Over the past few years, I have encountered a variety of tools that help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. You could say that I’ve sort of become “tool obsessed.” I believe this obsession dates back to the days when I was the VP of Cultural Insight and Innovation at a Madison Avenue direct/digital agency, and my first official task was to complete an audit of the strategic tools our agency used to service clients from all around the world.
Fast forward, six years later, as a strategic consultant to emerging and established businesses, I find that I am still just as passionate about ensuring that businesses have the right tools to adequately address their challenges, optimize their results, and maximize the value they deliver to their clients, customers, communities, and audiences.
I believe that November and December are the best times to evaluate business tools because Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Holiday season sales provide an extra incentive to “retire and hire” tools at an affordable price.
Along my coaching and consulting journey, I’ve noticed that there are certain challenges that almost every entrepreneur faces as they strive towards advancing their entrepreneurial ideas, goals and dreams. I’ve selected four of these challenges and suggest that… if you are facing any of them, or simply seek to evolve your approach to these areas, that you consider making one or more of these tools your own.
CHALLENGE: STORYTELLING
More than ever, masterful communication and thought leadership play an essential role in business growth. This requires navigating a complex set of platforms as you powerfully communicate the features, benefits, and transformation that your products, services, and experience delivers. When I began my business, I started off using tools like Hootsuite, but as the communication landscape became increasingly complex, my mantra soon became “New Day. New Tools.”
Earlier this year, a new tool called StoryChief impressed me with its game-changing, comprehensive approach to storytelling. What I love most about this tool is its ability to create customized narratives across multiple platforms, including integrations with WordPress, medium, as well as social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I definitely recommend StoryChief to overcome storytelling challenges. Check it out HERE!
CHALLENGE: STEWARDSHIP
When it comes to your business, one of your key responsibilities is being a capable and responsible steward of it. At any given moment, you can be called up to make a decision and you will need some form of a crystal ball to provide the level of insight and awareness needed to make the best decisions for your business. Having this level of depth into your business is what enables you to efficiently and effectively manage and create results. I believe Plutio helps solve stewardship problems with “Swiss army knife” eleg
ance. Its mobile and desktop solution offers businesses everything from project management to time tracking, from proposal and invoice creation to co
ntract completion. Check it out HERE!
CHALLENGE: SCHEDULING
Entrepreneurs s today require tools that not only help with booking and managing individual calendars but also with scheduling and booking a wide variety of activity streams and workflows that comprise the overall “way of doing business.” Managing schedules and bookings in a busy world is an inescapable challenge. To this end, it’s important that businesses have a way to easily and seamlessly schedule meetings, notify all stakeholders. Omnify offers a great deal of support across a variety of scheduling and booking of business activities, as well as the storefront for potential clients and customers to see all that you have to offer. I would definitely consider Omnify. Check it out HERE!
CHALLENGE: SALES
The final challenge, and perhaps the biggest challenge that most businesses face is generating enough sales. If you’re not making any sales, then you might as well not be in business. The magic word, used over and over, that leads potential clients into having an encounter with your business, then guides them through the carefully crafted transformation you deliver is called a “funnel.” Kyvio is a special integrated solution that comprehensively addresses sales challenges through a variety of functionalities- the creation of funnels is just one of them. Creating the right funnel could make all the difference in your business. With Kyvio, you can explore and experiment with different types of funnels easily. Check it out HERE!
The future of business flows towards Integration and integrated solutions are becoming increasingly important to emerging and established businesses. This integration is not just at the level of the tool itself, but the vibrant communities that come along with them. Within these tool-based communities, you get to not only meet other emerging and established businesses, but you also have the opportunity to connect directly with the teams that are actively growing the platform you are using. Growing together?. How cool is that!?! Certainly consider making one of these tools your own, as well as joining the communities they’ve integrated into them.
When fire was first discovered, it was is a tool that helped humanity progress at rates unimaginable. You could say that the modern equivalent for fire in our era was the internet. While both tools created great advances for humanity as a whole, in the world of business, it is usually those with FMA – First Movers Advantage– that benefits in BIG ways, because when we adopt and implement innovative tools that solve key challenges, we tend to create great leaps forward with them.
As you evaluate your current set of business tools and explore bringing new tools on board, I invite you to consider what the next evolutionary leap in your business looks like. What needs to happen in order for you to reach greater heights? If you are ready to receive world-class strategic support to help get you there, then I would love to invite you to book a Business Evolution session with me or consider joining my one-on-one or group Business Evolution coaching program. Your next level of transformational growth is right around the corner. I would love to support you with it!
To Your Evolution!
Ozioma
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