With more than 800 million users worldwide, Instagram is one of the most popular social networking sites. It is also a leading platform for small business promotion.

But what makes Instagram popular among small business owners?

Reasons to Use Instagram for Business

Digital company NoHatDigital has compiled a list of the top 10 reasons small businesses should adopt Instagram. Here are some of them.

Put a Face to Your Brand

Instagram is a visual platform to help you form a more personal connection with customers. You can share pictures and videos of your team and happy customers to engage your audience.

A visual feed can reflect your brand’s uniqueness and differentiate your business.

Boost Your Sales

You can use Instagram to update your followers about sales and special promotions. For example, you may run a promotional ad campaign to create awareness and drive more traffic to your website.

If you are launching a new product or service, use Instagram to provide a sneak peek into your latest offerings.

Tell Interesting Stories

Instagram is the perfect place to be creative when marketing your brand. Instagram Stories, in particular, is designed to boost audience engagement.

You can use Instagram Stories to offer discounts and run flash sale. You can also run contests to keep your customers interested.

Build Connections with Like-Minded People

Social media is all about networking. And Instagram is a great place to find like-minded people who share similar interests. You can expand your social network and collaborate with a brand or influencer to reach more people.

Stay Up to Date with Consumer Trends

Another reason why you should be on Instagram is because it can help you make the most of new trends. You can use it to promote causes or simply generate interest by posting holiday-specific content.

Check out the infographic below for more reasons to join Instagram.

Photo via Shutterstock

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With the right perks, employers can deliver the work-life balance many of today’s workforce is looking for. A new survey by Clutch reveals one of the most valued of these perks is flexible work hours, which make it possible to achieve this balance. This was the case for more than 2 in 5 or 41 percent of the respondents in the survey.

The report that follows the survey asks, “Why Employee Perks and Company Culture Matter?” And according to Clutch Content Creator and Marketer Elizabeth Ballou, who wrote the report, it is because businesses offering perks will benefit with more productive employees.

This doesn’t only apply to large enterprises. Ballou says small businesses can also provide perks by carefully choosing what to make available and being flexible in the implementation of employee perks.

The goal is to make your employees feel appreciated and valued in your organization. resources/why-employee-perks-company-culture-matter” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Ballou writes, “Whether those perks come in the form of a free snack bar, the option to work from home, company retreats or reduced-rate evening classes, employee perks show workers that businesses care about their wellbeing.”

The Clutch survey was carried out with 507 participants holding full-time jobs. It was made up of 52 percent female and 48 male respondents split evenly among 18-34, 35-54, and 55 or older age groups. Respondents came from a wide range of companies with anywhere from 1 to 10,000 employees, but the largest group, or 21 percent, came from organizations with between 1 and 10 employees.

And, the Most Important Employee Perk is…

Some of the key findings in the survey revealed 42 percent of respondents didn’t have employee perks and more than half or 53 percent have perks which give them a better quality of life. Of those respondents who receive the perks, 66 percent said they are satisfied with them.

When perks are available, the most common ones are flexible working hours at 32 percent, professional development at 28 percent, fitness, health perks, and food and snacks at 19 percent, and working from home at 14 percent, according to respondents.

As to how these perks benefit employees, 53 percent said it gave them better quality of life and another 49 percent felt valued.  In addition 44 percent reported improved physical and mental health, 42 percent reported cost savings and 33 percent reported better bonding with coworkers has benefits of added perks.

Small Businesses

Ballou suggests small businesses can provide perks with health and wellness programs by covering some or all of the cost of gym or other club memberships. Businesses can also take part in the professional development of their employees by offering access to online courses or internal training by senior staff.

Takeaway

Perks improve the working environment of your employees, which in turn make their lives better inside and outside of the workplace. Whether the perk is offering flexible hours or something specific to each of your employees, you can be creative in how you choose to provide them. And you don’t have to be a large company to make it happen.

