Choosing the Right Bank for Your Company

Banks form part of the business associates platform and their main function is to offer financial support and services to business organizations. During the process of business operations, banks interact with the entrepreneurial entities in various ways some of which are granting loans for business growth, necessitating transactions through money transfers and offering financial advice to the clients. Indeed, a constant interrelation needs to be nurtured in the most complaisant manner possible.

With the many financial institutions, it must be admitted that choosing the right bank is not an easy task. It requires a critical examination of the goals and objectives of the company in regard to financial stability, and on the other hand, the ability of the financial institution to offer the much-needed support. For a company to choose a suitable bank, it should consider the viability of the financier, the kind of supportive services that the bank offers to the business clientele including advisory on future borrowing, and the flexibility in terms of agreements.

The company should critically establish how the bank has been performing, how the other companies commend on its services and if there are any disputes with other business organizations and how they were resolved. It should be noted that most banks will not disclose any information that they feel may taint their image. Perhaps details on disputes with clients may only be obtained from other sources including the business journals, courts of law and the media highlights and archives.

There are numerous dimensions on which to categorize a bank as suitable to indulge in business with. First, the financial institution should have a record track in offering good services. The period in which it has been in business should clearly signal its performance mileage. Entering into contract with a bank that has no known performance background can be quite technical.

It is not certain whether the institution will be able to offer the necessary support when things go haywire. For example, during a recession, an unstable bank may be faced with operations setbacks that may hinder a company from seeking any financial help to back up its monetary resource. This is the time financial institutions should show commitment and demonstrate their ability to support businesses.

Secondly, other aspects need to be evaluated, for example, the terms of agreements when applying for loans. The financiers may be so stringent that being unable to repay loans can prompt a further unprecedented course of action such as unjustifiably taking up collateral that have been placed as security for loans. Although this may be in the interest of the lenders to protect and safeguard their business, but on the other hand, there should be a consensus on how to best resolve such a an eventuality.

The interests of the two parties (bank and the company) should be taken into considerations on a win-win situation. The financial institutions should have good advisory frameworks that assist businesses to financially manage their monetary resources. It should advise the businesses on the right time to borrow and how to appropriately obtain manageable loans.

Financial companies that are out to unscrupulously exploit the companies without considering their financial uncertainties can lead businesses to plunge in financial pit-holes. The terms of agreements are one of the most important of the conditions in borrowing. The financiers should be able to offer in-depth pre-loan information to the company. There are times when banks, out of fear of being branded as unreliable, tend to hold vital information regarding lending agreements.

For example, banks may hide particular information to its clients such as the so-called 'hidden charges’. This implies that the companies only come to know of such terms when they have already entered into a loan contract with a bank. This is quite pathetic and creates misunderstanding and lack of confidence with the institution. This can adversely affect the company's financial goals and objectives. 

Enhance your Document Signing Process with esignature Service

The process of filling and signing of documents has been made more effective, reliable, cost-effective and fast with the application of esignature services. Companies are seeking for those technological innovations, which enhance service delivery and perhaps online document signing offers an ideal option. With the online document signing process, the documents are uploaded in PDF or word file formats and send to the recipients’ email.

Upon signing, the documents are sent back to the sender. The process can take hours if not minutes and this reduces the time taken in signing document from hours to minutes. Moreover, since there are different ways in which esignatures can digitally be embedded on the documents, this means that the signers can apply the most suitable mode. 

For example, there is the use of handwritten signatures where the documents are signed by use of finger on their laptop or iPhone screens. This produces a wet-looking signature that looks like a ‘pen and paper’ signature. This is as impressing as the typical way of signing documents. Similarly, there are specially designed fonts, which are used to produce typed signatures. 

A signer can as well apply these fonts, which resemble handwriting. In addition, with this electronic signature service, the signer can sign by using the touch pads on their iPhones and iPads. This means that they can sign the documents while on the go thus enhancing service delivery in organization. With a secure system of online document signing such as the use of SSL data encryption features from VeriSign, this ensures that clients’ documents and data are protected from intruders.

There are other features, which are incorporated in the signing process such as ‘sign by fax’ whereby the signers sign documents by printing out faxable signature pages that contain unique barcodes. The document is signed with pen and faxed to a special fax number provided by the esignature service provider. The signed documents are then forwarded to the sender. The process is confidential and secure and all clients’ data is protected. This creates confidence with users.

Live Mobile Support Apps…What Retail Store Owners Could Be Missing!

Consumer buying behavior is a complex aspect that needs to be analyzed in-depth by e-store owners in order to convert leads into sales and one way this can be achieved is through live mobile support. The point of decision is certainly one of the most important stages in the consumer buying life cycle. 

