ScaleX, Inc : Expediting The Sales Process Through Innovative Solutions

Founded in 2017, ScaleX is a leading firm that resolves the sales pipelines issues by leveraging artificial intelligence and sales automation. It offers an entire suite of services to fill your pipeline each month, guaranteed. With swift growth in mind for businesses, the venture helps sales professionals increase revenue by focusing on the only two things that matter in sales – increasing frequency and competency.

Chad Burmeister, Founder & CEO started this firm when he saw that the sales software as a service market was getting over-crowded by new entrants. But to be successful, experience in sales and marketing operations and deep domain expertise in tools and technology were required. In early March of 2020, when the world had to deal with the Coronavirus for the first time, work from home became the only way to sell, and ScaleX.ai became more important to B2B companies than ever before.

Chad Burmeister is not only the CEO of ScaleX, but he’s also ScaleX’s biggest client! He has a successful career in building high-velocity sales teams at companies including Cisco-WebEx, Riverbed Technology, ON24, ConnectAndSell, and RingCentral. He was the Founding Chapter President of the AA-ISP Silicon Valley Chapter which was voted two years in a row as “Chapter of the Year”, Director of AA-ISP Frontline Friday, and Colorado Chapter President to help advance the profession of inside sales to the next level of professionalism and performance. Chad is currently on the team who launched the Denver Enterprise Sales Forum. Chad has
been voted Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professional by the AA-ISP 10 years in a row (2010 – 2019) and continues to be at the forefront of inside sales and high-velocity selling strategy & execution.

ScaleX has used it’s own solutions to more than 2X sales each year for the past 3 years. Chad is committed to the inside sales profession – and has earned the title of Top 25 Inside Sales Leader for the past 10 years by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals. Chad also recently launched SalesClass.ai, the first and only “Netflix for sales” platform that delivers relevant sales training content through live and on-demand training.

Message from the CEO
“Make sure to check out SalesClass.ai.
When you sign up for a subscription,
your first month is just $1!
We hope to see you there.”

Advanced Solutions

ScaleX offers three core solutions – ScaleX Social, ScaleX Pipeline as a Service and ScaleX Introductions. ScaleX Social enables sales and business professionals to connect with hundreds (or even thousands) of their best prospects on LinkedIn, passively. ScaleX Pipeline as a Service delivers data + digital outreach + dials and regularly delivers 3 years of outbound in 3 months for clients. ScaleX Introductions leverages powerful artificial intelligence to determine the best influencers to reach out in order to ask for their help in making introductions to a target list of prospects. A recent client landed a meeting with the CMO of Microsoft as a result of this solution.

Awards & Recognitions

Not only has Chad has earned the coveted Top 25 Inside Sales Leader for 10 years in a row, his company ScaleX.ai was voted Top 10 AI for Sales Solution in 2019, was ranked a Vendor Neutral Top 100 technology company and ranked in the top 5% of growth companies in SaaS for 2019 by Nathan Latka.

Point Of View on Current Market

Although 2020 has had a lot of very deep seeded challenges, out of every challenge comes opportunity. We’ve seen that as people move from working at an office to work from home, the skills and technologies that have been mainstream for inside sales professionals are now getting adopted by remote field sellers everywhere. Technology like Zoom Video is obvious, but also Social Selling Technology like ScaleX and other AI-related prospecting technology is now becoming mainstream too.

Hurdles on the Way

The biggest challenge at ScaleX was in March 2019 when company revenues went from $100,000/month to $30,000/month. When a company doesn’t have investors, that’s a big dip. The positive outcome from that experience – they learned to double down on “ScaleX powered by ScaleX” where they use their own technology to drive pipeline more than they did previously.

Contributing Factors behind Success

“You are the five people you hang out with” is a phrase I’ve heard Jourdan DuFort on our sales team use before. In 2019, Gerhard Gschwandtner challenged a group of 25-30 leaders to find mentors. So I did. Robert White is an expert in organizational design and mindset, Townsend Wardlaw, CRO is a mindset expert and incredible CRO. Rich Blakeman is the former SVP from Miller Heiman, the biggest sales training organization in the world. All of these individuals and more are now part of my daily interactions. These strategic thinkers help us drive the company strategy and pivot as required.

Creativity And Innovation in The Workspace

“Recently, the sales pipeline was down. Rather than call a meeting and punch people in the mouth, I held a meeting with a blank screen and asked the team to strategize on a way forward. The solutions were amazing – far better than if I would have beat the team-up that day”, Chad Burmeister shared.

Customer Relationship

“Client Success is the lifeblood of ScaleX. Many of the processes and technologies that we role out are true “magic”. They can enable a sales team to 10X the number of sales touches, at higher quality, and drive 3-5X in the pipeline. Getting the rocket off the launch pad is important since launches can be delayed at times. So we recently deployed Monday.com for client onboarding. So now we provide the best technology, the best dashboards (from ClicData) and the best onboarding experience in the industry”, stated Chad.

Road Ahead

ScaleX will continue to innovate and bring to market technologies and solutions that are highly unique and different designed to outpace cheaper and less effective solutions. As we scale from $337k to $1.2M to $2M+ in 2020, we’re looking at M&A opportunities to bring the best-of-breed players under one brand.

Unified Office : A VANGUARD,UNLEASHING GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES FOR BUSINESSES

Leveraging communications technology and cloud-based infrastructure to enhance SMB workforce productivity

Incorporated in 2011, Unified Office, an innovative and leading-edge managed services provider is the brainchild of Ray Pasquale, CEO & Founder. The firm provides reliable, hybrid cloud-based business communications services, Internet of Things (IoT) services and real-time data analytics.

