FOUR WAYS TO BOOST YOUR B2B SALES

When it comes to B2B marketing, the biggest mistake you can make is to use marketing strategies that work for the B2C market. 

How you sell as a business to another business (B2B) is significantly different from how you’d sell to a direct customer or consumer (B2C). These are two different types of audiences with differing needs. Let’s look at some features that typically characterize a B2B customer:

• B2B customers need complex offerings such as the product itself, installation services, regular maintenance, and more
• In industrial cases, a product may have to last for a lifetime or decades
• B2B customers carry out extensive research
• These clients buy in high volumes or buy a single or few products at extremely high values
• B2B clients often buy products so that they can use them to cater to their own customers 
• They can be price sensitive and constrained by business budgets 

These are a few ways business clients differ from everyday consumers. And in this post, I’ll share how to craft your marketing approach so that you account for B2B needs. Let’s get started. 

Generate B2B leads with the right lead magnets

One of the most difficult aspects of marketing to B2B customers is finding qualified leads. It’s very likely that your website gets visits from consumers as well as potential business customers. 

One way to identify B2B leads and capture their email information is to create lead magnets. Lead magnets are free gifts that you can offer to visitors on your website. To access this gift, your visitor can drop in their email address and stay in touch with you through a newsletter. 

Here are a few lead magnets that you can create that will appeal to B2B customers:

• Industry reports and trends
• Case studies
• White papers on topics in your industry
• Free ebooks
• Toolkits and resources
• Video courses

Typically, content like the ones mentioned here are useful to B2B clients rather than the average consumer. Once you start getting better leads, you’ll be able to personalize your communication and make more B2B sales. 

Qualify B2B newsletter subscribers with an extra step

If you’re using a good optin popup tool, then you’ll find it easy to add an extra step that helps you distinguish B2B from B2C leads. 

On your newsletter subscription form or popup, ask users to either describe who they are in general terms or explain what they’re looking for on your website. 

For example, adding a step where the user chooses either of the following ‘I’m a business owner’ or ‘I don’t own a business’ will help you segment your email list right away. 

You’ll build an email list where you can send personalized emails to your B2B leads and start building a relationship with them right away. 

Focus on product education

Because B2B customers spend more money and have more complex needs, they spend a lot of time doing research. 

It’s critical that your content marketing provides clients with the right information at every stage of their purchasing journey. 

One key focus that you should work on is product education. Create extensive documentation on how to use your product using simple language and by including all the relevant details. 

And also, make sure that your content doesn’t just help customers achieve their immediate goals but their overarching ones too. 

Here’s an example of what I mean: for my OptinMonster brand, we give people a way to create optin popups easily. Our content helps customers understand how an optin popup can help them get more leads. But that’s just a step in the overall plan a customer has. What they really want is to make their business a success or to solve a major problem.

When we realize what the ultimate goal is that a customer wants to achieve, we can start creating content that helps them. To continue the example, aside from teaching customers how to use popups, our OptinMonster blog also shares key information on creating conversions. 

Your B2B customers do not shy away from research. Help them out by creating extensive video and written material and you’ll see better results as customers move through the sales funnel. 

Offer extra benefits

For many B2B products, it isn’t enough to make a sale, deliver the product or service, and consider the relationship or transaction closed. 

More often than not, customers need to be able to get help, request more features, fix problems, maintain the product, and more. 

Customers also place a great deal of importance on pricing. So, if you want to make your offer more appealing, then offer customers ‘free’ benefits for buying from you. Some free or extra benefits that can close the sale include:

• Free delivery
• Training on using the product
• 24/7 customer service
• Maintenance and servicing at a limited-period discount

A major fear that keeps customers from buying is the worry that they’ll regret their purchase. You can put this fear to rest by offering top-notch customer service. And highlighting how your customers will benefit from working with you. 

Back to you

Creating more sales through your B2B customers can be both challenging and rewarding. The important thing is to realize that these customers are different and they’ll need more time, details, and continuous support to win them over. 

LEADING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES: HOW CHURCHILL LED BRITAIN THROUGH THE BLITZ

On Friday, May 10, 1940, at 4:30 in the morning, Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg on the Low Countries.

That same day in London following teatime, Winston Churchill was summoned to Buckingham Palace for an audience with King George VI. Churchill departed as England’s new Prime Minister.

During the 1930s—his “wilderness years” he called them—Churchill took the lead, often alone, calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat from Nazi Germany.

Now, following his appointment as Prime Minister, Churchill was experiencing a profound sense of relief, having lived his entire life for this moment. He was 65 years old. “At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene.” Unlike his predecessor, Churchill relished making tough, bold decisions.