Retail businesses failure to close their sales partly because the aspect of point-of-decision is not addressed conclusively when business owners and marketers engage with consumers. An augmented retail experience is lacking among many e-retail stores that can help influence the buying behavior of the consumer.

If a customer has not visited or completed the shopping cart this doesn’t mean that he or she does not want to buy the goods or services. There is a “connection” between the seller and the buyer that is missing. This is what needs to be derived and augmented in order to turn that prospective buyer into a real customer by completing a sale. 

As smartphones sales proliferate, customers are using these mobile phones to research product information, potential purchases, prices of goods, as well as ratings and products reviews.

Surveys show that smartphones are currently influencing 5.1% of sales generated annually by retail stores. This translates to close to $159 billion of sales forecasts in the year 2012. According to a research by Deloitte Consulting, it is expected that the smartphones growth retail sales to 19%, representing $689 billion by 2016. 

The most challenging aspect for retail store owners is that many do not know how to leverage live mobile support in the overall customer engagement. The consumer needs to be more engaged at the point of decision in the buying life cycle. The way in which smartphones users will be able to make buying decisions will largely depend on the kind of information they get about products and services they are willing to buy. 

Retail store owners are examining the consumer cross-channel shopping behavior in a simple way yet this is a complex phenomenon. Consumers’ behavior has changed significantly and in order to be able to make these customers buy your products and services, you need to have the right tools for mobile apps and software products.

The overall decision making process of the buyer differs mainly on the consumer, shopping trip and also the point where the consumer is in his or her shopping journey. Despite these differences on the buying decision, the bottom-line is that the more information e-retail store owners provide to the consumers, the more influential they will be in converting leads to sales. 

Consumers are now tech-savvy meaning that they want knowledge and more credible information before they can close a sale. If a retail store integrates the Near Field Communication- NFC supported mobile phone attributes into their retail apps, this can greatly help at the crucial point of decision of the consumer.

This is a key element, which helps feed the consumer with access to relevant products information in real time meaning that customers get ready hand information about products they want to buy. The apps have to be customized to create high profile brand image. With the apps, consumers are able to view product ratings and reviews, which are a major determinant factor in influencing their buying decision.

Because software compatibility is a major challenge, the live mobile support apps you integrate in your e-retail store show also be compatible with most of the smartphones. With branded and easily customizable apps templates, the consumer can easily navigate and view as well as read the information they want about products whether it is product details, what other say about the experience they have had after using the products or the simplicity in payment process.

Businesses are also afraid of installing too many apps in their systems and this means that with software application that does not require downloads and installations, this relieves the e-store owners the stress of economizing their limited systems network storage capacity. By simply touching the live mobile support apps tag, products information is readily displayed and this drives the consumer buying quest to closing his or sale.

Considering the importance of social signals in today’s internet marketing, the e-stores can greatly benefit from Twitter “Tweets”, Facebook “Likes” and LinkedIn “Inshare” information that is shared from friends and relatives through augmented shopping experience software. This further complements the consumers’ shopping experience giving them the confidence to buy the products.

In essence, businesses need to apply cross-device digital and retail marketing strategies in order to be able to exhaustively generate leads and then convert the leads into sales. The smartphone apps that offer localized information, products details and price comparison and transparency coupled with easy shopping cart attributes will be able to convert more leads into sales.

Email Marketing Campaigns...Transforming Small Business Growth

Email marketing campaigns are essential tools that can help turn around the sales and returns on investment- ROI of a business. Businesses leverage various marketing strategies in order to optimize their sales process. Email campaigns are praised of offering the ability to pre-sell to a targeted traffic or market. When traffic visits your website, there prospects that make a buying decision and there are those who do not make a decision though they may be willing to buy. Use of email marketing campaign helps businesses to reach their prospective leads and convert them to sales.

One of the immediate benefits of bulky email campaigns is that they provide a cost effective way of reaching out and enticing customers to buy products and services. This gives your business a competitive advantage as it enables you scale down the cost of email marketing, which can drain off your resources including time and money.

Through email marketing campaign, businesses are able to increase the prospects conversion rate. This means that a business administer increased conversion of the traffic that visits its website. When a business embarks on lead generation and nurturing process, it has to engage with every lead based on its stage of development. There are those leads that show an immediate need to buy products and services. Those leads may visit and abandon the shopping cart. These are the leads, which have some information and know something about your business.

At this stage, they may not be interested with the background information of the company but rather a content that can make them close a sale. Information such as promotional offers may be essential. If you send personalized messages based on the stage of lead generation in which your prospects are in, this can help in turning them to buyers.

