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Sales

Time Management is the Key to Being a Successful Sales Rep

Time Management is the key to being a successful Sales Rep

We have often heard the saying “time is money”. For sales reps, the saying is very accurately put. It is true that time management is a vital aspect of any sales rep.

However, at the same time, the fact remains that this is a very tricky job for every sales rep.

A recent study conducted with 200 sales reps has produced the following result:

  • Only 28% of the sales reps practice a dedicated time management system.

Out of the total active time period, a sales rep focuses only 35% of the time on selling while the remaining is spent on all other tasks.

In this article, we will look at some awesome tips to better manage your time as a sales rep. But before we do let us understand why time management is so important for a sales rep.

11 Best Time Management Tips

Plan a customer-centric prospecting schedule

Prospecting is one of the main tasks of any sales rep. However, planning a well thought out prospecting schedule can be a bit tricky. Mostly because the time you have blocked out for prospecting might not match well with your clients’ schedule(s).

This is why you must always focus on planning a customer-centric prospecting schedule. This means you will need to track and know your target clients’ behaviours and routines. That is the best way to match your clients’ time with yours.

A general rule of thumb does state that the best time for prospecting is in the early morning or late afternoon. However in the end it all comes down to how well you know your customers’ routine so that you can match both times.

Track your Time Smartly

11 Best Time Management Tips

Tracking your own time makes fundamental to time management. If you cannot figure out where your time is going it is the wisest thing to do. You can use various time tracking software that is readily available in the market.

With these softwares, you can track the amount of time you are spending on specific tasks. Give it a few weeks time and you will start to see a pattern. This is important as you can then analyse your routine and figure out how you can be more productive.

There is a widely practised technique that encourages everyone not just sales reps to work in bundles of 25-minutes to maximise productivity.

Take it one step at a time

There is a very common misconception that multitasking makes you more productive. Let us make one thing very clear: It is nothing but a myth. The more you multi-task the less productive you become. Many studies have concluded to this fact.

What these studies found out is that while you are multi-tasking in reality your brain is scurrying from one task to another in rapid successions. This results in you losing to about 40% of your productivity. This is because as your brain is constantly shifting its focus from one task to another and cannot concentrate.

This is very bad for a sales rep as it makes them inefficient. That is why it is always recommended to finish one task at a time by prioritising on your sales activities.

Batch your tasks and appointments

There are some very simple processes that can literally change the way you do your job: grouping, time blocking, and batch processing. Grouping similar tasks together is a great way to effectively carry out your tasks and improve your productivity.

You may consider blocking specific periods of time daily for your cold calling tasks. It is always recommended to do the same for returning calls rather than checking your voicemail all day long. The latter can really bite into your otherwise productive time. Successful sales reps are those who get their job done ahead of time. Most of them designate an hour or two every afternoon for scheduling a prospecting action for the next day. These practices are proven to improve workflow.

Learn to say NO

It’s no mystery that chasing the wrong prospect is nothing but a waste of time. As a sales rep, we all have a system in place to qualify and disqualify leads. However, it is hard to let go of any prospect even if there is a very slim chance of a conversion.

This is where you need to start saying no. You must be able to say “No this lead is of no use to me” while scrolling through your leads and move on to the next one as fast as you can. To do this you will have to understand what makes a good prospect and what doesn’t.

Once you have embraced saying NO to useless leads your time management will become even better. Nobody wants to chase a dud lead.

Follow the 2-minute rule

It is a general rule of thumb that states that if you can finish your job in 2 minutes then just do it instead of putting it off for another time. If you keep procrastinating you will soon end up with a tedious and long to-do list that may seem impossible to finish.

For instance, let us say you are an automobile sales rep. You found a prospect from your cold calling and they want you to send them an e-brochure of the make and model of the car they are interested in. It’s best to send them the information as soon as you get off the call. If you put it out for after you have finished your cold calling, you may end up forgetting to send the brochure and lose a potential client.

Try to Avoid Distractions

Avoid distractions

Distractions are all around us in many different forms. Make no mistake they will divert your attention from the task at hand. Even though a loss of a minute or two does not affect your productivity at that moment but it will add up over the course of the day. And this is harmful to your productivity.

You can tackle them by planning your day ahead of time. That is one way to look at it. For any sales rep, social media is a very important aspect. However, checking updates and newsfeeds online for 15 minutes can easily turn into an hour of wasted time watching funny videos. In the end, it all boils down to the fact how much you can keep yourself from being distracted. There is no hard and fast rule to do so. It’s in your willpower to not get distracted.


Start using Email Templates

There is a time for everything; a time to be creative and a time to be strategic. While contacting a prospect many of us start from scratch and try to write a new email every time. This is inefficient and unrealistic at the same time.

In spite of the fact that your email prospecting must be tailor-made for each individual and situation, you can still manage your time efficiently by using email templates. Chose the template that fits your requirement and customizes it according to your customer’s requirements. This is a very effective way to increase productivity.


Eliminate non-essential tasks

To maximize your selling time, look for administrative tasks you can automate. Saving a few minutes here and there will quickly add up — and as an added benefit, you can direct more energy toward activities that are actually challenging, like giving demos or answering tough questions.

Every sales rep has to row through a sea of non-essential administrative tasks. This eats off a huge chunk of productive time. That is why as a sales rep you must always focus on automating such tasks.

There are softwares you can use to send sales collateral and quotes that are used parallel to CRMs. You can send a professional-looking yet personalised proposal without wasting your time. You can also use route planning software to reach your clients efficiently while planning the rest of your time.


Streamline all repeatable tasks

Streamlining tasks simply means reorganizing them. Streamlining repeatable tasks will help you to avoid repeating them by automating them or using shortcuts where you only need to customize them. This really helps to save a lot of time.

If your company is targeting a specific type of buyer, then most of your prospects will be similar. This is where streamlining your tasks becomes effective. For example, in such cases, you may consider developing a core set of questions to work from and customizing as per client assessment. This is much more efficient than sitting down every time to make a brand new list of questions.


Take breaks but don’t overindulge

Breaks are as important as avoiding distractions are. Some of us use distractions as an excuse to take a break from work. That is very harmful.

However, it is similarly harmful if you do not take breaks either. In fact, taking scheduled breaks have often found to help increase productivity. A 5-10 minute break is very helpful to clear your mind from the knots where you are stuck. This, sometimes, helps to figure out a solution to a seemingly impossible problem.

However, you mustn’t overindulge yourself into taking breaks every now and then. This has an opposite reaction on your productivity and you may as well end up losing your job.