Photo via Shutterstock

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Running a successful business requires you surround yourself with constant sources of inspiration. You can be inspired by other entrepreneurs, changing up your mindset, or even stepping up your own healthy habits. Here are some tips from members of the online small business community for staying inspired and taking the next step in your small business.

Get Inspired by These Women-Owned Businesses

In honor of International Women’s Day this week, Amazon’s Day One blog took the opportunity to profile some successful women-owned businesses that utilize Amazon’s selling platforms. Check out some of the big names to get a quick dose of inspiration in this post.

Check Out This Profile in Women’s Business Leadership

Another source for inspiration, this post by Tim Kelly of Biz2Credit, includes an interview with woman business owner Jamie Clifford, along with some other insights about the general business landscape for female entrepreneurs. Read more here.

Build a Disruptive Startup with These Mindset Elements

If you want to start a business that’s truly unique and disruptive, you need to have the right mindset. In this Startup Professionals Musings post, Martin Zwilling offers some important mindset elements you’ll need. BizSugar members also shared commentary on the post in their community.

Take These Steps to Create a Healthier Workplace

No matter what type of business you run, creating healthy habits for you and your entire team is a must. A healthy team is more likely to show up regularly and actually be productive. So take a look at these tips from Joe Hessert on the CorpNet blog to create a healthier workplace.

Pick the Best Domain Name for Your Business

A domain name for your business’s website can serve as sort of a first impression for customers. A memorable domain name can also make it easy for customers to do business with you again and again. Ivan Widjaya explains these benefits and more, along with some tips, in a recent Biz Penguin post.

Learn These Important Social Media Terms

If you’re going to use social media to market your business online, it’s important to understand the lingo. There are lots of common terms used when talking about social media that might seem confusing to those unfamiliar with the platforms. Check out some of the essentials in this post on Susan Solovic’s blog by Lindsay Dicks.

Consider the Best Email Apps for iPhone

Pretty much every modern entrepreneur is able to access their email on a phone or mobile device. There are tons of different apps available to give you that access. For iPhone users, a recent Process Street post by Adam Henshall lists some of the top options currently available.

Learn How to Deal with a Bully at Work

No one wants to have to deal with a bully, especially at work. But no matter where you work or what kind of business you’re in, you might find yourself in such a situation with a partner, client or competitor. Learn how to deal with them in a recent Corporate Coach Group post by Chris Farmer. Then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post.

Boost Your Small Business Marketing with Illustrations

If you’re looking for a way to make your visual marketing content really stand out, you might consider going a little old school with some custom illustrations. This design element can give your marketing a personal and unique spin, according to a recent Crowdspring post by Arielle Kimbarovsky.

Overcome These Obstacles When Using Social Media Globally

Social media offers marketers a unique opportunity to quickly reach potential customers on a global scale. However, there are some challenges that go along with growing globally so quickly. You can learn more by reading a recent Social Media HQ post by Nate Vickery.

If you’d like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to: [email protected]

Image: Shutterstock

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The third annual report dedicated to telecommuting shows a growing trend toward working  remotely among American workers in a variety of industries. According to the report, more industry segments now offer some form of remote work arrangement to their employees, either full or part-time.

2017 Virtual Vocations Year-End Report and Telecommuting Statistics

The 2017 Virtual Vocations Year-End Report has gathered comprehensive data on telecommuting trends in the United States. The report reveals the top states with remote workers, the companies hiring them and the best industries for telecommuting jobs along with who is performing these jobs.

Small businesses, who employ the majority of the workforce in the country, are also switching to remote workers in greater numbers. Hiring remote workers for bookkeeping, HR, marketing, web development, IT and other positions makes increasingly more financial sense by reducing company overhead.

The data for the report was compiled from a list of over 40 telecommuting job categories and more than 6,500 new remote employers, with a total of over 10,000 employer profiles.

Telecommuting Statistics

Who is Working Remotely?

