Tag Archives: Corporate Business Solutions LLC

Life Changing Steps to Becoming Successful

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Becoming successful – it’s what so many of us strive for. Success is one of those things that comes in all shapes and sizes. It is not something saved for only the rich and famous. It’s not a fairy-tale or a dream that will never come true.

Success is attainable for everyone, as long as you’re willing to go after it.

That is the thing with success; it’s not something you can just hand over to someone. It comes from hard work not just on what you’re doing, but on who you are as a person.

If you’re looking for the key to success, consider some of the following tips for an overall successful life. CBS-CBS.com provides many tips for small businesses that will help you get on the success path for not just work, but for life.

Go Outside Your Comfort Zone

There’s a reason why it’s called the comfort zone. It’s where you are most comfortable and likely not very vulnerable. You know what is going on and what is likely to happen. It’s easy.

One key to success is to step outside of your comfort zone every so often. Take on a new challenge that may make you nervous. Once you step outside of your comfort zone, you start to learn new things about yourself and what you’re capable of doing.

Be Determined and Committed

Because success is not something that gets handed to you, determination and commitment are vital to being successful in life. There’s a difference between being interested in something, and being determined to know more. When you have that determination and commitment, you won’t let anything stand in your way of being successful.

Learn to Appreciate Failures

We often look at failures as the enemy, which is why we tend to stay in our comfort zone. Failures can be quite discouraging. They lead you to think that you can’t do something. However, if you learn to appreciate each failure as a stepping stone, you learn from those speed bumps and continue down the road to success.

Think of a child learning to walk. They don’t start walking right after the first step. Instead, they fall over and over again until they get the hang of walking. After that, good luck stopping them because they want to walk everywhere now.

A failure is when you stumble down after learning to take a step. Instead of giving up, continue with those steps until you’re past the point of failing. After that, you won’t want to stop.

Be Realistic

Most of these keys to success are about being daring and going after things. Another key that is different from those stated above is knowing when you need to be realistic. Setting too high of standards and going after unattainable goals is a way of setting yourself up for disappointment. That disappointment can quickly pull us down from the high of success and make us want to give up.

Instead, be realistic about what you can and cannot do. You can have big dreams, but set yourself realistic goals to get there.

6 Qualities to Look For When Hiring a New Employee

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When the time comes to hire employees, it can be difficult to determine who is the best fit for the position. Especially if you have many applications coming in, eventually you have to select one. Do you have a list of qualities you’re wanting from your new employee?

As send out a job posting, typically you want to hire the best and brightest person. Although your business will have its unique needs compared to others, there are some standard traits which employees should possess that work across all companies.

Corporate Business Solutions is here to help you out. As you begin your hiring process, pay attention to the following six traits to find the best employee for your company.

Dependability

You want someone whom you can depend on, not having to check in to ensure work is getting done. A dependable employee can be trusted with almost any task, and you know it will get done. If not, you can guarantee they will keep you informed or ask for help.

Commitment

When you hire an employee, you’re looking for someone that will stick with you for a long time, rather than walk out the door after the first month. Why? Because it can cost you more money having to hire and train new employees on a regular basis. Commitment is a significant quality to look for.

Good Work Ethic

A good employee is one that knows when it’s time to get to work and ignore distractions. The work ethic of an employee is another top trait to pay attention to. What would you rather have: an employee who clocks in, does the bare minimum, then heads home. Alternatively, would you instead prefer an employee who is willing to put in more than just the minimum, is willing to work extra hours if needed, and one whom you can rely on?

Positive Attitude

The attitude of the potential employee is another significant characteristic to look out for. Someone who comes into the office with a poor attitude day after day will bring down the whole team and create problems with the work environment. Instead, find an employee who can maintain a positive attitude at work, and can leave personal issues at the front door.

Team Member

Even though you want an employee who can work alone without supervision, you still want that employee to work well with the rest of the team (even if the team is just you). If your new worker continually buts heads with everyone around, it will be difficult to get high-quality work done.

