Published on: 21 November 2018
Last Updated on: 09 October 2020
Operating a struggling business can feel like an extremely stressful uphill battle, especially when there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel. Luckily, there are dozens of ways to bring a failing business back from the brink of failure. However, it will take some willpower and a multifaceted approach to pull it off. Things aren’t going to fix themselves, and in most cases, a full recovery will require the implementation of some radical changes. That being said, here are some steps you can take to save even the most troubled business from its own demise:
How to Save a Struggling Company:
1. Apply for a Loan:
Regardless of which approach you choose to take, chances are you’ll need a bit of extra funding to facilitate a full-fledged reform. If you have decent credit and can show proof that the business is earning some form of revenue, you can probably get approved for a loan on a same-day basis. Small business loans from Become. Lending Express has become a popular option for struggling companies that need extra cash flow to get out of the hole.
2. Find New Customers and Clients:
While a loan can keep you from going under, to really get back on your feet you’ll need to start focusing on generating additional revenue. Be competitive in your niche, provide unique products/services, and utilize aggressive promotional techniques to spread brand awareness. Most struggling businesses simply aren’t making enough sales to cover their operating expenses, so the straightforward solution here is to bring more business in the door or to your site.
3. Halt All Unnecessary Expenditure:
Excessive overhead is the last thing a struggling business needs hanging over them. Make a minimal list of everything your company needs to continue operating and scrap everything else immediately. After all, if you’re at the stage of needing a loan or a ground-breaking ad campaign to keep the business afloat, you don’t want to be wasting borrowed money on expenses that aren’t even necessary.
4. Bring in New Management:
When you’re trying to find the root of where your business went wrong, nine times out of ten there is somebody that can be held accountable. Assess the company’s primary mistakes and try to ascertain who was responsible for allowing those decisions to be made in the first place. While letting go of employees can be a difficult adjustment to make, bringing in fresh perspective and talent could be all that’s needed to turn things around. Better yet, consider the advantages of taking matters into your own hands for a while.
Create a Comprehensive Recovery Plan:
In closing, all of the above steps should be incorporated into an overall recovery plan that will guide the business back into a state of solvency and profitability. Try to be as detailed as possible when coming up with specific goals, budgets, deadlines, and agendas. The more specific and realistic your plan is, the greater your chances of success will be, so it’s important to take everything into account, even if it takes days to run all of the calculations and brainstorm it out.
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There are a lot of businesses out there. In fact, according to recent data, there are over 28 million businesses in the United States alone. So how do you make sure that your business stands out from a crowded niche? It can be challenging, but it's not impossible.
Today, we'll discuss five ways to set yourself apart from the competition and attract more customers to your business using cloud marketplace solutions.
Top 5 Worthy Expert Guide To Stand Out In a Crowded Niche
1. Identify the needs of your target audience
Any business owner knows that one of the keys to success is understanding the needs and wants of their target audience.
After all, if you don't know what your customers are looking for, how can you hope to provide it?
Fortunately, there are several ways to get feedback from potential customers. Surveys are a great way to collect data from many people, and social media can be used to reach out to potential customers and gauge their opinion of your products or services.
In addition, many companies also use focus groups to get more in-depth feedback from potential customers. No matter what method you use, gathering feedback from your target audience is essential to ensure that your business meets their needs.
Related: Which Targeting Option is Best for Influencing Consideration?
2. Research your competition and find a way to differentiate yourself
Any successful business owner knows that it's essential to understand who your competition is.
After all, if you don't know who you're up against, it's hard to develop strategies for winning over customers. However, simply knowing your competition is not enough.
In today's competitive marketplace, businesses need to find ways to stand out in a crowded niche. What makes your business unique?
Why should potential customers choose you over your competitors? If you can answer these questions, you'll be well on your way to attracting new customers. By understanding both your competition and what sets your business apart, you'll be in a solid position to succeed.
Related: 6 Tips to Help Your Business Stay Ahead of the Competition
3. Create valuable content that is worth sharing
In today's digital world, content is king.