Time management is a very tricky task for most sales reps, but at the same time, the successful ones are those who have ingrained this to their lifestyles. With the above tips, you won’t have to worry too much. Follow them and you will be able to effectively manage your time.

Categories
Marketing

Optimizing Your Marketing Technology Stack

Optimizing your Marketing Technology Stack

The marketing technology landscape has been continuously expanding to the point that marketers these days find it near impossible to perform optimally without technology.

According to a 2020 study, there are over 7000 tools and solutions for marketers to choose from.

However, a calculated approach is needed to build up your arsenal or else you will end up with much more tools that you may need. This is where a Marketing Technology Stack plays a vital role for a marketer.

In this article, we will look at how you can optimize your Marketing Technology Stack. But before that let us first understand what exactly a Marketing Technology Stack is.

What is a Marketing Tech Stack?

The term originated as a marketing slang. Simply explained, it is your arsenal of tech-based marketing tools that will help to improve your marketing activities.

However, it is more dynamic than you think. In a marketing technology stack, a host of marketing tools are not used individually for different tasks. Rather these marketing technologies are “stacked” together.

This integrated string of tools allows you to improve your marketing activities as well as customer relationships over various channels.

How should a good Marketing Tech Stack look like?

How your Marketing Tech Stack should look like depends entirely on your budget and what type of business you are doing. Your target market is another very important aspect to consider.

This means that the Marketing Tech Stack of a B2C company will slightly differ from that of a B2B company.

However, there is a foundational or standard structure that every company and/or businesses follow. Let’s take a look.

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

  • A CRM is used to track all customer relationship activities for your sales force
  • Mostly used by B2B companies
  • Some tools: Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, etc.

2. Content Management System (CMS)

  • A CMS helps to run your websites, landing pages, blogs etc that are the forerunners in customer engagement
  • Some tools: WordPress, Joomla, etc.

3. SEO and Advertising

  • Another very basic toolset needed for efficient customer acquisition
  • Used by both B2B and B2C companies
  • Some tools: Google Ads, SEMrush, etc.

4. Social Media

  • Helps to track and monitor all your social media activities like social conversations, schedule posts, etc
  • Some tools: BuzzSumo, SproutSocial, etc.

5. Email Marketing

  • It is always a very cost-effective support solution for sales as well as for building brand awareness
  • Most often this technology is readily available in other platforms within the tech stack
  • Some tools: SendGrid, MailChimp, etc

6. Collaboration Tools

  • Focuses mainly on efficient support and transparency for your team
  • Includes project management tools, as well as the customer journey, focused tools
  • Some tools: Trello, Asana, etc.

7. Report and Analysis Tools

  • This is a must tool for your tech stack regardless of the type of your business
  • Helps to access data and measure marketing efforts
  • Some tools: Google Analytics, etc.

What needs to change in 2021

For any type of business be it B2B or B2C, a marketing technology stack is very critical for its success.

As the marketing environment is becoming increasingly complex the need for an optimized and efficient marketing technology stack has become even more important.

  • Integrate only the necessary tools as per your requirement and avoid overlapping of similar tools and allow tool de-duplication
  • Maintain an accurate and clean database
  • Bring about an overall team cohesion by leveraging sales and marketing team alignments.
How should a Good Marketing Tech Stack Look Like

4 Steps to Optimize your Marketing Tech Stack –

Whether or not you are a start-up or an enterprise the above factors are reason enough for you to build up the optimum marketing tech stack for your organisation.

Follow these four steps to building up the foundation of your marketing tech stack:

Step 1 : Start with your goals and strategies

A most common mantra for optimizing a tech stack is “Strategy First, Technology Second”.

Typically decision making involves the need to fulfil certain requirements. In other words, it means to find solutions to problems.

We do this every time we buy a tool to add to our marketing tool stack.

This means that every tool we use is focused on achieving our goals. This is why we need to know our goals in order to strategise while building our tech stack. Once we know that we can clearly strategise on which tools we need.

For example, in case your goal is content production and social media marketing then CMS tools and social media tools are a must for your tech stack.

CMS tools can help you to manage your content production activities. Scheduling social media activities becomes very easy with social media tools.

Step 2 :

  • Audit and assess your existing stack

Now that you know your goals and business strategy, it is time for auditing your existing tech stack. A thorough audit will help you get a clear picture of what tools you need and what you already have.

In case you do not conduct an audit you may end up with tools with overlapping functionalities. You may also end up with tools that are missing functionalities vital to your marketing operations.

This often leads us to waste our money on techs that we do not need or already possess.

Typically a general audit must be conducted on a daily basis. A thorough audit of your tech stack is recommended twice in a year.

Moreover, with a thorough audit, you can easily identify tools that have overlapping functionalities.

You can also identify the gaps or tools that are missing from your tech stack. Thus you can compare the functionalities you already have with those that you need.

Let us take an example for content production operations. Let’s consider that you already have a tool to detect plagiarism in your content.

However, you lack tools for vocabulary enhancement and grammatical support. Without conducting an audit you could not have identified these gaps.

ALSO READ : Skyrocket Your Revenues with White Label Support Services and Solutions

Step 3 : Integrate your systems

Efficiency increases with a seamless distribution of data across multiple tools. This is why system integration is a vital step for optimizing your tech stack.

However, according to a recent study, proper system integration has been cited by most IT leaders as one of the top five challenges faced by many businesses.

Even though it is a tough task there is a way to get around it. You can initially focus on integrated technology for your vendor strategies.

This means you need to prioritise on vendors who can give you a clear idea about how their solutions can integrate with your technologies.

Step 4 : Customer Experience is the core of your operations

All things said and done, the final step is to consider the impact of your tech stack on customer experience. This may be the last step but like all other, this is also a vital aspect to consider.

You need to keep in mind that all your investments and efforts need to result in a mutually beneficial relationship between your clients and your business. Otherwise, it would all be a waste of time, effort and money.

Your approach must be inclined towards customer interactions across various touchpoints. You need to pinpoint the functionalities that can enhance your customers’ experience throughout their journey.

As you can see optimizing your marketing tech stack is not a very easy task. Rest assured if you keep the above factors in mind then you can build up an efficient foundational marketing tech stack.

ALSO READ : Digital Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing

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Outsource Support

Skyrocket Your Revenues with White Label Support Services and Solutions

White Label Support and Services
White Label Support and Services

In the digital world, every agency owner finds it a very difficult task to handle everything from websites and marketing campaigns to reputation management and social media.

Moreover, as the local businesses are continuously finding themselves in need of growing marketing assemble it becomes hard for keeping track of all your clients’ and their requirements and demands.