Communicator

Ideal employees should know how important communication is in not just the workplace, but in life in general. Many issues can stem from improper communication and a lack of clarity. A good employee should be able to adequately communicate what he or she needs, is concerned about, or if he or she needs help.

On the other side of communication is listening skills. As important as it is for an employee to communicate, they must be able to listen when someone else is talking with them. Pay attention to their verbal and nonverbal communication during the interview process.

4 Traits That Signal Bad Leadership

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If your employees avoid you at all costs, don’t make eye contact with you when talking, and you can see how nervous they are when you come around the corner, chances are there’s an issue with your leadership style.

Poor leadership quickly can be the downfall of any business, no matter the size. If your team does not respect you as their leader and manager, it will be difficult to not only keep them on board with your plans but to keep them employed altogether. Poor leadership is noted as one of the top reasons employees quit their job.

If you want to avoid this scenario or fix it if this sounds like your office already, you’ll need to evaluate your leadership style and see if anything needs changing. Corporate Business Solutions (CBS-CBS.com) has some of the top traits that signal bad leadership.

Poor Listening Skills

If you never listen to your employees, how do you expect to gain their respect? A good leader will take the time to listen to all of the employees he or she has. Not only will this help improve the employer to employee relationship, but you may also find that they have ideas that could benefit the company.

No Honesty

A quick way to turn into a bad boss is by lying to your staff members. The lack of transparency from management will ultimately lead to the lack of trust and respect from the staff in your company.

Being transparent as much as possible with employees helps develop a positive and trustworthy relationship. It shows that you care enough to include them in what affects them. Transparency brings everyone onto the same page, which will help foster a strong team.

Ego Gets in the Way

Ask yourself this – how often do you take responsibility if an issue arises, or do you often find yourself asking someone else why this problem occurred? A visible sign of poor leadership is when the manager won’t take responsibility and lets his or her ego get in the way.

When there is good leadership in the office, the manager knows when to take responsibility for issues that are out of their employee’s controls. If he or she makes a mistake, they own it, learn from it, and move forward. Also, a good manager knows when it’s time to recognize his or her employees so that the spotlight isn’t always on them.

Lack of Understanding

Proper leadership knows there needs to be a balance between empathy and being understanding, and knowing when you need to be stricter. If you don’t have compassion towards what your team goes through on a daily basis, as well as any challenges they face outside of the office, you’ll likely notice a negative atmosphere in the office.

Empathy is essential in management. Quite often the word empathy correlates soft management. However, the lack of empathy actually corresponds to harsh management in the employee’s eyes. Showing a bit of understanding towards your employees will help foster a sense of trust and that you care, which will help grow your relationship with your employees.

Consider these four traits and compare them to your leadership style. Can you confidently say, and know your employees would agree, that you listen to them, are honest with them, takes responsibility when needed, and shows empathy? If not, it may be time to re-evaluate your leadership style.

10 Reasons Why Employees Stay With Your Company

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As you know, retaining top talent and unique employees is key to long-term productivity and team effectiveness. Thus, knowing what makes people happy at work is important. Corporate Business Solutions experts lay out for us the 10 most common reasons why employees stay with your company.

Benefits and Incentives

Some of the most effective benefits and incentives are more workplace independence, development opportunities, healthcare, commuting assistance, and performance-based bonuses.

Satisfaction with the Environment

A clean and organized workplace with a lively atmosphere, ample space, and sufficient facilities is essential to maintaining employee morale. People are also integral components of the environment. Opportunity to socialize and collaborate is a big part of workplace synergy.

Financial Compensation

Payment for work, complete with bonuses and incentives, provides tremendous stability. Being open to the possibility of raises in the future with long-term tenure and continued good performance is also a motivating factor.