According to the  report, 20-25 percent of U.S. workers telecommute at least part of the time. And the number among professionals is increasing. An overwhelming 80 to 90 percent of professionals want to work from home at least on a part-time basis.

According to the data gathered, 42.3 percent of telecommuters care for children or family members, 48 percent are over 50 years old and 82.3 percent have received a post-secondary diploma or degree.

Of those currently working remotely, 39.5 percent earn at least $71,000 per year and 50.4 percent work as independent contractors. When qualifying the benefits of working from home, 74.3 percent of telecommuters stated they have experienced an increased quality of life. Another 83.5 say they have saved on the expenses associated with working outside of the home (e.g. lunches, clothing, gas, etc.).

Top States

California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois were the top states for remote work, accounting for 23.26 percent of all job posting in the Virtual Vocations database for 2017. The country was divided into West Coast, Southwest, Midwest, South, Gulf Coast, Mid-Atlantic and New England regions for the purposes of classifying the data from the report. Top states for telecommuting opportunities were California, Texas and New York.

Top Companies

The top 20 companies offering telecommuting opportunities included companies across many industries including healthcare, IT, banking and insurance. UnitedHealth Group took the top spot, but Oracle, Salesforce.com, and U.S Bank were also on the list.

 

Finding the Right Mix

For small businesses, the key is deciding whether the obs you are hiring for require workers to be on the premises or whether hiring telecommuting workers saving you overhead and giving them greater flexibility is a viable option. For example, your company conducts business almost exclusively online, web designers, marketers and other workers may be able to operate best as telecommuters saving you money for office space.

On the other hand, the servers in your small restaurant or a barista in a small coffee shop can’t really do their jobs from a laptop while sitting on the coach in their PJs.

If properly managed, the money you save can be directed to investing in other key operations more important for your business.

Images: Virtual Vocations

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A quick scroll through your social media feeds, especially Facebook, will show the many different ways video marketing is being used.

Videos can increase the likelihood of an offline purchase by as much as 64%, and one study showed that just over half of marketers believe videos have a higher return on investment than any other media.

Video Marketing Growth for 2018

According to YouAppi’s Second Annual CMO Mobile Marketing Guide Survey, 85% of Marketers Plan to Increase Investment in Video in 2018, up from 75%.

Review the PDF of the entire guide for many more brand new statistics related to the growth of video marketing. Highlights include these insights:

• Increases across all 5 channels are up in 2018;
• Over 75% of respondents said video was very or critically important to the customer journey;
• Video priorities have changed from 2017 to 2018;
• There are two top concerns for video advertising;
• Reengagement difficulties doubled year-over-year; and
• Some cutting edge technologies may be priorities over others.

Branded videos are engaging and informative, and can do wonders for your business. If executed correctly, videos can dramatically enhance your digital marketing strategy.

With a bit of clever video magic, you can stand out from the influx of videos published every day.

Still, it’s a particularly challenging medium because viewers have little freedom in terms of how they consume it.

Unlike content, there’s no real way to skim it — jumping forward causes the viewer to feel like they’ve missed something important, yet watching a video in its entirety just to get to the useful bit feels like an awful waste of time.

Video Marketing Best Practices

Although video is a different medium, you should still follow content marketing best practices:

• Grab their attention immediately! Do not make the mistake many videographers do of having a long, drawn-out introduction on your videos.
• Don’t manipulate your audience. You never want your customers to feel tricked or misled when viewing your videos.
• Provide highly useful information. When they understand that your video content is useful, this creates trust between you and your visitors. One bad video could deter them from ever watching another video from you again.
• Tell a story. Viewers expect to follow a narrative when consuming video content.
• Keep it simple. Your video shouldn’t feel like a research paper or operations manual. The who, what, where, why and when of a video should become clear early on.

How to Increase Profits With Video Marketing

The effectiveness of video marketing also makes it a highly competitive area on the web. To stand out from the crowd, it’s imperative you take a unique approach to your video strategy.