We are in an age where many local businesses are always in search of more marketing contributions from fewer partners in order to juggle as fewer companies and contracts as possible.

This makes it difficult for a business to focus only on what they do best. It is here that White Label solutions like the software(s), services and products play a major role in transforming an incomplete business into a full-service providing agency.

But what is a White Label Solution and what does that mean? In its simplest terms, a White Label solution is a product or service that you can rebrand and resell as your own product to your clients.

In order to understand the concept of White Label solutions let us take an example of Company A and Company B.

Say Company B wants to develop a website and assigns the project to another organisation namely Company A. Now Company A will finish the project and hand over the product to Company B.

Company B will now rebrand the product under their brand and resell it to their clients. Thus it can be seen that Company A is technically the brains behind the product while Company B is the face of the product.

The most significant benefits one can gain from availing these solutions is bringing scalability to their business is by scaling up their revenues.

The basic definition of the term White label solutions can explain how it can help to scale up your revenues as you are rebranding and reselling products that were developed through outsourcing.

This means the cost of manufacturing becomes significantly less and profits from reselling the product become quite high.

So now that we know what White Label solutions are and how they can benefit to improve revenues, let us look at what these solutions are and what genres they are available in.

9 White Label Solutions for better revenues :

1. White Label Social Media Marketing

Various social media services such as managed posting, business management, campaign designs along with social media content creation compile White Label Social Media Marketing Solutions.

These are available for rebranding and then can be sold by resellers while keeping their own price tag over the products.

2. White Label Website Solutions

Any website related service or product that can be rebranded and sold as their own by a reseller can be grouped under White Label Website Solution(s).

Services enveloped under this genre may include website hosting reseller programs, web design services that can be rebranded as well as website add-ons that can be resold.

Design and development services provided by third parties are the most common form of White Label Website Solution. Once again these products are sold by resellers with their own price tag.

3. White Label Digital Advertisement

In general, White Label Digital Advertisement encompasses various digital advertisement solutions like advertising platforms and reports, campaigns and/or products.

These are again of course rebranded by resellers and sold at their won price point to local businesses. It must be noted that digital advertising is generally categorised under marketing services and for that reason the most common form of a White Label solution in this field is service fulfilment.

This means a reselling agency can partner-up with a white-label service provider in who will design, develop and maintain the digital advertising campaigns for the resellers and they, in turn, can sell it by branding the product under their banner.

4. White Label Email Marketing

Simply put any email marketing platform built by a white-label service provider to resellers so that they can rebrand the product and sell it under their own pricing schemes can be termed as a White label Email Marketing solution.

A white-label email marketing platform can be rebranded by customising with the reseller brand and sold to local businesses like any other white label solutions we have seen so far.

5. White Label Mobile Apps

With the ever-growing digital world, it is no longer sufficient for local businesses to maintain a website presence only. With the active and spontaneous shift towards mobiles, the necessity of a mobile app for these businesses is very apparent.

As businesses in this modern world of marketing want to reach the clients where they live a mobile app is a very clever idea as according to researches 90% of the time spent on mobiles by us is devoted towards using an app.

Additional overhead costs always come into the scenario as app development is a complex process. By outsourcing, this task businesses can effectively cut costs.

White Label Support and Services SNWN
White Label Support SNWN Infographics

6. White Label Reputation Management

Products that deal with the online reputation of a business and reviews are termed as reputation management service.

Such services that can be rebranded and resold by reseller companies are what we call White Label Reputation Management Solution.

That said, only a few aspects of reputation management services can be white-labelled.

While softwares for monitoring the reputation of a business can be rebranded whereas review response and review generation services fall under a white-labelled fulfilment option.

7. White Label SEO

Like every other service we have seen so far, White Label SEO is nothing but SEO solutions and platforms that can be rebranded by reseller companies and sold at their own price.

White Label SEO Solutions are specifically designed to fetch local business clients found on SERP and increase the visibility of the businesses.

White Label SEO options can include both managed fulfilment products and SEO software that clients can use to manage their optimization processes manually.

8. White Label Graphic Design

White Label Graphic Design solutions include custom-designed projects that a reseller can brand as their own and sell under their own price tag.

This is generally offered by a specialist graphic designer and/or design agencies specializing in graphic designs. It can be also so that the graphic designers from a white label provider work directly with the end client but under the shadow of a reseller company who is branding the service as their own.

9. White Label Content Creation

In the case of White label Content Creation Solutions, copywriters generally provide the written content for rebranding by reseller clients who in turn provide them to local businesses under their own pricing format.

It can be social media posts, blogs, website copies and any other form of digital written copy.

This particular service can be offered in various ways. It can be a one-time purchase for example a blog. It can also be an ongoing service like a specific number of social media posts per month.

CONCLUSION :

We have thus seen some of the most popular White Label Solutions for boosting your businesses’ revenues. So check out the various white-label providers out there, choose the solution and pricing plan that suits your needs the best and get started on booming your business over your competitor.

Categories
Sales

5 Ways How To Simplify And Must Do To Your Sales Process

Sales Process
Sales Process

Ask any Sales personnel and they will tell you that salespersons are amongst the most overworked and stressed professionals and that, Sales is the most unforgiving career options one can choose in the current economy.

But it doesn’t need to be so. That is why, in this article, we will try to understand the reason behind such conclusions, and how we can simplify a sales process, thereby improving our work environment.

Living in the 21st century, we are privy to the rapid advancement of technology, which has also reached the Sales industry with much impact.

At first glance, it is supposed to make things easier for sales reps and managers, but in reality, the opposite is true.

5 Steps of the Sales Process :

  1. Approach The Client
  2. Assessing your best leads
  3. Automate tedious admin works with a CRM system
  4. Consider investing in Marketing automation software
  5. Complete The Sale And Follow Up

1. Approach The Client :

The Nature of the Approaches can varies according to your sales methods , which you are using on daily basis , for approaching new clients.

You will never see most of the client on Phone Calls, whereas you want a firm sales executive person , who had well knowledge of dealing with complex minded person and get with the positive response from the client.

But for this, the first step is to build a Good Relation with the client and then approaching the sales good according to the requirements.

This can be done, by introducing yourself and telling them, who you are and what kind of work our company does, so that, their level of trust can increase on yourself first, then gradually you can sale anything, for the profit margins.


2. Assessing your best leads :

The success of any business relies heavily on lead qualification and prioritizing. This is because unqualified leads can be very frustrating for your sales rep and this can lead to a decreased rate of deal closures.

The reason is quite straightforward – not every lead is your prospect.  This is why adopting a structured approach to lead identification and qualification becomes so crucial.