Inspiration for Working Smarter

You should always encourage and foster working smart rather than working just to be busy. Ultimately, this is more productive and rewarding. This approach must be present in managers who supervise without micromanaging.

Great Relationships with Leadership

Those who seek to prove themselves every single day should be praised for their work ethic. Those who may be falling behind should be offered help from management to improve their performance, which may include such things as retraining, help with skill development, or clearer performance standards as to what is expected from the employee so that goals can be achieved. Positive efforts by management to help an employee improve can help foster the internal motivation that the employee needs to perform better. Forming relationships is an important factor in a harmonious workplace.

Challenge and Excitement

People want to be engaged with challenging work that piques their interest and employs their technical and interpersonal skills. Being able to complete projects with a dynamic and well-balanced team is encouraging.

Mentorship

Learning from more experienced members of the company can make things seamless for new and less experienced employees. Mentorship is conducive to learning on the job.

Recognition

It goes without saying that everyone likes to be respected and recognized for their hard work.

Career Development

Most employees don’t want to be trapped in dead-end jobs with no prospects for advancement and doing the same thing for years. Being engaged includes new challenges to overcome and new skills to learn in order to develop as employees and people.

Work-Life Balance

Excessive overtime hinders productivity. A reasonable amount of sick leave and vacation time is motivation to take quality rest and recovery time. This ensures that employees go back to work with a rejuvenated sense of purpose and excitement to perform.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

4 Awesome Tools To Come Up With Blog Ideas

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Content marketing is all about helping small businesses generate website traffic, online visibility, and sales leads. As known, a business blog is a key to content marketing. But if you’re like many in a small business, you may find yourself wondering what exactly to write about.

Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend the following four tools to help generate ideas for blog posts.

Google Keyword Tool

The entirely free keyword tool from Google AdWords is great for finding out what people are actually searching for on Google on a day-to-day basis. You can use the tool even if you’re not advertising through Google.

Of note: look for keywords that get a significant number of searches (for example, 50,000 monthly searches), but have low or medium competition. Take note of  “local monthly searches” if you specifically want to target readers in your region or area. You can also change the location to determine how keywords are performing in various regions.

Netvibes

Netvibes allows you to create a personalized dashboard so you can monitor RSS feeds, social media accounts, and even analytics for your own blog and website (all in one place). You’ll be able to add RSS feeds for your favorite blogs and news sites and check it daily.

You can add as many feeds as you desire to get vast coverage of topics. Then, you can simply scan the headlines for something in the news that triggers a blogging idea or serves as a launching point for your own piece.

Alltop

Alltop is an amalgamation of the best blogs under hundreds of topics. You can easily come up with blog ideas by browsing through the current post titles that are shown under each topic. For example, if you write on technology, there are a myriad of technology posts from which you can learn. You can also search for related topics for each heading.

Quora

Generally speaking, a good blog post often answers a burning question that many people have. Quora is a great place to identify the types of questions that business people want answers to. Quora is particularly good for business-to-business topics.

Questions are grouped under topics. Look especially for questions with a significant amount of interactivity and comments. This is generally a signal that the topic will be engaging.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

5 Awesome Content Marketing Strategies

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While some companies use content marketing as a way to increase brand awareness, others use it as a way to generate sales or leads. Regardless of its purpose for your business, Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend the following five strategies for improving your content marketing.

Identify Your Target Audience

As expected, content works best when its targeted for a particular audience. Rather than aimlessly creating content without considering who your target audience is, spend time identifying your target audience and think about who will benefit most from your products or services. This will ensure the content you create on your site is more engaging and relatable for your target audience.

Use Great Visuals

The old adage of “a picture tells 1000 words” certainly carries truth today. This is particularly true in the world of content marketing. Combining the use of great visuals, whether it’s pictures, videos or infographics, with quality text, is one content marketing strategy for your website that should not be overlooked.