Unified Office helps Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB) adapt to an always-changing consumer and business marketplace.

THE MAN BEHIND UNIFIED OFFICE AND ITS JOURNEY

Since its inception, Ray Pasquale has been leading Unified Office on a robust growth path, scaling the business, and forging alliances. Ray’s deep domain expertise and rich experience is rooted in serving some of the telecom industry’s giants including Cascade Communications, Ascend Communications, Lucent Technologies and Sonus Networks.

THE ROLLER COASTER RIDE

Ray Pasquale started Unified Office because he saw that companies were becoming increasingly virtualized.
Geographic distance had to become irrelevant. The only way to accomplish this was to first make Voice over the Internet (VoIP) work reliably without the need for expensive legacy techniques like T1 phone circuits. Once this was achieved it was time to make their VoIP service go to work for small and medium-sized businesses.

Many VoIP/UC companies came into being in the early 2000s largely by disrupting the pricing of the legacy
PBX phone market while offering little to no innovation. This came primarily from centralizing a PBX in the
cloud that would handle hundreds of subscribers independent of location via a VoIP desk phone. Because the
Internet was not built for real-time applications like voice communications, there was an inherent lack of quality and reliability – and a missed, garbled or dropped call is a missed business opportunity.

Unified Office transformed this market much in the same way Steve Jobs transformed the music player market
back in 2001 with the introduction of the iPod and later the iPhone.

Unified Office’s unique architecture is the result of the team’s collective 150 years of experience in both the
telecommunications service provider and large enterprise data networking industries. Their executive team has designed protocols, built scalable products, and integrated, deployed, and supported carrier-grade equipment in many of the largest converged networks around the world.

EMERGING AS A DIFFERENTIATOR

Here are the key points that make Unified Office stand out:

Unified Office offers the highest quality, most reliable VoIP service on the market.
It is the only company that can provide high quality, reliable VoIP service without the need for expensive legacy T1 or MPLS circuits.
No other company offers the range of customized features and vertical market applications that Unified Office does.
Unified Office ensures that no business is lost due to a loss of phone calls, particularly at peak call times.
Their highly customizable and configurable services are based on open source systems that constantly evolve. As a result, their services will never be obsolete.
The team focuses on developing pragmatic solutions and products that will positively impact their customer’s operations and more importantly their top and bottom lines. They help them adapt and change at the speed of the market.
They help improve operational excellence through Real-Time Data Analytics, IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) products and services.
Unified Office offers all of this within the context of a managed service that allows their customers to focus on running their businesses.
Unified Office is renowned for offering the highest level of business continuity and reliability, avoiding downtime and resultant revenue losses by implementing multiple levels of network resilience for their customers. Their patented High Quality Rounting Protocol HQRP provides rapid problem isolation, repair and dynamic rerouting to create an always available communications network. Techniques include LTE broadband backup and PSTN failover.

SPEARHEADING CUTTING-EDGE SOLUTIONS

Unified Office’s business communications suite of offerings includes:

Total Connect Now^SM , (TCN^SM ) business quality VoIP and UC services, built for companies who can’t afford to miss calls.
Visual Performance Suite^TM advanced business analytics.
TCNOPS^TM (Total Connect Now Operations Performance Suite^TM ), an IoT service layer designed to help improve operations and performance levels, for example monitoring and reporting on refrigeration equipment for restaurant customers.
TCNIQ^TM , an AI solution that enables users to detect customer sentiment in recorded calls, a big time saver over having to listen to each call one by one.
Virtual Communications Console^TM , a virtual operator console that integrates with practice management software and other vertical market CRM solutions.
Visual Call Flow Builder^TM , a simple, visual graphical user interface that enables customers and resellers with the capability to build, design and manage their own call flows.
TCNOMS^TM (Total Connect Now Operations Management Suite^TM ) an easy to use portal enabling customers to manage and configure their services themselves anywhere they happen to be.

HURDLES ALONG THE WAY

“We have faced all of the challenges that confront any rapidly growing company. Dealing with the COVID-19
pandemic highlighted the strengths of our platform. For example, we were able to help our customers quickly
transition to a remote working environment and also developed a contactless pickup and delivery service
product for our restaurant customers,” said Ray Pasquale.

MAJOR CHALLENGES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

We live in a real-time, hyper-connected, push-button world today, which is evident in the ubiquitous adoption of smart phones, on demand taxi and rideshare services, near real-time product delivery and ever-increasing broadband speeds. People expect an immediate response when shopping for things thanks to companies like Amazon, for example. Unified Office came into being to help businesses adapt to an ever-changing market.

There has been a lot of talk in the marketplace about digital transformation. According to Unified Office Founder and CEO, Ray Pasquale, “It is only through industry specific innovation, customization and market differentiation that you can help your customers achieve the best top and bottom-line results. Yes, digital
transformation is important, but it must achieve meaningful results for people or else it doesn’t matter.”

THE DRIVING FORCE

Unified Office’s core mission is to help businesses of all types monetize their communications services and
solve problems that are unique to them. In this way they help companies adapt to an always changing consumer and business marketplace. They do this first by being relentless innovators providing their customers with reliable, high quality voice communications. They then make VoIP go to work for their customers by developing simple, elegant, easy-to-use value-added services and products that improve the effectiveness of their business operations and respond to the needs of their customers at the speed of the market.