With such an approach, one can integrate developing buyer personas for lead identification that can prove to be a very effective method for your sales teams.

Buyer personas help your sales reps to sort out which leads they need to prioritize and which not to. This can impressively decrease the need to focus on everyone.

There are many sales tools available for simplifying these steps even further.

3. Automate tedious admin works with a CRM system :

In this age of technology, your sales reps need not bury themselves into tedious admin works that tend to pile up with each lead.

The last thing your sales reps want to do is investigate each potential leads manually to bring out their prospects.

This can easily be automated using various Customer Relationship Management or CRM tools that are readily available in the market.

The best thing about these tools is that your sales reps can learn from each result. While choosing who you should focus on, the most useful thing to do is to assess the best marketing campaign for them.

With CRM tools, you can automate this process altogether as these sales tools use the existing data on your leads and give you the assessed results.

4. Consider investing in Marketing automation software :

Other than CRM tools, you can also consider various marketing automation software that is also available in the 21st-century world.

In fact, many successful businessmen recommend investing in this software. They are very powerful automation platforms that you can greatly benefit from.

These tools help your teams to automate various ongoing tasks like email marketing, social media marketing, and much more.

With these tasks being automated, a lot of the time, that was otherwise being consumed in executing these repetitive tasks, are now available to your sales reps.

They can now easily focus on the tasks that require their immediate attention, like following up with their best prospects in hopes of closing a deal that is almost at closure, etc.

5. Complete The Sale And Follow Up :

In this Final Phase, Just complete their order and on monthly basis, just take follow-up on regular basis, so that client will feel comfortable with your products.
With a simpler sales process, you can save both your costs and labor. This, in turn, makes your sales process more effective and efficient.

So, now that you know what you need to do in order to simplify your sales process, you can effectively draw up an action plan that suits you the best.

ALSO READ : Work Smarter: Live Chat Best Practices

Categories
Sales

The Ultimate Guide to Sales Email Automation

Sales Email Automation
Sales Email Automation

Mankind has come a long way in history and so has technology. With these advancements in technology so too has sales techniques & strategies, campaigns and tools have also changed drastically over the ages and continue to do so.

Now as we step into the second decade of the 21st century, sales techniques and tools are once again undergoing upgradation; this time with the Ultimate Guide to Sales Email Automation.

Automation has been spreading like wildfire sometime now. In this article we will try to understand everything there is to about Sales Email Automation as simply as possible.

Sales Automation

To understand Sales Email Automation, one needs to understand two things first Sales Automation and Email Automation.

So what is Sales Automation?

As you can understand from the word automation, we are talking about automation software. But then how are they relevant to sales? Well, let’s take two cases:

Case1:

Let’s say you are the Sales Manager of a leading sales firm. Your daily sales tasks include setting up the targets for your teams, analyzing their performances, and predicting upcoming sales potentials among many other tasks.

Case2:

Say you are a sales rep from the same company and your daily sales tasks would mainly include prospecting, retaining your existing customers, and focus on achieving your targets.

Now in both cases, there are many repetitive tasks. These tasks are quite time-consuming and most often lead to missing out on a few minor details like losing track of prospective clients.

Now, what if you could focus solely on closing more deals and outsource these tediously repetitive tasks to someone else? I’m not talking about a human; rather a software.

With so many tried and tested platforms, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and automation tools, your job can become at the same time a lot easier, smoother, and smarter. That is what we call Sales Automation software.

Why Sales Automation?

With an automated sales process, tracking leads and following-up with them becomes guaranteed to never miss out.

This is because with automated communication you will keep getting reminders about your follow-up schedules and this makes sure that you don’t miss out on the task.

For many newcomers, getting to fully understand how the sales process works and how to identify the shortcomings in one’s sales process becomes a nightmare.

The most asked question is “why do my leads never lead to conversion?” With a fully automated sales pipeline, you can easily track and identify the stages where you are losing most of your clients.

Another leading problem becomes identifying and understanding the source of your leads and clients.

Without fully understanding where the lead is entering your pipeline from, you cannot understand your target audience and this will pose a problem to strategize a better sales campaign. With automation tools, this becomes very easy.

Sales Process Automation

The sales process of your sales teams is an important asset to your business. With a well-defined sales process, you can take on your sales campaigns effectively.

With automation, you can further improve the efficiency of the existing sales process by identifying the loopholes and cracks and improving them.

Thus Sales Process Automation can be defined as the process of automating the various steps and tasks in your existing sales process, so that the sales reps can focus more on connecting with prospects and selling to your customers, without having to worry about the various administrative tasks.

With these process automation tools, you can enjoy a much more streamlined workflow. One such software is particularly very important: the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.

This is so because the CRM tool acts as the center of the wheel holding onto the various spokes.

Without a proper CRM tool, you cannot effectively carry out other automation tools. The CRM tool can help automate these following key tasks in your daily sales process:

  • Prospecting
  • Lead Enrichment and Rotation
  • Lead Scoring and qualifying prospects
  • Daily Follow-ups
  • Deal Management
  • Reporting and Dashboards

Email Automation

In 2020, we have many different forms of sales tools and email is one of them. With the improvements in technology, some might think that the age of emails is coming to an end.

But the scenario is quite different. According to a US-based survey, about 95% of online consumers from the country use emails as the preferred mode of communication.

The survey also shows us some figures that highly suggest that email is far from being ‘taken over’. According to them, about 2.8 mil emails are sent every second with around 43.5 mil consumers checking their emails daily.

This has paved the way for email automation. It is an automated emailing option where the right emails are sent to the right people at the right time.

That too without having to do it yourself! The main aim of email automation like any other sales process automation is to nurture leads into customers.

But how exactly does it work?

There are many email automation tools in the market and each of them has its own working methods with their own UI. However, the general working principle can be chalked out as follows:

  1. A random person visits the website of company XYZ and completes certain actions like filling out a form or downloading an eBook.

2. The contact information of this person is automatically added to the marketing database of that company.

3. Based on the location, preferences, behavior, etc criteria, these gathered data are segmented into different audience segments.

4. Next, the marketing teams will create a campaign depending upon these leads and data by setting up trigger points to schedule when and to whom the emails will be sent automatically.

5. The person(s) visiting the website will receive emails depending on the conditions and trigger points set by the marketing teams.

Benefits of Email Automation

Email automation can help your sales and marketing campaigns in a much smarter way:

  1. It works on its own and all you need to do is set up the criteria or checkpoints to guide the automation process.

2. It helps you understand the best time for your sales team to contact leads by following up with their interests as not every lead might be your prospective client(s).

