Are you supporting work place mental health at your business? We show you how to make your workplace friendlier for mental health. Plus, nine more awesome tips to close the deals while treating your employees right.

The Hottest and Most Brilliant Business Tips for YOU – Support Work Place Mental Health and More

Our research ninjas at Credit Suite smuggled out ten amazing business tips for you! Be fierce and score in business with the best tips around the web. You can use them today and see fast results. You can take that to the bank – these are foolproof! Starting better supporting work place mental health for your employees and more.

Stop making stupid decisions and start powering up your business. Demolish your business nightmares and start celebrating as your business fulfills its promise.

And these brilliant business tips are all here for free! So, settle in and scoop up these tantalizing goodies before your competition does!

#10. Be Real!

Our first jaw-dropping tip is all about building an authentic Instagram audience. Entrepreneur says your aim should be to create a community, and not just a bunch of followers. But the tip we loved was the first one – and it leads directly into the one about a community.

Follow Hashtags to Instagram Glory

Now, the truth is, you can do this on Twitter and Facebook as well. Although, note that on Facebook there’s less of a culture of using hashtags on posts, replies, notes, etc. People use hashtags to cull the tsunami of information they get every day on social media. It’s easier to read enough content to fill, say, an hour, versus 24 hours. Heck, it’s not possible to keep up with everything anyway.

This takes advantage of a truth for everyone. We all curate our social media feeds, or we let algorithms do that work for us. Because none of see everything. It’s physically impossible.

This means your ideal audience is doing so as well. The posts they click on and react to are fueling the algorithm. They’re essentially telling the algorithm what interests them. So, let’s say you have a dry cleaning establishment. People might not be taking about it too much on Instagram. But for those who are, they’re probably using hashtags like #drycleaning and #drycleaner. They may even be using hashtags like #laundry and #delicatefabric or #lookinggood.

As you find these people, engage with them. This means commenting on photos and maybe sending a personal message. But be mindful of the fact that not everyone likes personal messages. And, you probably shouldn’t lead with one. ‘Cause that’s just creepy.

#9. Soften Your Sales for Success

The next awesome tip is about how to use soft selling in your sales efforts. Mail Shake notes that soft selling doesn’t mean passive selling. You are still trying to sell, after all. 

Personalization

We have been beating this drum for quite a while, and so have many of the articles we’ve been reading lately. Because of technology, personalization is possible on a grander scale than ever before.

As a result, we loved their comparison between hard and soft selling. For hard sales, you get the prospect’s contact information. But there’s no specifics on that. Whereas for soft sales, it comes from personal contact, such as networking, social media engagement, or inbound marketing. 

We are all on the lookout for scams. What sounds more like a scam to you? Is it someone calling you out of the blue with a sales offer, or someone you know, at least a little, making that same offer?

In the next tip, we’ll cover building trust.

If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Support work place mental health and treat your employees and customers right – plus nine other great tips this week.

#8. Build Trust Brick by Brick in Current Relationships

Our following life-changing tip concerns building trust in extant relationships. LinkedIn lays it all out for us. Of course, we are talking about this in the context of sales. But this could work for your not-so-commercial relationships, too.

Don’t believe us? Then try this tip on for size.

Treat Your Customers as if They Were Prospects

Essentially, as in life, don’t take people for granted!

Kind of a good idea no matter what, eh? 

Checking in on existing customers is a great way to build trust and to set the stage for, perhaps, renewals or even upsells. And, let’s face it, you’ve spent a ton of time courting a prospect and converting them to a customer. Abandoning them once the check is cashed is the very antithesis of that. 

And how should your customers feel if the only times you contact them are when it comes to getting your hands on some more of their cold, hard cash?

How would you feel?

#7. Perfect That Elevator Pitch for Investors

For our next sensational tip, we looked at avoiding errors in your first meeting with investors. Startup Professionals says that there are eight errors which you should be doing your best to avoid.

