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:
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A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a formal document that outlines a project's needs and invites qualified vendors to submit bids to complete it.
A marketing automation platform is software that automates marketing actions. It helps manage tasks like email campaigns and lead nurturing.
Social selling is the art of using social media to find, connect with, build relationships with, and nurture sales prospects.
The decision stage is where a well-researched buyer chooses a vendor. They compare specific products and pricing before making their final purchase.
Direct mail is a marketing method where businesses send physical promotional materials directly to potential customers' mailboxes.
Total Audience Measurement (TAM) provides a holistic view of content consumption, tracking viewership across all platforms and devices.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a business strategy where the product itself drives user acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
A hybrid sales model blends traditional and digital sales methods to engage customers across multiple channels and buying preferences.
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract defining the level of service between a provider and a client, including metrics and penalties.
Mobile compatibility ensures your site or app works flawlessly on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, for a seamless user experience.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses software bots to mimic human actions and automate repetitive, rules-based tasks on digital systems.
Overcoming objections is the process of addressing and resolving a prospect's concerns or hesitations to move a sale forward.
A sales process is a structured set of steps that a sales team follows to move a prospect from an initial lead to a closed customer.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) software helps teams coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land high-value customer accounts.
Inside sales is a remote sales process where reps sell products or services via phone, email, and other digital tools instead of in person.
A competitive landscape is an analysis of your direct and indirect competitors, revealing their strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
Lead response time is the duration between a potential customer showing interest and your team's first point of contact with them.
Content curation involves gathering, organizing, and sharing the most relevant online content on a specific topic for a particular audience.
The sales pipeline velocity formula is a key metric that measures how quickly deals move through your pipeline and turn into revenue.
Dynamic pricing is a strategy where businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market demands and other factors.
A lead list is a curated database of potential customers (leads) with contact information and other key data for sales and marketing outreach.
A pain point is a specific, recurring problem your target customers face, causing them frustration, inefficiency, or added costs.
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired goal, like a purchase or sign-up, out of the total number of visitors.
A closed question is a type of query that elicits a simple, often one-word answer like 'yes' or 'no,' or a specific, factual response.
A triggered email is an automated message sent to a user in response to a specific action or event, like signing up or making a purchase.
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.
Trade shows are events where companies in a specific industry showcase their latest products and services to find new customers and partners.
Sales compensation is the total pay a salesperson receives, including salary, commissions, and bonuses, structured to motivate performance.
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Dynamic territories are fluid sales assignments that adjust based on real-time data, ensuring reps can focus on the highest-value accounts.
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Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
“No Spam” is a commitment to sending only relevant, solicited messages. It means avoiding bulk, unwanted emails to respect the recipient's inbox.
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Time on site, or session duration, is a key web metric that tracks the total time a visitor spends on your website during a single visit.
Demand capture is the strategy of engaging potential customers who are already actively looking for a solution that your company provides.
An HTTP request is a message sent by a client, like a web browser, to a server to ask for a resource, such as a web page or an image.
Referral marketing is a strategy that incentivizes existing customers to recommend a company's products or services to their personal network.
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Lead management is the process of capturing, nurturing, and qualifying leads to guide them from initial interest to sales-ready.
Marketing Operations (MOps) is the engine of a marketing team, managing the technology, processes, and people to run campaigns effectively.
Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.
An Account Development Representative (ADR) identifies and qualifies new business opportunities, creating a pipeline for account executives.
Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a method where all expenses are re-evaluated and must be justified from scratch for each new budget period.
Siloed describes the isolation of data, teams, or systems within a company, which blocks collaboration and creates operational bottlenecks.
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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.
A product champion is an internal evangelist who drives a product's adoption and success by ensuring it solves real problems for their team.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
Order management is the end-to-end process of tracking customer orders from placement to fulfillment, ensuring a seamless customer experience.
Account-Based Everything (ABE) is a strategy aligning sales, marketing, and success teams to focus on a specific set of high-value accounts.
A cloud-based CRM is a customer relationship management tool hosted online, letting teams access and manage customer data from anywhere.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
Sales conversion rate is the percentage of prospects who take a desired action, like making a purchase, turning them into customers.
A value gap is the difference between the value a customer expects from a product and the actual value they receive, often leading to churn.
Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) is the portion of the market you can realistically capture with your current resources, sales, and marketing.
A buying signal is any action from a prospect that indicates they are interested in making a purchase, helping sales teams prioritize leads.
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to their organization, motivating them to contribute to the company's success.
Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting computer systems, networks, and data from digital attacks, theft, and unauthorized access.
Real-time data is information processed and made available almost instantaneously, enabling immediate analysis and decision-making.
Sales training is the process of honing a salesperson's skills and knowledge to enhance their effectiveness and drive sales success.
Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes in code, allowing developers to collaborate and manage project history effectively.
Forward revenue is the total value of all active, committed contracts that are expected to be recognized as revenue in the future.
The Target Buying Stage identifies a prospect's position in the buying journey, from initial awareness to the final decision to purchase.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric measuring customer loyalty by asking how likely they are to recommend your company or product to others.
Omnichannel marketing creates a seamless, unified customer experience by integrating a company's various communication and sales channels.
A payment gateway is a service that authorizes and processes payments for businesses, acting as a secure link between the customer and the merchant.
Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your products to build a pipeline of qualified leads for your sales team.
An electronic signature is a digital method for getting consent on electronic documents. It's a legally binding way to sign agreements online.
Firmographics are descriptive attributes of organizations, used to segment companies by characteristics like industry, size, and location.
A Target Account List (TAL) is a focused list of high-value companies that a business specifically aims to convert into customers.
Data-driven marketing uses customer data to inform marketing decisions, optimize campaigns, and deliver personalized experiences to consumers.
Marketing performance is the process of measuring a campaign's effectiveness against set goals using key metrics like ROI and conversion rates.
Loss aversion is our tendency to feel the sting of a loss more acutely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain.
Webhooks are automated messages sent by an app when a specific event occurs. They push real-time data to another app's unique URL.
Programmatic display campaigns use automation to buy and sell digital ad space in real-time, targeting specific audiences across the web.
Hot leads are prospective customers who have shown significant interest and are ready to buy, making them a top priority for sales teams.
Custom Metadata Types store application configurations as metadata. This makes them easily deployable between different Salesforce environments.
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The C-suite, or C-level, refers to a company's most senior executives. Their titles usually start with 'Chief,' such as CEO, CFO, or CTO.
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