Thursday, December 8th, 2011
CRM software and wider customer relationship management strategies can have multiple benefits for businesses. This article looks at some of the primary benefits of CRM to business, including the ability to better coordinate a company’s actions and getting to know customers better.
Coordinate your business
Most businesses – even small enterprises – have multiple departments. Commonly, this can include HR, sales, customer services, accounts and more. This means that if a business is going to be successful, all of these different areas of the company need to be able to communicate with each other easily and effectively. After all, if a business can’t communicate with itself, communicating with customers as part of its CRM strategy will be somewhat difficult. This is where CRM software can help businesses, as it offers a space that all aspects of the company can utilise.
Get to know your customers
Another benefit of CRM solutions is that they can help you get to know your customers better. This is important as without a good understanding of who uses your business, it will be hard to appeal to your audience and develop strategies that they will appreciate. For instance, a good CRM system can provide you with information such as how many people use your business, how much they spend on average and whether any of them give you repeat business. An understanding of information such as this can enable businesses to offer better services, which is important for customer loyalty.
Improve processes and efficiency
CRM systems can also enable the business to be more efficient by improving various processes. For example, an important part of any company is communication. Often, this takes the form of email updates to customers and other important contacts, including details of the latest company news and any special offers that the business might be running. CRM software enables you to set up regular communications and ensures that correspondence such as newsletters are delivered on time.
Highlight sales opportunities
Customer relationship management can also benefit companies in terms of sales: after all, it makes sense that a good strategy for dealing with customers will encourage more sales that add to revenue. Of course, a lot of sales work is done face to face, directly with customers. However, you can use CRM software to track and manage your sales opportunities so you can see at a glance how things are progressing and whether anything about the process needs to be altered in order to ensure success. This could potentially make the difference between failure and success, so the importance of a decent CRM system is not hard to see.
Develop marketing strategies
Another benefit of CRM is that an understanding of your customers can help you to develop more successful marketing strategies. Getting a good ROI when you’re running marketing campaigns is important as you need to know that your initial spend is paying off in the long run. If you understand your customers and the kind of products they like, you’ll be more likely to successfully target your campaigns and see some real results.
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Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
There are a number of ways to choose where to place your trading stop, and these will vary depending on your trading strategy, especially when considering your risk limit and profit target. However, most stops fall into the categories of technical stops, equity stops and volatility stops.
Technical stops
A good rule of thumb is that if you enter a trade for a technical reason, you should exit that trade for a technical reason.
So if opened a trade when an asset price bounced off a support (or resistance) level, your profit target would be when the asset approaches the resistance (or support level). This also means you can use the original support (or resistance) level as your stop. Similarly, if you are trading a breakout, once the asset price passes the support or resistance level, that level will become your new stop.
Another example would be if you bought a stock or went long on a forex pair because a short-term moving average crossed above a long-term moving average – if the short-term moving average falls back below the long-term average, this could be your signal to exit. As far as a stop loss is concerned, you could make the longer-term average your stop loss, adjusting it as the average moves with the stock or currency price.
Equity stops
An equity stop is essentially placing a stop loss at the maximum amount of equity you are willing to lose on a trade.
A common recommendation is to risk no more than 2% of your equity per trade. So, if you had $10,000 in your account, you could risk $200 per trade. If you were trading one standard forex contract, the stop would be about 20 pips from your entry price (though this amount can vary depending on the currency pair you are trading – a one pip movement, or movement of 0.0001 – is worth 10 units of the second-named currency. So, in the EUR/USD pair, 20 pips is 200 US dollars. However, if the second-named currency was the EUR, GBP, CHF, AUD or SGD, 20 pips would range from 200 British pounds to 200 Singapore dollars, which are worth very different amounts when converted into a common currency. This is why it’s essential to convert your potential losses into your currency, to ensure that the amount you are risking is actually 2% of your capital).
Volatility stops
The market you trade can impact the method you use to place your stop. Some stocks are not frequently traded, and can, consequently, either make very small, steady movements, or be subject to gapping. By contrast, the most commonly traded forex pairs can be very volatile and, in a 24-hour market, can move considerably when you are not at your computer.
To account for volatility when placing your stop, it is a good idea to factor in the average true range (ATR) of the asset concerned. The true range is the largest of:
- The most recent period’s high minus the most recent period’s low
- The most recent period’s high minus the previous close
- The most recent period’s low minus the previous close
The ATR is simply the average of the true range over a number of periods.
By placing a stop at a percentage of the ATR, you account for the fact that some assets are more volatile than others. For example, the ATR of the EUR/USD at the time of writing is 170 pips, while the ATR of the AUD/NZD is 85 pips. This means that a stop of 20 pips will be triggered much more easily in the EUR/USD than in the AUD/NZD, potentially stopping you out before the currency trends in your favour. Typically, assets with higher ATRs require wider stops, while those with lower ATRs require tighter stops.
Determining the percentage of the ATR to use will depend on the length of your trades – if you are a day trader, it is likely to be very small, perhaps only 10% of the ATR. However, if you are keeping positions open for a number of days or weeks, it is a good idea to gauge the average size of intra-day price swings, which could result in you placing your stop at 100% of the ATR.
Conclusion
Your trading style, including the length of your trades, the volatility of your chosen market, the technical tools you use to enter a trade and your risk tolerance, will determine the method of stop placement that will work best for you.
This article was written by Jacqueline Pretty – IG Markets – CFD Trading. No representation or warranty is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the above information, consequently any person acting on it does so entirely at his or her own risk. IG Markets accepts no responsibility for any use that may be made of these comments and for any consequences that result.
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Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
Wow. Here’s something you don’t hear much about. Sure the national unemployment rate is at 9% but that’s not the whole story. There are so many people that are underemployed. Are you part of this new growing group?
The unemployment rate may be readying itself for a slow, but gradual decline, as it hovers at 9.1 percent,the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticsreported on September 2.
However, according to thelatest Gallup survey,underemployment a classification that includes those workers that are highly skilled but working in low-paying jobs or low skilljobs, andpart-time workers that wouldprefer to be full-time remains high.
At 18.9 percent, underemployment is more than twice that of unemployment, as of September 21, 2011.
Daryl Pigat, Metro Market Manager withRobert Half Professional Staffing Services,(1 Metrotech Center, downtown Brooklyn, 17thfloor), says there are useful tips for Bed-Stuy residents or anyone who suddenly finds themselves in an underemployment scenario.
Were going on four years now in an economic downturn. I think people just want to work, and theyre willing to do even less than what theyre qualified for, said Pigat. That, coupled with employers with tighter purse strings and some hesitancy in some sectors to add certain skill sets has helped fuel underemployment levels.
Pigat has worked at Robert Half for seven years. Hes familiar with what’s going on in the employment world, on a granular level. He has gained invaluable insight from talking regularly with employers and has developed best practices he shares with his clients for making the best out of their underemployment status:
See the Original Story here
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