Consider these seven lessons showcasing Churchill’s leadership during the terror of The Blitz as you wrestle with the uncertainties created by a global pandemic:

1. Keep calm and carry on. While the words are not Churchill’s, they could’ve been. The words from this World War II poster encapsulate Churchill’s indomitable spirit and steady leadership. To lead in uncertain times means keeping your head while those around you are losing theirs. Remember that people want to be led.
2. Address uncomfortable truths. Faced with adversity, we get to choose: We can ignore it, belittle it, or complain about the hand we’ve been dealt. Or we can play the hand to the best of our ability. Ignoring difficulties diminishes others’ respect of you. Complaining won’t change anything, and negativity poisons those around you. Anyone can be part of a team when things are going well. You need a great team—and a great leader—when things become difficult. Tell the truth to the British people, Churchill counseled, “they are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.” Great leaders use adversity to build strength.
3. Cast a vision that engages, unifies and inspires. Motivation comes from within. Inspiration comes from great leaders who recognize people’s hopes and appreciate that people with a purpose can fight through hardship. In his first address as Prime Minster, Churchill was blunt: “we have before us many long months of struggle and of suffering.” Yet his clear vision forward injected strength, courage and hope in Britons: “You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all cost; victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be. For without victory, there is no survival.”
4. Tell people how they can help. Some believe happier people are more productive. Others believe productive people are happier people. One thing’s certain: In challenging times, get people moving. Sixteen days after Churchill took office, the entire British Expeditionary Force had been driven into the sea at Dunkirk. Churchill’s appeal to volunteers to evacuate the trapped soldiers was answered by 850 private seagoing vessels that rescued 340,000 men. Churchill tempered the rejoicing, warning, “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”
5. Never waste a good crisis. The war unleashed Churchill’s boldest ideas. Within weeks of becoming PM, Churchill created the Special Operations Executive, known among insiders as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Charged by Churchill to “set Europe ablaze,” the SOE executed subversive activity in Nazi-occupied regions. Today’s pandemic invites (or forces) you to improve, accelerate, pivot or reimagine your business.
6. Affirm the capabilities of those you lead. Point to training, to competence and to experience addressing other tough situations. Most of all, point with realistic optimism to the belief that together we will accomplish our greater goal. “I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made…we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our island home.”
7. Treat your words as the performance they are. Inspiring leaders understand the importance of communication. Throughout history, the speeches imprinted on the minds of millions were delivered in times of crisis: from Queen Elizabeth encouraging her troops at Tilbury and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address to FDR reminding a worried nation that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” and MLK’s dream of racial harmony. Churchill’s first public address as Prime Minister on Monday following his Friday evening appointment—a mere 730 words delivered in five minutes—pledged his commitment to victory and galvanized a nation with five words now known to millions who were unborn at the time: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Words—whether read by the eye or heard by the ear—are tools leaders use to console, educate, influence and inspire.

In England’s darkest days, Churchill’s urgency, resolve and rhetoric bound up a nation as it stood alone against Nazi Germany’s terror.

As a leader, your job is not to mimic heroic leaders of the past. Doing so is inauthentic, and people will see through that charade. Yet your responsibility as a leader confers upon you opportunities to make history.

Because above all, leadership lessons from the past teach this: when everyone else around them faced the same set of adverse or ambiguous circumstances, it was the women and men with the courage to make a difficult decision who changed history.

 - Greg Bustin, author of How Leaders Decide

TIPS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGE AND BOOST SITE SPEED

Do you want to know how to optimize your images in WordPress to boost site speed?

Page speed is a ranking factor in search engines because it’s a sign of quality user experience. In other words, faster page speed makes for a better user experience and can increase page views and conversions, as well as reduce bounce rate—all of which are factors that will improve your SEO.

That said, a crucial step in improving your site speed is to optimize your images, and I’m going to show you 6 tips on how to easily do just that.

So let’s have a quick look at some of them.

1. Define Your Image Dimensions

Start with resizing your images to fit the blog content of your page. Even if your website fills up the whole width of the screen, the blog section has a set maximum width. Using larger images will slow down your page loading and negatively affect your SEO and rankings on Google.

For example, if your blog’s maximum width is 706px, your images will never be displayed wider than that. Also, if you have a responsive website, the browser will resize images that are wider than 706px to fit them on the screen.

This means that when using larger images than your set blog width, the browser still has to load your image in its full size. And large images are heavy in file size, which will reduce your page loading speed.

That’s why you should resize and upload your images in the maximum width of your blog or page. Fortunately, it’s easy to check this by navigating to the web developer settings in your browser and the inspector tool. Then, you simply hover over the column you want to check, and a black box with the dimensions will show up.

For example, this is a screenshot of AIOSEO’s full blog width. You can see that it’s 706px, which is the maximum size you should upload images in if you want to boost your site speed.

2. Choose the Right Image Format

Depending on what image format you use, your image file size will be larger or smaller. This will also impact the overall file size of your website and its page loading speed.

The most common image file types are JPG, PNG, and GIF. And each image format serves its purpose depending on what type of images you’re creating or uploading to your website:

-JPG is best for website graphics that have many shades of colors
-PNG is best when you want top-quality images
-GIF is for animations or moving images

JPGs are generally smaller in file size than PNG’s and GIFs. However, PNG is better for high-quality images, such as screenshots, drawings, and pictures with text. So depending on your image goals, you should consider what image format to use when uploading images to your website.