Take Viewers Behind the Scenes (BTS)

There’s no better way to humanize a brand than by taking viewers behind the scenes (BTS). However, it’s just as easy to botch a behind-the-scenes clip as it is to get it right.

This is because BTS videos can easily start to feel mundane if they don’t take an interesting angle or have something unique to show.

This is where your brand personality can truly shine, offering a glimpse into your world. Use it to show your team’s dedication to the craft, and make your viewers interested in learning more.

To help get you started, take a look at some existing behind the scenes videos. Your research doesn’t have to focus exclusively on brands.

Example Behind-the-scenes Videos

This Vimeo blog post focuses on behind-the-scenes tips for movie makers, and the suggestions are still relevant to any video content you create.

The nuts and bolts — tell your story, explain why you’re here, what the viewer is seeing, etc. — are all the same.

Take advantage of a drone’s powerful technical prowess to create stunning imagery. Large offices, events and demonstrations could benefit from aerial footage.

However, as stated by DroneBase.com, there are a handful of FAA rules accompanying drone coverage, and it’s important you read up on them before you put out any content.

Here are a few BTS ideas:

• Show off your inception skills. Film your team shooting a commercial or marketing video, and detail what goes into making a video for the public. This is similar to what radio producer Alex Blumberg did with his podcast Startup. He gave listeners real-time updates into the trials and tribulations of starting up a podcast business.

• Put your company culture on full display. If culture is your strong suit, let it shine. Show your employees during a team-building exercise or work event.

• Feature your progress. If your business is going through any changes, like a major office renovation or new product version, update your audience and use videos to take them on the journey with you.

Edit your events in mini feature films. Events take quite a while to plan. A well-shot, edited mini-feature film can help you show off your event AND provide a glimpse into what goes into making an event happen.

Use Influencer Marketing

The power of influence is phenomenal. One Nielson study found that 92% of consumers trust opinions from people they know, both directly and indirectly. Celebrity influence is a great example of how this works.

Though the majority of people have never met Tony Robbins, if he endorses a product on any of his social channels, those product sales are likely to skyrocket.

Many studies have shown just how effective influencer marketing can be, and this is because the consumers of today trust the opinions of those they follow.

Google published a report that showed 70% of teen consumers trust YouTube bloggers over traditional celebrities — a trend expected to gain momentum.

First Consider Niche and Local Influencers

When choosing influencers, remember they need to be influential to your target audience. Although celebrities have wide appeal to many, they may not be best for your particular brand.

First consider people who are influential locally and in your specific niche over any general influencer including a celebrity.

Who Uses Influencer Marketing?

Other research reveals that 86% of marketers used influencers in some capacity in their 2016 campaigns, and most marketers had plans for doubling their 2017 budget.

There’s a good reason why dollars are being funneled into the pockets of influencers: Influencer marketing can build brand awareness and increase profit.

Combine video marketing with influencer outreach, and you’ve got a winning recipe that can multiply your results.

Example of a Successful Influencer Video Marketing Campaigns

This is exactly what Lynda.com, an online learning resource owned by LinkedIn, did with their video marketing campaign.

The company teamed up with a handful of YouTube bloggers across different industries and commissioned them to post how-tos that were most relevant to their channels.

They also discovered it was a unique way to circumvent ad blockers. This video shows that 46% of consumers use some form of ad blocking on a daily basis:

It was a win-win situation; video bloggers were able to post useful content, and Lynda.com received more unique visits.

Influencer Marketing for B2Bs

Another way to work with an influencer is to interview them. Let them test out your product or service, and broadcast a conversation that shows how they’re using and benefiting from it.

Not only can you turn these into fun videos for social media, but you can also use these as testimonials on your site.

Lastly, influencer marketing can help boost your SEO. When people are talking about and linking to your brand, it results in organic reach.

These SEO improvements are a byproduct of your video marketing that stick around long after the video is published.