Actually, this is good advice for any sort of an elevator pitch, such as when you’re bucking for a new job. We encourage you to read the article and see for yourself. Hence, we’ll concentrate on one tip.

Stop. Talking. So. Fast.

Did you know that the attention span for elevator pitches is just 30 – 60 seconds? And that means about 150 – 250 words.

Any more than that, and you’re just overloading your potential investor. This means two things are in order. One, practice, practice, practice so you don’t lose words to um, uh, and er. And two, consult a thesaurus and find better, more descriptive words if you need them.  This doesn’t mean $100 words. Rather, it means being succinct, so long as you can be understood.

That means instead of saying “our product is between blue and green”, you say, “our product is teal”. It’s not just faster and more succinct. It’s also more confident-sounding.

https://creditsuite.wistia.com/medias/94z8msbn94 

#6. Empower Your Employees with Productivity Software

This tip is so cool, and it works! The SBA tells us all about productivity software to empower your employees. That’s a great way to support work place mental health, eh?

Our favorite tip had to do with showing big goals to your entire team. We loved that because it gathers all of the trees into a forest. That means it’s time for a true story.

Your Work Matters

Way back when – as in, the 90s – your intrepid blog writer worked as a data analyst for the Legal Department of a large insurance company. This company routinely spent millions of dollars every year on outside counsel. Their list of law firms topped 3,000 firms.

And so, I was asked to do two things – figure out if a firm is being paid fairly and determine if we can let a firm go and get another to pick up the slack.

This meant gathering a ton of supporting information from local offices. It also meant putting together a system for deciding ‘fairness’. Now, this is before much of the internet (we didn’t have access, anyway) existed, so there was no looking up salaries online. 

With no information on the big picture, I never learned just how much money the company saved because they ended up with a workable system to decide how much to pay their outside counsel.  With no information on the overarching reason for my task, I felt purposeless.

And, you guessed it, I finished the project and left shortly thereafter.

Employees want to have a sense of purpose. Showing them what their work is leading to can do that.

#5. Take the Time to Support Work Place Mental Health at Your Business

Grab this mind-blowing tip while it’s hot! 

Support work place mental health – it’s the right thing to do.

Entrepreneurs’ Organization says work place mental health is not a subject everyone is comfortable with. But they should be.

Now, keep in mind that the article does not suggest that managers or entrepreneurs need to become therapists. In fact, one of their tips is to bring in a work place mental health counselor. This can be someone accessed remotely.

But here’s the tip we really liked and think should be explored in some depth.

Give Your Managers Training

 This is not necessarily to be able to tell if someone has a mental health issue. It’s more to train your management to be more sensitive to the employees who report to them. This means praising people publicly when they do well. And it also means kindly addressing problems early, and in private.

If your employees feel comfortable talking to you about their work performance, then they just might feel comfortable talking to you about their work place mental health. And if you are a sensitive manager who pays attention to your employees, then you may notice when they are feeling off.

Depression Isn’t Just Feeling Down

We would be remiss if we didn’t touch upon this. And it wasn’t covered in the article, but it’s still vital. There are a number of memes flying around which claim that depression in particular is just an instance of temporary sadness or even inattention. As if counting your blessings could cure a serotonin imbalance!

So, keep in mind that an employee suffering from depression might not, to you, look ill. They may be holding it together as well as they can during business hours. But then at home, it all comes out. 

And, the corollary to this is also true. An employee who’s down – particularly if there’s a readily identifiable cause – isn’t necessarily a person with mental health issues. That doesn’t mean you can’t offer counseling services, of course. Divorce, death, miscarriage, estrangement from family – these can all make people feel bad, of course. 

Supporting workplace mental health means accounting for that, too.

In short, be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Support work place mental health and treat your employees and customers right – plus nine other great tips this week.

#4. Hello, My Name is Email

Check out this spectacular tip, all about how to successfully introduce yourself over email. HubSpot notes that there’s an actual formula to writing an email to someone you don’t know – at all.

