Digitisation Archives

People are business, and business is about people

Written by Lindokuhle Ntombela on June 8, 2022. Posted in Insights, Lead generation and conversion.

People are at the heart of any business, from suppliers to customers and staff. Your ability to read and work with people – and to get what you need out of them to move the business forward is critical to your business growth.

In this Podcast of The Money Show Pavlo Phitidis outlines his approach to getting the most out of people to achieve your vision of the business.

There are three people or kinds of people you have to understand to harness their ability to build your business.

The starting point is understanding yourself

Self-awareness is an important part of career development, and even more so for your business to know where you are going, as a business forces you to look objectively and adjust. Examining strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and failures from the past can help you to move forward with re-energized objectives, which helps with vision alignment for your business, whether it is in the hiring process or having composed company goals with the people you share the vision with. There are always trials and tribulations, but when the whole business is aligned to the goal you have, it becomes easier to achieve beyond measure.

Next, understand your customer

In a world where everything in business is customer-centric, knowing your customer is critical, whether you work in a B2B or B2C organisation.

To get this right you have to listen to your customer – you cannot sell to them on the assumption or hope that they are interested in what you are telling them.
Understanding your customer will help you to be more clear and focused in what you do for them. It is always important to know precisely who you serve, what you serve them and how you serve them. You cannot be everything to everyone.

Then understand your employees

In hiring new people, you need to be at a point where you have understood your business and you have a good sense of what kind of personality fits within your business. Having a good sense of your own values and the values of the company you are building is important. You need to hire on the back of that discussion. And that is not an interview that needs to be a social engagement.

“When it comes to employing additional staff, you must have a strong understanding of your business and a real vision of what sort of personality suits it. It is critical to understand your own values as well as the values of the company you’re building. To the extent that you can get birds of a feather to flock together, you can coordinate, simplify, and scale”.

Turning your physical service into a digital, online, e-commerce service

Written by [email protected] on October 27, 2020. Posted in Innovation, Leadership, Trends.

…and increase customer reach, engagement, and revenues

Once you start on a programme of digitization, it’s not a destination, it becomes a new way of looking at the business, and it changes the strategy behind the business.

Listen to the podcast of Pavlo’s discussion about digitisation from The Money Show on 702 & CapeTalk:

What drives change?

Opportunity drives change: Black Friday

Over R6 billion was spent on the Black Friday weekend last year, over R70 million online, and the biggest single amount was R10 067 400 from an overseas buyer who spent it on a service – an incentive package trip for his team. I

So it has moved beyond TVs, fridges and phones to services already.

Crises drive change: COVID

During the Covid hard lockdown we were forced to go online for all intents and purposes. This has supported progress to the 4^th Industrial Revolution.

More people than ever before have moved to online shopping. It may have taken a couple of attempts to get used to it, but Pavlo’s guess is that most of us don’t want to go back to the hassle of going in store, standing in queues, finding parking etc.

Even Business to Business brands needed to engage digitally out of necessity. Screens have become meaningful interfaces to now demo products and describe services. Explainer videos to articulate services have exploded.

The edge of competition is moving fast towards a place and space where you can have anything you want, the way you want it, where you want it, how you want it.

Competition drives change: Shampoo

The edge of competition is centered on thinking about how any service can be delivered in this manner.

You have to do things differently to remain relevant.

Pavlo works with a business in the USA, that has created a new way of selling shampoo. They believe everyone has different hair, and that your hair changes as you go through different life stages. They were up against massive cosmetic brands on the shelves, so they created an app. You take a photo of your hair, tell them a few things about yourself and your lifestyle, and the app then diagnoses and recommends the right product, and lets you buy it immediately for delivery.

And what happens if you do not respond to it?

A Kodak moment – A global brand that went from employing 16 000 people, to 300 because they missed the writing on the wall.
Irrelevance – when you don’t meet your customers’ needs.
Loss of talent – no one wants to be in a sinking ship
Loss of customers
Fall prey to competitors – they will take away your assets, staff and customers.

Lead it rather than be a victim of it and to get that right, here is your mantra for today’s show and the rest of time too!

DIGITISED, CUSTOMISED, SERVICE CONFIGURATION, BUILT, BOUGHT ONLINE, DELIVERED ONLINE/OFFLINE

Mass customization is a marketing and manufacturing technique that combines the flexibility and personalization of custom-made products with the low unit costs associated with mass production. Other names for mass customization include made-to-order or built-to-order.