Another benefit of email marketing campaign is that it saves the time utilized in marketing. Sending messages to thousands of prospects may be time consuming and could occupy most of your time thus resulting to inefficiency. However, with software applications that have been designed to handle bulky customized email campaigns, these help in saving the time you dedicate to your marketing campaigns.

In addition, email marketing campaign is a supplement for those marketing strategies that may not be able to optimize the conversion rate of the traffic. Whereas some campaigns will deliver a good traffic, closing a sale may be a problem. However, when a sale is not closed, this does not means that traffic does not want to buy. It may only be that the prospect need to be a little more convinced to buy.

This is why email campaign is used to influence the prospects and lure them to make buying decision. Closing a sale becomes the most challenging part in the selling process. Email campaigns can be used as buyer engagement tools, which help reach, understand and influence the buying behaviour of prospects.

When you are initiating email marketing campaign, it is essential that you observe certain things like customized message, optimizing landing page and building a prospect profile score in order to make it successful. Many businesses engage in costly email campaigns that only plunge them deeper into financial constraints because the strategies applied do not yield any tangible results.

How to Manage Sales Contests With Systems Software Applications

The application of sales contests is one of the most rewarding for the sales manager and his team and this is because these contests produce positive results in achieving sales targets. The sales team is the driving force for the business revenues since it engages in developing new product sales opportunities and influencing the consumers and turning them into buyers. A sales job is certainly one of the most challenging. This is because a company is under pressure from the company owner to meet to particular sales targets. 

On the other hand, the sales manager and sales executives have to work behind the clock to ensure that every tactic is a “selling” strategy. A sales contest will make your team to;
•    Gain recognition for exceptional performance
•    Build team spirit
•    Set the right performance standards
•    Make the sales job more fun and interesting
•    Feel like winners
•    Provide a baseline for sales performance improvement and training

The contests have been viewed as motivational factors, which make the sales team more vibrant thus being able to go past their limits.

However, managing sales contests is never easy as it requires constant interaction, assessment, monitoring, and morale creation for the team to be able to achieve projected sales goals. With the managers in the office and the salesmen and sales ladies on the field or on the internet doing the job, for the sales manager, it is a difficult moment to put up the team to its optimal performance. 

Close interaction, appreciation, commenting, pin pointing essential things and also checking on the performance of the sales team leaders is the most challenging thing. A sales manager can easily lose control of his sales contest team if there is no that interaction. In order to be able to organize your sales contests smoothly and successfully, you can use an innovatively and intuitively designed software system. 

The system helps you build a high impact within the shortest time possible. With this system, you can rally behind your sales team to ensure that it realizes more sales opportunities; it’s able to launch new products, and close more sales deals.

The sales figures can exponentially grow with the use of the software system. The software allows for application of an incentive behavior where the sales manager makes use of different attributes of the program to create the best rewarding program. 

For instance, leads, opportunities, events, tasks and chatter features are applied. This means that you can develop different reward schemes for the contest team such as the sales person who has acquired the most business leads, a sales person who has obtained a breakthrough in creating new opportunities for products and services.

Sales contests rewards can also be organized through particular events or certain completed tasks. Through the analysis of the performance of the sales persons, a chatter reward is one of the easiest, effective, and most interactive ways to keep your team in high spirit. You can reward almost immediately when a certain peculiar achievement or success is achieved by a sales employee. 

You can decide to reward that sales person through the chatter with very encouraging message and approximate reward to keep him or her motivated and determined. The system also streamlines the prizing and awarding and the sales manager can add prices that he or she feels can best motivate the team. Through the system, the eligible entries are automatically entered into the contests. 

The administrators of the contest including the sales manager are able to view the leaderboard and updates of the team members that have gained entry into the contests. The interaction with the sales team through the system enables each member to view their performance. They are able to set targets based on their achievements. The sales manager has one-on-one contact through emails and chat platforms to try and motivate each individual member.

Why Insurance Companies Should Use Social Media Strategy to Engage the Consumer

Social media is now becoming part and parcel of the mainstream business aspects. Like other businesses, insurance companies need a social media strategy to help reach and engage the consumer. Insurance company is highly regulation field and despite these charges, it also needs to understand that its survival lies on how well it engages the consumer. Social strategy cannot be ignored by businesses including insurance companies no matter how it is perceived and therefore, there is need for social media management.

In the insurance industry, there are been a notion that social media is crippling insurance business by exposing too much of the negatives than the positives. Whereas this may be true, it is certain that social media has far much better things to offer than bad in terms of marketing and branding insurance products, and services.

