while looking for a new job, this is a particularly important point to keep active, organised and motivated, which has positive flow-on effects for your job search. 

Prepare a ‘Rainy Day’ Fund 

While it may well be too late for this point to be applicable, it’s a solid financial rule for life that is never too late to learn. Establishing a safety net to cover your essential overheads like rent or mortgage payments, food budgets and expenses related to any children you have is an essential part of relieving the immediate stress in the aftermath of being laid off. You’ll have the added luxury of time when it comes to searching for your next job, so you’re not pushed into something below your level of expertise or invest your time into something you’re not passionate about because of inescapable financial obligations. 

Remember the Big Picture

No doubt, there’s few things more stressful in life than a sudden and shock lay off. These life events, however, can be pivotal moments that push you toward bigger, better things that you might not have looked for otherwise. It’s with that in mind that you should remember to take a step back, gather some perspective, and remind yourself that you are a capable, confident and committed person that will not only meet the needs of your next employer, you’ll exceed them. 

Having said that, I’ll wrap this piece up, and see you in the next one. 

Kobi Simmat, Director & CEO of the Best Practice Group. 

If you’ve found yourself recently unemployed and you’re interested in finding out more about our recruiting arm – Best Practice Talent – click here. 

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First and foremost, De La Vega points out that while there is an increased emphasis – perhaps more than ever before – on innovation within organisations, in a bid to fight the war against disruption and the fast pace of doing business. The difference for the author, as he explains, is that “the two go hand in hand.”

“Creativity in a business environment stands for the ability to develop new ideas and to discover new ways of looking at problems,” he says, while on the other hand, “innovation is the ability to use creative ideas in the development of products, services, or solutions that result in competitive advantage.” Next up, De La Vega ponders exactly whose job it is to be the creative-type in an organisation, where he argues should be a top-down approach. He cites a list of BCG’s Most Innovative Companies of 2019, stating that “many of them are led by a CEO who is involved hands-on in innovation. Think of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and of the late Steve Jobs, to name a few.”

“In fact, the authors of the book ‘The Innovator’s DNA” found that the CEOs of the most innovative companies spend 50% more time on innovation than the rest of their peers,” he says.

So, then, how does one spark creative ideas and innovation levels in their organisation? It’s all down to the refining of what are known as ‘discovery skills’, which are made up of associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and networking. “Based on my personal experience working with a lot of startups recently, I agree with the promise of the five discovery skills,” he says.

Associating boils down to the someone’s ability to connect the dots on two – or more – seemingly unrelated phenomena or observations. Steve Jobs is a great example of this put into practice, combining – or associating – two very disciplines like computer design and calligraphy to create a more engaging user experience for the customer. “This is a perfect example of association skill,” De La Vega writes, “had he not had a love for calligraphy, he might have launched Macintosh with a single typeface offering, just like everyone else.”

The author then moves to experimenting, deeming it “the most admirable of the discovery skills. It takes a lot of determination to try and try again as many times as it takes,” he says.

He moves to the example of Thomas Edison, “who famously said he had not failed 10,000 times but that, rather, had found 10,000 ways his idea would not work.” Edison once said that “our greatest weakness lies in giving up… the most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. While the words of a 19th century inventor might not seem initially applicable for relevant, effective business advice in the 21st century, Edison was actually referring to one of the most important distinguishing facts separating organisations today: those that are willing to experiment, fail and try again- and those that are too afraid to try it in the first place. In fact, an organisation that likes encourage creativity amongst staff can actually gain a competitive advantage in today’s business world.

If you’re able to promote creativity and make your employees feel comfortable trying out new ideas, you will likely find that it increases your organisation’s ability to solve problems and come up with more innovative solutions. After all, creativity and innovation often go hand in hand, as increased creativity often gives way to more innovative thought processes. Additionally, if you’re having trouble finding solutions to problems, it might be a smart idea to provide your staff with a wider variety of skills training so that they’re able to come up with more creative ideas through creative problem solving.

I’ve written before on the importance of experimenting in your organisation, and there’s a number of reasons why you need to be paying more attention to this than you might like to hear. First and foremost, there’s more competitors out there than ever before, and they’re always looking for an opportunity to usurp your organisation and steal the top position. Likewise, in terms of customer expectations, with that rise in competition, so too has the expectations of your consumers; if you’re not coming to market with an exceptional product or service, matched by a high-level in customer service, you won’t remain competitive for too long. Creativity in the workplace is paramount in gaining an advantage over your competitors. If you’re able to inspire creativity and create an environment in which your able to effective encourage creativity at work, you’ll give yourself the best chance at success.