3. Compress Your Images to Reduce File Size

Did you know as of May 2021, Google made website loading speed a part of its Core Web Vitals? These are factors that Google considers necessary for giving users the best experience when visiting your website. For instance, it’ll look at your site speed, responsiveness, and how quickly different elements like images and fonts load.

So, one crucial step in optimizing your images for site speed is to compress them. And like choosing the image format, this reduces the overall file size, which will have a massive impact on your site speed.

To easily compress your images, you can use free services, such as:

TinyPNG for PNG & JPG files
CompressJPEG for JPG files
Optimizilla for PNG & JPG files

These services can help you reduce your image file size by 70% and more, which will most definitely boost your site speed.

4. Serve Images Via an Image CDN

If you want to maximize your site speed and also make it crash resistant, you should consider using an image CDN (Content Delivery Network). A CDN delivers your website content at lightning-fast speeds worldwide, which will improve the user experience and boost your rankings.

How does it work?

An image CDN picks a cached version of your pictures from a server closest to your geographical location. This will speed up your website since it limits the number of internet hops it takes to display your image from your original server (your web hosting provider).

5. Lazy Load Your Images

Lazy loading of your images is always good when you have a lot of them on your website. It shows the pictures on your page only when they’re visible to the user as they scroll down your content. This makes the communication between your site and the server more efficient and makes your page load faster.

Here’s what Google says about lazy-loading:

“Lazy loading can significantly speed up loading on long pages that include many images below the fold by loading them either as needed or when the primary content has finished loading and rendering.”

Fortunately, if you’re using WordPress 5.4 and newer versions, lazy loading is a default feature. However, it doesn’t include lazy loading of other HTML elements, such as iframes, videos, and background images. For that, you can use a WordPress lazy load plugin like WP Rocket to speed up your page loading even more.

6. Install a Cache Plugin on Your Site

The last tip for optimizing your images and speeding up your website is caching your site. Browser caching can help speed up your website by storing some of the larger files, including images, locally in the user’s web browser.

The easiest way to start using this functionality is by installing a WordPress cache plugin, like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache. Both these plugins make a copy of your images and content after the first time your page was loaded and then serve that cached version to other users.

With caching, WordPress can load your website content and images faster. This means faster loading times, improved user experience, and higher rankings in search engines.

On a final note, if you want to know how your images are affecting your site speed, you can test this using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

Wrapping Up

WordPress is by default a fast-loading platform, but by using these 6 simple tips to optimize your images, you can make your site even faster. And like I mentioned earlier, a fast-loading website will provide a better user experience. So, go ahead and implement these image optimization tips and watch your page load speed and rankings increase in no time.

BRANDING TIPS FOR SMALL AND MED-SIZED BUSINESSES

Branding is not just about having a powerful logo and a cool website. These elements definitely help you create an identity for your business.

But that’s not what branding is all about. It’s more about the experience you create for your existing and potential customers. This is true for businesses of all sizes.

Whether your business is small or big in size, its success depends solely on the number of customers you can have and retain. The more customers you have, the more sales you make. And the more sales you make, the more profit you can earn. So it’s important to make your users feel important and valued.

But how do you do that? Let’s look at 4 of the easy yet powerful branding tips you can use for your small or mid-sized business.

1. Build Strong Relationships

Building strong relationships is one of the essential steps to consider when you’re working on branding your business. And as a small or mid-sized business, you have the edge over the big names on this point.

The size of your business makes it easier for you to create a rapport with your users by reaching out to them on a more personal level. This may not be possible for larger companies. So take advantage of it to do your best to connect with your users.

You can start doing that by communicating with your users more efficiently. This can be through social media or even through email newsletters. Instead of simply focusing solely on promoting your business, try identifying your user’s problems. Then figure out how your business can help them solve those problems.

To make things even better, encourage your users to offer their feedback. It’s a great way to hone your user’s needs and find the best solution to their problems. By taking action based on their feedback, you show them that you’re listening to them.

Another way of making your relationships stronger is by showing appreciation to your long-term customers by rewarding them with loyalty points. Allow them to redeem these points to get discounts.

2. Build a Strong Community

Most major businesses focus on building a community around their businesses. They do this because they know that by gaining people’s trust for these communities, they can extend that trust for their brand as well.

So instead of investing too much in paid promotions and advertisements, they choose to make their communities stronger. There are several ways to build business communities. You can create your online communities using different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

So invest your time and effort in building these communities. You may not be able to grow them all at once. And it’s alright if you can’t. Just focus on one or two platforms at a time for the best results.

Once you gain a certain number of followers, shift your focus to another platform. But don’t forget to keep your existing community active. You can do that by posting helpful and high-quality content consistently for your users. You should also continue to reply to your user’s comments to keep the conversation growing and connecting with them better.

