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Getting the Most out of Business Networking Events

Today we are going to talk about that one little thing people don’t like to talk about—business networking events. A lot of people think they’re useless. “Why even bother when we can just do everything online?” That is absolutely correct—if you do not want to succeed in your business.

Truth is, going to networking events can increase your sales very, very rapidly for little or no cost. Should you do them? Yes! Should you do them if you’re a 20-year-old business? Definitely.

Picking a Business Networking Event

Let’s start off with what kind of events you should go to. There are free events and paid for events. Picking an event is more about where would the people you’re looking for be hanging out. Don’t go to an event full of scientists if you sell something that’s not scientific or something that scientists hate. Figure out where your people hang out. Do they hang out at the local Chamber of Commerce events? Do they hang out at free meetups? Where do they hang out?

We’ve been to a lot of networking events—free events, paid events, Chamber of Commerce events, Board of Trade events, inexpensive events, expensive events. In our experience, paid events usually have a higher level of people; people more likely to do business to business type stuff. Free events tend to be more business to customer type people, or businesses that are just starting out with a little bit less money.

So if you’re selling a little bit higher ticket item, a paid event will probably get you a better audience because they’re already people that have been proven to pay for stuff, and because they’re paying for the event. It just usually gives you a different caliber of people. In the B2B, especially, paid events are awesome. In the B2C, they’re also awesome; you just get a little bit different caliber of people. Meetups are great because they’re super-specific. Meetups that cost money would, again, qualify for both.

Do’s and Don’ts of Going to Networking Events

1. Attire

Let’s talk about something really simple—how should you look when you go to a networking event? Basically, you want to look like the person people want to do business with. Sometimes you’re feeling a little bit slow, and you’re not really in the mood, and you know that most of the people that go to that event usually don’t wear a suit and tie (usually casual at best), so you think of going casual in your golf shirt as well. Most people won’t take you seriously in that attire.

Think about the last time you went to anywhere out in public, and you saw somebody dressed in T-shirt, jeans, and riders, unkempt, and unshaven. How do you think of that person? Do you think of him as being successful? Do you think that they can do a great job of selling you $300 an hour business consulting, or accounting, or a lawyer? Maybe they could. They could be incredibly skilled. But you’re not going to know it by looking at them. However, if you see somebody dressed in a suit, even if it’s not a really expensive one. Not necessarily a tie, but a nice shirt, cufflinks—subtle things. It can set people apart. It’s all about first impressions.

I hear it all the time at networking events as people make excuse for their poor attire, “I dress this way because I believe in comfort.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, the more you learn about the people that go on and on about comfort, and the reasons they’re going to be different, it’s always been “I wear all these crazy prints because it’s my identity.” Fair enough. They’re allowed to do that. But if you’re there to increase your sales quickly, we recommend you put your ego and yourself on the shelf, and do what’s going to attract you the highest quality and biggest numbers of people that want to interact and buy stuff from you.

2. Accessories

Let’s look at little things like accessories. We see this all the time with men and women—excessive jewelry, piercings, tattoos. The reality is you can be super proud of your tattoo, which is awesome. And, as long as you understand that having that tattoo is going to turn off 30 percent of the potential customers (and you’re okay with that), you shouldn’t change.

But if you’re about rapidly increasing your sales, which is what Small Business Dream is all about, I’d recommend covering up the tattoos, not because I hate him or love them. It’s about, “Do you turn off that one guy or one lady that might have brought you a $50,000 contract because of your tattoo pride?” Our advice is, don’t do anything that might turn away a customer.

A lot of people will prejudge, unfortunately. Personal preference is completely up to you. But when somebody has seventeen piercings on their face—tongue, lip, nose, eyebrow, earlobe—and has tattoos running up the side of his neck, it can be a little bit of a turn off. Unless they’re looking for a tattoo parlor owner or a piercing person, they’re probably not going to engage with that person. It’s just human nature. If that’s your business, you’re going to want to show off what you do. But that’s the type of clientele you’re going to attract and you’ll go to the networking events that are specific for that type of clientele

3. Dressing up for the occasion

We were at a branding event where there was a lady who sold her own custom clothes, and she went against the speaker quite strongly and saying, “Well, I wear my own clothes instead of the converting colors. I wear my super colorful clothes because then I’m my own billboard.”