By creating high-quality, valuable content, you can attract attention to your business and build trust with potential custom bIf your content is shareable, you could see a significant boost in website traffic and social media engagement.
Creating great content isn't always easy, but it's worth the effort. When your product is truly useful or interesting to your target audience, you'll be rewarded with their attention and loyalty.
If you're not sure where to start, try brainstorming a list of topics that would be helpful or informative to your customers or clients. Once you have a few ideas, you can start writing or recording your content.
Remember to keep your audience in mind throughout the process and aim to provide informative and engaging content. With a little effort, you can turn content into a powerful tool for growing your business.
Related: How to Get Into Content Marketing
4. Use social media to reach out to the new audience
Social media is a powerful tool that can reach out to new audiences and promote your business.
To stand out in the crowded niche, you can quickly attract new leads and customers by posting engaging content, participating in relevant conversations, and running target meters.
However, it's essential to use social media wisely, as over-exposure can lead to fatigue and alienation.
To maximize the impact of your social media campaigns, focus on quality over quantity, genuinely interact with your audience, and be sure to measure your results so that you can continue to improve your efforts.
With some planning and effort, you can use social media to effectively reach new markets with cloud marketplace solutions and grow your business.
Related: Social Media Usage: Pros And Cons
5. Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and changes in your industry
Industries are constantly changing and evolving, so businesses need to stay on top of the latest trends to remain competitive.
Customers' needs and wants are continually shifting, so it's crucial to be able to adapt your products or services to meet their changing demands.
Plus, keeping up with the latest industry news shows that you're a leader in your field, which can attract more customers by standing out in the crowded niche of your business.
There are several ways to stay up-to-date with the latest industry news, such as subscribing to industry publications, attending conferences and trade shows, or following influencers on social media. By taking advantage of these resources, you can ensure that your business is always ahead of the curve.
Related: Explore Some Interesting Marketing Trends for Your Business
Final Thoughts
As any business owner knows, standing out in a crowded marketplace can be challenging. With so many businesses vying for attention, it can be challenging to hear your voice above the noise. However, by following the tips above, you can set yourself apart from the competition and attract more customers to your business.
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As an entrepreneur, your customers are the biggest pillar of your business. No matter your industry of domain, area of specialization, or even your business focus, they are the single most valuable asset to your organization and you should treat them as so.
Through their valuable feedback, your business can gain a new sense of direction, develop new concepts, as well as bring in more revenue. With that said, as a business owner, simply appreciating your customers isn’t enough. You need to truly understand them to tailor your products and services to meet them at their point of need. And that’s where Salesforce application development comes in.
It entails creating integrated customer relationship management solutions that interface businesses with their customers. These CRM platforms also give all the departments in a particular organization a unified view of all the customers and how they interact with various aspects of the business.
In this article, we are going to look at what Salesforce is and its uses. While at it, we are also going to delve deeper to see the entire Salesforce application development lifecycle.
What Is Salesforce?
Simply put, it’s a cloud computing SaaS company that provides customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Thanks to the company’s cloud technology, businesses are able to better connect with their existing clientele, partners, and potential customers.
Over the years, Salesforce software has grown to become the leading marketing and customer behavior tracking solution for both small startups and Fortune 500 companies. As it turns out, customer relationship management is one of the key driving factors for the increasing demand for application development in Salesforce.
Recent research from Vonage offered a compelling view of the effects and consequences of poor customer service. In the US alone, the research revealed that an estimated $62 billion is lost annually as a result of bad customer experience.
To underwrite this figure, a different report from Huffpost has indicated that 91% of customers won’t hesitate to switch brands once they experience bad customer service. These are mind-blowing figures, especially if a business has no solution to counter the consequences of poor customer experience.
However, with Salesforce in place, businesses are able to overcome the problems caused by poor customer service and other business process variables. According to statistics published on Salesforce’s website, companies that are currently using their software have continued to see average increases in multiple areas. For instance, 34% of users have seen an increase in customer satisfaction, with 27% and 32% users seeing an increase in sales revenues and lead conversion respectively.