3. Create Authority

Another brilliant way of branding your business is to create authority for your brand. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on hiring a subject matter expert to do that. You can simply do it with your content by making them in-depth, high-quality, and problem-solving for your users.

When you do that consistently, you can present yourself as an expert and establish your authority over the subject matter. As a result, your users start trusting you, and they count on your blog as their go-to resource when it comes to finding a solution.

You can also use your content to establish and reinforce your brand voice to demonstrate who you are and what you can do for your customers. As a result, your relationship with your customers becomes stronger. This is a great way to encourage your customers to come back to your site again for more purchases and increase your overall conversions.

4. Offer Top-Notch Customer Support

You may be wondering how customer support can help you build a stronger brand. The reason behind this is simple. Good customer support services can help you make an impact on your customers and build long-term relationships with them.

It’s important for you to remember that there are hundreds of companies that are doing the same business as yours. This means that your customers have a lot of choices to pick from. So to make them select you as their go-to business, you have to do something different so that you can stand out and draw your audience’s attention. By offering top-notch customer service, you can easily stand out as a unique option. Make it easy for your customers to solve any problem they are facing with your brand. Always remember that customer support services are not only for ensuring a smooth onboarding process.

Sometimes you may have to deal with angry customers who come to you with their grievances. Be patient with such users and listen to their problems without losing your temper. Now apologize for their inconvenience and assure them to help them solve the issue. If you’re not sure how to tackle it, give them a specific time in which you can solve the matter.

Make sure to keep your promise. If you can’t solve the problem, ask them how you can compensate for it. You might even offer a refund if it makes the customer happy. Doing this can help you retain your customers and attract more traffic to your business. It’s also a brilliant way to stand out and achieve success.

WHAT REMOTE WORKERS SAY ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE

We’re now a year into massive remote work experiment driven by necessity and marked with trial and error. Now, as companies weigh their future with remote work, leaders must shift from helping their company survive virtual work, to helping their employees thrive while working from home.

For 14 years, I’ve been founder and CEO of a 100 percent remote company. I’m passionate about sharing the efficacy of a flexible work environment supported by virtual work, and I decided to take a pulse of the present state of remote work to help predict the model’s future. I surveyed my readership of over 100,000 people with five high-level questions about remote work.

The survey struck a chord. Nearly 2,000 people responded within a few days—CEOs, department heads, managers and individual contributors. Despite our team’s considerable experience with remote work, even I was surprised by the results. Here’s what you need to know.

Remote work is here to stay

While companies as large as Twitter and Dropbox have already committed to a remote-friendly future, others remain unconvinced. Netflix CEO Reid Hastings referred to remote work as “a pure negative,” while Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon called it, “an aberration that we’re going to correct as soon as possible.” Their comments have prompted questions of just how prevalent remote work will be going forward.

The data from the survey was pretty clear that most employees don’t want to return to the office every day, or even most days. While 52 percent of respondents worked in an office every day before the pandemic, only two percent want to return to the office full-time. In fact, 68 percent of respondents clarified they want to work from home either most of the time, or every day.

Employers may believe they can snap their fingers and call all employees back to the office post-pandemic. But if they haven’t checked in with their employees, they could be making a strategic mistake. 

Many employees will be willing to leave an in-person company to pursue remote work opportunities, and they will find far more virtual companies than they ever could have found pre-pandemic. Rather than assuming remote work is a fad, leaders should listen to their employees and consider that remote work may help them attract and retain talent in a post pandemic world.

Flexibility matters

A second goal of the survey was to learn people’s favourite benefits of remote work. I shared a selection of remote perks and asked respondents to select all the ones they found valuable. While it won’t surprise you that nearly 83 percent of people like avoiding their commute, nearly as many—82 percent—also enjoy the flexibility remote work offers.

Employees saw flexibility as a benefit even while a global pandemic restricted our movements, or forced many of us to work with kids running around during lockdown. What workers will soon realize is that the autonomy remote work offers is far more valuable in normal times, when it is easy to go on a run during lunch, do school drop-off and pickup during breaks or take a mid-day yoga class to balance your day.

As a leader or manager, consider how you can maximize the flexibility your team has, without compromising work outcomes. You may allow employees to travel the world, and work from remote locations, or to design a custom schedule that works for both them and the business. The flexibility offered by remote work could go a long way toward fostering more engaged and balanced employees.

 Creating separation

Of course, the survey also measured the pain-points remote workers feel. While these were varied, one was especially common: 59 percent of respondents, regardless of their role, reported a tendency to overwork, and not take breaks throughout the day while working from home.

While many new remote workers worry their personal life will infringe on their work, the spill over often flows in the opposite direction: we find it hard to stop working after the workday ends and even before it begins. An office environment offers several social cues to help us ease up—seeing when colleagues start and end their workday, or following them for lunch or coffee breaks. Without those signals, many remote workers find themselves burrowing into one task after another, only to discover they’ve been working since they got out of bed and have now worked through dinner.