“ Quality, dependability, innovation, and support are core to our values.”- Ray Pasquale

MOTIVATING CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION IN THE WORKSPACE

Ray Pasquale shared, “We pride ourselves in providing a safe and nourishing work environment that values and welcomes open communication and close collaboration across teams, encourages employees to think outside of the box, fosters creativity and new ideas, and empowers our employees to make their own decisions. We strive to appreciate our employees’ uniqueness, diversity and individual skills and to encourage personal growth.”

BUILDING LONG TERM CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

The Unified Office team creates long-term customer relationships by delivering on what they promise and by
providing products that are meaningful to their customers, while also giving them the very best customer service. They go above and beyond by proactively watching over them twenty-four hours a day seven days a
week.

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

Unified Office has received two patents for its Highest Quality Routing Protocol™ (HQRP™) transmission
network. The HQRP™ network platform introduces an entirely new way of transmitting highly reliable, high
quality, real-time business class voice communications over broadband networks that is radically different from any other offerings on the marketplace.

Moreover, the company has been honoured with numerous awards for innovation from Light Reading, TMCnet, Computer Reseller News, ChannelVision Magazine, the NH Business Review, Compass Intelligence,
MD Tech Review, Insight Success, Silicon 70, and CEO Views, among others.

ROAD AHEAD

Looking ahead, Unified Office will continue to evolve and transform the communications marketplace and to
help businesses of all types adapt to the speed of market changes that occur at a pace that is historically unprecedented. There has never been a better time for a company like Unified Office.

ehotel, THE LEADER IN ONLINE INTEGRATED HOTEL SOLUTIONS

Our key driver of success remains to continuously look for innovative ways to provide our corporate customers with a streamlined end-to-end experience in the hotel segment.- Fritz Zerweck

Founded with a vision to simplify the hotel search and booking process, today, ehotel has set a new benchmark in online booking for corporate travellers. A former partner of I:FAO, a major corporation that still develops software applications for business travel, ehotel was among the first to build a hotel booking portal. After breaking away from I:FAO two years later and supported by a group of investors, the company has grown from a small independent online portal into an internationally successful hotel solutions provider for corporate business. The original idea remains the same, even though they now provide a much broader service, from searching to planning to billing.

In 2004, ehotel switched to OTA (Open Travel Alliance) software, the global standard for the travel industry.
Their central billing solution for business travel and events was introduced in 2006. The state-of-the-art meta-search technology at ehotel, which automatically integrates corporate travel policies and gives business
travellers or travel agents an overview of availability for over seven million hotel rooms, was developed in
2011. ehotel introduced its own virtual credit card in 2015, and payment via PayPal in 2017.

SERVICE PORTFOLIO

By pioneering a service that can compare all available options, ehotel paved the way for the many hotel
booking platforms that exist today. Backed by its leading and innovative meta-technology, the company
offers added value in the form of savings and quality improvements. ehotel provides a comprehensive search
among all leading hotel room providers and tour operators as well as reliable tools that simplify the booking
process for companies, travel agents, and business travellers, from making individual bookings to organizing
big conferences. ehotel’s modular business model offers corporate customers a comprehensive, end-to-end
service portfolio that includes planning, booking, payment and billing, and even claiming VAT refunds on
behalf of customers.

Besides, ehotel equip their corporate customers with powerful tools like the Rate Manager, to audit negotiated rates, or their advanced analytics tool, to help companies increase the performance of their own hotel programme and make data-driven decisions.

Moreover, the hotel platform offers travel managers and buyers a range of additional tools, including MICE
purchasing and participant management systems.

What makes ehotel stand out is its commitment to sustainability. The focus of the company in product development is to introduce additional features to help customers easily search, find and book hotels that meet their environmental requirements. For this purpose, ehotel has partnered with leading sustainability
certification providers like GreenSign, Green Key, Green Globe, Travelife, Certified Green Hotel, EU Ecolab,
Tourcert, and EMAS-EU, so that ehotel content can be filtered for hotels that meet the sustainability criteria.

Furthermore, ehotel contributes to offsetting the CO2 emissions of business trips by providing reports on the
CO2 emissions of overnight stays.

THE MAN BEHIND THE BRAND

ehotel CEO Fritz Zerweck’s vision of offering a perfect all-round service for business travellers worldwide is
shared throughout the company. ehotel’s international success is based on teamwork, developing new ideas and solving problems together. Bright minds and helping hands are appreciated both by the management and among the staff.

The main goal is to support corporate businesses throughout the entire hotel booking process – from sourcing to booking, to payment and invoicing – to achieve savings and quality improvements. In this respect, Zerweck’s merit lies in his ability to lay the ground for everyone at ehotel to capitalis e on their strengths. The innovative meta-search technology was developed under Zerweck’s leadership, and providing a high level of customer service remains a top priority for the company.

A GLIMPSE OF INDUSTRY

During the pandemic, travelling has become challenging, and there is a lot of uncertainty. ehotel supports
travellers and hotels through a blog and newsletter, which provide up-to-date information about COVID-19-
related measures, hygiene regulations, and travel warnings to ensure the health and safety of hotel guests and staff. The meta-search technology of ehotel is programmed to only show currently valid and
available contingents. During the lockdown, ehotel remained productive, using the temporary decline in
bookings to review and optimize current processes, relaunch their website, and provide more filter functions
and search options. In this time of global crisis, wanting to gain advantages seems cynical, and ehotel have no desire to revel in the failure of competitors. They continue to rely on their competence and core principles to support customers, regardless of what the future brings.