She just went on and on, and he looked her right in the eyes and said, “So why are you here learning about branding to make your business better? Because, obviously, what you’re doing isn’t working as well as you thought.”

And then he asked the crowd and he said, “Hey everybody, if you met her saying that she has her own clothing brand, and you met her at a networking event, would you have trust in her? Would you have belief in her with the way she’s dressed?” And basically the whole room said “No.”

So there she was, wearing her clothes that she’s so proud of, and trying to sell online. They weren’t even bad-looking clothes. But the trust of people thinking that she’s the person to engage with for clothes in a business setting was not there. So her ‘billboard,’ as she thought it was, might be appropriate to some events like a fashion-centered event, but not necessarily the right thing to do in a business networking event where, maybe, she’s looking for distributors of her clothes.

We’re not here to judge people for what they do. We’re simply saying, if you want to accelerate your sales as fast as possible, dress the part of the networking event you’re going to. It’s critical.

4. Blending in with the crowd

It’s really hard to overdress, but you can definitely underdress for the event. Still, you can overdress. For instance, don’t show up to a networking event in a tuxedo and tails, unless everyone else is in tuxedo and tails. The rule of thumb is, you want to be at par with the speaker of an event. But what about business tycoons like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs? These guys dress the way they want to dress and it doesn’t seem to impact their businesses at all. The simple answer is, when you have that many ‘zeros’ in your bank account, you can dress the way you want to.

Why Go to Networking Events?

Why would somebody that’s in business for 20 years and trips across us with our Small Business Sales Blueprint tell people to start going to networking events? Why would they even think that that’s a good idea? What are reasons someone in business for 20 years might want to go reengage face to face?

Stay top-of-mind to your clients. Let’s look at seasoned companies. There’s always new people coming out. It’s branding. It’s getting your face known. We go to networking events and we’ve been doing it year after year. People are seeing us year after year at the events. That trust, that rapport starts to get built up because we’re still there. We’re still doing the same thing. They’re seeing your face over and over again, and the familiarity creates trust. And trust eventually creates referrals and puts you now top of mind, and that turns in sales.

Test things out in the real world. If you are that person who has a 20-year-old company or a-10-year old company, and you’re trying to find a way to increase your business quickly, the biggest advantage of going to a networking event is you can start testing out the things you say online, in your store, in your interactions on a whole bunch of people all at once. Say, you’re thinking of a tagline for a video online. You can go, “Hi I’m Dennis. I’m with Small Business Dream, and we are the number one global small business sales experts,” and I can look someone in the eye as I deliver that message and see if it resonates or not. It works really well for testing headlines of email campaigns and all kinds of things. And if you go there and you just smash it (you go to ten networking events in a month), you’re going to have people talking about you.

Connect with other businesses. We go to networking events to meet people. Are we going to thenetworking event to sell people? Nope. Are we going there to make friends? Yes. However, we’re not really out there just to make friends, but with an ulterior motive to make a ‘business friend.’ Don’t get engaged in a conversation which has nothing to do with business, because that means missing out on a bunch of other people that might want to know about your business. You need a ‘sniper-like’ approach where your plan is to make friends, but with a motive. You’re not there just to make friends and hope they’d ask you what you do and come. You’re there to generate enough interest in what you do from everyone you talk to that they might want to bring a friend to your business.

Get as many contacts as possible. You got to stay on point that you’re there to do business. The point is, don’t get into ‘pitch mode.’ You want to create the curiosity of what you do and then leave it alone. Go on to the next person, unless they engage you. And even if they engage you, be mindful how long you engage with that person. Remember, you only got an hour of networking in that event. Do you really want to get into a fifteen-minute pitch to one guy that probably isn’t going to buy from you anyways? Or do you want to make half the room know who you are and what you do so they can bring you people?