3. Studies show that 90% of consumers find personalized content much more appealing and with email automation tools you can do just that as you can target their interest because the tool helps you nurture your leads too.

4. As the whole process is automated you can save up a lot of time that you can focus on other tasks and outsource these repetitive tasks to your AI friend.

5. With email automation, the need for a large sales team making daily cold calls becomes very less important and so you can cut back a lot on your investment costs. In turn, your reps can contact the leads at the right time.

Sales automation tools are becoming more and more imperative as we go forward in this age of technology.

With so many cool time-saving processes your reps can focus on what really matters and leave the administrative tasks to AI. This helps businesses make time from otherwise repetitive tasks that bog them down.

ALSO READ : Personalize Outreach at Scale with Sales Engagement Automation

So get started with your sales and email automation tools and lead your business from a simple startup to one of the leading brands in the market.

Categories
Technology

10 Ways Technology Will Affect the Future of Customer Service

10 Ways Technology Will Affect the Future of Customer Service

Customer Service has existed for as long as the business has; simply because the two things go hand-in-hand.

With the passing of ages, technology has improved and this led to a simultaneous evolution in customer services.

With these, customers have grown to expect faster and efficient support from businesses.

And this is true for every kind of business, be it a small business or a multinational conglomerate.

Advancements in artificial intelligence, real-time messaging, crypto-currencies, self-service, and many more such technologies have the potential to affect the future of the customer service and success industry vastly for the better.

In this article, we will take a look at 10 ways in which the future of customer service will be affected by these advancements in technology.

1. The age of video communication is now!!

Eye contact is a very powerful thing, not just in the novels but in every day-to-day task. And in the customer service industry, this aspect is becoming very necessary.

This is because video calling is no longer a myth. The positivity of video calling lies in the fact that with video calling.

It becomes easier for both the customer to explain his/her issues and the professionals to understand the requirements of the customer easily.

Moreover, with video calling i.e. eye-contact things become very transparent and help improve relationships with customers.

They too can rely on the authenticity of the business.  As such this is becoming a very important and useful tool for many businesses.

2. Email will be outpaced by real-time messaging

Just like video communications which are also done in real-time, customers expect support techies to be always “on-line”. This means they would rather prefer to chat than ring up or communicate via email.

One example of such a communicating medium is the Facebook Messenger that has gone one step further to even show their average responsiveness. This means you can avoid unnecessary engagements depending on the responsiveness.

On-site conversations and chats are considered by customers as authentic and in real-time which is a very reassuring option for customers to engage.

There are various tools for helping businesses to collect and assign all incoming messages from customers across various channels in one place so that businesses can effectively carry out their customer service and support tasks.

This helps professionals to identify potential roadblocks and effectively counter balance them.

3. The future is here: Data-driven decision making

Customer service no longer includes only supporting the customers by understanding their issues and solving them.

A lot more goes into it. The first and foremost being understanding customer feedback and upgrading the existing customer service technology in use. To do this we need information or data.

However, in order to effectively use the technology in place, we need a mechanism to measure its success quantitatively and that is where data analytics comes into the fray.

ALSO READ : IT Support Services for Disaster Recovery

This is why service technologies nowadays record the various information gathered via customer interactions.

Moreover, other departments such as marketing and sales departments can also use these data to further develop their initiatives and sales pitches for a better business environment.

4. Social media: not just a platform to connect

  • Social media: not just a platform to connect

Social media has long been a platform for people from across the globe to connect with each other.

However, the fact that whatever anyone says on social media platforms, remains for the world to see, has made it possible for social media to be used as a tool for both sales & marketing as well as for customer support and services.

As authenticity becomes more and more important for any business, many large and small organizations have started using social media as a service tool.

Answering customer queries online gives much credibility to a business’s customer service aspect. This can even go on to improve your brand value as well.

5. Chatbots are here to aid professionals

Nowadays if your customer support/service department does not include a chat-bot, then it is simply not considered to be an effective one. There is logical reasoning behind that.

But before we go into that I’d like to clear one thing first: Chatbots or bots are not AI; they are simply very clever mathematics and logical interpretations that are presented in a conversation-like user interface.

So, how are bots the game-changer of the future? Well you see it acts as a SaaS and answers customer queries and then resolving common issues.

In case the query is unique or not in the scope of the bot it will automatically redirect to a customer service agent. Moreover, bots are online 24/7 even when your customer service team is asleep.

6. Self-service is rapidly becoming a necessity

More often than not, customers complain about the length of time they had to wait for a call and forget about the real problem for which they were making the call in the first place.

The aim of self-service is to reduce this time delay for the customers. This is becoming more important because each and every service query does not need a human response.

This is why many organizations are including self-service tools in their customer service department.

These include creating a detailed FAQ section that the customers can go through thoroughly and be able to solve the problems themselves.

Chatbots are another self-service example as we saw just above.

These tools are most effective for those customers who work for long hours or like to get things done on the commute.

ALSO READ : 10 Mistakes Sales Representatives Makes Way Too Often And The Solutions To Avoid Them

7. Customer support and SEO

Contacting customer service to get your issues resolved has been the traditional and conventional method in the past.

However, with the turn of the century, we were introduced to this awesome thing called Google.

Nowadays we tend to ask Google for any big or small issues we have in every sphere of our lives.

But with this, there also comes the chance that your customers may end up on a different page and find wrong suggestions to their solutions, which can make things worse for your clients.

And in this age of customer success and services, that is the last thing you want to happen to your customers. This is where SEO comes in as it can really work wonders.

8. The role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

  • The role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence is something that is no longer a science-fiction. It is as real as sunlight and rain.

According to a report, 85% of customer interactions are predicted to be managed without any human intervention by 2020.

AI and Machine Learning can effectively impact customer support and after-sales support in the days to come.

9. Blockchains for e-commerce customer support

Blockchains are going to be very beneficial to the e-commerce and electronics industry in the future; mainly their post-sale customer support departments.

This is because, with Blockchains, a company can access all the information regarding their products in a single ledger.

This will contain everything from the manufacturing date, installation date, product details, and ownership details.

Moreover, this information will be shared between all the parties involved, i.e. the manufacturer, the customer, part-providers, and any other parties involved.

This means more transparency and hence better customer service and success.

10. Customer success in place of Customer service

Customer success is predicted to be the motto of the future as much as customer service is today.

The pace at which companies nowadays are searching for customer value is the main driving force for this to happen.

However, this can have an adverse effect on small businesses that are looking to increase their customer base.

That is why organizations already practicing customer success today are bound to stay ahead of the curve when this finally hits the ground.