One way to alleviate this burden is to put clear barriers between your work and home life. Set a clear schedule, with a consistent start and end to their workday. Follow a morning routine, rather than jumping straight into email. It’s even helpful to simulate an evening commute: if you end your workday with 20 minutes of meditating, a quick walk outside, or even some light reading, you’ll set a mental boundary between work and home life.

To complete this commuting effect, it’s also useful to physically separate your workspace. Even if you don’t have a spare room to use as an office, designating a desk in the corner of your living room as your workspace, or having a designated “office chair” at the kitchen table helps you separate your work and personal life.

As we approach a light at the end of our pandemic tunnel, it’s becoming clear that many employees want to continue remote work in the future. The companies that can execute this workplace model effectively are the ones that will attract and retain the best talent. The ones that are inflexible, or mandate 100 percent in person work, are likely going to find a dwindling pool of talent looking for that value proposition.

 - Robert Glazer, author of How To Thrive in the Virtual Workplace

QUALITY: IMPROVES YOUR PEOPLE SKILLS

If you want to improve your people skills, one quality stands out as far more important than others.

Do you know what this quality is?

This quality is charm.

Charm is the ability to create extraordinary rapport with anyone, and make him or her feel truly exceptional in your presence.

You might think that you need to be born with charm, but although some people seem to come by it naturally, charm is something that you can learn.

No matter how skilled, smart, or experienced you may be, most of your ability to succeed at anything depends on your ability to win people over, to convince them, to charm them.

It is important to note that the deepest craving of human nature is the need to feel valued and valuable.

Therefore, the secret of charm and improving your people skills is to make others feel important.

The more important you make people feel in your presence the more charming they will perceive you to be.

HOW NOT TO GO STRESSED WORKING FROM HOME

For those of us who have been working from home for years, either as freelancers or online solopreneurs, the recent wave of social distancing and the need to stay home has still been an adjustment. It’s just not as much of an adjustment as for people who hold more traditional away-from-home type jobs. This is a brave new world and you might find yourself going a little stir-crazy staring at the same four walls 24 hours a day. Whether you’re transitioning to self employment or your more traditional employer is now encouraging a more remote working environment (telecommuting), you may need some tips, advice and insight into how this whole “home office” thing can actually work. Without you going crazy. Allow me to speak from my 14 years of experience. All Work and No Play… There’s a weird paradox to the whole working from home dynamic. Many people think that you “only” have to work “when you want to.” But, depending on how things go, if you’re anything like me, then you might feel like you “should” be working “all” the time. It’s because you CAN work at practically any hour of the day and the home office is literally right there. But, you know what they say… All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but all work and no play Homer something something. I guess some drink  and TV wouldn’t hurt. The point is that while there is a temptation to work pretty much all the time, especially if you’re going to be holed up at home for so long, you really need to make the conscious decision to take a break now and then. It also means setting some boundaries. This is both in terms of physical boundaries, like having a home office that is distinctly separate from the rest of your home, and in terms of mental and temporal boundaries, like having set working hours.  The Silence Is Deafening Here’s another one that might feel a little counter-intuitive. You know how some parents say that their children are so loud that they can’t even hear themselves think? To that end, we might think that the best way to be as productive as possible is to get rid of all that noise. A quiet space is a productive space, right? After all, distractions are bad, aren’t they? Well, not necessarily. Part of the reason why the Shining Homers of the world go “something something” is because of this sense of quiet, social isolation. When you are alone with your own thoughts for too long, it becomes a slippery slope toward insanity. Especially if you’re used to the usual background clatter of a traditional office, it helps to have some white noise playing while you work.  In particular, I’ve found a number of YouTube streams and videos with ambient noise, jazz cafes, instrumentals, lo-fi hip hop and other tunes. They’re enough so the office isn’t deathly quiet, but not so much as to be overly distracting. Social Distancing Doesn’t Mean Antisocial Social distancing has been a challenge for many people, especially when they’re used to socializing with co-workers at the office and with the barista at the coffee shop. While we are staying at home more, especially when we’re working from home, that doesn’t mean that we have to do without socializing completely.  It’s true that working from home can be isolating. While social distancing means that you shouldn’t get together with friends for lunch, you can still set up the same kind of social support system through social media, video conferencing, online chats, and other digital means. Parents have been setting up digital playdates for their kids, so why can’t remote workers do the same to create a virtual coworking space? It’s All Fun and Games? Remember how I said you should have a physical, mental and temporal separation between your work and non-work life? This also means opening up the opportunity to have a little fun too, even if you’re cooped up at home. Remember when Ant Man was under house arrest? Maybe he was getting a little stir-crazy, but he found ways to entertain himself and keep his mind fresh. You may not want to invest in a drum set, for the sake of your neighbour's ears, but it’s worthwhile to have hobbies and interests outside of work that you can do at home too. Analog choices are especially good for digital workers. The Voluntary Commute I know how easy it is to fall down the deep end and teeter on going crazy when you’re working from home AND you don’t really leave your home either. I get it. However, depending on where you live and the current conditions, it’s still possible to maintain your health while working from home.  If the area where you live isn’t that busy, you may be able to take a stroll around the block to get some vitamin D and fresh air. This can be a great idea to simulate the commute, giving a bit of a routine to the start and end of your work day. It provides structure and greater mental clarity. What about you? What have you been doing to retain your sanity during these trying times?