Business Cards or No Business Cards?

Now to the question, “Business cards, or no business cards?” There’s a couple different camps on that, and they seem to be getting more and more divided. I’ll preface this within my opinion. If you’re at a speed networking event, business cards are a must. You just can’t write down people’s information or connect with them in a meaningful way fast enough if you have eight people sharing their 30-second story with each other before moving on to the next table and doing it again. It depends on what kind of a networking event you’re at.

I’m still of the camp that having a business card is helpful. But, of course, we at Small Business Dream also understood that a lot of Millennials aren’t so much thinking the same way, and there’s lots of cases where we just plain ran out. So, we actually created the Small Business Button.

“The Button”

The Button is a free app which you can online from your appropriate store. Here’s how to use the Button app:

Let’s say you meet somebody at a networking event. You could say to him, “Hi Dennis. Good to meet you,” and simply ask his number. Type his name in the app and say, “Push the button,” (it will make a cool sound). It will auto-populate a pre-formatted message which then goes to your text messaging platform. Push the ‘send text’ and it sends that text message. You can get it free if you go to 88ur.com/button. It will automatically take you from your mobile device to your appropriate store to download the free Button app.

What’s really good about the Button app is it’s tactile. It also makes an impression (you can even change the button top to be your company instead of our company). It can be a bit of a conversation piece. People love it, they share it with others—it’s a really cool way when you don’t have business cards, or you just want to do something different that makes people remember you.

Just remember to always make them push the button; don’t do it for them. Show the phone and say, “Push the button.” Next time around, they’ll remember you as “The Button Guy.” It creates a memorable ‘hook’ to remind people of you.

Get Down to Your Data—Fast!

Another thing that happens in networking events is people will often end up with a stack—great big stack—of business cards. You go home, and they go on to your desk beside your computer. That was a Monday event. Tuesday, they move a little further away, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then finally into the circular filing cabinet—that’s the garbage—because they’re no good by now.

The worst part is, that’s your ‘gold.’ That’s the data you work hard with. So, what you really need to be doing if you’re going to be at business networking events, is have a proper introduction email and take the time to send it. And, of course, nobody has the time to send 30 emails. So, get yourself some sort of a system.

We recommend smallbizdream.com as your sales and marketing automation solution. Get some kind of automation where you can, in our case, take a picture of the card, enter some details about who they are, it goes to a live transcriber, it comes back, it triggers your email, they can be entered into a series, and all these kinds of cool stuff. Have something that collects that data and sends them a welcome email.

Don’t blast them with everything you do. You’re not there to sell them; you’re there to make a connection. The easiest way to connection is say, “Hey, nice meeting you at that event. Do you know any other cool events that are coming up?” Just ask some information. Create that relationship. Don’t immediately go into, “I’m Dennis, and I saw this, and I saw that, yada yada yada.” That’s what the people that do it wrong do, and that doesn’t actually further your relationships. That will actually make them avoid you at the next networking event you go to. You’ll actually see them, sort of, staying as far out of your orbit as possible when you do that. So don’t do it wrong; do it right.

Final Thoughts

So, let’s wrap up with everything we’ve learned thus far.”Dress for success,” look good, make sure that you’re connecting with as many people as possible. Make your 40-second elevator pitch down. Get your words down—what to say, who your ideal client is, what you do.

The worst thing you can say is, “Oh, I’m a financial planner.” You watch, like Moses parting the Red Sea. People will not come near you. And that’s only because they know what comes next. But if instead you said something as simple as, “You know what? I’m a financial planner and I focus on people in the IT community that run companies between one and four million dollars. Do you know anyone that might need my help?”

Everyone who knows somebody like that is likely to refer them to you because now you’re interesting. Now you have a specialized expertise that the other financial planners in the room don’t have. So, don’t think, “The broader you make it, the more people you will get,” because your target isn’t the people in the room. Your target is some people they know who decide that you’re interesting and specific enough to bring someone to you.