This is an excellent article, and we strongly encourage you to read it through to the end. It truly is that good.

So, instead we’re going to concentrate on one of their steps.

Make Your First Line About Them

How many times have you received an unsolicited email that started with – my name is ___? Or it started with – I’m writing to you because ___. You may have sent emails like that. Your intrepid blog writer sure has (oops, sorry).

But it’s an email. The sender’s name is already on there. And it isn’t, then the sender can add their name in their signature line, and they should. 

Rather, try opening with a line like – I see that you won the __ prize recently. Or, I just saw your post about __ on ___. Here’s another: I’ve never learned so much from one piece of content.

Then, segue into why you’re writing – and it should be related to your opener. By definition, that means it needs to be related to the recipient. Here’s an idea:

I’ve never learned so much from one piece of content. To that end, I would love to get your quote for a similar article I’m writing.

By the way, this approach could work for anything from sending a resume to contacting someone’s dating profile… 

#3. Where Do You Want to Go Today?

It’s not your imagination: this winning tip can help you create a vision board. Score tells us that vision boards are a way to see where you want your life to go. And that can be for either your personal or professional life. 

This article concentrates more on vision boards for a personal life. But there’s no reason why it can’t be adapted for professional use.

Consider the Future

For a personal vision board, it might be representations of a place you’d like to live or visit. Or it may be images of fitness or other goals. For professional goals, it could be visuals of success – for you or the business.

What does this spell, in terms of images? It could be a corner office or a picture of a second location. Or it could be an image of a lot of employees.

So, Where Do You Want Your Business to Go?

What are your business’s goals? If you own a trucking company, maybe you want to be the premier provider in Utah. Or maybe you want to hire more drivers or get more trucks. It could be that you have a company you’d like to snag as a client.

Having a visual representation of success can be inspiring to a lot of people. Why not decorate your workplace with a vision board? Talk about supporting workplace mental health, too. Because when you take others’ ideas into consideration, then they can feel a lot less isolated. That might make a difference for someone.

#2. Are You Meeting 401(k) Standards in Your Business?

Our second to last unbeatable tip can give you a new perspective on making sure you meet 401(k) standards in your business. Effortless HR reveals all about this essential part of benefits handling.

Our fave tip was about having what is essentially a form of insurance. It’s actually an ERISA fidelity bond. The bond has to be equal to the lesser of $500,000 or 10% of the total investment accounts that you hold. This insurance bond protects your business if errors are found in your management of the 401(k) plan. 

Did you know you needed that in order to offer a 401(k) to your employees? 

#1. Master the Clock

We saved the best for last. For our favorite remarkable tip, we focused on improving time management. Under 30 CEO says better managing your time means you’re that much more likely to achieve your goals. 

We’ve seen some of these tips before, to spend your leisure time on leisure, and to stop multitasking. Another tip we’ve already seen is to leverage your commute for minor work tasks (which is technically multitasking).

And while this tip is also something we’ve seen before; we’d like to showcase it anyway because we think everyone should do.

Banish Distractions

Quartz says the average smartphone user gets 63.5 notifications per day. We think this figure is grossly understated.

Of course, this isn’t the only source of distractions out there. But it’s one over which we all have some control. Do you honestly need to know every time someone has commented on a topic you answered in a forum? Or can you wait for a daily digest? Maybe you can skip the notification 100% and just visit that forum whenever you feel like it.

Yes, we all want to know when our appointments are. And we need to know if family are ill or otherwise need us. But do we really need to immediately know how many people liked a tweet?

Go into your apps and any sites you visit, and fiddle with the notification settings. See what works for you. You’ll probably find you don’t need to know everything, all the time, ASAP.

Take back your life.

So, which one of our brilliant business tips was your favorite? And which one will you be implementing now? 

If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity! Support work place mental health and treat your employees and customers right – plus nine other great tips this week.