Archives for December 2015
Is a Retirement Crisis in the Cards for You?
Is there a retirement crisis in the U.S.?
If you are one of nearly 86% of Americans sensing they are living in the midst of a retirement crisis, you probably also feel that you won’t be able to rely on the government to bail you out.
Are you justified in thinking that your retirement is not safeguarded? And if so, what can you do about it?
Is the Crisis Real?
It might be.
According to a recent study reported by EBRI, nearly 45 % of Americans run the risk of falling short of money during retirement.
Other studies report that most Americans have less than $50,000 saved up for retirement.
It seems that most people are still counting on social security to cover the gap between savings and what they’ll really need during retirement.
Who is to Blame for the Retirement Crisis?
As the article “who to blame for the retirement crisis?” looks at, you might want to take a quick check in the mirror.
One facet of the problem is that folks haven’t saved up enough for retirement.
People overspending, relying on credit cards for staples, and not paying back owed debt has helped put this country in some real financial dire straits.
The stock market crash of 2008 can be at least partially blamed on consumer debt, and that comes down to people wanting the latest televisions, computers and smart phones.
Was it worth it?
The government has spent millions if not more in bailout money, but the solution is short term.
What will be done when your generation is set to retire and the stock market is at its lowest point?
How Can You Protect Yourself?
For starters, recognize that your retirement security is up to you.
Though Social Security will probably still be in place by the time you retire, no one can guarantee that outcome.
Why put your livelihood in the hands of someone else? Take control of your own retirement now, before it’s too late.
Nothing could be worse than sitting around waiting for that first Social Security check from the postman and discovering that it is far less than you can live on.
Living on Less
Next, you should look at your current lifestyle.
Are there areas where you can cut corners and sock more money into savings? Do you need to spend so much on holiday gifts, or can you cut the gift giving budget in half and put the rest into savings? Do you really need that expensive cell phone plan, or can you put up with a less than perfect plan that has budget pricing?
Trying to budget for 20 or so years of living with no work income is no easy task for anyone.
But instead of spending your energy blaming others, your time will be put to better use finding ways to take care of yourself and your family anyway.
That way, if the retirement crisis does turn out to be true, you will have safeguarded your security anyway.
Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com
About the Author: Kate Supino writes extensively about financial matters.
Remember To Look Up
A week ago I went to a local arts and crafts fair and connected with a woman who I hadn’t spoken to in years. She is a local pottery artist that owns her own shop. It was pleasant talking to her and she said I could come to her shop for more pieces if I wanted.
So this past weekend I went down to her shop to look for Christmas presents. She had the place stocked with beautiful items and I noticed she was at the cash register. As I went to check out, she barely looked up. She seemed busy and stressed. She didn’t recognize me, well I’m not sure she really even looked at me, as I checked out.
And that was it. And I left feeling very unseen. She was calm and relaxed when I had seen her a week ago. We talked about various topics and she was kind and attentive. But she was someone else entirely this past weekend. And though I understand that she was very busy and preoccupied, it was disappointing.
Our personal touch with customers and clients is what solidifies healthy relationships with them. But if we are so consumed with the work that we forget to look up, we miss out on deepening relationships with them.
Often times we think caring for people is antithetical to making money when in reality, the more we care for people, the more likely they are to stay customers. And it’s a well-known fact that it costs far more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. So it’s vital to our businesses that when we are serving current customers we remember to take our eye off our work and look up and see them.
It gets crazy this time of year. Even if you’re not in retail and you’re just closing the year out, there’s still a tendency for us to check out or burn out (after all, those days off are coming). But we can’t forget that our customers are people and every interaction matters.
We need to remember to look up. Put a sticky note on your laptop so that your eyes actually leave it when someone comes to ask you a question. Put a note on your cash register. Put it on your to-do list.
Serving people is what makes our work worth it. There will always be work to do. But if we forgo chances we have to look up and serve people, we’ll find those chances dwindling. None of us wants that. So let’s remember to look up.
Cover image info: Original, royalty-free image from Death To The Stock Photo.
About the author: Lindsey Tolino comes alongside artisans, craftsman and people monetizing their passions to help them create healthy businesses. She shares her heart at ToBusinessOwners.com. Follow her on Twitter @LindseyTolino.
Beach Notes: Change Your Perspective, Change How Life Looks
By Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh
From a distance Des assumed these were the usual flock of seagulls. When we got closer he saw they were cockatoos. We’d never seen them at the beach before.
Sometimes our assumptions can be wrong.
Keeping an open mind – and our eyes peeled – helps enrich our experience of life in all its diversity.
Authors’ Bios: Suzie Cheel is the Heart Whisperer at Suzie Cheel You can find Suzie on Facebook and on Twitter as @suziecheel
Des Walsh is a Digital Disruption Navigator at Des Walsh Dot Com You can find Des at LinkedIn and on Twitter as @deswalsh
Get Personal in Training Your Sales People to be the Best
Does your sales training have a personal touch?