In 2018, Salesforce emerged as the biggest CRM software commanding a total of 19.8% market share of the CRM software market. During the same period, the company was voted as the #1 CRM provider by the International Data Corporation. It shouldn't come as a surprise that companies are willing to pay the highest Salesforce consultant salary just to get wind of this technology.
The Benefits of Using Salesforce
Given the commendable portfolio of Salesforce, here are areas it can help your business find success. Below I am going to discuss the benefits of using Salesforce.
Helps Collect Customer Intel
In the prevailing competitive business environment, overlooking data collection can be a fatal and unforgiving mistake. As a business, collecting and collating customer intelligence should be an obsession or the very least treated as a full-time affair, because it can lead to loss of revenue. As such, if you are to improve customer satisfaction and continue remaining competitive, hiring qualified Salesforce developers to build a high-quality CRM tool is inevitable.
And with Salesforce, you get an upper hand over your competitors by enjoying tools that help you identify, understand, and solve customer problems.
Flexible And Scalable
As companies and business needs continue to evolve, the tools of trade must also adapt. For instance, if the structures of your business start to grow, the management software should be able to seamlessly accommodate the changes. Cognizant of this fact, Salesforce CRM comes with multiple functions that allow for scalability right from the initial stages to any future interactions.
Helps in Account Planning
Having a unified view of customer information allows your teams to independently make plans for various accounts. It also facilitates a more hands-on customer connection approach as well as allows various reps and departments in your organization to modify their plans for optimized results. Salesforce also comes with a to-do items feature, which helps your entire workforce stay organized throughout the day.
Along with that, Salesforce also works as an organizational tool. Your team can create calendar reminders specifying the future customer follow-ups or important duties reminders to the upper management, which helps prevent anything from falling through the cracks.
If you are in the service-based businesses, Salesforce also gives you insights into the amount of time a particular customer/s has stayed in a particular subscription package. Once this info is established, your team is able to customize marketing materials to match a particular customer niche.
Cloud Connectivity
Many companies are now gravitating towards software as a service (SaaS), which means software that is available online. Luckily, Salesforce doesn’t need to be installed on a computer as it is cloud-based. This means that you can easily access it everywhere, interface it with other digitized services, and enjoy unlimited storage capacity. And since no maintenance is required, you get to save on a Salesforce developer salary that would have otherwise been paid for this purpose.
Facilitates Team Collaboration
Poor team communication and collaboration can lead to reduced productivity. On top of a unified view of customer data, Salesforce’s “Chatter” feature allows your team members to easily and regularly communicate work-related information. Additionally, the feature also lets you highlight and prioritize urgent issues that require special attention by inviting different team members to look at them.
Salesforce Application Development Lifecycle
Software developers spend a lot of time designing, developing, securing, and delivering products that perform better than initially envisioned. As a result, different software development approaches like agile development, waterfall model, and many others have merged.
When it comes to cloud-based solutions, the incorporation and implementation of various software development methodologies make it even more complex. Moreover, the Salesforce Development Lifecycle also means that the software is developed, tested, and deployed in a cloud environment.
Below, we have laid down 6 steps that clearly illustrate the entire Salesforce Development Lifecycle:
Business Requirements Analysis
The first step towards a successful custom Salesforce application is to conduct an internal business needs analysis. It entails the development team eliciting the potential customer needs, elaborating them, validating all the assumptions, and devising efficient methodologies to meet these requirements.
Business requirements analysis is important as it helps avert potential mistakes as well as make the final product both efficient and compatible with the existing system and security standards.
UI/UX Design
Another important aspect of Salesforce application development is optimizing the app for user experience. A report by iMPACT indicates that 52% of customers are less likely to conduct business with a brand offering a poor mobile experience. On the other hand, Forbes conservative estimates indicate that intentional and strategic user experience can yield a conversion rate as high as 400%.