There’s a cool little trick we want to share with you using LinkedIn which is a hybrid of online and person-to-person, face to face networking. If you get access to the microphone, or you get to stand up and you get to say who you are, what you’re doing, you can get access to ‘controlling the crowd,’ so to speak, Craig’s little LinkedIn trick is pretty cool—cool enough that we should save that for our next blog.

So once again, consistency, pre-plan it and continue to go and grow your business. Make more people, make it a goal. Before you head out to your networking event, have a goal in mind. “I’m going to meet five people, ten people, whatever that number is. Go for big number, and that’ll keep your introductions short. You want to make sure you listen to them twice as much as you talk. So, if you have two minutes of things to say, find a way to get them to speak for four minutes.

Look in the mirror before you leave. Make sure you’re dressed for success. You want to be approachable (do not wear excess perfume or cologne). Be respectful. Try to help people. The best way is give people tips. Help them with things you can help them with. Offer advice, offer suggestions, do things that are good for them instead of trying to sell them. Stop trying to sell people on the first time you meet them.

Creating a Digital Customer Experience for Your Small Business

Digital customer experience (DCX) is a buzzword among tech businesses and online marketers. Oftentimes, we associate the phrase with online shopping and e-commerce websites like Amazon. Nowadays, it’s becoming more popular among traditional businesses to have a web presence and connect with potential customers.

Let’s look at how customer experience has evolved over the years, and later we’ll get into how business owners can modernize customer experience to meet the demands of digitally enabled customers.

Customer Experience Then and Now

Customer experience typically starts with a customer walking by and getting a sense of what’s inside our business. Does it look nice and tidy? Do store people greet customers by the entrance? What about the customer service? Does it make them feel comfortable, important, and cared for? It’s the overall perception about the business during the customer’s journey. A great customer experience can be the turning point from being just a casual buyer to a lifetime source of revenue for the company.

The influx of mobile technology and subsequent growth in mobile users takes customer experience to a whole new level. Innovation gave rise to digital customer experience as businesses take their brand into the virtual space and create a seamless experience for both digital and physical customer engagement.

Bookings for hotel and accommodation are a classic example. A good digital customer experience meant customers could easily find their hotels by price range, ratings, and location, and be able to book their stay and make frictionless transactions all within the app or website. Moreover, they should be able to redeem their points and make cashless transactions through the app on-site and in-store.

Small Business Dream is built around the concept of providing users with the best digital customer experience through its digital marketplace (business directory) which also doubles as a mobile wallet.

Digitizing the Customer Experience

Here’s some way you can create a digital customer experience for your small business.

1. Engage with customers on multiple channels

Multi-channel marketing has a lot of advantages compared to just one type of customer communication. Traditional advertising is pretty much a thing of the past. Today, we need to grab people’s attention through social media, providing useful content (blogs, tutorials,etc.), and using top-of-mind strategies.

Your customers’ journey begins when they pause at your catchy post on Facebook, watch your videos on YouTube, subscribe to your mailing list, or click your page on Google’s search engine results. Webhosting sites, content management systems (CMS), and sales and marketing automation enables small businesses to build an online presence much quicker and easier at a very reasonable cost. Small Business Dream sales and marketing automation provide business owners with a little bit of everything from micro-sites, landing pages, autoresponders, follow up series, Facebook and Twitter integration, and so on.

2. Focus more on inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is more likely to succeed in this day and age compared to outbound marketing particularly among millennials. According to survey it may take around 3 to 18 months from initial engagement before they come up with a decision. It’s a continuous process of educating, following up, and sustaining their interest all throughout the journey.

Outbound marketing still has its place, although they’re still pretty much “hit-and-miss” even on the web. How many times did you have to skip a YouTube ad or got distracted by a Google ad because it failed to reach its intended audience? We call this “interruption” marketing. On the other hand, inbound marketing pulls people in (not push) by giving them exactly what they want, when they want it, and how.