HICCUPS ALONG THE WAY

The greatest challenge for ehotel has always been anticipating technological developments to keep the service relevant and deliver an added value. The next goal is to map the entire complex of hotels in the business travel segment, without any breaks in the system. However, it is evident that the tourism industry is currently facing a huge overhaul. Despite economic and social problems, which will certainly have an impact for a long time to come, the ehotel team is cautiously optimistic that by joining forces, they will emerge from the crisis stronger by finding new ways of keeping business travellers safe and comfortable in the future.

A MOTIVATED AND VALUED WORKFORCE

“What we convey to the outside evolves from what we experience within: We value our employees as individuals, and they feel comfortable as part of the ehotel team. We believe that this is vital for creating optimal working conditions. In addition, our centrally located offices offer modern workplaces with state-of-the-art equipment, a pleasant atmosphere, good communication structures, fair payment, regular training opportunities to grow personally and professionally, flexible working hours, and management keeping their eyes and ears open. If there are any issues, we address them right away”, Fritz Zerweck.

CORPORATE ETHOS

“There is no particular tactic or secret strategy for building long-term customer loyalty. All you need is common sense. After all, we are all customers ourselves: at the supermarket, at the tailor’s or online. Therefore, we know from experience that customers want their needs and problems to be taken seriously. And that is exactly what we do: our service is flexible and responds individually to the needs of travellers and their companies. We know that satisfied customers keep coming back, and we do our utmost to maintain the highest level of customer satisfaction. We are a data-driven company: we perform A/B testing to see what drives customer engagement and, in order to be fully effective, we constantly review our customer feedback loop, taking into consideration feedback from all possible channels,”, says Fritz Zerweck.

FEATHERS IN THE CAP

ehotel has been honoured by many independent institutions and magazines – including Focus, Focus Money,
Die Welt, WirtschaftsWoche, Deutsche Gesellschaft fürVerbraucherstudien, Stiftung Warentest, The CEO
Views –, showing that the team is on the right track. These awards and recognitions are also a constant
incentive for the team to continue setting high goals, and to always account for social and technological
changes in their all-round service.

FUTURE ROADMAP

Business trips will continue to be necessary in the future, because video conferences and Facetime calls cannot completely replace direct, face-to-face communication. Negotiations with several partners at a time, company events, workshops and site visits are centred on personal encounters and shared experiences.

Fritz Zerweck explains “Our industry thrives when people are able to come together physically. We want to help business travellers to be safe and focus on important issues such as sustainability and the environment. We are not only working to eliminate all breaks in the system and ensure a seamless digital cycle but are also focussing on expanding our filter functions and developing more tools to stay relevant to the values of our time.”

“ehotel’s strategy is to partner with relevant stakeholders and solution providers to seamlessly integrate our company into the system landscape of our corporate customers. Instead of investing money in transactional advertising, we put it towards improving the quality of our product and connectivity to deliver an end-to-end experience to our customers. This formula has been driving our success for almost 20 years.”- Fritz Zerweck

Creating great places to work

Studies from Gallup and a plethora more have, by now, established from various perspectives that creating a great place to work has significant tangible and intangible returns including enhancing employee productivity and loyalty in the process increasing customer satisfaction resulting in outstanding company performance to the investors.

Studies on great places to work

There are a number of such studies which focus significantly on compensation and benefits as a key element to being a great place to work. One such study published in HBR sometime back, talks about a great employer being able to take care of an employee’s well-being from four different angles: emotional, mental, physical and spiritual wherein ingredients to a great workplace include factors like a well-equipped gymnasium etc. As a senior HR leader, I have got the opportunity to work with multiple leaders across a number of organizations and I have witnessed managers struggle with the question of how they can contribute and help the situation. They are not, of course, expected to sponsor the gymnasium or Starbucks coffee costs and yet, has to remain accountable to the quote that “People do not leave organizations, they leave their bosses”. So, in this discussion, we are going to focus on steps HR managers can take, in order to help their organization be a great place to work.

A few years back, Sirota Consulting, in collaboration with Wharton, conducted a survey of about a million people from different companies. The study found that there are three basic things people want at work: a) Fairness or Equity, b) Sense of achievement from their work and c) Camaraderie & Sense of Belongingness.

From another similar study, it was found that the top five factors to boost employee’s enthusiasm were: a) Creation of Self-Managed Teams, b) Reward, c) Performance driven Profit-Sharing Pay Framework, d) Recognition and e) Job Admiration & Security

And then there is the famous study by Dan Pink which explains in very lucid terms, how Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose are the key elements of what motivate people to perform and contribute

From all these studies, it may be observed that there are a multitude of steps that can be taken to help create a great place to work which may be more behavioral practice driven and may need relatively much lesser dollars than what would see-saw the budget.

From another angle, a review of what really makes an organization a great place to work will reveal that it is mostly the innovative ways of making things work or the best practices that strike employees as outstanding and makes the workplace a delightful and desirable place to be, be it in the form of facilitating a leave exchange program or an initiative to a delightful candidate experience by optimizing candidate waiting time between interviews or any other such ideas.

Ensuring Fairness or Equity

One of the foremost expectations of an employee from an organization (mostly his/her manager) is to act in a fair and just manner. Any kind of favoritism or perceived bias can impact the perception of a great workplace pretty adversely. Within this category are also included a lot of issues which, on the surface, seem like compensation related issues but are at the core, concerns arising from a real or perceived lack of equality.

