Creating Virtual Opportunities in Business During Lockdown

Quite a number of places had some degree of lockdown imposed on them in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has sorely affected most businesses, big or small. In a previous article, we visited the possibilities of making social media a veritable tool for your business marketing and visibility. This article will discuss important steps to digitise your business.

Working from home has gained popularity over time, however, it has been a slow process. Running a virtual business has numerous benefits, not least of which is that it costs arguably less to run. Despite reservations about the idea from many, it has become a necessity for businesses to explore this mode of running a business as the restrictions to movement lingers. The following are some steps that can be followed in creating a virtual workspace.

Create Online Awareness

This is a very obvious step, so it goes right on top. For the same reason you would expect your physical business to be known around its physical location (unless you run a shady business of course 😉), your virtual business can do with online publicity. Social media remains a primary tool for this. This space gives you visibility and engagements, as has been discussed earlier.

Social media does not do it all, though. Your business needs its own private space, space where all your offerings and information can be seen. You need an up-to-date website that is easy to navigate. Websites do not personalise your business, however. For this reason, it is encouraged to run a blog also. Blogs provide a personal feeling about your business. People are more likely to patronise you if they feel there is a person behind it and not just a “mindless bot”.

Create a Business Plan

You need to identify what your business offers in terms of goods and services – what your business CAN offer. You need also to have a clear vision and set boundaries, create an effective working process, and have realistic targets. This helps you and members of your team to be able to be effective and have the best possible ROI in the shortest possible time.

Let all employees understand how working remotely differs from working in an office environment. Be selective when picking members of your team; not all are well suited for remote assignments and not all tasks can be handled by all members of your team.

Keep the Communication Line Open

This works for both customers and employees. There should be an open channel of communication across the designated hierarchy of your organisation. All members of your team should be comfortable coming up with ideas and putting them to those higher up the ladder. This gives them a feeling of belonging and drastically improves their input as they feel like a part of the system and not a misfit.

Regular meetings should also be set up. This will help to keep tabs on the progress of the team, communicate new plans to all, and maintain a personal relationship. Virtual meetings can be held using various platforms. Popular ones include Zoom, Skype for Business, Slack, Zoho Meeting, and WhatsApp.

Measure Productivity

Your business must first and foremost be productive. So you must have set down metrics to analyse the productivity of your business. Try not to only focus on the final outcome of a particular process. Evaluate various stages of the process. Use quantifiable data to measure how well you are doing. Analyse key performance indicators (KPIs) diligently and be willing to make changes to certain areas that seem to be lagging.

For every observation, you need to be willing to train members of your team to make them improve in that area. Do not stop at measuring the team as a whole, observe individual members of the team and help any such who might be behind to keep up. Make sure to have a rewards system as well as extra motivation.

Be Realistic

It will not be easy getting used to the remote working system for sure. There might be some losses along the way, maybe more. But with proper planning and determination, a virtual workspace will yield dividends. Overall, it’ll pay off!

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How to Attract The Media To Your Stand At Trade Shows

The main objective of exhibiting your business at trade shows is capturing leads to acquiring new business and brand awareness. However, attracting the media to your stand is certainly the best way to achieve such objective, but how do you achieve this?

Prepare Media Kit

To get the media to talk about your products, the first thing to do is to provide them with valuable contents. Unless your company is very famous or your news incredibly powerful, journalists won’t spend time searching for information and material to talk about you. You must provide them with everything, make it easy for them.

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What should my Media Kit contain?

A good Media Kit contains the following information:

  • Company introduction
  • Company factsheet (figures, facts, graphs – key elements about your business that make it worth talking about)
  • Company timeline (your historic, major dates and milestones)
  • Major products / services / innovations introduction
  • Bio of the founder / CEO / key employees
  • High-resolution Photos and Logos (a good article always comes with a photo, if you don’t provide it, you risk losing control over your content or losing the article altogether)

The strategy is to always provide something very short to give a quick overview with links to find out, make it easy to grasp your documents within seconds, don’t lose your reader in pages of text.

Build your story

Most companies have no story to tell, hence no PR coverage.

Unless you have some incredible innovation to share or an internationally famous brand, why would people talk about you?

You need to have a story that will captivate your audience.

The story can be about your company and what it stands for or about your CEO or founder on his own journey or unique personality.

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Make use of PR (Press Release)

Write a Press Release announcing that you will be exhibiting at the show. Make it bold. Use your story as the backbone of your release and add some suspense into it. Talk about innovation, announcement, exclusive information, etc.

If your press release is boring, don’t even bother publishing it. It would have no impact and would only waste your time. Write something worth reading that makes people (and media) want to come pay you a visit.

Once written, publish your PR and relay it through your own networks (website, Social Media, blog, newsletter, etc.), send it to journalists within your network and invite your partners to help you spread it.

Prepare Question & Answer Forms

You did everything right and some journalists stop by your booth, well done!

Then what?

They start talking to your staff. Your team members have been trained for capturing leads and educating visitors, but do they have a clue on how to handle media? Most probably not.

You will certainly ask them to direct journalists to you, but what if you’re not here or the journalist has no time to wait?

Prepare a Q&A sheet for internal purpose. This sheet should contain the top 10 questions you expect journalists to ask about your business and the “correct” answers your staff should be giving.

Use this document to standardize your numbers (you don’t want a person to claim a number and another one say something different) and make sure everyone is on the same page. Distribute this Q&A document and tell your team to read it and memorize it carefully

YOU ARE READY FOR THE TRADESHOW

HIGHLIGHTS OF TOSSE2018

The annual Total School Support Seminar/Exhibition holds Thursday – 31st August 2023

The annual Total School Support Seminar/Exhibition (TOSSE) holds this Thursday, 31st August 2023, at the 10 Degrees Events Center, Billing Ways, Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos.