If these numbers are anything to go by, designing a user-friendly and highly responsive Salesforce application development is absolutely paramount. In order to optimize an app for effective and enjoyable use, developers need to map out the user journey and creatively choreograph user/platform interactions to benefit the end-user.
Development Phase
The next step in Salesforce application development entails creating developers creating isolated sandboxes. Generally, these distinct sandboxes hold the main production app copy and other supplementary Salesforce configuration information. They are also independent, implying that changes in a single sandbox don’t affect the main Salesforce production enterprise. Individual developers have to clone their branches.
To retrieve the metadata from the sandboxes to the IDE, the developers need to use Force.com IDE. Once they have the metadata, they continue coding their assigned app features, performing initial unit testing, and then submit the finished code to the Git repository.
If a subsequent developer wants to build on top of this freshly updated branch, they need to clone it to their sandbox and continue developing new features. Once done, they also have to submit their latest development to the repository.
With that said, the possibility of multiple developers working on the same branch cant be overlooked. To avoid conflicts, it is important for everyone in the development team to check for possible branch updates before committing.
Testing
The next step after building a Salesforce application is to ensure that it has an excellent and stable performance. This mainly entails developers carrying out QA activities including unit tests and code reviews. It is also at this stage that functional, performance, and integration testing is conducted within the development process.
Lastly, automation tests and debugging are conducted to augment the app’s speedy delivery.
Integration
During the integration phase, the custom CRM application is interfaced with third-party software like CMS. To facilitate a smooth transition, the development team also conduct hands-on training sessions as well as provides training materials to the client.
Launch
Once the app is launched for internal use, it is transferred to the client and subjected to their User Acceptance Testing environment (UAT). Once satisfied, the finished product is moved to the production environment and deployed to the end-users.
Salesforce Application Development Team Actors
During the app development process, different players are involved and handle different aspects of the app. In the Salesforce app development life cycle, the most common actors include:
Product Manager: Help finalize business requirements.
Release Manager: Help coordinate the app’s release schedule.
Software Developer: Handles the main coding and produces the requisite deliverables.
Quality Analyst: Tests and confirms the functionality of various app features.
Potential money from the Salesforce AppExchange development:
After researching the fact this has been seen that Potential money from the salesforce AppExchange development can depend on several other factors.
How To Build an App for Salesforce AppExchange?
To build your AppExchange app, you must go through the multi-step procedure, which includes compliance, release, ongoing support, and demand app development. Below, I will discuss how to create an App for Salesforce AppExchange.
1st Step: Become the Part of Salesforce Business Partner Community
The first and foremost step in becoming a Salesforce AppExchange trade Partner is to join the Salesforce Partner Community. In this case, you must submit the form using AppExchange. After all, the Salesforce Partner Community is the hub of existing AppExchange Partners.
2nd Step: Examine AppExchange Market
The next step in building the app is to examine the AppExchange market. AppExchange offers many products and solutions for several products and cloud services in Salesforce. In this case, for optimal outcomes, you must use the curated collections of AppExchange.
3rd Step: Make the First Sketches of Your Product
Once you are done researching the existing solutions on AppExchange, you must start defining the unique value proposition of your product. For the outline, you must follow the below-mentioned procedure such as:
Firstly, you must understand your target audience.
Secondly, ensure you have an idea of business targets.
Thirdly, you must follow the types of Salesforce editions you will support.
After that, ensure you have an idea of the package type.
Next, ensure you have the Salesforce Licenses that you want to use.
Lastly, it would help if you ensured the requirements for your AppExchange App security.
4th Step: Define the Type of ISV Partnership and the Type Of Your AppExchange Solution
Once you have joined the Salesforce Partner Community, then, you must analyze the existing products, and you can create a rough roadmap. In this case, ensure you have defined the type of ISV partnership, and consequently, you also have built the AppExchange solution.
There are seven types of ISV partners in AppExchange. It includes OEM, CDP Cloud Partner, Commerce Cloud Partner, All Other Clouds (paid), All Other Clouds (free), and Technology Partner/Tableau.