Career Guidance

In addition to the additional benefits and innovative practices, a large chunk of people (more so, millennials) rate the existence of career progression paths and internal opportunities as a vital ingredient for an organization to be seen as a great place to work. HR managers can play an active role here by investing time in coaching the employee on his skills and strengths and guide him towards the right career opportunities – even such discussions are valued by the employees and managers also get to be more holistic mentors and well-wishers and not only as administrative managers. Even with behavioral practices and implementing innovative ideas, they are much more controllable factors unlike introducing an organization wide benefit which may be an uncontrollable factor for that people manager or leader.

Igniting Passion& Job Admiration

Another key area in which people managers can play a vital role is to be able to ignite, arguably, the single most important factor which defines the level of contribution from a person – passion. Unfortunately, that’s something which does not happen very often – sometimes, due to immediate work pressures while sometimes, due to a lack of awareness in the manager and yet sometimes, maybe due to a general lack of interest or ignorance. Interestingly, this is a phenomenon we do not hear about, in varied areas like defense forces or sports teams or music bands and so on – the reason being that the people joining those teams are cognizant about their passion and do not require someone to generate it anew, which is mostly untrue in the corporate world. There are many instances when productivity has been witnessed to go up significantly by teams once they have been made aware, responsible and proud of the purpose that they are trying to achieve together. If organizations can ensure this one aspect about identifying and tapping into an individual’s passion or dream and help the individual realize that dream or progress towards it, it would have moved a giant leap closer to becoming a great place to work.

Sense of Achievement or Purpose

In the words of noted author and motivational speaker, Simon Sinek, “Because a true sense of purpose is deeply emotional, it serves as a compass to guide us to act in a way completely consistent with our values and beliefs… Purpose is human, not economic”. Many times, its said that the only or primary difference between successful and unsuccessful people is the formers’ extraordinary sense of purpose. An organization, with the help of its good leaders can enable people to see and focus on that purpose – giving their jobs or tasks a new meaning.

Respect and Recognition

Every individual loves being praised for his capabilities or achievements. Recognition, even in its simplest but most genuine forms, goes a long way in creating an impression of an organization being a great place to work. And it does not necessarily have to be accompanied with huge budgets. Conversely, every individual despises lack of respect and any organization striving to be a great workplace must ensure respect for the individual at the workplace.

Sense of Belonging

There are multiple drivers that can be leveraged to make an organization a great place to work – both tangible and intangible. Like in the case of Purpose, this is human. But as human beings, we tend to have stronger bonds created by the relationships we build and the associated intangibles, and organizations can create great workplaces by creating and leveraging such bonds and relationships – of course, once the material fundamentals are ensured.

Top 10 tips that make you a good manager

It’s not easy to be a manager, and especially a good one. But what does a good manager mean? A manager does not have to have superpowers to be good and he is allowed to make mistakes. He must listen and understand his team, motivate it, be open to proposals, manage the business, solve problems and delegate tasks, depending on the abilities of each team member. In other words, to coordinate the company in such a way that the business achieves success, and the work is not a burden for the employees. Do you face all these challenges? If not or if you feel you still have something to improve, here are some tips to help you:

1. Communicate effectively with the team!

Communication is the most important aspect of management. Make sure that you train your team well and that you present, as well as possible, your plan and vision, when it comes to certain projects or objectives that you set.

Make employees understand that you are always willing to listen to their problems and help them overcome them. Also, assure them that they can ask questions without feeling embarrassed. It is important to work constantly with the team to solve problems quickly and to encourage business development.

2. Motivate your team, constantly!

The team must be motivated to maintain its productivity. Do not think that they are obliged to perform, under any circumstances, the work for which they are paid. You have to understand that sometimes there are less good days or tasks that are difficult to accomplish. Then you need to step in and encourage your employees to work harder. Motivation is closely linked to productivity, and this influences the company’s success with Seamless Search.

3. Manage finances efficiently!

Constantly monitor cash flow and find out how you can successfully manage money in a company. A manager has the task of increasing turnover.

4. Befriend the team!

A manager does not have to be cold and authoritarian. The position already inspires authority, so there is no need to adopt an attitude of superiority. To create a pleasant work environment, you need to be friends with your employees. And this is a form of staff motivation and productivity growth.

5. Be open-minded!

You have an important function, but you have to be realistic. Admit that you don’t know them all and accept other perspectives or ideas. Allow employees to come up with proposals where needed and congratulate them on their involvement. Teamwork always brings performance.

6. Delegate responsibilities properly!

To delegate responsibilities is to get to know each member of your team. Identify everyone’s abilities, talents and inclinations so that you can distribute the appropriate tasks to them. Every employee can excel in some ways, and if everyone gives their best, the business will evolve constantly.

7. Celebrate achievements!

Always praise employees when they manage to achieve an important goal. This will convince them that their work is appreciated, will increase their morale and will motivate them further. At the same time, the other members of the team will be encouraged to work harder.

8. Use a helper software!

It’s not easy to monitor employee activity, but artificial intelligence can help. With an ERP management software you make sure that the employees respect the deadlines of the tasks and that all the company’s activity is organized. Get the best ERP Romania and you will see the difference.

9. Use mistakes to your advantage!

Mistakes should not demoralize you, but be important lessons. First, analyze the errors in depth to see what caused them and how you can avoid such things in the future. A mistake does not make you a less good manager.

10. Respect employees!

Employees must be respected, even if they are subordinate to you. Make sure they don’t feel embarrassed in public. Sensitive topics should only be approached in private. Criticism can be constructive, but you need to know how to “pack” it. Otherwise, you will only demoralize them, which lowers productivity. Therefore, a good manager must know how to coordinate the activity of employees, to constantly collaborate with them and to use all the resources to the advantage of the business.