One of the most commonly used methods include content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), as well as using customer relationship management (CRM), and sales and marketing automation tools. Say, you want your potential customers to receive updates specific to their own interests. Small Business Dream’s survey builder will enable you to segment your contacts, as well as sales funnels to quickly assess their levels of interest.

3. Get your business listed on a mobile marketplace

Your small business needs to be searchable. You can work on improving your Google search ranking through SEO. But if you want a faster way without having to wait for months or years to rank, business directories is the way to go. Unlike Google, you’ll have better chances being listed on business directories like Small Business Dream Business Finder app as it allows users to find your business through local searches instead of getting buried underneath in Google search results.

Mobile marketplace appeals to mobile users and digitally enabled customers who want fast and easy way to find businesses around the city. They also help in making buying decisions based on ratings and comments from customers, creating a much better digital customer experience for app users. It can also take advantage of Google or Apple’s push notification service which would allow you to have direct access to your mobile users’ phone screens.

With Small Business Dream, you can have your business listed in the Business Finder app or be able to send push notifications to app users as a Small Business Dream sales and marketing automation software subscriber.

Conclusion

Creating a digital customer experience is more than ever within reach for many small businesses. With better technologies in sales and marketing automation and more people getting access to mobile services, we can bring our businesses closer to people and level the playing field for everyone. You can take your first step by visiting Small Business Dream and learn how you can create a digital customer experience for your small business.

How Small Businesses Can Benefit from Push Notifications

Push notifications have re-surfaced as a cost-effective way to increase and maintain customer engagement since its first launch in 2009 by Apple, and Google in 2010. Some of the reasons points to the recent explosion in the mobile markets and greater internet access. With consistent growth in mobile users, it’s only a matter of time before mobile becomes the new standard in customer acquisition and customer engagement.

Customers Have Gone Mobile

We bet, most, if not all of your customers are mobile users. Small businesses have been increasingly aware of this fact. According to Global Digital 2019 reports, 5.112 billion or two-thirds of the world’s population are mobile users. This, coupled with the rapid growth of social media makes mobile marketing not only useful, but a necessity for every small business.

Tech-savvy business owners are no stranger to email and social media marketing, yet many small businesses still haven’t seen the potential or shy away from push notifications. They work extremely well when combined with sales and marketing automation and, when it comes to real-time customer engagement, no method comes close to having a well-designed and well-executed push notification mobile marketing strategy.

How Push Notifications Work

One of the defining characteristics of push notifications is its ability to be seen through the user’s “heads up display,” which gives it a distinct advantage over email, SMS, and social media. These very short messages, typically 1 or 2 lines of text or around 80 characters, have been contextualized for the individual user. They can also be time-sensitive and thus relevant for a specific time only.

One example would be, “Hey Sarah, we have added 50 credits in your wallet for today’s year-end Sale. Shop now.”

There are several approaches to using push notifications as a mobile strategy for business in addition to email and social media marketing. Small Business Dream has created an app that is perfect for networking events. It allows you to push a button which will send the recipient a vcard with all your information while letting you collect some important data about that person. You never know where this connection will go or if this person will become a client, a partner, or a supplier.

Users on the customer’s side need to download and use the app in order to get notified via Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) or Apple Push Notification Service (APNS). They may or may not have the option to get notified upon install. Conversely, users may uninstall the app if they don’t want to be notified again. Use caution so as not to annoy your recipients and cause a lot of uninstalls.

Simple Push Notification Strategies You can Use

Before going on with the specific examples, be sure to observe the following when designing your push messages. They should be:

segmented
relevant
catchy
compelling
concise

Here’s some uses for push notifications for your small business:

1. Seasonal goods and services. Your messages can be tailored based on what’s currently in season. For instance, you can send push notification during hot summer days like, “Love the sun today? Stay cool and fresh with our stunning hats and sunglasses at 10% off.” This applies to special days as well, like Father’s day or Thanksgiving.