The aim of sales training is to equip your sales team to do their best for your business. Well-trained sales people will pursue the best leads and communicating effectively with customers, ultimately improving your sales and conversions.
By adding a personal touch to your sales training, you increase the chances of success for your sales team.
So just what does a personal touch mean in terms of sales training, and how can you implement it in your business?
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
When it comes to sales training, it’s all too easy to take a one size fits all approach.
You set up a training day or give your sales team an e-course to complete on their mobile devices, delivering everything you think they need to know. However, this may not be the most effective approach for your business.
Here’s why:
- Different people have different learning styles;
- Different people learn at different speeds;
- Some team members will already be familiar with some of the material;
- Team members will have different gaps in their knowledge;
- Some people will learn better at different times of day;
- Some people will respond better to specific content delivery methods than others.
Understanding the different needs of your sales team members is vital in creating sales training that has a truly personal touch.
What Does Personal Training Look Like?
Personal training is focused on what is best for each individual learner.
Personal training can include:
- Offering different learning options (such as videos or interactive quizzes);
- Breaking training down into bite size pieces so learners can choose where to go next;
- Recommending new training modules based on each learner’s history;
- Giving learners a chance to focus on problem areas;
- Delivering different content based on each learner’s progress.
Benefits of Giving Training a Personal Touch
Adding a personal touch to your sales training means you’ll be offering the best training for each individual member of your sales team.
By focusing your efforts on adapting your training to be appropriate for each individual learner, you increase each team member’s chance of getting maximum benefit from the training.
As the article, “Modern Pharma Sales Training Deserves a Personal Touch” points out, customizing training to each learner’s needs improves the quality of the training.
Each person will receive the best content for them, in a way that they can personally work well with. Their engagement with the content will be more meaningful.
Making Training More Efficient
Adding a more personal touch to your training also means your training will be more efficient. When you deliver the same training to everyone, some people will receive training in topics they’re already well versed in.
As well as wasting time, this is likely to bore learners.
By personalizing your training, you let each learner skip over areas they are already familiar with.
More personal training also lets you see where each member of your team is struggling, giving you the chance to offer them support. Learners can put their focus on the areas they most need to improve.
Finally, by personalizing your sales training, you can pay attention to each learner’s preferred method of learning, for example by reading, answering quizzes or watching a video.
Targeting a preferred learning method is much more efficient than having everyone wade through material that doesn’t gel with their personal learning style.
When you add a personal touch to your sales training, you are essentially delivering the very best training for each member of your team.
The result is the best trained sales people, who are an asset to your business.
Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com
About the Author: Tristan Anwyn writes on a variety of topics including social media, how to build customer relationships, content marketing and how to offer the best training to your sales people.
Swing for the Fences with Gated Content
Funneling gated content into your websites is the lifeblood of your business.
When you have a sufficient stream of content flowing through your company’s site, you could have a guaranteed steady flow of customers.
If you want that circulation to continue, you must keep a steady stream of content behind the gates.
Uber active websites with daily and hourly content will build a devoted viewership base that will grow exponentially, while websites with dribbles of articles will plateau at a certain level and eventually wither away.
Here are some top tips on how to get more relevant content centered on your business:
- Recruit a Few Dedicated Writers for Your WebsiteYou don’t have to hire a full-time staff writer for 40 hours a week. You don’t even have to find writers and hire them directly. One of the best ways to keep gated content streaming on your website is to hire a marketing agency. Marketing agencies hire freelance writers for you, come up with the topics for them to write about, and bundle it all up in a neat little package that you don’t even have to publish yourself. With a marketing agency and dedicated writers behind you, your pool of gated content will overflow. As the following article looks at, here are 3 more of the4 simple ways to increase your amount of gated content.
- Center Content on Customers’ DesiresYour customers always know what they want. To build content and keep your customers happy, center content on their desires. Of course, to do that, you have to actually find out what they want. You can do this with surveys, opinion panels, behavior tracking and analysis and more. Their desires and wants are a wealth of information on what type of content should be published. Emails and comments that they give you either directly or on your business social media pages are clues telling you what your customers want. You can learn what they aren’t getting or understanding, what needs to be better iterated, and what they are interested in getting from your company.
Watch What Other Websites Are Doing
Pay attention and observe what other popular websites are doing. What are they publishing, which pages are getting more comments, what’s making them gain page views and comments, and what premium content are they selling? If a website is getting attention while yours is not, spot the key differences and make the change. Grab your market share.
4. Share the Load
Your premium content doesn’t all have to be from you. Consider partnering with a non-competing website. Offer to link-back to their site in return for content that doesn’t require a lot of man hours; video interviews, podcasts, and such. This media rich environment for premium content will give your readers value and give you a much needed break from content creation.
In the end, your gated content has to deliver on your promise to your customers.
Make sure your content enhances your reputation by following these tips.
Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com
About the Author: Kate Supino writes extensively about marketing and best business practices.