There is need for insurance firms to apply social media management strategies to enhance their presence in social media networks and influence their existing, prospective and potential clients. Insurance companies can benefit in various ways if they create their social presence on the internet.

They understand their weaknesses through the posts and discussions which are raised by customers through social media networks such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn. These companies are able to know where they are failing to offer what consumers want. However, insurance firms they argue that the comments may just be too negative and spread so fast. On the other hand, failing to react to these comments is a retrogressive business approach. This is the reason why social media management needs to be applied by insurance companies.

Through social media, insurance firms are able to develop their product and services. Consumers contribute in providing key information, which help formulate better insurance products that meet to the expectations of the insurance buyers. Social media can reduce the overall cost of formulating new products. If these companies apply social media management strategies they can win the clients confidence.

Insurance firms are able to manage their reputation through social media participation. Engaging the consumer in social discussion forums shows how committed insurance companies are to their clients. When clients’ comments are responded effectively, this nurtures a bond that can go a long way in spreading good word about the insurer.

Through the social media, insurance firms enhance their sales growth. Peer recommendations have become very effective in advertising. Insurance coverage buyers are now seeking for information about insurance policies such as quotes, premium rates, and claims issues through social sites. This influences their buying behaviour and therefore, insurance firms should focus on social media management.

In summary, social media is offering an unprecedented representation of business internet marketing campaigns and it cannot be ignored and insurers need to embrace social media management as a core marketing aspect. Consumers are now controlling the social media. Insurance companies cannot afford sidelining social media participation in their marketing strategy.

Here are the Best Ways to Manage Personal Finance!

Faced with many financial needs and with limited streams of income, it is clear-marked that people need to manage their cash effectively to avoid crisis. Even with numerous and huge cash inflows, these monetary reservoirs can be drained off if poor and untimely spending behavior is adopted in personal finance. The key to succeeding in meeting your financial needs is to first make an appropriate use of the available cash. Poor financial use can plunge one into a burden of indebtedness and eventually be rendered bankrupt. 

To manage the cash inflows, it is important to develop a personal financial plan streamlining how one intends to spend the available cash. With great ambitions, people are always working hard to meet these aspirations.  However, these ambitions can only be achieved when the cash earned is utilized in the most appropriate manner.  Setting your financial goals and identifying ways to achieve them is certainly one of the aspects that a person should emphasize on.

Once you have identified your financial goals and objectives, it's imperative to prioritize them.  There are urgent and not urgent needs.  At the same time there are important and non important financial needs.  For instance, buying your dream limousine may not be urgent but providing for your daily meals is important and urgent since one cannot go without food.  There are basic and secondary needs all of which require cash to meet them.

One of the most important things in managing personal finance to do is examine your streams of income and calculate how much you earn per specific period of time for example, on monthly basis.  The next step is to establish your regular expenses such as food cost, insurance premiums, household bills including electricity and telephone bills.  It must be agreed that regular bills cover most of the expenses.  This is because; although they may appear little in the short run, since they recur every day or month, in the long run they consume a large part of your income.

Identifying the disposal income is also of paramount importance since you are able to know how much is left for saving after covering most of the recurring expenses.  You should also save with a purpose and this means that you have to establish how you intend to spend the money you save.  This calls for financial planning, and setting up a budget is one healthy way of utilizing your hard-earned finances.

 A budget can be used as tool for determining how much cash will be allocated for particular expense and when this will be accomplished. The financial needs are categorized as short term (immediate), medium term and long term. With this classification, all your financial needs should then be placed in the right category.  It must be emphasized that setting a target to accomplish in your financial obligations places one in a better position to utilize the saved cash appropriately.

Time frames are very important in managing cash. This substantiates the reason why time is said to be money. You should also match your spending with income earned.  Do not overspend even if the income increases. There are certain aspects that form a stumbling block to achieving financial goals and these include aimless and multiple borrowing, unnecessary expenses that are not budgeted for as well as other expenses that can be minimized. 

Borrowing has to be done when it is pressing to do so otherwise, repaying a loan can be daunting especially when it is not clear how such a loan will be paid back. The interest charged on loans can destabilize ones ambitions to achieve financial goals. Unnecessary expenses occur when impulse buying of products or assets is done. Budgeting should help in eliminating impulse buying or untimely expenses.  This is achieved by sticking on the budget features. 

Other expenses that can be reduced such as insurance premiums, regular household bills, and leisure and recreation costs should be scaled down significantly. This helps in cutting down on the expenses and the end result is an increased disposable income and hence savings. Moreover, a saving culture should be developed where you save as you earn. The saving should be targeted and proportionate to the earnings.  When there is a significant increase in cash inflows this is the time to save more and manage your personal finance well.