Day: December 7, 2020

movie themed

How can I use webinars to win business?

Posted on | by admin

Webinar marketing is all about hosting online workshops to build a relationship with attendees and to promote and increase credibility for your business.

What’s great about webinars is that they are a win-win for both parties: attendees learn valuable content and, if you do it right, it markets or achieves a sales outcome for your business. Sounds good, right?

While webinars are a great tool to use to win business, if you don’t do it right, it can end up costing you a lot of time and effort for little reward. So this is the point of this short article. We want to show you the 3 essential steps for how to use webinars to win business.

Step 1: start with the end in mind

If you think about what you want to achieve from your webinar before you start, you can make sure that it is relevant and that it is a topic that is in demand. Before creating your webinar, explore these 4 questions:

  1. What is the purpose of my webinar? Is it just to inform clients, to stay front of mind or to sell an additional service?
  2. Who do I want there? Is it for existing clients or potential clients or both?
  3. What pain points are my audience motivated to solve? What are their biggest challenges at the moment?
  4. When will they attend a webinar? When is the most ideal time for them?

Step 2: get people to sign up, turn up, stay till the end, and to buy from you

For your webinar to be successful and for it to win you business, you will need these 4 essential processes in place:

  1. How I will get people to register – your webinar needs a catchy title and objectives that promise value and raise curiosity. You also need to pick a time and day that is best for your audience and use an email marketing tool to assist with registrations.
  2. How I will get people to turn up – streamline a process for sending email reminders to attendees (we send a total of 5 reminders to ours) and call warm prospects or people you want there.
  3. How I will get people to stay to the end – keep your attendees engaged and make them want to stay. You can do this by making the webinar highly interactive (especially at the beginning); tell them the agenda, promise something for those who stay to the end, and make it about your audience and their issues.
  4. How I will get people to buy – you need to show your audience their ‘ideal’ scenario and position your product/service as the solution to getting them there. You can do this by including case studies of clients who have had the same or similar issues and how you’ve helped them to take action and resolve them. You can also include statistics, show them the different options available to them, and have clients actually on the webinar to advocate for you in real-time.

Step 3: use the right technology

Technology can make or break a webinar, so make sure you are using the right tools. Tools that will assist you and make your life easier rather than tools that limit you. If you want to win business from your webinars, you need to be using the following technology:

  1. Webinar or online meeting software (e.g. Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc)
  2. Decent broadband and ideally a webcam
  3. Automated diary booking system (e.g. Calendly, AcuityScheduling etc)
  4. Registrant data collection tool (e.g. Eventbrite or the other event software)
  5. Bulk email marketing tool (e.g. Active Campaign, MailChimp etc)

Webinar marketing is a great way to win new business and to stay in front of your existing clients. You just need to know how to create a relevant and engaging webinar that your audience is interested in and you need to make it as easy as possible for people to remember to turn up and buy.

Checklist

Reopening your business safely: the ultimate checklist

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We may not know when things will be going back to normal, even now that a Covid vaccine is on the horizon, but we can plan ahead for when the time comes to reopen our businesses.

This is called scenario planning – also known as ‘hoping for the best but planning for the worst’ – and it’s very valuable. Not only does it make you feel better in the short term, but it also allows you to act more effectively if that time does come in the future.

While reopening as normal may still be a few weeks or months away, there is a lot of logistics to think about due to the safety measures you will need to implement. To help you plan for this, here is a useful checklist so that you can reopen your business safely when the time comes.

6 areas you need to cover to reopen your business safely

Safety

Do we have a plan to reopen with ‘social distancing’ in place when our business is legally allowed to?

  • Do we have a supply of hand sanitiser available for all entrances and exits used by staff and customers?
  • Can these sanitisers be fixed in place to minimise theft?
  • Have we done a deep clean of our premises
  • Do we have a supply of face masks for staff? If possible, will they be branded?
  • Have we worked out how to minimise the risk to staff by introducing social distancing wherever possible? E.g. spacing out seating, staggering shift times or rotas, placing visual markers where queues form to help people socially distance?

Staff

Do we have a plan to re-engage with staff who have been furloughed?

  • Are they physically able to return to work? And on what basis?
  • What hours do we need them to work? And does this require formal HR assistance if there is a major impact on their working hours or contract?
  • What training will they need to be safe and competent in doing their job?
  • Will they need to be reskilled or reassigned? And how will this happen?

Impact

Have we forecasted the impact of social distancing on our business?

  • Reduced demand and capacity?
  • Cash flow? Turnover? Profit?
  • Resource requirements?
  • Parents of school-age children may still need to be at home with their children?

Customers

Have we identified ways to reduce the need for customers to physically be on our premises?

  • Telephone and/or internet orders?
  • Photos or videos of our products/services on our website?
  • Deliveries to customer homes?
  • Click and collect?

Operations

Have we done a risk assessment and implemented recommendations to minimise the risk to our staff?

  • How to reduce contact in our offices and premises?
  • Increased cleaning of all surfaces?
  • Education and training to staff on how they will play their part to keep everyone safe?

Marketing

Have we identified ways to increase demand for our business’s services or products whilst still remaining ‘COVID-19’ secure?

  • New products or services which will be in demand?
  • Different ways of delivering the service or fulfilling the order or demand?
  • New channels to market? E.g. direct to consumers?

Plan your coronavirus-comeback

If you want to be ready for when the time comes (and it will) where you can reopen your business, you will need to have a plan to keep your employees and customers safe. If you have your plan and your safety measures in place for when that time comes, you can hit the ground running.

Imagine bouncing back stronger than ever when restrictions ease? Don’t waste any more time now giving into the Covid turmoil. Plan your comeback and reopen with confidence.

Is my accountant regulated?

Is my accountant regulated?

Posted on | by admin

Would you trust your life to someone who was not a doctor?

Would you be defended in court without a qualified lawyer?

Of course not. Yet many businesses trust their livelihoods to unregulated accountants.

Why does being regulated make a difference?

To be regulated accountants have to be a member of a professional body. The main professional bodies are:

  • ICAEW
  • ACCA
  • CIMA
  • AAT

In order to practice as an accountant with a professional body, you have to have a practicing licence and hold professional indemnity insurance. You also have to do continued professional development. An unregulated accountant does not have to have any of this in place.

As a member of a professional body they will be regulated by law under the Proceeds of Crime Act Money Laundering Regulations (AML) with very strict rules to comply with.

How to check if your accountant is regulated.  

When you sign up to an accountant, you will receive their terms of business (engagement letter). This will set out the basis of the contract between them and you. In that proposal there should be reference to their professional body and details of their AML procedures. If there aren’t, this should be your first red flag.

Questions to ask your accountant:

  • What professional body do you belong to?
  • Can I have a copy of your professional indemnity insurance?
  • What CPD do you do?

If the accountant isn’t regulated they HAVE to register with HMRC under the AML rules. This is the law. The link below will give you the details and allow you to check if your unregulated accountant is actually registered with HMRC.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/money-laundering-regulations-supervised-business-register

Our experience

When taking on new business, we always request hand over information from the previous accountant. Normally this is relatively easy, however for one of our new clients it has been far from it. We have been shocked by the quality and correspondence from the previous accountant. After looking through all the information, we have found out that this particular accountant is unregulated. This ultimately meant, our client cannot report the accountants actions to their governing body. Leaving them with one option, legal action.

The client put their trust in this accountant and have been left with extremely messy books, which could result in more tax and potential fines.

Make sure your accountant is regulated, this way if something goes wrong your accountant has certain standards to adhere to, ensuring your finances are kept in order.