TOOLS NEEDED TO BE SUCCESSFUL WORKING FROM HOME

Most of us can still remember counting down the final days of school and eagerly anticipating the freedom of summer vacation. Miranda Barrett is years removed from school, but she still gets that feeling every summer—when there isn’t a global pandemic, that is.

Barrett has been a fully remote worker since 2017, first as a consultant and most recently as vice president of member success at the U.S.-based member association, the Community Company. Her story is perhaps the best-case scenario for designing a life around remote work.

“When you have kids and they’re in school, it’s not like you’re bouncing around the world,” Barrett, a mother of two boys, said. “The summers, however, are magical. I am able to build out a whole fun summer for us, and as long as I can work out camps and childcare, I’m able to work with consistency and availability.”

In summer 2019, Barrett and her family travelled for seven weeks, visiting places like North Carolina, Vermont, and California. In a previous summer, she took her older son on an extended trip to California and Hawaii. These trips did not require vacation or time off from work. She worked during normal work hours, including leading a department of thirty-five employees, while at the same time creating lifelong memories with her kids outside her work hours.

Though the pandemic cancelled Barrett’s travel plans for summer 2020, her family still made a big move. Rather than social distancing in their Arlington home—a “shoebox” in Barrett’s words—the family moved to a relative’s farmhouse in rural Virginia, where they began raising goats, chickens, and foster dogs.

The future of remote work

While many experiencing remote work realities for the first time in 2020 did not have the chance to recreate Barrett’s experience, her story illustrates the possibilities that remote work holds beyond the pandemic.

In considering the future of remote work, it is worth noting that COVID-19 has forced virtual employees to work under conditions and constraints that would be abnormal or even inappropriate in usual circumstances. If you are working remotely for the first time under these pandemic conditions, it’s important to consider that future remote work opportunities you may have will be different and much easier.

Employees who continue working remotely after the rest of their lifestyle returns to normal will likely find virtual work to be easier and more fulfilling under less extreme conditions. These are some crucial differences that remote work will hold after the pandemic finally passes.

First, as emphasized earlier, working parents won’t have their kids home schooling in the background and will be expected to arrange childcare during the workday once it is safe to do so.

Employees will be increasingly expected to have a more formal office setup—a specific part of their home designated for work, better lighting, appropriate technology, a clean background, and other professional touches. While creating these will require some logistical coordination, it’ll also make remote work feel more comfortable and normal.

You’ll feel like you’re working from home, not living at work. Remote work will feel less isolating when employees can use their flexibility to go to a class at the gym during the day, grocery shop on their lunch break, or see friends for coffee or an after-work happy hour. As Barrett’s experiences show, it’s even common for remote employees to travel, using their flexibility to work from a different or new location that they can explore during their free time. These types of arrangements must be carefully planned and agreed upon with managers, but they’d be simply impossible for office-only workers.

On a higher level, remote work offers an opportunity for people to expand their lifestyle options and have a real choice on where and how they want to live. While many people around the world live in cities because they truly want to, many do so because they need to be close to the best opportunities in their industry.

For decades, employees have needed to endure increasingly longer commutes in order to obtain a balance of the career they wanted and the space they needed personally at a price they could afford. In a world where remote work is available at many organizations, people can truly choose where they want to live. People who want to live in the suburbs to raise a family can seek out a remote organization, allowing them to design the personal lifestyle they want without professional trade-offs.

Couples won’t need to deal with the strain of one person following their partner’s work opportunity to another city and having to leave their own career behind. Traffic for the employees who choose to commute will decrease, and public transit will be less crowded.

Ask yourself—if you could live anywhere, with no professional constraints, would you choose to live where you live now? Would you prefer to live farther from a city centre in exchange for a larger home with a better home office? Whatever your answer may be, working remotely offers a different world of possibilities for you.

All told, it’s likely that remote workers will find it easier to work from home when the pandemic finally passes. People who are on the fence about virtual work during the pandemic may find themselves far happier and more comfortable under normal conditions. And people who like remote work now will likely enjoy it even more!

This is the new frontier for work-life integration. Working remotely will give people the opportunity to decide how they want to integrate work with their preferred lifestyle rather than needing to live in a certain place based on the career opportunities available.

With that said, remote work is not for everyone, nor for the demands of their job. Barrett’s husband, a reporter for the Washington Post, is counting the days until he can return to the newsroom. But having worked remotely for years and managed several virtual employees, she’s convinced many people who try it will never want to return to the office.

“There’s really just no limit to what you can do with it,” Barrett said. “I don’t know what the future holds for us, as far as where we’ll live and what we’ll do, but I am not willing to give up the level of flexibility I have with remote working.”