The TOSSE platform brings together manufacturers/suppliers of educational resources and stakeholders in the education sector. TOSSE is an education fair featuring the display of innovative products and services, networking among top school leaders, administrators and teachers attending transformative seminars.

The 15th edition of TOSSE featured TOSSElead held in June, and TOSSE2023 slated for August. The event will host over 100 exhibitors with WOWBII Interactive being the lead sponsor.

Join the event YouTube Livestreaming on Thursday, 31st of August 2023

Check out some of the brands to expect at the event this Thursday:

FinLab is a leading indigenous scientific and technological equipment company actively involved in manufecturing, design, supply, and installation of laboratory equipment and furniture. Another brand is HowBodi, a teletherapy App where you get overall health care from the comfort of your home using a phone, laptop, computer, or tablet. KidsReadArt will also make an entrance as a literacy program that teaches children to read fluently through the use of phonics, animations and games.

Some institutions that will showcase at TOSSE2023 are African Leadership University (ALU), an higher education dedicated to building an army of ethical and entrepreneurial leaders, equipped with the required skillset, knowledge, and network. GreenSpring Training College (GTC), a subsidiary of greensprings educational services limited established to meet the development needs of teachers, school owners, parents, students and professionals. Blooming School is one of the top 15 educational institutions in Lagos State that blend British and Nigerian curricula designed to enhance critical thinking and HIIMA Education.

TOSSE Outdoor Floor Plan: Three seminar rooms

Attendees will be opportune to meet Wagefit, a payroll and financial well-being platform that provides Earned Wage Access (On-Demand Pay) by enabling employees to access a portion of their earned unpaid wages before payday to deal with unplanned emergencies. Visitors would also see Eduriea Future, a technology and innovation deploying technology company driving the much-needed innovation in the way educators engage young learners to lay a good foundation for success.

Parents would be excited to meet SchoolingYonda Consulting, an organization that assists parents and their children to study opportunities abroad and transition from study to work in Canada. Edukoya will also be making a return to TOSSE,  the Nigerian’s No1 online tutoring platform, which enables students to learn LIVE with some of Nigeria’s best teachers from the comfort of their homes. Edukoya caters to learners in primary and secondary school, and learners preparing for competitive examinations. TOSSE2023 will also feature Lothego, a learning platform with the mandate to transform education and improve access to high-quality content for continuous professional development.

Education stakeholders will also meet LAPO Microfinance Bank, a leading Microfinance institution committed to the empowerment of members of low-income households and owners of MSMEs. The Bank is bridging access to quality education through its Edu-finance product by providing credits to school owners and parents. SuccessTAB by Chronicles Software will be on display. It’s  an advanced learning device that offers diverse apps for students.

Nexcel Group will be showcasing its EduproVR and EduproTAB, their innovative educational solutions created to bridge the gap between knowledge and understanding of what students are taught in schools, enabling teachers to impart knowledge seamlessly. Zeta Brent Education is a leading study abroad agency in Nigeria.

Other great brands that will be present at TOSSE2023 are Revive Tech Montessori, Manners & Conduct, BredHub, Nliten, Legal Properties, Stamp4School Concept, Brains & Butter, The Ark Pregnancy, The Spelling Bee & Vocabulary Handbook, 9ijaKids, Syllabux, Kunda Kids, Lady Divine, Smart school uniform, Angels Learners, The Let Cerebral Palsy, Save a child save a nation, Teach for Nigeria, Red cross, Imperial Edtech, ALTS Education Consulting and many others.

The Total School Support Seminar/Exhibition (TOSSE) is a Viable platform that provides Impactful support for the education sector. This Initiative represents 15 years of passionate, committed and Impactful Support of the education sector by creating a platform for all stakeholders to Interact and devise creative solutions for current challenges in the sector; This was a statement made by Mr Alex Okoh, DG of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, Keynote speaker at TOSSElead 2023 event.

4 Core Principles of Customer Relations That Fuel Business Growth

Companies in all industries and all of sizes understand that customers are perhaps their most valuable asset. Improving the overall customer experience is vital for continued success and survival of their business.

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Customer relation is a way business relates to its customers, clients and patrons. Some business organizations hire people specifically to manage how the company interacts and communicates with people. The goal is to retain existing customers and to gain new ones by providing the best customer relations and clients’ services.

There are some core principles to relationship management that any company can and should follow:

Communication: Listening is just as important as telling. Think about how often you actually speak with your customers. Focus on less financial-driven communication (whether it’s E-mail, phone or face-to-face interaction) if you make your customers feel involved, they feel as though they actually have a stake in your company, and feel like you care about more than just trying to make sales.

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Rewards: Every company should initiate and make provision for reward programs. It is a very simple form of saying “Thank you” and particularly it is a viable and measurable marketing tool that big companies and small businesses can use to retain their customers and grow their business.

Be flexible: Be quick and attentive to customer’s complaints: The objective of customer relation is typically to interact with the customers in order to answer questions, resolve support issues, establish credibility and nurture relationships.

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Here are strategies that Improve Customers Relations and building customer’s loyalty, from simply opening up communications channels to implementing elaborate point systems that reward loyalty enhanced customer communications.

Be prepared to meet and interact with lot of customers at TOSSE 2019.

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  • Providing customer feedback forms
  • Asking about customer needs in general when customer calls with problems
  • Training call-center staff to handle disputes
  • Encouraging a service culture throughout the organization.