Read about:- MOST IMPORTANT LINKEDIN RESOURCES FOR B2B MARKETING

Most Important LinkedIn Resources for B2B Marketing

LinkedIn trumps other social networks when it comes to generating qualified B2B leads. This is a known fact among savvy B2B marketers, and it’s backed by numbers.

Based on compiled data reports, 92% of B2B marketers prefer positioning their organizations on LinkedIn over other social networks, and the platform is 277% more effective at lead generation than Twitter and Facebook.

Aside from those numbers, LinkedIn is also equipped with various functions and features which opened a lot of doors for marketers and advertisers who are focused on driving traffic and branding.

But before we delve into how you can make the most out of these resources, let’s take a quick look at some interesting facts and statistics which paved the way for LinkedIn being the B2B marketing powerhouse it is today.

Pew Research Center’s reports revealed that LinkedIn users mostly consist of educated individuals and highly paid professionals. Even 49% of adults in the US who use the platform are college graduates, and 45% of them have an estimated yearly income of over $75,000, which is higher than the average annual earnings of Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram users.

A LinkedIn study showed that 49% of B2B buyers look at vendors’ LinkedIn profiles when doing research about them, while 44% have actually found potential vendors by looking at shared connections.

The site itself revealed that it is the most used social media platform among Fortune 500 companies. LinkedIn has a high concentration of B2B’s target audience, as over 20% of users consist of educated and influential decision-makers and senior-level executives.

Based on a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to implement content marketing campaigns. The study further revealed that 78% of them say that the platform is an effective content marketing tool.

Recent statistics show that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, while Twitter takes second place with 13% and Facebook the third spot with 7%.

It’s already established that LinkedIn is a valuable tool to grow your network and reach out to like-minded professionals. Now, let’s make sure that these three marketing opportunities on the biggest professional network are not overlooked.

Using LinkedIn as an Inbound Marketing Tool

By now, you probably know how to enhance your online presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google. Leveraging LinkedIn advertising platform, which features an excellent selection of audience targeting and segmentation tools, is also a great way to build a community around your business.

If done right, running LinkedIn ads can help generate a steady flow of quality B2B leads and ultimately increase sales conversion. How to start?

Identify Target Audience

This should be a no-brainer. Any marketing campaign is doomed to failure if it didn’t start with determining the target market first and ensuring that you’re deploying the ads to the right audience.

As a B2B marketer, it’s not possible to tap into the minds of over 610 million active professionals on LinkedIn, and it shouldn’t even be your goal. So your safest bet is to utilize the platform’s targeting options, which allow you to narrow down your list of market segments to target.

Create Effective Targeted Content

First off, create a list of your primary business goals and ask yourself these questions: Do you want to enhance brand awareness through increased website visits, focus on building a community and reach out to like-minded individuals, or advertise your products?

Then, identify what type of content your target audience typically consume and proceed to creating high-quality, easy-to-digest content that aims to educate and provide solutions to your audience.

Lastly, set an attainable goal and budget.

Luckily, LinkedIn’s content mediums are at your disposal, which brings us to the next topic.

Optimizing Content Marketing Strategies on LinkedIn

As already mentioned, LinkedIn offers B2Bs the opportunity to reach a massive professional audience, and with it comes another challenge of avoiding this cringe-worthy scenario — LinkedIn users rolling their eyes at a posted content that doesn’t offer anything new.

So make it worth their time by optimizing your content and making it relevant to your target audience.

But first, you need to choose from a variety of content types from different media within the platform:

Photo/text ads– You can write a compelling copy that summarizes a topic and end it with a call-to-action, and include an image or a link to a LinkedIn article or a landing page. The headline should be interesting enough to catch the users’ attention and drive the readers to click.
Video ads– This form of sponsored content on LinkedIn is ideal if you want to promote events or share a product demo or brand story. This type of content auto plays on the newsfeed without sounds. To make it less time-consuming (especially for those who are in the workplace and couldn’t listen to the audio track), keep the video short and add subtitles. You may even use a video ad to promote a LinkedIn article.
LinkedIn articles– Another way to boost your online reputation is to publish business articles. If you’re planning to use the LinkedIn publishing feature, the factors you need to take into account are the relevance of your topic and the quality of the content, headlines, CTAs, and images used, as well as the timing of your post. Publishing insightful, high-quality content will keep your target audience engaged and help enhance business credibility.

Increasing Leads with an Optimized Company Page & Showcase Pages

Potential B2B buyers visit the LinkedIn profile before deciding if they’d make a purchase or not. So don’t waste that opportunity to make a good impression. A well-optimized company page has:

A profile image (business logo) and a company profile banner that adhere to LinkedIn’s requirements.
A well-written ‘About Us’ section that answers the most basic questions about the business (i.g., what type of company, what are the core values, where are you located, what are the products/services offered, what makes the business unique, etc.). Although you’re targeting an audience of business-minded professionals, this section doesn’t always need to have a formal tone. Keep the words simple and the sentences concise to make it easy to read.
The important information included in the page such as your professional website’s URL, local and/or international address(es), type of industry, and size of the company.

Showcase pages, on the other hand, allow you to maximize your targeted advertising strategies on the platform. Creating showcase pages enable you to highlight the different areas of your business and publish specific content to your target audience.

