Business continuity refers to an organization's ability to maintain critical functions during and after unexpected events, such as natural disasters, cyber attacks, or supply chain disruptions. It involves proactive and reactive planning to prevent operational interruptions and ensure a swift return to normalcy when disruptions occur.
Understanding the key components of business continuity is crucial for effective planning and management. Three main aspects to consider are:
To ensure continuity, organizations should follow these steps:
Organizations face several common challenges when it comes to business continuity, including security breaches, natural disasters, power outages, equipment failures, and sudden staff departures. Overcoming these challenges requires a proactive approach and strategic planning.
Some effective strategies to address these challenges include conducting a business impact analysis to evaluate the importance of different functions, ensuring systems and processes are resilient and can withstand disruptions, and having contingency plans in place for unforeseen events. By implementing these strategies, organizations can maintain critical functions, recover from interruptions more quickly, and minimize the risk of financial, personal, and reputational loss.
Adopting best practices in business continuity can help organizations maintain critical functions and recover from disruptions more effectively. Some of these practices include:
Voice broadcasting is an automated system that delivers a pre-recorded voice message to a large list of phone numbers simultaneously.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
Webhooks are automated messages sent by an app when a specific event occurs. They push real-time data to another app's unique URL.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.
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Accounts Payable (AP) is the money a company owes its suppliers for goods or services bought on credit. It's listed as a current liability.
Workflow automation uses rule-based logic to run a sequence of tasks that would otherwise require manual human effort to complete.
Hadoop is an open-source framework designed for the distributed storage and processing of extremely large data sets across clusters of computers.
A Call for Proposal (CFP) is a document that solicits proposals, often through a bidding process, for a specific project or service.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
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Objection handling in sales is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns about a product or service to move the deal forward.
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An elevator pitch is a short, memorable summary of what you do, designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
A Target Account List (TAL) is a focused list of high-value companies that a business specifically aims to convert into customers.
Net new business is revenue from customers who have never purchased from your company before. It’s a crucial indicator of sustainable growth.
Personalization in sales means tailoring outreach to a prospect's specific needs, interests, and context to make communication more relevant.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Audience targeting is the process of segmenting consumers into specific groups to deliver more personalized and relevant marketing messages.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the ethical gathering and analysis of market data to inform strategic business decisions and gain an advantage.
Customer buying signals are the actions, behaviors, or statements a prospect makes that indicate they are moving towards a purchase decision.
A sales kickoff (SKO) is an annual event for a sales team to celebrate wins, align on goals, and get motivated for the upcoming year.
Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of a company's relationships and interactions with its customers.
Sales prospecting software automates the process of finding, contacting, and tracking potential customers to help sales teams build their pipeline.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue kept from existing customers, including upsells, downgrades, and churn.
Sales and marketing analytics involves measuring and analyzing performance data to maximize effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI).
A channel partner is a company that works with a manufacturer or producer to market and sell their products, software, or services to customers.
Sales enablement content refers to the materials and tools that empower your sales team to engage prospects and close deals more efficiently.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
Trigger marketing uses customer actions or events to automatically send highly relevant, personalized messages at the perfect moment.
Sales partnerships are strategic alliances where two companies co-sell products to expand their reach, generate new leads, and increase revenue.
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that manages your entire hiring and recruitment process from a single dashboard.
A marketing play is a repeatable tactic used to achieve a specific marketing goal, like generating leads or driving engagement.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
Outbound sales is when reps proactively contact potential customers through cold calls or emails to generate leads and build a sales pipeline.
Feature flags let you remotely control features in your app without new code. This enables safe testing, gradual rollouts, and quick rollbacks.
Firmographic data is information used to classify firms. It includes attributes like industry, employee count, location, and annual revenue.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Process Builder is a Salesforce automation tool that lets you create 'if/then' business processes with a user-friendly visual interface.
Shipping solutions are services or software that streamline the logistics of getting products to customers, from label printing to final delivery.
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Precision targeting is a marketing strategy that uses data to identify and reach a highly specific audience most likely to convert.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
Buying criteria are the specific requirements and standards a customer uses to evaluate products or services before making a decision.
Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your products to build a pipeline of qualified leads for your sales team.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable, recurring income a business expects to receive each month from all active subscriptions.
An enterprise is a large-scale organization, often a corporation, defined by its complex structure and substantial number of employees.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.
Contact discovery is the process of finding accurate contact details for potential leads, including names, emails, phone numbers, and job titles.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost a business spends to gain a new customer. It includes all sales and marketing expenses.
Programmatic display campaigns use automation to buy and sell digital ad space in real-time, targeting specific audiences across the web.
Marketing Operations (MOps) is the engine of a marketing team, managing the technology, processes, and people to run campaigns effectively.
Mobile compatibility ensures your site or app works flawlessly on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, for a seamless user experience.
Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.
“No Spam” is a commitment to sending only relevant, solicited messages. It means avoiding bulk, unwanted emails to respect the recipient's inbox.
Direct sales involves selling products directly to consumers in a non-retail setting, such as at home, online, or person-to-person.
Single Sign-On (SSO) is an authentication method allowing users to access multiple applications with one set of login credentials.
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Cohort analysis is a behavioral analytics tool that groups users with common traits to track their actions and engagement over time.
A use case is a detailed description of how a user interacts with a system to achieve a specific goal, outlining the steps from start to finish.
Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.
Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing raw data by adding missing information from other sources, making it more complete and actionable.
Programmatic advertising uses AI and real-time bidding to automate the buying and selling of digital ad space, targeting specific audiences.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is a sales specialist who finds and qualifies new leads, building a pipeline for the sales team.
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A sales coach is a mentor who trains and guides sales reps to enhance their skills, boost performance, and ultimately close more deals effectively.
Product recommendations are a marketing strategy that uses customer data to suggest relevant products, boosting sales and customer engagement.
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Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
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Psychographics categorizes people by their attitudes, interests, and lifestyles, revealing the 'why' behind their purchasing decisions.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a focused B2B strategy where marketing and sales collaborate to target and convert high-value accounts.
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Closed opportunities are potential deals that have concluded. They are categorized as either 'closed-won' (a sale was made) or 'closed-lost'.
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Sales coaching is a process where managers help reps improve their skills and performance through personalized feedback, training, and guidance.
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Account-Based Marketing (ABM) software helps teams coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land high-value customer accounts.
Expansion revenue is the extra money a business makes from its current customers via upgrades, new products, or additional services.
The lead qualification process is how you determine which prospects are most likely to become customers by evaluating them against specific criteria.
A product champion is an internal evangelist who drives a product's adoption and success by ensuring it solves real problems for their team.
Objection handling is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns or hesitations about a product or service to move a deal forward.
GDPR compliance means following the EU's strict data protection laws to ensure the secure and lawful handling of personal data.
SFDC stands for Salesforce Dot Com, a popular cloud-based CRM platform that helps companies manage their customer interactions and data.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
A consumer is an individual or entity that buys products or services for personal use, not for resale. They are the final user in a supply chain.
Technographics is data that outlines a company’s technology stack, helping B2B teams identify prospects based on the software and hardware they use.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a web security vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into trusted websites.
A cold email is an initial outreach sent to a potential customer with whom you've had no prior contact, aiming to introduce your business.
Sales enablement provides sales teams with the necessary tools, content, and information to help them sell more effectively and efficiently.
A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
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User interaction is any action a user takes within a digital interface, like clicking a button, scrolling a page, or filling out a form.