 - Robert Glazer, author of How To Thrive in the Virtual Workplace

ONLINE SALES EXPLODED IN 2020.........BUT MOSTLY FOR RETAIL GIANTS

Online sales skyrocketed in 2020--but mostly for the largest retailers and well-known brands.

That's according to a report on the top 500 retailers in North America, released Tuesday by Digital Commerce 360, a Chicago-based research and media firm. The Top 500, measured by the prior year's online sales, generated a combined $849.5 billion worldwide in 2020, a 45.3 percent increase from the previous year. That was the largest year-over-year jump in growth rate since Digital Commerce 360 started the report in 2006.

The spoils of 2020's e-commerce boom disproportionately went to the large, well-established brands like Amazon, Walmart, and Target that make up the top 500. While online sales increased for businesses of all sizes, the report found that "strong 2020 growth enabled the Top 500 to take market share from their smaller competitors in North America." 

Consumers who were new to online retail largely turned to familiar, big-name brands, and larger companies were better able to handle supply chain and shipping issues that arose during the pandemic. "Last year, it was a lot of 'How can people get essential items and PPE,'" says Fareeha Ali, research and editorial director at Digital Commerce 360, who wrote the report. "This year we're not seeing that kind of demand." 

Ali says she expects demand for essential goods will soon go back to normal, providing opportunities for small businesses to catch up and attract more customers. She suggests small businesses follow some of the customer service tactics that worked for the largest brands last year, such as offering the option to pay in installments through companies like Klarna and Afterpay, which provide interest-free payment plans. She also advises making curbside pickup a permanent feature, and being transparent with customers about shipping issues.

Toy and craft retailer Joann was the fastest-growing online business on Digital Commerce 360's top 500 list, with a 342.3 percent increase in sales in 2020. Away, the New York City-based travel business, had the largest drop in online web sales of the group measured, at 33 percent.

DISCIPLINES TO GET RESULTS

Of a thousand qualities for success, there is one specific quality you can develop that will guarantee you greater success, accomplishment, and happiness in life…

Self-Discipline

All successful people have developed self-discipline to a high degree. Without self-discipline, it will be virtually impossible for you to ever achieve what you are truly capable of achieving.

I know for most of us, we have been conditioned to associate “self-discipline” with negative concepts, like self-control, self-restraint, and punishment. It usually requires us to do something we’re forced to do.

But the truth is, that is exactly what self-discipline is — it’s the ability to do what you know you should do even when you don’t feel like doing it. And it's the quality that separates successful men and women from unsuccessful ones.

I want to share with you the 7 disciplines you must also develop to achieve all that is possible for you:

1. Goal Setting - Every morning, take 3 to 5 minutes to write out your top goals in the present tense. By writing out your 10 goals at the beginning of each day, you will program them deep into your subconscious mind and make you more alert. Throughout the day, you will see opportunities and possibilities to move more rapidly toward your goals.
   
   
2. Planning and Organizing - Take a few minutes, preferably the night before, to plan out every activity of the coming day. Always work from a list. Always think on paper. This is one of the most powerful and important disciplines of all for high performance.
   
   
3. Priority Setting - The essence of all time management, personal management, and life management is contained in your ability to set proper priorities in the use of your time. This is essential for high performance.
   
   
4. Concentration on your Highest-Value Activities - Your ability to work single-mindedly on your most important task will contribute as much to your success as any other discipline you can develop.
   
   
5. Exercise and Proper Nutrition - Your health is more important than anything else. By disciplining yourself to exercise regularly and to eat carefully, you will promote the highest possible levels of health and fitness throughout your life.
   
   
6. Learning and Growth - Your mind is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.
   
   
7. Time for Important People in your Life - Relationships are everything. Be sure that in climbing the ladder of success, you do not find it leaning against the wrong building. Make time for your relationships every day, no matter how busy you get.

These 7 disciplines will ensure that you perform at the highest level and get the greatest satisfaction and results from everything you do. 

WAYS TO HELP YOU DEAL WITH STRESS

Stress is a normal and natural part of human life — You can’t avoid it, so how do you manage it?

We encounter stress every day: in driving through traffic, falling behind schedule and managing big projects.

We must learn to how to deal with stress in order to lead a more productive, happy life.

Here are 5 ways to deal with stress:

1) Plan Your Day

Plan every aspect of your day and plan your activities in advance, especially if you are going through a difficult time in your life. Having a plan for your day will make you feel more in control. You won’t have to think about or make a decision on what to do next.

Becoming an expert in time management will reduce your stress levels enormously. Breaking down every task and activity in your day or week will make the big picture a lot less intimidating.

2) Focus On Your Most Important Task

When you are experiencing a lot of stress, only work on the tasks that are the most important to improving your life.

You can use tools that we’ve discussed in the past, like the 80/20 Rule, to make setting and choosing your goals easier.

Setting clear priorities for your work each day, before you begin, will relieve much of your stress immediately. Then, discipline yourself to start on your most important task and work on it until it is complete.