Customer Service and Explainer Videos

Brands have ample opportunity to use customer service and explainer videos to their advantage. In fact, this is an untapped area of potential for many businesses, especially those in the tech industry.

Think about all the instances you’ve had to Google how to operate a certain product. Let’s say you’re trying to figure out how to work an Apple TV.

You’d search for the phrase “how to turn on an Apple TV” and would see several videos appear in search results — mostly from YouTubers and tech aficionados. These videos have huge branding potential.

Not only would you be able to provide your customers and potential leads with valuable, straight-from-the-source information, but you’d be able to promote other products or services, too.

Here are some tips for using explainer videos in your video marketing strategy:

• Start by repurposing some of your most frequently asked questions as explainer videos.
• Don’t be afraid to show your staff and let them have fun with it. A little humility goes a long way. You may not realize it, but seeing brand representatives fix common issues helps humanize the brand.
• Write a rough script that each of your explainer videos will follow. This creates a cohesive string of branded videos that your customers will come to learn, and this format will eventually become synonymous with your marketing videos.
• If possible, keep recurring actors or pinpoint video hosts. This helps increase recognition and build loyalty.

Consider taking the Lynda.com approach to combining influencer outreach with explainer videos. For example, maybe you could partner with the tech YouTuber who showed your customers how to successfully use your product.

At the end of the day, video marketing isn’t about being a salesman. Remember, you have a limited amount of time to engage your audience, and this isn’t the place for it.

Where to Share Your Videos

It isn’t enough to just have your videos on YouTube or your own site. Know what platforms to share your videos on natively, as well.

• LinkedIn recently rolled out native video, but this doesn’t mean you should post any type of content onto its platform.
• While professional explainer videos might be relevant, funny BTS videos would be better suited for Facebook.

The key is to be engaging. Hook them during the first 10 seconds, and maintain the momentum throughout the video.

Infographic Source

Photo via Shutterstock

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Once you create the logo to best represent your company, you have to start using it strategically so it can have the most impact. LogoMaker has published an infographic with a checklist of 10 spots where you should use your logo.

When your logo is out in public, you are telling the world you are ready for business. Soon, it starts becoming a brand people recognize. Making it stand out among all of the established logos and advertising is not easy. But it’s very doable, with the right approach.

For small businesses with limited budgets, the task becomes even more difficult. So placing your logo in places where your potential customers will find it is key. With enough exposure, they will become familiar with it, and anytime they see it, will think of your business.

Where to Put Your Business Logo

Here are five of the 10 spots LogoMaker recommends. You can look at the remaining five places in the infographic below.

Social Media Profiles

If you are active on social media, make sure your logo is part of the content you post. Format the logo according to the specification of each channel so your followers can see it, and so the entire image is in full view.

Website and Blogs

LogoMaker says you should showcase your logo on your website or blog at the top of the page, preferably displayed horizontally. The logo should also be next to other items associated with your brand, such as tagline or bio.

While on the subject of websites, remember to create a favicon so it can be in all of the pages of your site. A favicon is basically a miniaturized version of your logo which can be linked to your home page for use by feed aggregators.

Products and Packages

With eCommerce now part of almost all businesses, you are very likely to be shipping packages to your customers. Placing your logo on the product as well as the shipping package lets everyone see where it comes from.

Invoices and Forms

When you send out invoices or forms to be filled out, make sure they have your logo on them. Generic invoices and forms might be cheaper, but they don’t communicate anything about your company.

Business Vehicle

Even if you only have one vehicle for your business and it is your personal car, use it to advertise your brand. This type of passive marketing gets a lot of eyes on it every time you get in your vehicle and drive. As LogoMaker says, your vehicle becomes a moving billboard for your brand.

Images: LogoMaker

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The Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report, now in its 11th year, reveals an increased dependence on automation, machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect potential cyber attacks..

Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report

The Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) report looks at the trending techniques being used by attackers and defenders with the goal of helping organizations better defend themselves. The report includes comprehensive security industry data, analysis and insights into what attackers were up to over the past year. And the Cisco 2018 Security Capabilities Benchmark Study, which is part of the report, delivers the insights of more than 3,600 Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and security industry leaders from 26 countries regarding their security position.

For small businesses, who are now facing the biggest cybersecurity risks, it means being proactive in protecting your digital presence. This is especially important as you conduct more transactions online and have the personal financial data of your customers.

On the Cisco blog, John Stewart writes, “No single strategy, technological solution or approach will solve all of the challenges that our adversaries throw at us. It takes a comprehensive and unified approach across people, process, technology and policy. By making strategic security improvements, employing advanced technologies and industry leading practices, defenders can increase visibility into a miscreant’s actions, slow their progress, and minimize their exposure to risk.”

Use of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Organizations are using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome the lack of visibility of attackers using encryption. The advanced capabilities of machine learning and AI can enhance network security defenses, with the added benefit of automatically learning to detect unusual patterns in web traffic indicating malicious activity.

As to the level of reliance on AI, 32 percent said they are completely reliant, while another 41 percent indicated some type of reliance, making up a total of 73 percent of the respondents totally or partially reliant on the technology for defense. On the other end of the spectrum, three percent said they don’t rely on AI at all, with the remaining 24 percent showing different levels of lesser reliance on the technology.

Cisco’s Recommendations

The most important recommendation is being prepared. This allows you to react to the attack and with the right recovery system in place, to minimize downtime and loss.

With this in mind, Cisco has taken the best insights and security practices from all those intrviewed to offer the following:

• Implement first-line-of-defense tools that can scale, like cloud security platforms.
• Review and practice security response procedures.
• Back up data regularly and test restoration procedures. Cisco says this is especially important as network-based ransomware worms and destructive cyber weapons are used to attack organizations.
• Review security systems.
• Employ network segmentation to help minimize outbreak exposures.
• Carry out security scanning of microservice, cloud service and application administration systems.

The Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report has 68 pages of extremely valuable information, including recommendations to help your small business make the best informed decision in adopting security solutions.

You can download the full report here.

Images: Cisco

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It is estimated by 2025, three-fourths of the workplace will be made up of millennials. With this group making up such a large proportion of the working population, it is vital small business owners know how to proficiently manage these tech-savvy workers.

Tips for Managing Millennials in the Workplace

To give you a helping hand, global training consultants Guthrie-Jensen have compiled an infographic on ‘How to Manage Millennials.’

Create A Strong Company Culture

Millennials don’t fear authority and seek challenging and meaningful work. It is important you generate a strong company culture in your organization in order to provide this generation with work with meaning and purpose, so they remain loyal to your company.

Offer Greater Work-Life Balance Through Flexible Hours

Millennials want work-life balance — so much so in fact, they’re willing to relocated to find it. To stop your best millennial workers from relocating to another job, offer flexible working hours with opportunities for remote working, to help millennials spend time with their family and achieve the work-life balance they crave.

Encourage the Use of Tech and Social Media

It’s no secret millennials are an incredibly tech-savvy generation. Instead of stifling their love and knowledge of tech, embrace it in your workplace. Since 60 percent of millennials view social media as an important tool to stay competitive, encourage this tech-savviness to help your business stay competitive.

Create a Collaborative Working Environment

Millennials, generally speaking, are social creatures. As the infographic highlights, in the workplace, collaboration should be encouraged through the likes of regular team meetings, workshops and brainstorming sessions so teams can bounce ideas off one another and thrive on each other’s creativity and innovation.

Let Them Lead

Millennials like to take the lead rather than be led. Mentor and coach this generation to nurture creativity, productiveness and company loyalty, instead of merely being their boss.

Check out Guthrie-Jensen’s full infographic on managing millennials below.

Image via Guthrie-Jensen

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When you think about thieves, you might think about shady characters who physically break into your office and take product or equipment, leaving behind a horrible mess.

