Rely on a third-party website like social media as the companies primary website
Most SMB (small and medium-sized business) owners fear that because they don’t know how to code a website and the cost of a commercial one is inhibitive, they can’t have an online presence. Many therefore resort to using a third-party platform like social media as their primary website and point of contact.
If you are one of those relying only on Facebook, Twitter or any another social media channel as a primary business hub, you could be missing out on many potential leads and sales. Relying on this type of platform, you’re always at the mercy of that third-party. You have little if any control over your content changes and if the platform changes access or policies, or you contravene their guidelines you are banned and the account closed with no consideration to your content, then you’ve lost the only means of income that you have.
The 9 mistakes that you as owner of a Small Business Website Should Never Make! A) Rely on a third-party website (social media) as your primary website B) Relinquish control by outsourcing web tasks C) Start creating a website without a strategy or goal D) The website design doesn’t reflect your branding and vision E) There are no well-defined prompts for visitors to take action F) Do not let creativity (or design) outweigh a conversion factor G) Today any website should be built to accommodate mobile devices H) Always consider SEO for your primary website I) Never set it and forget about it, connect to Google analytics and monitor success and update content when necessary.
The last day of the CompTIA Security + course with our intake 2 students at McBride career group in Edmonton. They have now completed their technical training part of the program and only have a few more weeks to go to complete their job search phase. All of them have work terms arranged and are eager to get into the IT field. Wishing each and every one the very best success.
The pictures show a group photo below and the 5 top achievers on the left. These amazing students did not miss a single day during the entire program. Here they are with their prizes.
GodMode is a special folder in Windows that gives you quick access to over 200 tools and settings that are normally tucked away in the Control Panel and other windows and menus. This Mode is most helpful for advanced Windows users that work in IT, or any advanced Windows enthusiasts.
Most customers, will not see a use for having this Mode enabled on their Windows 10 systems. It’s like having your developer settings enabled on your smartphone. If you want to try it out, though, here’s how to enter God Mode in Windows 10.
How to enter God Mode in Windows 10
Make sure your Microsoft system account has administrator privileges.
Right-click on the Windows 10 desktop and “Create a new folder.”
Right-click the the new folder and rename the folder: “GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}” press enter and you’re all set!
A CRM can transform your business or
become your worst nightmare.
Customer service good or bad can affect your business in
many ways. Small mistakes can lead to major issues down the line that could be
construed as bad customer service leading to one or more of the following
conditions.
Damage your company’s reputation
Stops leads or opportunities from converting to
business
Customer lifetime value drops
Great employees leave
And a downward spiral begins.
Situations that are usually unacceptable to a business are
long wait times, poor attention to detail, lack of experience or product
knowledge and unprofessional or impersonal actions by staff members that could
be caused by the CRM.
Businesses that are guilty of these unacceptable customer
situations above usually have a difficult time overcoming the loss of customer
confidence and could lead to the total businesses collapse. The good news is
that with the correct staff most customer related issues can be overcome if the
corrective action is taken speedily and effectively.
Many organizations falsely believe that by adding a Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) to the mix will resolve all of their bad customer
relationship issues. This is a gross misunderstanding of the actual issues that
caused the bad customer service in the first place, people.
A CRM is there to help good staff keep track of their
actions and transaction with your customers. It is important to have a CRM that
is accurate and up to date at all times. With incorrect policies a CRM will
become a company’s biggest nightmare. Quotes, orders and invoices all rely on
the accuracy of the customers information stored in the CRM, the policy should
include a customer creation and update procedures with staff training at the
top of the list. Creating duplicate accounts due to using different naming schemes,
assigning contacts to the incorrect accounts are just two of the most common
issues. These are introduced by untrained or dishonest staff with no
repercussions for sloppy work.
Migrating Data from old legacy or merging data from two or
more companies to a new CRM system always opens the door for introducing
errors. Before handing over a new CRM to the sales and marketing departments
one has to ensure that the data is accurate and complete, has no duplicate
companies or organizations, no duplicate contacts and must have a complete
management capability preventing staff from recreating duplicates. Your migration
should have verified that all physical, mailing and email addresses are
correct. That all related contacts either relationships within household,
businesses or networks are accurate. Employee, agents or brokers, suppliers and
their assets, and any channel partner data that helps your organization
understand the target market and serve your customers to the best of your
abilities needs to be verified before use. Remember that getting this data
accurate does not happen by chance, it requires a project with meticulous
planning and budgeting. If you skimp on this part of your CRM project, your
have a high probability of failure. Its not the fault of the staff that use the
data but the migration team that does not verify the data that are to blame. It
does not matter how much you pay for the use of the CRM or how good it is on
paper but a second-rate CRM with accurate data is far better that the costliest
or the very best one with inconsistent and incorrect data.
Clean up your data as soon as possible or suffer the
consequences of frustrated and disgruntled customers and staff. You could lose
both in a very short time.
open source product
A CRM is a complex tool and requires a lot of setup, choose
your CRM based on your requirements and not on what it could do for you. Many
aspects of a CRM are based on automation freeing up your staff to better
utilize their time with more important customer relations task. Please remember
a CRM does not sell products for you, sales people do this based on
relationships and bonds that are formed between your customers and your staff.