Always remember that better customer support improves customer satisfaction and that is what really drives for a successful business.

ALSO READ : Work Smarter: Live Chat Best Practices

Categories
Support

Work Smarter: Live Chat Best Practices

Work Smarter: Live Chat Best Practices

Is there a sure-shot formula for your business to skyrocket? Well, no, but yes as well. If not a sure shot hack, it’s definitely a consideration.

Even two decades back, most of the businesses especially in third world countries had monopolistic nature. Today, the world is welcoming an open market. Open market means to match the steps with a competitor.

There is one product but several brands to offer the same product. Sometimes, the quality too doesn’t vary much. Then what is the masterstroke? None other than experience, most importantly, customer experience.

The customer is the king in modern times. There are a plethora of options that one has on their plate.

Out of all of them, it is really the customer’s discretion on which service or brand they choose from. Much of this decision comes from how the customer is treated. People today look for two things precisely: on-demand service and customer satisfaction.

The quality is crucial but it can be given a miss by some if they are promised for a better one when they seek redressal.

According to Esteban Kolsky, Founder, ThinkJar, if a customer is dissatisfied then 13% of them will tell at least 15 people that they are displeased with a company’s service.

Especially if you are a company that is hot off the oven, this is murder. The ideal thing is to build your base keeping in mind the likes of your customers. Be it new or old. New businesses need customer testimonials that are organic over social media for footfalls to increase.

On the other hand, the established businesses need the goodwill to be maintained and talked about all over. They would need the customers to become their brand ambassadors.

Many brands have even considered that as an image positioning vehicle as well. Now technology has come to be a big boon and the best of it is that it has multiple options through which a customer or a potential customer feels at home.

A personalized approach is what many people look for and live chats are proving to be ultimate winners in bridging gaps between businesses and buyers. It is the present and is also the future of the customer experience.

Some tactful practices using live chats can prove to be absolutely useful. Few of the best practices with a live chat that businesses can follow are-

Align live chat with business goals

First thing’s first, you need to ask yourself why your business needs a live chat? Is it a type of business that can leverage from a chat system? If they do, then it has to be an omni channel for your business and customer satisfaction.

It can include KPIs, SLAs, customer issue resolution, and reducing shopping cart abandonment. According to CX Trends Report, businesses embed chat solutions for native customers.

This includes having self- service content in an e-commerce website or an embedded live chat window to provide support.

Optimize user experience

Live chat location, access and timing are the three pillars basis which the user experience can be judged. Potential customers draw the basis of their first impressions on what they see on your website.

The website should have a clear indication of where to address in case of any issues. If they are satisfied with the way they have been catered to, depending on the prompt response, or tone or language used, proactiveness, all of them earn brownie points.

Proper intervention and assistance on the customer support chat are well appreciated among potential customers. The frequently your team can extend support and suggestions, the fewer chances are of abandoned carts.

You got to be unobtrusive so that you don’t drive away your potential customers. For a budding business or a business that sees a lot of competition, driving away customers is the last thing that should happen to you.

ALSO READ : Ethical Formalities Of An Ideal System Administrator And A Security Professional

Good user interface

Good user interface

A website that is easy to navigate and has simple language that speaks the customer’s language will always have a benefit of the doubt.

Your website must speak how supreme the customer is for you. Despite having compelling company stories or uber quality products, it will all fall flat if the customer feels that something is off with the environment.

Chatbots and a dedicated team will be wonderful to serve all existing and potential customers and make them feel special and important.

Not just that but you can also embed a pop-up chat box that opens the moment a potential customer lands on your business page.

Staffing requirements

Go for seasoned and experienced agents as they may be well versed with a live chat feature, chat routing, turn of calls, etc.

An agent who holds a better understanding of the process will inherently serve better and bring business. If you hire a novice agent, make sure that their training includes all basics.

Make them familiar with the chat software, language training, how to conduct research on the customer’s chat history, ticket issue, and resolution.

Sometimes there is a mingle between agents and chatbots. Agents pick on from the data and information that is shared by the chatbots.

An agent must inculcate the understanding that repeating the same stream of information will only lead to frustration which will turn off the customer.

Build a chat workflow

A workflow is a masterstroke to ensure that your customer support system is on point.

The process includes ticket escalation path, agent assignment plan, and real-time monitoring, and channel management.

Monitor and improve

There is always a scope of improvement. You must as a business owner have a team in place that will purely look at the live chat analytics and device any improvement plans.

Using this data, average wait times, customer satisfaction, and agent performance can be determined and outlined for the scope of improvement.

Once the live chat is up, it needs a close watch. Before that what’s essential is hiring the right team of agents, establishing the right objectives, training, and workflow creation are the main aspects.

The rest will be on keeping the objectives that were laid out in place.

ALSO READ : Role And Responsibilities Of Ideal System Administrator In 2020

Categories
Sales

Personalize Outreach at Scale with Sales Engagement Automation

Personalize Outreach at Scale with Sales Engagement Automation

As a sales professional, you must agree that when prospects show interest in your services and/or products, they will always expect a fast and personal reply.

A study shows that most of the consumers consider this as one of the most important elements in any sales interaction.

However, in today’s sales environment, very few in-person opportunities arise for engaging with your prospects.

For this very reason, faster, more practical, and above all, personalized outreach programs have become very necessary in order to build up your sales pipeline and to establish a trusted relationship with your prospects.

But it is much easier said than done as engaging with your leads after following-up is very much time-consuming, not to mention the tediousness. This has led to the development of sales engagement through automation tools and software.

In this article, we will learn what exactly sales engagement means, why would your business needs sales engagement, and how you can benefit from adopting some of the best sales engagement practices?

What is Sales Engagement?

The term Sales Engagement can be defined as a collection of interactions and/or exchanges conducted between a sales rep and the target audience (prospects).

It is a measurable quantity and is done so by ‘contact-points’ (aka touches) or the time spent by both parties on each interaction.

Any action taken by the prospect, be it opening an email, clicking on a link, or even downloading an ebook or video, is considered as a form of Sales Engagement.

The rate at which the prospects complete these actions tell the sales rep how engaged each prospect is.

This is a very effective technique as it helps the sales reps to understand the requirements of the prospects more clearly and come up with the best support strategy.

There are many software and tools in the market that can help with Sales Engagement.

Why do I need Sales Engagement?

Why do I need Sales Engagement?

In order to understand this, we will need to look at some of the “pain-points” of sales and how do they affect the overall sales of your rep.

A quick survey would tell you that at least one of these seven “pain-points” is a worrisome issue for any Sales Manager.