2. Markdowns on selected items. Your old inventory could be taking valuable space and you want to get rid of them as fast as possible to maintain your cash flow. You can get help by sending push messages to a specific category about a price drop. Your message can go something like, “Hey Mark, as a Nike fan, you can get 20% on selected items when you drop by at ABC Store today.”

3. Reminders for inactive app users. The nice thing about using a push notification service is it enables you to check on who uses your app more often and those who don’t (the app interacts with the app server and GCM or APNS with each launch). You can then use the data to send an automated push notification message such as, “Jeff, you have 50 unused credits in your wallet. And we’re adding 50 more because it’s Season End Sale. So hurry. Shop now.”

4. User feedback. Customer survey is an excellent tool for improving customer engagement, allowing you to segment your contacts further and be more relevant to your users. Know their preferences and ask about their experience using the product or service. Something like, “Hi Dennis, your experience matters to us. Tell us how you feel so we can better improve our service.” Insert a link below that says, “Take Survey Now” to take them to your survey page.

5. Geofencing. A bit more advanced, but if your app can pull this off, geofencing can work miracles for brick and mortar stores. By default, Google tracks your customer’s location, and you can use this feature to trigger a push notification message, say when a customer enters your store 5 times. Depending on which category they fall into, you can send a push message like, “Bet you’d like our men’s apparel on sale at 10% off.”

Conclusion

Push notification can work wonders for your business if handled well. Regardless of marketing technology, be it sales and marketing automation, or marketing strategies like email and social media marketing, your creativity and sensitivity to customers’ needs will set you apart from other businesses. It’s all about planning and execution. For small businesses that are struggling or want to increase their sales, download mobile apps like Small Business Dream that combines the power of sales and marketing automation and push notifications, enabling businesses to engage with customers on multiple touchpoints.

Turning Slow Months into Opportunities to Grow Your Business

Businesses aren’t always bustling with customers buying. Some businesses are in a lull during summer and post-holiday winter. People’s spending habits change. They go on summer trips, spend more time outdoors or they had to pinch the dollar after spending everything for the holiday season. But there are things you can do to prepare your business for changing spending habits to help see you through the dry spell. In fact, this could be an opportunity to set your business for massive growth in time for the “days of plenty.”

1. Improving the customer experience

You should always be working on ways to improve your customer’s experience. Set a priority system, if you haven’t done already. If you’re a brick and mortar store, move merchandise a bit to improve traffic and freshen your look. Set the vibe with posters, slogans, or works of art. Note how your customers shop, what they pick up, what they look at and where they wander. Anything you could think of to improve your customers’ overall experience, slowdowns can give you that opportunity.

Say you’re running a restaurant that serves Italian cuisine. Having replicas of Italian renaissance art or paintings of popular destinations can lend a traditional Italian vibe to your restaurant. Customers will start coming in, not just for the pasta, but for the whole experience. It’s one of the keys to Starbucks’ worldwide success as an iconic brand. People come not just for the daily dose of coffee; it’s the whole coffee experience they’ve grown to know and love.

Same goes if you have an e-commerce site or online store. You can use downtimes to improve your website by making it easier for customers to navigate or make buying and paying more frictionless. This brings us to our next point.

2. Working on your online presence

There’s no excuse for not having a web presence, particularly during slow months. Popular webhosting platforms have made it easier than ever to create your own. If you want to test it out, try using a sales and marketing automation tool that comes with its own page builder/editor like Small Business Dream. Unlike most generic webhosting platforms, Small Business Dream is made specifically for small business owners like you.

You don’t have to start from scratch. If you’re a restaurant owner, simply choose Restaurant from a list of templates, and you’ll be greeted with a web page specific to your industry, complete with background and featured images, sample text, and call-to-action. Slap your brand and logo to make it truly yours. Jazz it up with pictures of your mouthwatering dishes, and promote your site through email and social media.

Once you’ve established an online presence, you become more searchable, enabling your business to gain more clients through online visits, thus maintaining your cash flow even during slow months.