So how can you make the most out of this feature? Keep posting! Keep the specific audience of each customizable page informed and engaged by regularly posting videos, text ads, articles, and other superior quality content.

Read about:- Reliance Jio and Google come together to develop affordable 4g & 5g smartphone

Solar Panda partners with Lion’s Head Global Partners

Solar Panda Corporation, a company selling PAYGo solar home systems in Kenya, has secured a loan from FEI-OGEF, the African Development Bank’s flagship Off-Grid Energy Access Fund managed by Lion’s Head Global Partners. OGEF becomes a new syndicate lender, augmenting an existing $15 million framework deal with Lendable.

Lion’s Head joins Lendable, an early lender from 2018. The sophistication of Lendable’s data analytics gave Lion’s Head confidence in Solar Panda’s performance early on. Andy Keith, CEO and Founder of Solar Panda says, “Lion’s Head’s decision to syndicate the loan with Lendable is validation of our performance and speaks to the strength of our operational fundamentals.”

Harry Guinness from Lion’s Head notes, “We are very happy to add Solar Panda to our portfolio of loans bringing sustainable power to communities in Africa. We have been monitoring the company since launch and have been impressed by the team’s commercial pragmatism and commitment to customers. We’re excited to formalise our relationship as a lender and to support future expansion and energy access.”

The expansion of Solar Panda’s lending portfolio to include OGEF is a welcome addition. “This deal is an essential part of our strategy to diversify funding sources”, adds Keith. “Closing the transaction became a top priority when the pandemic hit and disrupted financial markets. We were impressed with how quickly and decisively Lion’s Head came to the table and the ongoing support from OGEF and its investors.”

Hani Ibrahim, Chief Investment Officer, Lendable says, “We are excited to partner with Lion’s Head and FEI-OGEF on this syndicated loan facility that will support Solar Panda’s mission of providing first-time energy access to rural Kenyan families. As mentioned, this is the second financing facility that we have arranged for Solar Panda and are pleased to see our partnership develop as we continue to support their strong growth trajectory.”

The current loan supports demand for Solar Panda’s products in Kenya which have continued to be strong through the pandemic. “This funding ensures our sales will not be constrained by inventory”, says Scott Remborg, Managing Director of Solar Panda Kenya. “At the beginning of the pandemic, it was anyone’s guess what the impact would be. We are seeing lots of demand, especially for our high-quality TV Premium product which sells at an attainable price point.”

In response to the pandemic, Solar Panda took steps quickly to ensure that customers were informed about Coronavirus and how to stay safe. Over 1 million text messages were sent to customers with information sourced from the World Health Organization and the Kenyan government. Free hand sanitizer was added to product packages. Sony Musundi, Head of Sales and Training says, “We are gratified to be contributing to our customers’ well-being in ways we never imagined. This funding will allow us to continue to grow at the high rate we have been experiencing and bring more clean, affordable electricity to families in Kenya.”

About Solar Panda

Solar Panda, headquartered in Canada and Nairobi, manufactures and sells Solar Home Systems that include lights, mobile charging, and a television through its network of 25 shops across Kenya. Launched in 2017, Solar Panda has grown quickly due to its high-quality products, affordable pricing, excellent customer service, and direct sales strategy. Solar Panda’s dedicated team stands alone in the industry with its high percentage of women (55%) in roles at all levels within the organization. Solar Panda’s products have a profound impact on the lives of low-income, rural families in Kenya, saving families money, enabling children to study at night and improving health through the elimination of harmful kerosene fumes. Now in more than 130,000 homes, Solar Panda (www.solarpanda.com) is bringing clean, affordable electricity to over half a million Kenyans.

**About the Facility for Energy Inclusion Off-Grid Energy Access Fund (FEI-OGEF)**

Funding for the deal comes through the Facility for Energy Inclusion (FEI), a US$500M debt platform created by the African Development Bank and managed by Lion’s Head Global Partners. FEI OGEF is a $100M window within FEI to invest in innovative companies active in the energy access sector with flexible debt oriented to fit the local capital markets. OGEF is a blended finance facility supported by stakeholders including the European Union, KfW, the Nordic Development Fund, and the Global Environment Facility.

About Lion’s Head Global Partners

Lion’s Head Global Partners (www.lhgp.com) is an investment bank operating across frontier and emerging markets. Lion’s Head provides financial advisory, capital-raising and asset management services to a range of corporate and sovereign clients. With offices in London, Nairobi, Lagos, New York and Dubai, their diverse and dynamic team of over 50 finance professionals offers deep sectoral expertise, a broad product range and the ability to leverage synergies between corporate finance, asset management and advisory activities. Lion’s Head has a specific focus on using capital markets for sustainable growth and development in Africa.

About Lendable

Lendable is a leading debt provider to fintech companies that are tackling the challenge of financial inclusion in frontier and emerging markets. Founded in 2015, Lendable has provided financing to fintech companies including off-grid energy companies, MSME lenders, consumer lenders, and asset finance companies. To date, Lendable has deployed over $60M to its clients in Africa and Asia. For more information go to www.lendable.io.

To find out more

Dr. Kushant Uppal: An inspiring entrepreneur

“Entrepreneur’s need to remember that they are the best marketer’s for their products and company” says Dr. Kushant Uppal, Founder, and Managing Director, Intelizon. He founded Intelizon in 2007 with the vision to create a world of smart energy which formed the basis for the name. INTELIZON means intelligent solar- ZON means sun in Dutch and INTELI is short for intelligent. “The idea of Intelizon was seeded in 2006 when I was in Silicon Valley and solar was catching attention. The opportunity to create solar lighting products for rural markets was a dream since it had a social, environmental and economic impact” speaks Dr. Kushant. Intelizon is a journey where they have created technologically the most advanced solar systems addressing the requirements at the bottom of the pyramid. The lithium-ion based solar street lights and the DC systems are state of the art, cost-effective and have been proven to work in tough conditions. The IOT based remote monitoring and control and the AI-based inbuilt camera systems are path-breaking with a global market.