Unfortunately, most business theft doesn’t happen that way. It’s invisible, carried out by the employees and vendors you trust with your most intimate and private information.

What is The Ugly Truth About Cash About?

In The Ugly Truth About Cash: 50 Ways Employees and Vendors Can Steal From You and What You Can Do About It, Ruth King exposes the hidden side of business theft that will open your eyes and have you running through your bank statements with a fine-toothed comb.

The book reads like it could be one of those docudramas you see on television where they juxtapose real people with re-enactors to tell a story. It’s like a train wreck. You don’t want to look, but you can’t help it.

The book is divided up into two main sections:

Part One contains story after true story from business owners who had learned about theft the hard way. They lived through it! You’ll also learn what they did about it to keep their businesses afloat.

Part Two is much shorter and provides small business owners with a few reports and guidelines on how to prevent theft, report theft and what procedures to put in place.

At the end of each story, the author shares lessons and then a company procedure that you can implement to protect yourself.

King has experiences writing about employee theft. Her first book “21 Ways to Keep Your Honest Employees Honest” cemented her reputation for helping small businesses control this potentially devastating problem. Over the past 25 years, she has owned seven businesses and she’s consulted with hundreds of small businesses about how to grow to the next level of success.

What Was Best About The Ugly Truth About Cash?

I don’t often get emotional over the books I read, but this one absolutely put a lump in my throat from the opening pages with King’s personal story of theft in her father’s law firm.

Don’t think badly of me, but at first, I wasn’t excited about reading a bunch of personal stories about people who experienced theft. “Learn your lesson, do better next time”, I thought. And then story after story left me with such a feeling of profound sadness for the business owner and eventually for some of the folks who were stealing that I couldn’t put the book down.

Pay special attention to the end of the book where King shares a summary of procedures to put in place. This is a really useful section you can use as a checklist for what new policies and procedures you’ll put in place.

The very end of the book contains a message to embezzlers that I absolutely love:

“Revealing your practices in this book will force you to be even more diabolically creative in your theft. I hope you can’t figure out another way to steal, but if you do, I will hear about it and write a sequel to this book revealing the new ways you have found to steal.”

Why Read The Ugly Truth About Cash?

No matter what type of small business you own, theft is a reality. While you can’t do everything, you have to hire people you trust. Reading this book, while sad and difficult, will help you hire the right people and put the right systems in place before you lose it all.

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When many think about artificial intelligence (AI) today it’s usually centered around headline grabbing examples of it addressing the futuristic type issues and challenges. And because the media lens focuses on those “eye-catching” use cases, many small businesses don’t feel like AI is really something that they would benefit from.  But, according to Jon Lee, founder and CEO of CRM platform ProsperWorks, AI can help businesses of all sizes make better, more timely decisions that can help create more successful outcomes.

Better CRM Data Quality Improves AI and Analytics

Lee shares how automating the data entry process not only frees up sales professionals from having to enter and maintain contact and account records, but also provides CRM apps with the data it needs to feed AI and uncover important relationship-building insights.  Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.  To see the full interview watch the embedded video or click on the SoundCloud player.

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Small Business Trends: I want to get a little view of your personal background and also give us like the 30,000 foot view of what ProsperWorks is and what you guys do.

Jon Lee:  I’ve been a career entrepreneur since 2005. Started my first company, a marketing automation software business. I bootstrapped it to 47 million in revenues and then sold it to a private equity consortium in a roll up of various advertising networks. Then I started a software company that built video games and AV testing software. And then we sold that company to Zynga. And then basically took a long hiatus and really questioned my meaning for life and realized that it’s to serve. I felt that the best way to do that was to help my fellow kind which is other entrepreneurs, other fast-growing businesses.

Every business struggles with building great relationships and ultimately monetizing those relationships. And so we focused on the CRM space but we did so and really positioned ourselves differently by focusing on G-Suite, which is formerly known as Google Apps. So ProsperWorks is the number one CRM for Google Apps and we are solving the biggest problem in CRM today, which is that there’s a lot of dirty data. It’s actually dirty data that causes more than 47% of CRM’s to fail according to Forester.