3. Empowering your employees

Use their spare time to level up and acquire new skills. Teach them how to be a sales and marketing pro. With cutting edge technology in sales and marketing automation, we can condense the learning process significantly. What has taken many top earners and marketing legends to master can now be learned in less than a year at just a fraction of the cost (before we have Internet, they had to spend hours finding leads and qualify each one over the phone).

Think of how many hours you’ll save by getting your team up to speed. They can reach their goal, say 10 to 20 leads per day, in just one or two hours instead of eight. Multiply that with the number of hours per week and the number of sales people in your team and see how your company can save hundreds of hours for other productive endeavors. This could mean more sales and bigger opportunities to grow your business.

4. Finding business partners

Successful businesses are built through partnerships. In retail businesses, this could mean finding the best suppliers that would allow you to get the highest profit margins, or in the case of auto repair shops, provide you with both high quality aftermarket and genuine OEM parts at a lower price. Having less customers during these slow months means you’ll have more time looking for these people.

There are many ways to find partners. One way involves finding business partners through social media. Of course, not everyone on social media are genuinely interested teaming up with you (some aren’t even real people, i.e., bots and fake accounts). You’ll need a tool to curate your “likes” or “follows” to see if their businesses do exist or if they really want to build serious business relationship with you. Small Business Dream offers a way to curate your leads through the Social Connect function. This allows you to find potential partners and weed out bad ones in one sweep.

A second option involves meeting up with people in business conferences, expos, and networking events. This requires social skills, a compelling business idea, and the ability to handle objections. This type of event allows you to network with likeminded people who you can partner with – or at the very least become a customer. You’ll have to own this skill through experience and gaining a lot of exposure in social events.

Conclusion

Regardless of the industry you’re in, you’ll find many practical uses of sales and marketing automation for your business. Struggling to find high quality leads? Train your realtors and insurance agents to set up sales funnels and survey pages to qualify unlimited number of leads. Other businesses like home improvement, dining, beauty care, and repair service, can also find lots of creative ways of using sales and marketing automation. Need more sales ideas? Small Business Dream can lend a hand through their mentoring services and help oversee your sales people.

As you can see, slowdowns doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being less productive; you’re simply channeling your resources to further your business goals over the long haul.

How Small Businesses Will Pave the Way To Adopt Cryptocurrency For The Mainstream

There’s been a lot of talk about cryptocurrency in recent years, but not many people can actually use it to pay for everyday goods and services – yet. Most are into it just for the quick buck while some were just HODLing and waiting for mainstream adoption. However, more small businesses are accepting crypto.

If we know that cryptocurrency is here to stay, how do you prepare your business for the coming of this new era in cashless transactions? And when is the right time to start learning and actually using cryptocurrency in our day to day transactions?

Increased Adoption for Business Use

Cryptocurrency has been adopted by many small businesses across Western, European, and some Asian countries with more than 14,000 venues worldwide currently accepting cryptocurrency as of late. Adoption has doubled from 2015 to the present and big institutional investors are stepping in this 2019.

Data from Coinmap.org reveals an interesting growth in businesses accepting cryptocurrency payments from 2013 to the present:

2015 – 6,970 venues
2016 – 8,035 venues (up by 15.28%)
2017 – 11,189 venues (up by 39.25%)
2018 – 14,124 venues (up by 26.15%)

Small businesses are starting to impact mainstream adoption and we could see a dramatic change on how we do businesses in the next 3 to 5 years. Businesses will have to adapt quickly if they are to stay competitive and relevant with their new breed of customers (esp., millennials and tech-savvy users).

Here’s how small businesses are paving the way towards mainstream adoption:

Easy access to cashless transactions. Before cryptocurrency, banks and financial institutions have the sole authority over who may or may not have access to their financial services. Fast forward to our present day, people are now able to transact peer-to-peer with their mobile phones and have access to cryptocurrency in a multitude of ways from mining, to crypto-exchanges, online and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, airdrops, bounty hunting, and the list goes on. Small businesses help further the cause by making it much easier for people to spend their cryptocurrencies much like their debit and credit cards.