“I was exposed to entrepreneurship at an early age as my father had his own business. I have a B-Tech from IITM and a PhD from University of Southern California and worked at the hub of entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley for a decade creating world leading products in the telecom sector. Having seen corporate success and with encouragement from my wife, the idea to work on a business with triple impact became the driving passion for my career” says Dr. Kushant. Intelizon has a team of professionals who are dedicated to the company’s vision and are passionate about their work. They work tirelessly to build trust and long-term relationships with their customers and suppliers alike. He believes the ethics they have built has set the platform for a long-lasting entity which will impact the world positively. The initial challenges were to understand the Indian ecosystem for building teams, projects and channels for the rural markets. As with any entrepreneur, you roll up the sleeves to understand the problems at its root and solve them one by one. “It took us a few years to get the market and product fit right. The markets were not ready for our products in the initial years. It took us the first 5 years to focus on the right market segment and have grown 4X in the past 5 years. Solar streetlights has become our bread and butter” says Dr. Kushant.

Unique Offerings

“We are pioneers in lithium ion based solar street lights. We are the only company in the world who has lights successfully operating in the field for more than 6 years. We also have home lighting systems based on lithium ion batteries. Our uniqueness lies in innovation- Theft proof designs for street lights, remote monitoring and control systems using Wi-Fi/GSM/Bluetooth and most recently inbuilt lights and cameras for wireless surveillance. We also provide best in class quality, reliability and customer service” speaks Dr. Kushant. Solar street lights is an unorganized sector and they are unique in terms of providing technology and building a brand. Their customer satisfaction metric is based on the strong and long lasting relationships built with their channel partners. They are seeking people and businesses who are as passionate in creating the world of smart energy and building not only a business but also impacting lives and helping the environment.

They have a team of self-driven and passionate people who are encouraged to come up with ideas and excel in execution. Their passion for innovation, quality and customer service drives excellence. This has led to an installed base of over 25000 solar street lights and 100000 solar home systems with a return rate of less than 1%. Intelizon has impacted more than 2 million people, reduced CO2 emissions by 30000metric tonnes and saved over 16million units of electricity to date.

A realistic Work life-Balance Dr. Kushant believes work-life balance is the key to success. This philosophy allows one to work efficiently at work while being an effective support at home. Family support is critical to maintaining sanity and balance in the life of an entrepreneur. “In my case, my wife has been the pillar of support since the ideation in 2006 till today. I have also received tremendous support from my father who is involved in the day to day finance management at Intelizon and gave me good advice on the Indian business environment in the early days. My wife, parents and kids inspire me the most” asserts Dr. Kushant. Kids in general have a positive mindset and are passionate about learning which forms the crux of an entrepreneur’s life. His wife multi-tasks and balances work, kids, parents, home, etc., which is a huge motivation and makes entrepreneurship feel simple.

Compact and cost-effective analysis of incremental signals

Incremental encoders have become indispensable in many applications due to their compactness and low price points. Beckhoff meets this important need with the comprehensive EL51xx EtherCAT Terminal series for analysis of 5 V incremental encoders via RS422 and TTL signals. With their extension by four highly compact and high-performance I/Os, analysis of incremental signals in the controller can now be implemented in an even more space-saving and cost-effective manner.

The four new EtherCAT Terminals acquire incremental signals with high frequencies up to 5 MHz and feature numerous parameterization options and integrated functions that enable optimum adaptation to control tasks.

Each EtherCAT Terminal offers an integrated sensor supply, parameterizable to 5, 12 or 24 V. Encoders with differential RS422, 5 V TTL or open collector interface can be connected. Based on internal pull-up resistors, no external wiring is required for open collector analysis. Additional 24 V digital inputs are used to save, lock and set the counter value. A wide range of integrated functions, such as rotary axis functionality, workpiece measurement and standstill monitoring, also enable data pre-processing directly in the terminal. Beyond that, the measurement of period, frequency and speed with a resolution of 10 ns is also available. In addition, a duty cycle measurement of the incoming signal is implemented. Due to the optional interpolating micro-increment functionality, the terminals can determine even more precise axis positions for dynamic axes. The synchronous reading of the position values with other process data in the EtherCAT system is realized via the high-precision EtherCAT distributed clocks. This enables simple and precise synchronization of controller tasks. The EL51xx series is extended by the following EtherCAT Terminals: EL5102: 2-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V (RS422, TTL, open collector) EL5112: 2-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V (2 x AB or 1 x ABC RS422, TTL, open collector) EL5122: 2-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V single-ended (TTL, open collector) EL5131: 1-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V with two parameterizable 24 V DC outputs

Joe Biden wins the White House

Joe Biden has won the US election, beating Donald Trump to claim the White House even as counting continues in several states.

The Democrat took Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes to pass the threshold of 270 electors needed to clinch the hard-fought victory.

Biden tweeted that he was “honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country”, adding: “The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a president for all Americans – whether you voted for me or not.”

Trump responded by reiterating the false claim that “illegal ballots” have been counted in Biden’s favour, adding: “The simple fact is that this election is far from over.”