You may or may not have already heard of buyer personas - but what are they really, when you move past the jargon? Here's the lowdown on what exactly buyer personas are, and how they can help your business generate more leads, sales and revenue.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected virtually every business owner. Although lockdown measures are being gradually relaxed, things are far from back to normal, and as a business owner you may find yourself with extra time on your hands.

This is a great opportunity to put that time to good use and work on the five most effective ways of preparing your business for growth in the coming months as things start to return to normal.

Measuring sales performance is crucial to long-term profitability and growth. However, this may pose a challenge, since defining and tracking performance is complex and depends on various metrics – some of which will have more relevance to your business than others.

Effective tracking involves more than simply monitoring revenues in and out, and requires a proactive approach that anticipates obstacles to productivity. Owner-managers of small businesses may find this even harder due to the time constraints, which can easily lead to losing track of strategic objectives. Here’s a brief overview of the five best practices that will make the task easier.

Good sales performance is the lifeblood of businesses of any size. With the growing power and accessibility of marketing and sales automation platforms – HubSpot being the leading example – improving sales has become an increasingly data-driven process.

These affordably priced platforms have placed an advanced sales management toolkit at the disposal of even small businesses, enabling ambitious sales strategies without huge staff and operational expenses.

With travel restrictions and the banning of large public gatherings, 2020 has been a non-starter for the traditional face to face networking events on which so many businesses depend for sales. Conferences, trade shows, seminars and expos – from the international to the local scale – have been cancelled or postponed around the world.

The coronavirus pandemic has left most businesses with no option but to adapt to remote working practices. You may have found the experience liberating, or it may have been a struggle. Either way, remote working has posed some unique challenges to the way businesses nurture leads and make sales, especially for businesses whose sales strategy is heavily dependent on face to face meetings.

Whenever the concept of mindset is addressed in the context of business and entrepreneurship, it refers to personal beliefs and how they influence one’s journey to success. Business leaders, SME owners, and decision makers with a growth mindset are more inclined towards putting efforts to achieve something, even when it is challenging.

People with a fixed or self-limiting mindset, on the other hand, are comfortable with their status quo. They believe that what they have now is enough for their business to succeed and that it is unnecessary to increase efforts in pursuing a goal. This mindset is often enough to limit your results from sales initiatives and prevent you from fulfilling your true potential as a business.

Regardless of the potential of a business, there are always periods of unprecedented slowness, over which you have little or no control.

Economic downturns happen for many reasons – in this case due to the disruption caused by Coronavirus lockdowns – and can last for months or even years. In a downturn, you may experience a sudden plunge in your revenue or cash flow difficulties, or it may be harder to make sales.

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what defines the uniqueness of your business in a competitive marketplace. In other words, it’s what distinguishes your business from competitors X, Y and Z, and is the reason for a prospect to choose your service over theirs.

From your USP flow all the core messages and value propositions you use to make sales. A lot rests on your USP, and it is essential to make it as strong, compelling and clear as possible, regardless of how crowded or niche your sector happens to be.

For a business starting out, the prospect of attracting the right type of customers, with the value you need to grow your enterprise, can be daunting. Fortunately, digital technology allows you to target very specific markets with valuable content and highly tailored marketing messages. You no longer have to rely on word of mouth referrals, cold calling or scattergun advertising.

Yet, simply reaching a market is not enough to turn leads into customers.