Change people’s attitude about crypto. It’s hard to imagine living on cryptocurrency until someone walks the talk and shows you how he did it. Olaf Carlson-Wee, former Head of Risk at Coinbase, proved it is possible to live on Bitcoin with help from businesses accepting Bitcoin payments like Overstock, CheapAir, Shopify, and Newegg. Small businesses are also doing their share by usinig cryptocurrency gateways and processors like Coinbase and BitPay, enabling them to get paid in cryptocurrency just like with any other currency. Users will stop thinking cryptocurrency only as a store of value and start using it the way it supposed to work.

Accelerate growth in cryptocurrency users. Cryptocurrency’s market cap is nowhere near to fiat – at least, for now. But what if people started using cryptocurrency to pay their bills, groceries, and stuff instead of being just a store of value? Imagine what this can do to a cryptocurrency’s value. Businesses will continue to move cryptocurrency forward by helping the unbanked to get as much access to cashless transactions as people with bank accounts. Check out useofbitcoin.info for a list of small businesses currently accepting Bitcoin payments over the internet or go to coinmap.org to find local shops and stores accepting cryptocurrency payments near you.

Dealing with Fees, Confirmation Times, and Volatility

Business owners who are new to cryptocurrency are reluctant to the idea of accepting cryptocurrency when they hear about fees, confirmation times, and volatility associated with it. But this will be a thing of the past with recent developments in second-layer solutions (e.g., Lightning Network) and payment processors (e.g., BitPay).

Here’s how small businesses can start accepting cryptocurrencies and their pros and cons:

1. Accepting cryptocurrency payments through mobile wallets –Pretty straightforward. Business owners setup their own wallets like Copay (Bitcoin only) or Jaxx (multi-currency) and have customers send their payments straight to the wallet address by scanning a QR code. It’s the old way of doing things, which can have some advantages and disadvantages for the business owner.

Pros:

private keys are stored securely within the device
customers pay for transaction fees
no service fees

Cons:

risks associated with unconfirmed transactions (3-6 confirmations are needed to be secure)
faster confirmation means higher transaction fees for the customer
no protection from volatility

2. Cryptocurrency merchant services – Merchant services like BitPay reduces the risk associated with cryptocurrency’s volatility while making it easier for both customers and business owners to send and receive cryptocurrencies. Small businesses can now have the option to take cryptocurrency payment as is, or convert them straightaway into its fiat value during the sale. There would be some tradeoffs for using the service but in return, business owner will also get some of the good stuff.

Pros:

users own the private keys in some payment processor app (e.g. BitPay)
risk associated with volatility can be reduced significantly
fast and secure

Cons

service fees
still requires confirmation (BitPay requires at least 6)
some issues with compatibility

3. Payment channels through lightning wallets – Although still considered nascent, second-layer solutions such as Lightning technology is already showing a lot of promise. One of the earliest implementations such as Éclair wallet allows merchants to open channels (which are basically just smart contracts) with regular customers and transact indefinitely with as many micro-transactions as they wish without worrying about fees or confirmation times, and only pays transaction fees when closing the channel (time lock expires or both parties decides to close the channel).

Pros:

“lightning-fast” transactions
near-zero transaction fees
users keep their private keys

Cons

still in the works and are mostly experimental
may require business owners to run their own lightning nodes (partial or full copy of an updated blockchain ledger)
same with using regular mobile or hardware wallet, users are pretty much exposed to volatility.

Conclusion

There’s never been a perfect time to learn about cryptocurrency than today. It’s only a matter of time before cryptocurrency is used for everyday transactions. It could be just around the corner or we might have to wait for another five to ten years. Either way, it sure won’t hurt if people will start learning about cryptocurrency as early as now and be a step ahead rather than trying to catch up with the competition.

If you’re a small business, Metropolee Team Building System (MetroTBS) can help you build your customer base by making it easier to reach out to new and existing customers. MetroTBS has a business finder app to help you connect with your customers and with over 100 features, the possibilities are limitless.