Having said that, one image placed at the top of a blog won’t suffice. Rather, the content on your website should be accompanied by stimulating imagery. In other words, throwing a stock image at the top of an article will not cut it. You should add relevant images throughout the article to try and keep the user’s engagement high throughout the entire piece.

Create Shareable Content

Another critical aspect of content marketing is to make the content you create on your small business’s website shareable. In other words, you want to aim to make it go viral. Generating content that encourages others to share it will inevitably drive higher volumes of traffic to your website. As you know, higher percentages of traffic results in greater leads and sales.

Create a Content Marketing Plan

Successful content marketing campaigns should always begin with a content marketing plan. This essential content marketing strategy for your small business should include mapping out potential blog titles and topics for the upcoming weeks and months. You’ll also want to include any guest blogging targets and where your content gets posted on external websites to help your small business reach a wider audience.

Share Your Website Content On Social Media

Rather than simply writing a new blog and publishing it on your website or creating a new landing page and forgetting about it, share your fresh and creative content to as many followers as possible. In addition to using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, post regular content on multiple social avenues, including LinkedIn and Google+.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

5 Great Ways to Save Money

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While there isn’t a perfect formula for starting a business. different approaches work for different people. Having said that, there’s a great deal of value in cash flowing a business and avoiding the burden of debt on the front end. In order to effectively fund your own business, you have to master your savings habits and attain a strong grasp of your financial situation.

Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend the following tips to saving money in a small business setting. Considering using these today to better improve your cash flow.

Eliminate Your Debt

Sure, nobody wants to discuss the dreaded topic of debt. While we all seem to have it, very few of us ever directly confront it until it becomes too much to handle.

Just imagine what you could do if your debts were gone. All of a sudden, you’ll feel like you got a raise. Suddenly all of that money that was going towards repaying a debt can be put towards something else, such as starting a business.

Reduce Your Discretionary Spending

One of the best ways to pay down debt on a limited income is to slash your discretionary spending and put that money towards your debts.

Between eating out and online shopping, you should be able to save a few hundred dollars per month. Over the course of a year, this can add up to a significant amount of money.

Automate Savings

It’s easy to get so caught up in spending that you don’t even think about savings. Over time, this can have some pretty traumatic effects. And while there are plenty of ways you can deal with this issue, automating the savings process is one of the smartest options.

Ask Yourself THE Question

When you find yourself in a store and before placing something in your shopping cart, ask yourself this important question: “Do I really need this?”

Most of the time, the honest answer is generally “no.” While you might not like the answer, it’s what you need to hear in order to avoid spending money on things you don’t need.

Reinvest Profits

While this may seem simple, it’s often very challenging. Sure, your natural inclination is to start spending the money you make from your new business. However, it’s a much more logical practice to reinvest your profits. This will allow you to continue growing without needing to take on debt.

4 Critical Steps to Growing Your Small Business

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Expanding your small business is no easy feat. To be honest, it is one of the hardest challenges that people face when they are looking to abandon the 9-5 grind.

Ultimately, the success of your small business depends on your ability to increase profits using a variety of methods. From employee training to marketing, every component of your business needs the proper attention.

Sure, overnight success almost never happens. However, there is a myriad of steps you should take in order to keep your business moving forward. While it takes time and effort, you’ll soon start to reap the rewards.

Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend the following four tips for helping your business grow.

Know Your Customers

The best way to develop successful products and services is to know what your customers want. You can achieve this through surveys and various forms of research. For example, asking them to provide honest feedback is critical. Analyzing reviews is one of the best ways to get inside the minds of your customers. As a result, you’ll be able to develop the right products and services that accurately reflect the demands of the market. Additionally, you’ll gain a better understanding as to how your company can improve.

Enhance Customer Service

Regardless of whether or not you have a superior product or service, you won’t fully satisfy your customers without a strong customer service program. Ultimately, this facet of a company is all about you taking that extra step to make your customers feel important and valued. You’ll want to address their problems immediately and also take time to answer their questions. Consider tying social media into your customer service strategy.