One key consideration in this space is to make sure that your organisation is willing to pay the price if this process of experimenting doesn’t end up exactly how you’d like it to. You need to first set up a system that ensures the customer doesn’t pay for your mistakes; the organisation needs to take the damage. Also, by this, I don’t mean that your staff should be reprimanded for suggesting something that doesn’t work out. Your staff should be encouraged to put their hand up and offer up a possible solution that needs to be tested, and if you create a culture in which your staff are empowered to come up with more ideas in the future, you’ve sparked a cycle of sustained innovation without even trying!

For now, though, I’ll wrap it up, and I’ll see you in the next article.

Thanks again,

Kobi Simmat

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We’ve put together a guide to help you switch off from work and really relax over the break!

1. Turn off notifications on your work apps

The best way to switch off from work over the holidays is to turn off all notifications. This will ensure that you can’t use any apps or be tempted to jump into your inbox to action anything.

Chances are the work can wait until you’re back from the break and doesn’t need your much-deserved attention.

2. Do something physical.

The sun is shining and summer is in full swing, so why not get outdoors and get moving?

Getting outside and moving is one of the best ways to reduce stress, which will help you switch off from work. You don’t need to be an exercise guru to do this—think walking, swimming or even kicking a ball around the dog.

3. Do something that makes you feel relaxed.

The holidays are a time to breathe, relax and unwind. You can do this by doing something that makes you feel relaxed. Take a bath or shower, or have a nap in the afternoon with your feet up on the coffee table. Stretch out at home and do all the things you wish you had more time to do during the year.

4. Make time for creativity.

Take time out to do something creative.

In order for your mind to fully switch off from work, you need to make sure that you’re giving it the opportunity to breathe and relax. 

A great way of doing this is by making sure that there are things in your life that allow for creativity and relaxation. If you enjoy reading, pick up a book that has been on your shelf for longer than you care to admit. 

You can take up a hobby you’ve been wanting to try like clay building, painting, learning an instrument or getting back into the garden and tending to that veggie patch.

Taking time out of your work day to relax and have fun can be a great way to recharge. It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind without realizing how much we’re taking on, but taking some time for yourself is vital for your mental health. If you find that you’re struggling with this, then try some of these tips! 

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The second thing in terms of resourcing is we need to have a system for them to follow. If you have these systems we can go out there and say, what are you guys doing or what process are you following? They will have a set of instructions and guidance in terms of what their objectives are.

You then need to ask about the assessors – the people that are undertaking the assessments – do they have the appropriate training? Here at Best Practice, all of our auditors are trained. I recommend that you train your people to. The skills and resourcing in terms of doing that will need to be considered.

You have to understand that there are two parts to it. Now it is really important to be very delicate with organizations, labor and the individuals involved as the audit costs money. The salary or the wages of the auditor and the people being audited can start to be quite an expensive activity.

It’s very important to be focused on what the objectives are. The objectives are to verify that you comply with the standard and verify that you are following the planned arrangements. At Best Practice, we have to ensure that our sales and marketing team are doing the assigned tasks and are doing what they have said they would do.

Lastly, look for opportunities within your organization for improvement. Opportunities for improvement would be, can we be more efficient, can we save money, can we minimize duplicate work, and can we avoid human error? Those are the sorts of Internal Audits and objectives that we’re talking about. Following these steps will then help you to understand how we can resource it.

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The answer is simple.

Internal audits help organisations accomplish business objectives, create a systematic approach to monitor and evaluate the processes and procedures and create a roadmap for improvement strategies. Certification is based on Plan, Do, Check and Act. Internal Auditing acts as part of the Check function of certification.

Best Practice Founder, Kobi Simmat surmises: “Internal auditing is about the cycle of self-evaluation on the business and the cycle of looking at how you’re operating and how you can improve. It’s like going to the gym and getting on the scales. How did we go and what else could we improve?”

Many large companies have already discovered the potential internal auditing can unlock in business improvement, and have included Internal Auditing roles and functions in their businesses. Here is a free internal auditing tool, which you can choose dependant on your standard.

Internal audits may seem like a luxury to many small to medium sized businesses. The truth is, they can’t afford NOT to implement internal auditing in their businesses. How else can you improve if you are not measuring your success? How can you improve if you are not looking for opportunities? The answer is, you can’t, and this is why internal auditing is important for any business, regardless of size.

How can you make it cost effective for your business? Internal auditing can indeed be a function of existing employees. However, employers need to be mindful that one key tip for success is to plan and set out time for employees to fulfil the internal auditing function of their role. This will ensure employees are able to provide meaningful insights and improvement strategies for your company, as well as fulfil any management system requirements of ‘carrying out internal audits at planned intervals’.

For more quick tips and tricks you can implement right away, subscribe to our YouTube Channel, BestPracticeTV.

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