Support your sales staff in any way possible. The collaboration processes of
this tool should have great rewards as people share common information and
data.
Never forget to lay down some rules, your CRM can only be
effective if your company allows it to be. No CRM can function if it is being misused
by your staff, either intentionally or unintentionally. Creating some rules and
making sure that your workforce has been properly trained will alleviate some
issues and have a smoother transition to and a better acceptance of your CRM.
Building Revenue on
Relationships
We have all heard the term CLV or Customer Lifetime Value
and how important this is to a successful business relationship. A customer
strategy should be built on a culture of your customers success and tracking
their satisfaction. Some key factors to take into account when dealing with CLV
are:
Good communications, not too little and not too much as too much is construed as spam
Being sensitive to a person’s emotions and needs
Any issues and pain points should be noted and addressed
Always remember that these points may be multifaceted or layered
Knowing where your customer is at this point will help with any business transactions.
Your CRM should be the tool used by your workforce to track
the amount of communications, emotions or needs and their pain points.
Do factor in the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto
Principle, that is attributed to the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto. Applying
this principal to your business and your CRM configurations, helps keeping
track of the 80% of your company sales that come from only 20% of your
customers. These 20% are your core customers and need to be your top priority
for accuracy when updating or configurating a new a CRM.
A business analyst should be consulted to assist with the
elicitation of requirements before, during and after a migration is considered.
The stakeholders that will be using it as their sales tool, the templates used in
the sales processes, invoices used in the close process, and pricing with a structured
discount need to be considered and consistent throughout the elicitation
process. As I have said before, a CRM is only as good as its first implementation,
so make sure that it is done correctly before any access is given to the
stakeholders.
Windows Defender Offline has a powerful offline scanning tool that runs from a trusted environment, without starting your operating system. This topic describes how to use Windows Defender Offline in Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7.
When should I use Windows Defender Offline?
Run Windows Defender Offline if:
Windows Security (named Windows Defender Security Center in previous versions of Windows) detects rootkits or other highly persistent malware on your PC and alerts you to use Windows Defender Offline. You might see a message stating that malware was found on your device, or receive a message in Windows Security notifying you that additional cleaning is required.
You suspect your PC might have malware that’s hiding on it, but your security software doesn’t detect anything. In this situation, you can start a Windows Defender Offline scan from Windows Security settings. Here’s how:
Select Start , and then select Settings > Update & Security > Windows Security > Virus & threat protection .
On the Virus & threat protection screen, do one of the following:
In an up-to-date version of Windows 10: Under Current threats, select Scan options.
In previous versions of Windows: Under Threat history, select Run a new advanced scan.
Select Windows Defender Offline scan, and then select Scan now.
You’ll be prompted that you’re about to be signed out of Windows. After you are, your PC should restart. Windows Defender Offline will load and perform a quick scan of your PC in the recovery environment. When the scan has finished (after about 15 minutes), your PC will automatically restart to Windows.
Notes
Before you use Windows Defender Offline, make sure you save any open files and close all apps and programs.
You typically need administrator rights on the PC on which you plan to run Windows Defender Offline.
If you experience a Stop error on a blue screen when you run the offline scan, force a restart and try running a Windows Defender Offline scan again. If the blue-screen error happens again, contact Microsoft Support.
Where can I find scan results?
To see the Windows Defender Offline scan results:
Select Start , and then select Settings > Update & Security > Windows Security > Virus & threat protection .
On the Virus & threat protection screen, do one of the following:
In an up-to-date version of Windows 10: Under Current threats, select Scan options, and then select Threat history.
In previous versions of Windows: Select Threat history.
Have you already tried using clipboard history? If enabled, it allows you to save multiple clipboard items to use later. Introduced during RS5 development, we’ve been getting great feedback from everyone on this experience, and one of the things we heard most is that the UI wasn’t compact enough – a large space was used for each entry even if it was just a small text fragment. We originally opted to show bigger entries so there was space to show an image preview nicely, but when we looked at our data, we found 90% of items in the clipboard history were text. Based on that and your feedback, we now optimizing the design for text snippets – shrinking the height of each entry and thus giving you access to more entries without needing to scroll the view. Hope you like the change we made! Copy some text and press Windows logo key + V to check out the updated design.
Next-gen optical disk holds 10TB of data for 600 years
Scientists from Australia and China have used gold nanomaterials to demonstrate a new high-capacity optical disk able to hold data securely for more than 600 years, while using 1,000 times less power.
“All the data we’re generating in the Big Data era – over 2.5 quintillion bytes a day – has to be stored somewhere, but our current storage technologies were developed in different times,” said lead investigator, RMIT’s Distinguished Professor Min Gu. “While optical technology can expand capacity, the most advanced optical disks developed so far have only 50-year lifespans.
“Our technique can create an optical disk with the largest capacity of any optical technology developed to date, and our tests have shown it will last over half a millennium. While there is further work needed to optimise the technology – and we’re keen to partner with industrial collaborators to drive the research forward – we know this technique is suitable for mass production of optical disks, so the potential is staggering.”
The world is shifting from Big Data towards Long Data, which enables new insights to be discovered through the mining of massive datasets that capture changes in the real world over decades and centuries.