Getting it right puts you on the front foot of where global economies are going.

WATCH: How to thrive in a crowded e-commerce space

Written by [email protected] on August 20, 2020. Posted in Innovation, Leadership, Trends.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Digitising an established business to generate revenues through e-commerce needs to become a key element of your strategy today. The technology is now easier and more affordable to make it happen than ever before. What it takes is a good commercial strategy and understanding how your customers behaviour will change as a result of an e-commerce offering.

Pavlo hosted a one hour discussion with a business that needs to implement an e-commerce strategy and a panel of experts to walk through what needs to be considered, and how to get it right.

Watch the session, presented by Payfast and Business Day SME Matters:

With attention paid to B2B and B2C, the session offers practical, actionable insights to assist any business looking to establish or improve their e-commerce offering.

NEXT SESSION: DIGITAL MARKETING
Sign up for the next session, where Pavlo and a panel of digital marketing specialists will discuss how to market your brand in a noisy digital marketplace. Register here:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Webinar: How to digitise your business for a social distancing world

Written by [email protected] on June 8, 2020. Posted in Aurik Business, Innovation, Leadership, Mindset, Operational systems, Positioning.

Things will not go back to the way that they were, even after the lockdown ends. For businesses operating in this new reality, it’s no longer a choice, you have to digitise.

Pavlo Phitidis hosted a 60 minute webinar in which he unpacked practical, actionable insights to understand:

What the future looks like for your business
What can you digitise in your business?
How to go about digitising parts or all of your business?
What digital skills do you need to develop to stay relevant in the future

Watch it, share it with your team, and start now to get your digitisation strategy right.

How do you sell across a screen?

Written by admin on June 8, 2020. Posted in Aurik Business, Innovation, Lead generation and conversion, Leadership, Mindset.

Humans are, by nature, tactile beings, and our brains receive, store and compute millions of signals in any engagement with other people. Some we are aware of to some degree – for example body language, or the degree to which someone makes eye contact. But there are loads of other signals we know very little about that help us to make our decisions in human interactions.

As a sales person – a lot of these unconscious signals are part of your arsenal of assessing a potential client and gauging which approach to use.

How do we translate all of this, which we barely understand in the physical world, across a screen? Pavlo Phitidis argues that this is a critical competency to get right, and get it right soon, as those individuals who engage well online are going to leapfrog ahead those who don’t.

Listen to Pavlo Phitidis and Bruce Whitfield discuss this on The Money Show on 702 and CapeTalk:

Pavlo identifies the following elements which need to be practiced and implemented to make your sales engagements effective, online.

Create your best digital self

This needs be reflected across multiple platforms online, including a website that clearly communicates your value proposition; email, LinkedIn, and if you are consumer facing, facebook or Instagram too. You need to have these digital assets up-to-date to share with your lead before the engagement to help build the familiarity that would be established with the small talk or banter of a physical meeting. We are going to spend far more time and energy preparing for meetings online than we did in person.

Establish a professional presence in the other person’s screen

Know your framing and your posture are being received. Declutter your space so that there are no distractions. Test your tech before the meeting so that the platform runs smoothly from start to finish during the meeting. And switch off your own view so you aren’t distracted by your own image and can focus on the other person.

Create familiarity

A sale is based on trust and whether it is in person or via a screen, you have to build that trust. There are a number of touch points to do this through online: The meeting request, the meeting confirmation; send through an agenda, share your LinkedIn profile. By the time the meeting arrives they have been warmed to you by the multiple points of contact, and then look into the iris of the camera to mimic the feeling of eye contact.

Frequency

If it used to take 2 to 4 meetings to get your deal done, you will need 5 to 7 meetings online. Why? It’s hard for people to relax online and people can’t concentrate for hours on a screen. So you can’t deal with multiple issues all in one session. Take all of the steps you would have gone through in the 2 to 4 meetings and break them up into 5 to 7 meetings online. Keep them brief and leave the other person looking forward to another engagement to find out more.

Amplify everything

Just as you appear ‘flatter’ on TV than in real life, which requires exaggerated movements and inflection, to convey the same energy. And exaggerate the number of engagements – connect after the meeting, connect before the next one, stay in contact to build that familiarity.

We work with businesses to overcome obstacles to growth, including the adoption of digital processes where they can improve performance in the business. Talk to us to see how we can help you digitise your business.

Tag: Digitisation