Manual, time-consuming repetitive tasks are a sales rep’s worst nightmare

Even though the main responsibility of a sales rep is to close a deal as smoothly and efficiently as possible,  an array of related tasks are always associated with a sales reps job description.

Sending emails, following-up with prospects and making other calls, keeping the CRM updated, etc. are to name a few.

These manual, tedious, and repetitive tasks, by no means, contribute towards closing a deal. Rather these tasks are very time-consuming and eat up most of the work hours of every sales rep.

These tasks easily de-track a sales rep from selling. This situation has led to the automation of these tedious tasks. By automating these tasks, the sales reps can gain a bulk of time that was earlier being consumed by the manual operation.

In turn, the sales reps can focus more on selling rather than on admin tasks.

The necessity of personalizing at scale

Balancing the scale of one’s outreach programs with personalization is another very common challenge faced by sales teams globally.

Keep in mind that your customers or buyers will always expect and prefer personalization in your outreach programs. This goes to show that as a sales rep you know about their interests and who they are.

This approach is really effective as it impressively increases your chances of hearing back from them.

On the other hand, as a seller, you will need to scale your outreach programs so that you can attract a larger target audience, and hence, increase your prospect list.

This creates an instant tug of war that you cannot satisfyingly conclude. And this confuses your sales reps in choosing between whether to reach out to a larger bulk of potential customers with a lower level of personalization or to personalize every outreach initiative for each client?

This scenario has made it necessary for a platform that can aid in this dilemma and the answer to that was found in the form of sales engagement software that helps the reps to balance out their sales strategies.

ALSO READ : A Guide To An Ideal System Administrator’s Role And Ethics In The Concurrent World

Excess of sales tools have led to data clogging

Your sales reps may end up being overwhelmed rather than being overjoyed with the availability of a string of specialized sales tools available these days.

In today’s business world, most of the sales institutions have already engaged in multiple tools to support their sales reps and selling activities, hence improving their productivity.

These tools do not work by complementing each other, rather they operate independently. This ends up creating major issues for the sales teams as they end up toggling in between these tools.

As a result, a lot of data gets stuck in different storage locations or “silos” and hinders the sales reps from getting a clear picture at a singular location.

Instead, investing in a software or platform that can integrate the various tools is a much more effective support mechanism.

These are but a few of the challenges faced by sales organizations. Missing out on crucial business decision-driving data is another such serious issue that can be addressed and simplified with a Sales Engagement software in place.

Also, your CRM is not enough to efficiently handle customer engagement alone.

Benefits of Sales Engagement Software

Benefits of Sales Engagement Software

Personalized engagement with prospects

With such technology, you can simultaneously scale up your outreach programs and activities as well as improve the genuineness of each customer engagement with a higher level of personalization in each case.

With a Sales Engagement platform, you can easily set up an automated yet intelligent follow-up activity sequence(s), which, in turn, gives you better productivity and engagement.

Integrated platform

Data, existing in the different “silos” in an organization, are connected to each other cohesively into a single location with the help of this awesome technology we are discussing today.

This means that your CRM system is also integrated into this platform. This makes it much easier for you to select the best sales and marketing materials available to form up a grand strategy for executing your tasks smoothly and enhancing your productivity.

Sales reps are always privy to all their engagement needs like customer insight, communication execution, etc. in a single solution.

A stronger CRM system

As we said earlier that Sales Engagement software integrates CRM systems as well.

This means your existing CRM system will not be lost, rather amplified to a more effective aid to you. The CRM acts as a central repository while the Sales Engagement platform will act as a layer of communication that helps your reps to boost their productivity the smart way.

ALSO READ : 10 Mistakes Sales Representatives Makes Way Too Often And The Solutions To Avoid Them

It helps them conduct smart-work rather than hard-work.

So, now that you know how valuable this software has become in the current sales scenario, get started with your own!

Categories
Sales

10 Mistakes Sales Representatives Makes Way Too Often And The Solutions To Avoid Them

10 Mistakes Sales Representatives Makes Way Too Often And The Solutions To Avoid Them

A career in sales can be very rewarding in spite of the challenges that comes with it. There has always been increasing pressure on a sales representative to over-perform.

However, even with the best practices executed, sometimes, experienced salespeople make mistakes that are quite common. While sales mistakes can be avoided, they are not inevitable.

To prevent these pitfalls and sell at the optimum level possible, sales representatives must-

  • Recognize their mistakes
  • Understand why they are making them
  • Envisage the magnitude of repeating them
  • Learn how to avoid them in the future

Through careful planning and education, it is indeed possible to sidestep these mistakes. Here are 10 common mistakes sales representatives make and the solutions to avoid them.

Let’s have a look at the following

1. Talking a Lot

While sales representatives are characterized by their art of speech, most of them talk too much during conversations. Sometimes sales persons forget that selling is not all about being a good speaker but a good listener.

Many research studies have proved that all who have attained success in their sales career practice active listening. One of the key reasons why buyers choose a specific vendor is because they felt he understood their closest needs.

Talking a Lot

2. Less Knowledge about target customers

Another common mistake most of the sales representatives make is trying to sell to anybody and everybody. This mistake not only identifies his poor research skills but also displays that he is not taking his job seriously.

The lack of clarity in the vision results in unproductive output and one should not forget that sales are a performance-based job.

Now, what is the solution? According to experienced sales representatives, a salesperson must value primarily, identify his ‘target audience’.

After all, the product or service he is advocating for is meant for a group of audiences and just blindly approaching everybody is a bad idea.

3. Approaching Buyer without proper research

A sea of changes has occurred in the business arena over the course of time and today’s B2B buyers expect a purchase process that is more individualized and unique.

  Here, a sales representative has a huge role to play way before he reaches out to his prospects.  Before meeting the prospect, a salesperson must first learn about the prospect- who they are, their expectations, goals of the industry, etc. The best solution to come up with an effective result is reaching the prospect only after good research.

Not only it enables you to ask informed questions but also even prospect appreciate your dedication. Research consumes some time but it is always better to reach five assured customers than trying your luck on a dozen prospects .

4. Lack of Genuineness

Even though customers immensely rely on sales executives, several times, there have been instances when a salesperson has wrongly directed a customer.

In this booming market sphere, a sales executive must always deal with its prospect ethically. He should always remember that he is not selling a dream. While, this dishonesty might benefit him in the short-term, but it will harm his sales career in the long run.

The solution to this problem is available with finding the value of your product or service. If your prospect accepts something bigger, have the guts to admit it. Tell him that your brand will be considering the fact rather than making false promises.

5. Not upgrading your sales skills

If you look back into the sales strategy then and now, you will trace many differences that have taken place in the last decade.