5th Step: Choose the Programming Type and Tools to Build Your Salesforce App
Recently, Salesforce provided two types of programming languages and two types of tools that you can use. Let’s know what programming tools are used in Salesforce App development. This includes Apex Cloud-based programming language. Next are Lightning components and Visualforce.
6th Step: Build Your Salesforce App
Once you can identify the exact type of solution, it must have the programming language, licensing, and packaging, and of course, you must continue with the building procedure.
Two ways to do this are using internal sources or outsourcing the dedicated team. If you want to build the SalesForce App using an in-house team, it could be one the most viable and remarkable options. If you don’t have enough resources, ensure you can control the entire product cycle of AppExchange.
7th Step: Test Your Salesforce App
If you want to ensure optimal performance, then it must conduct comprehensive end-to-end testing in technological domains. In this case, you must adhere to the development of best business practices, especially for testing.
8th Step: Prepare Your App for the Launch on AppExchange
Once you are done testing and finalizing the app, the next step is to prepare by submitting it to the SalesForce AppExchange. In this procedure, it includes creating the managed packages and providing screenshots.
9th Step: Submit Your App for Security Review and Market This
Ensure you have submitted your final app by undergoing the security review and then have met the necessary security requirements.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce CRM is a critical business tool. It helps streamline data analysis and reporting, provides invaluable customer feedback, and aid in formulating better customer service strategies. As a result, businesses are able to align their resources towards creating timely, customer-oriented solutions.
With that said, Salesforce application development isn’t a linear process. It entails working with different tools and multiple software development methodologies. And with cloud solutions continuing to capture the imaginations of business owners, the world is yet to see the full potential of CRM Salesforce and the cloud ecosystem as a whole.
Read also:
Top User Tips For Getting Started With Salesforce
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Managers are a special breed of people who lead by example, and if you have a team of senior managers in your organization, they also require motivation and leadership. Building and maintaining a strong relationship with your senior managers in an integral requirement, and with that in mind, here are a few tips on how best to build a good working relationship with your managers.
Tips Of Building Better Relationships With Senior Managers
Setting Achievable Goals:
We all need to set realistic goals, especially those who manage others, and as their mentor, you should be helping your senior managers to set themselves attainable goals while making sure they are doing this with their teams. Once goals are set, it is important to keep them at the forefront of your mind, and should any employee underperform, the first things to look at is goal setting. There is also a great guide that explains how to set achievable goals, which you probably know anyway.
Managing Performance:
If you put your senior managers through a review of performance management training they will be better equipped to manage their teams’ performance, and this type of training course can be downloaded online, and for a single payment, you get to keep the very useful tools and resources that the course contains, and can use them in any way you see fit. You need to firmly establish the key elements of performance management, and by investing in a training program that you can deliver, you can help your senior managers to better manage performance.
Dealing with Poor Performance:
If a team player is underperforming, we must be careful not to negatively impact their morale, and with constructive analysis using a positive approach will help the employee to identify the causes of poor performance, while also helping them to rectify things. If you are at all unsure how to deal with poor performance, search online for a specific training course on the topic, and for a small cost, you can download dynamic training material that comes with full instructions for the trainer, and what’s more, you can use and re-use the materials, with zero restrictions.
Managing Conflict:
Conflicts among team players can literally destroy morale, and any good senior manager should be able to use a range of strategies to resolve conflicts in a positive manner, and it is always a good idea to review these strategies with your management team, and by downloading the right training course, you can boost your managers where it matters. Discipline is an important aspect of team management, and there are modules on managing conflict and maintaining discipline in the online training course, which you can access for a small investment.
Your senior managers should look to you as their mentor, their guiding light, and if you source a dynamic training course that specifically deals with building relationships in senior management, you can deliver the contents to your team at your convenience. The material would be put together by recognized business gurus and designed to be very easy to deliver and comes complete with a step-by-step guide for the trainer.
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