3) Get More Rest

It’s amazing how many people suffer greater stress from the same event because they are just tired. Fatigue causes you to experience stress at much higher levels for much longer periods of time.

A body well taken care of will serve you much better in the long-run, and will reduce your stress naturally. If you are planning your day properly, then planning for more sleep shouldn’t be a problem.

4) Talk Out Your Situation

Find someone that you like, trust and respect and talk to them about the situation you are experiencing; ask them for their advice. Sometimes just talking about the issue out loud will help reduce the anxiety and stress you are feeling.

5) Look For The Lesson

One of the things that you can do to eliminate the stress from your life is to ask yourself:

“What can I learn from this experience? What is this experience trying to teach me?”

Ask yourself if you should be doing more of something, or less of something in the future to avoid this sort of stress.

If you look into any situation and look for the lesson in your most difficult experiences, you will always find one.

VACCINATED PATRONS IS FORCING BUSINESS TO GET CREATIVE

During the pandemic, things were so slow at Catcher's, a seasonal restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, that owner Roland Buckingham and his son, Paynter, had to find ways to pass the time between filling takeout orders of crab legs and shrimp tacos.

"Basically, my son and I sat at a chessboard and did a couple of orders a night," says Buckingham, who whittled down his staff of 20 to a skeleton crew during the depths of the pandemic.

Buckingham now faces a new, albeit welcome challenge. Thanks to the CDC's surprise easing of mask and social distancing restrictions last week, vaccinated customers are returning in droves to businesses once hit hardest by the pandemic, such as gyms, restaurants, spas, and others in the travel and hospitality industries. Catcher's sales are up 100 percent compared with the late spring of 2019, as customers are splurging on missed in-person experiences, like shared meals with friends.

However, the restaurant currently has just six employees. What's more, Buckingham's typical talent pool has dried up, as so many businesses have begun scrambling to staff up.

"We're just biting the bullet and making as much food as we can make," he says.

Buckingham's problems aren't unique. Pent-up demand for in-person services and experiences has led to sudden nationwide hiring difficulties, mirroring the troubles businesses in spring break hotspots saw in March. The National Restaurant Association reported that 84 percent of restaurant operators said their staffing levels were lower than what they would normally be in the absence of Covid-19.

To cope, business owners are trying to patch their talent gaps with quick fixes like pricing changes, tech additions, staff initiatives, and more. 

If you can't increase sales, increase prices.

As demand began to spike for John Manison's two education businesses, Sailfish Swim School and Apex Tutors, the L.A.-based founder couldn't find the talent to scale his business.

At the swim school, many customers are currently on a wait list, and Manison says the business is bringing in 70 to 80 percent less revenue than it would if it were better staffed. 

The situation at the tutoring company, which brings in about $20,000 a month, isn't quite as bad; however, Manison and his general manager are spending more and more time tutoring students when they should be growing the business.

In the short term, Manison had to find a way to capitalize on new business while also facing serious employee shortages. So the founder raised prices, to about 20 percent higher than his closest competitor. In the first five months of 2021, both companies more than doubled their 2020 income.

The change has allowed him to pay his employees $5 more per hour than his competitor, he says, but he's hesitant to go further. Manison believes higher prices will turn customers away, and then word will spread and negatively affect the business.

To help balance the price change, Manison has homed in on creating more value for his current customer base, rather than trying to growing sales. "If you focus on providing great service to your current customer base," he says, "they will stand by you through thick and thin. Loyalty begets loyalty."

Give employees new ways to shine. 

During the pandemic, many massage-industry employees retired early or decided the job was too risky, according to Beret Ann Loncar, founder and owner of Body Mechanics Orthopedic Massage in New York City. Those who kept working often received offers from larger spa companies, which had the resources to offer better pay or benefits, she says. As demand for spa services has recently picked up, Loncar has prioritized keeping her 13 employees happy and engaged by allowing them to use their talents outside of their main roles. Today, this means that Loncar's massage therapists also create content for the spa's social media and company blog.

"I think it makes for a much more well-rounded job, probably will help with burnout, and makes people feel valued and respected that they are an active part of the company," she says. "We are saying 'Look, a staff member, made this!' and putting it out publicly."

Let tech lighten the load. 

Yassine Lamari, founder of Las Vegas men's formal wear company Gentleman's Guru, cut his workforce in half last year after formal events like proms and weddings were canceled. With the CDC loosening recommendations on large gatherings for vaccinated folks, Lamari is working overtime to keep up with the sudden demand, all while trying to hire and train new staff.

To improve the efficiency of his current operations, Lamari invested in an algorithm that automates his inventory management and predicts when and how much product to buy, including sizes and style variations. He says the tool will calculate past sales of an item, for example, and then anticipate how long that stock will last. To lighten the load on his 12-person staff, he's also working on adding a new system that will automate some customer service tasks, including filing returns and shipping tracking.

"Even though there's so much stress to deal with," Lamari says, "I'm actually very thankful."