While some basic strategies have remained constant for sales executives, with time, you should keep working on your soft skills and also develop new strategies and enhance the old ones.

The solution to this is first, self-evaluation and secondly joining coaching classes or other similar activities.

Experienced sales executives with a proven record of accomplishment have attained success by upgrading themselves no matter how good they were in their jobs.

6. Neglecting the existing customer and always hunting for new ones

One of the best sources of revenue growth can be by keeping on serving existing and satisfied customers. A sales executive often tends to look for new prospects without giving enough importance to the existing customers.

Nurturing the relationship with repeat customers is always a better option for these people will help you in the future by referring your product or service to their peers.

7. Paying more attention to non-selling activities

On average, only one-third of the time allotted to the sales representative is utilized for selling activities. Which means that sales representatives keep themselves engaged in other administrative activities that in turn affects their core target. Although most of them have a time management system, only a few follow it.

 Experts suggest spending only designated time for responding to emails and checking them. The rest of the time must be utilized for reaching out to prospects and setting new goals.

8. Lack of ability to identify customers’ problems

Sales representatives who are new to the profession tend to assume that the customers know the solution to the problem. The truth is the other way round as not all customers can identify the problems.

The sales representative must identify the nature of the problem by asking relevant questions.

9. Sending inappropriate content to the prospect

Another key mistake that sales representatives often make is their tendency to forward irrelevant content to their clients. Rather he/she should add value to their buyers by sharing content that will show how ROI can be attained.

10. Not Following a Structured Workflow

A sales representative tends to become overconfident once he witnesses success in his career. He often makes his own work plan, sales strategies and does not follow best practices and effective sales process.

In general, it has been seen that salespeople give up quickly, for example, say just one or two phone calls. However, studies show that most sales are made after four calls and even a couple of more.

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Categories
Support

Ethical Formalities Of An Ideal System Administrator And A Security Professional

Ethical Formalities Of An Ideal System Administrator And A Security Professional

We are constantly subjected to change. The world around us, the technologies it is always changing, evolving into something more advanced.

With this, our ethics and responsibilities wherever we go are always subjected to constant change to fit into the new world each day.

This article discusses the ethical formalities of an ideal system administrator and a security professional.

What does a security professional do?

First of all, a security professional or an IT security professional is an experienced personnel who deals with the protection of data, servers and computer systems from unauthorized data or damage.

A security professional is also an important job and requires a  great deal of sincerity and dedication.

A security professional is mainly entrusted with the duties of securing important data and networks for a business or an organization. He or she should also be a professional with an excellent grasp in the concerned with a strong IT background like a system administrator.

What does a system administrator do?

A system administrator is a professional who maintains the mechanisms or the operations of an electronic system especially a computer system.

This job requires skilled professionals with an excellent grasp in the concerned subject and with a strong IT background. An aspirant must be able to troubleshoot and resolve any sort of technical problems quickly.

He or She should be efficient. A system administrator candidate must have patience with impeccable communication skills. You have to tutor and update its teams and users on various models and technologies released today.

Role of an ideal security professional

An ideal security professional has a lot of responsibilities on his or her shoulders. He or she is entrusted with a business’ or an organization’s confidential data which shall not be compromised at any costs.

An interested candidate shall positively be competent enough to understand and handle the duties of  an ideal security professional.

Moreover, with changing times, the roles and responsibilities are drastically changing as well. With various technologies on the rise, an ideal security professional must also be prepared for crisis.

Some of the major roles of an ideal security professional or a security administrator is listed below:

  • Monitor security breaches or any potential cyber attacks.
  • Upgrading security for potential Cyber-attacks (firewalls, etc.) and planning recoveries in case of a cyber breach.
  • Updating security software in order to prevent loss of valuable data.
  • Conducting stimulatory tests (like potential cyber-attacks etc.) to evaluate the performance and necessary steps during a real-time crisis.
  •  Keeping track of updates on new IT trends and implementing them for an effective security system.

Code of Ethics of an ideal security professional

A candidate applying for the designation of an IT security professional must be sincere, dedicated and productive.

Listed below are some of the code of ethics which is mandatory for any individual who wants to work in this sector:

  • As a security professional, one must educate themselves thoroughly about the laws and policies and strictly abide by it
  • A security professional must be competent in understanding the responsibilities bestowed upon him. He or she must be firm in decision making and should be of clear intent.
  • As a security professional, he or she must respect his or her colleagues and promote a healthy and a safe environment.
  • He or she must refrain from controversies, and issues that might lead to an inappropriate conflict of interests.
  • Professionalism is mandatory. He or she must promise to treat employees fairly and equally.
  • As a security professional, he or she must be trustworthy. He or she must understand his or her responsibilities and refrain from illegal practices.

He or she must maintain the confidentiality of the data that will or might be accessed by the.

  • A security personnel must maintain the decorum of the workplace. He or she must abstain from the use of obscene language and keep away from biased ideologies.
  • Communication is crucial. An ideal security professional must be an expert in communication skills.

He or she should be able to communicate and teach his or her fellow employees about the new trends and other work-related projects.

  • As an aspiring candidate for this designation, he or she must be patient.
  • An ideal security professional must promise to be honest while business dealings and in every aspect of his work.
  • A security professional must promise to keep themselves updated on the new IT trends and always be productive and innovative by suggesting fresh ideas.
  • A security professional should obviously seek help from his or her fellow colleagues and provide timely reports to his superiors in the management department.
  • He or she should be resourceful as a candidate aspiring to be an IT security professional.
role of ideal system administrator

Role of an ideal system administrator

The responsibilities of a system administrator are diverse and wide-ranging and vary from companies to companies.

Apart from just maintaining servers and computer systems, they also have to cater to duties like programming, scripting and so on.

Below listed are some of the responsibilities which are mandatory for a system administrator to perform:

  • The role of a system administrator includes installation and configuration of software and hardware.
  • The role of a system administrator also includes managing technological servers and technological tools required.
  • This job requires to set up accounts and workstations.
  • A system administrator has to keep the performance of the servers or the machines in check and maintain them accordingly.
  • Also, this job demands for the skills to troubleshoot technical faults and power outages.
  • A system administrator also has to ensure security over the network of servers or the machines by using access controls, backups and firewalls.
  • A system administrator predominantly has to upgrade the systems timely with new and upgraded software or models.
  • A system administrator also has to be a patient teacher. An ideal system administrator should have the expertise and skills to train staff and keep them updated on new  technologies.
  • A system administrator also has to maintain and write technological documentation, manuals and IT policies.

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