Exploit Social Media

There is absolutely no doubt that social media is an extremely powerful tool. Not only can it reach thousands of people at once, it keeps people engaged. Ultimately, this helps you stay relevant. Listening to your customer’s comments will help you understand how to better satisfy your audience.

Focus on Professional Development

 

It will probably come as no surprise that the success of your business largely lies in the hands of the people that you employ.

The success of your business also depends on the quality of employees that you hire. Building a successful team is the key to ensuring that your company thrives. You should always give your employees a purpose and make sure they buy into your common goal.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

Five Critical Tips to Hiring

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We know. Hiring new employees can be a very time-consuming and resource-draining process for any business. However, it can be particularly challenging for small businesses with limited means. For a small company, each new hiree has a significant impact on the business, whether it be negative and positive. As a result, it’s critical for small business owners to have the right approach to hiring in order to avoid mistakes.

If you are looking to take the right steps when hiring, consider the following pointers from our Corporate Business Solutions experts.

Be Very Candid

The first step to ensuring that potential hires are truly ready to take on the duties is to be as clear as possible. You’ll want to inform them of the day-to-day tasks and share the company’s goals as well. Furthermore, it’s important to include details regarding salary and benefits. In addition, be candid about any challenges that he/she might face. Being as candid as possible about the position helps you hire the right people who will last a long time.

Use Connections

You might be able to find great candidates by contacting people you already know in your field. For example, calling or emailing business colleagues and/or creating LinkedIn posts is an effective way to let people know you’re hiring.

Establish Your Company Culture

As mentioned, each employee has a significant impact on the culture of a small business. Remember, you can teach skills, but not personality or a tireless work ethic. Take time to establish company values and the look for these qualities in your candidates. You’ll want to address your company’s values during the interview and also gear questions related to those values.

Measure Commitment

You’re really going to want to understand whether or not a potential hiree is truly committed to working for you before you put that offer on the table. Focus on little gestures during the interview and try to understand how enthusiastic the candidate really is about the job opportunity.

Implement a Trial Period

It’s important to implement a trial period prior to making a full commitment. You might want to consider having new employees sign a short-term contract or hiring them as freelancers. Ultimately, this will help you determine if he/she is the ideal candidate for the job before you make any long-term commitments. Furthermore, an effective trial period can be a great way to give both new employees and employers the right amount of time in order to make informed decisions.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.

Five Techniques to Enhance Your Blogging

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It’s no secret that online blogging and other forms of published content can prove to be a critical aspect of your marketing strategy. Having said that, it takes a lot of strategic thought and preparation to make online content supplement your business goals. In order to help you improve those efforts, Corporate Business Solutions experts recommend the following five tactics.

Identify Optimal Keywords

 In order for your target audience to stumble across your blog content organically, you must integrate relevant and applicable keywords. While this can certainly be challenging, it’s up to you to invest the time and energy into researching the best keywords. Trust us when we tell you that you won’t regret it.

Get More Subscribers

So, you post your blog and you see that it hasn’t been viewed as many times as you’d like. Now what? To ensure that people actually read your blog, it’s helpful to offer an email subscription option. This will put the new blogs directly in their inboxes. What could be better?

Utilize Your Blog to Augment Your Reputation

Whether it’s via blogging, reviews, or social media, it’s absolutely imperative to not only monitor, but also constantly improve what is being said about your company online. Ultimately, your reputation can make or break a potential customer’s decision to buy into your business.

Personalize Your Content

Think about it – which will draw more interest: generic or personalized content? You got that right. Generic blog content will not yield the positive results you are looking for. Rather, take the time to publish personalized and relevant content that is specific to your target audience.

Make Your Content Shareable

One of the best ways to widen reach your reach is to optimize your content and make it more shareable. The more your content is shared, the more people you will reach.

To learn more, visit CBS-CBS.com.