We automate data entry. Nobody likes data entry. It’s a huge waste of time. We estimate sales reps spend almost a day out of the entire week entering information. And for what reason? So CRM’s I think historically have largely been focused on backwards looking data. It’s an auditing mechanism for management to make sure that the team is ultimately working, right? The reality is that you want your team working, you don’t want them filling out data. That’s really where we come in and we really solve that problem.

By solving that data entry problem, that data cleanliness problem, we’re actually able to realize the revolution of CRM, which is that no longer are CRM’s just a backwards looking tool to see what happened in history, but actually can inform what you should do in the future. Using algorithms to basically interpret what was successful and what was correlated with success, verified causation, and then continually test that, we can actually recommend to customers what they should be doing. And ultimately automate that for our customers.

Small Business Trends: Give me the distinction or the definition of dirty data and how it compares to incomplete date or out of date data?

Jon Lee:  Usually it’s incomplete data is the number one issue, right? You have a meeting, you have a series of meetings, you get caught up, you forget to update your CRM at the end of the week. You don’t remember something so you basically don’t enter the information or if you do, it’s not accurate. Another thing is you pay your reps and you pay your relationship managers where you yourself as a relationship manager your most valuable asset is your time. And so a lot of times you’ll just enter something within CRM just to be able to try to have really good hygiene but the reality is it’s a hard thing to do. It requires a lot of discipline. But why should you even have to do it?

We live in the cloud today. All of the applications we use to communicate with customers exist in the cloud. We can pull that in so that your data is relevant, it’s comprehensive, it’s fresh, and you can trust it. And that’s the number one thing, can you trust your data? If you can trust your data you can make data driven decisions as to how you start to optimize your sales process? Who are your best performing reps that your other reps can learn from? Why are you losing customers? Why are you winning customers? Answering these key strategic questions, they’re important for every business owner, for every functional leader that they need to have answers to.

Small Business Trends: Talk the effect of good, clean data on AI and how that could optimize the benefits that companies get?

Jon Lee: That’s right. An algorithm is only as good as the data that you put in it. If you have missing data, the algorithm can’t really interpret for that or error correct for that. And so you need not only clean data but you need lots of data. If you don’t have those then you either don’t have an answer or you have an answer that’s non-determinant. Your error bands basically cross each other and you can’t make a decision. I think that AI is going to completely revolutionize CRM and just relationship management in general is because it’s going to be able to identify all of the specific things that occur, find those correlations to success, validate causation, retest, and then ultimately be able to help inform what the next decision is. Be able to identify patterns in data that human beings otherwise can’t see, right? To be able to inform. How can you optimize your business process better? How can you do better on that next call? What are the key things said in the call that really convinced the buyer to move forward with your solution.

We live in an amazing world today where you can transcribe this entire conversation. You can analyze it against other conversations, pattern match it, and be able to figure out what are the key phrases. Those are things that folks are doing that’s really exciting and that’s really helping to promote what I call the augmented productivity economy. Which is that it’s focused on really helping humans build better relationships. And through better relationships you get better results both for your customer and for your company.

Small Business Trends: And how does clean data, and complete data, and timely data, how does that impact ability to get the right nugget at the right time when you can actually do something with it?

Jon Lee:  An example would be you walk into a meeting, ProsperWorks knows you have this calendar event. It’s automatically recalled all of the e-mails, all of the phone calls, it’s transcribed the voice, it’s got all of the customer service tickets, it’s entered my information from outside the web about this person’s interest. It pops up because it knows, hey it’s time for the meeting and you’ve just walked into the building. And it can provide you with this whole dossier so to speak of what’s going on. And then that makes you go into the meeting knowing exactly what the customer’s challenges are, where you last left off, what your next objective is, and so forth.

This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it’s an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.

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