talkingDigital

It’s no doubt that companies exist to sell a product. If you think about it, everybody’s selling a product, even if they’re not aware that they are doing it.

Starbucks has a presence through billboard, commercial, film, internet, mobile app and obviously their stores, among many other things. The reason they exist is to sell coffee, and other coffee related products. Just because you don’t own a Starbucks or any other business, doesn’t mean you’re not out there to sell a product.

Everyone’s Out to Sell

When you go to Facebook or Twitter, or Instagram, or when you write a blog, you’re doing it because you want a response. Nobody puts up a social media profile and then says…”Ehhh, I don’t want any friends…or followers.” It isn’t natural.

So in the way that Starbucks is selling coffee, you too are selling a product, and that product is you. The product would more specifically be your words if you were a writer, but the point is-the world is a giant network of cogs all working and moving as a giant commercial machine.

Now that it has been established that this is a natural way of life, let’s talk about some of the different ways that companies are using devices like the mobile phones that everyone owns to sell a product.

Text Messages are Bigger Than You Realize

What may have started out as an innocent way to chat with friends has developed an entire life of it’s own. Text messages are the form of communication preferred by Americans. In other countries, it is still popular to carry out conversation through messaging apps. The reason is because wireless companies in other companies haven’t made texting as affordable.

Today, companies on a global scale are realizing the power behind text messaging. The way that they use it can be very diverse, but it proves to make operating business more efficient, and it also helps to bring in more customers and boost sales.

Convenience Rules All

People are willing to pay a price for convenience, and the companies know this. Businesses that create mobile apps for customers to browse and buy products are generally way more successful. It’s much easier for a person to shop from their couch and have a product delivered than it is to get up, warm up the car, drive to a store, browse and buy their product, pack it up, and get it back home. Convenience wins almost every time.

Look at your phone right now. Do you have the mobile app for Target, Nordstrom Rack, Modcloth, or Kohl’s? This is how companies sell products. They study you intently and know what you want. It can be a little overwhelming to think about, but remember, everyone is out to sell something.

Privacy is a major concern these days because so much of who you are is now kept in digital form, and then spread all over the world because of internet access. So even though so much more is convenient and available for you, without the right security measures, all of that information is available to other people as well who get access.

So, a big solution to that problem is to make sure that your digital presence is encrypted as much as possible, and you can do that by encrypting your email, your passwords, your financial data, your phone messages, and by protecting your mobile data as well.

Encrypting Your Email

Though most people don’t think that a majority of their email is any kind of a security risk, there are still times when you communicate when privacy is necessary. Sending medical data, financial data, or even relationship talk doesn’t always need to be publicly searchable or readable. So, to that end, consider using an e-mail encryption program that does the hard work for you, without you even having to think about it, so that all of that information is sent entirely privately.

Encrypting Your Passwords

Passwords are the keys to your most personal and most important data, so it’s no surprise that the best password managers are the ones that encrypt those passwords locally so that, even though you only need your one master password, the rest of them are safely locked away in a format that hackers can’t get to. That is one of the best safety features that you can put in place on your home computers.

Encrypting Your Financial Data

Most of your financial data is going to be encrypted by your banks and credit card companies automatically. Since the very beginning of internet technology, financial institutions realized how important that kind of safety was, so they have been using military-grade encryption practices pretty much since people started being able to use electronic banking.

Encrypting Your Phone Messages

Phone messages can be a source of privacy issues as well. This is why certain phone apps give you the option to encrypt them. This means that any links, texts, photos, or attachments that you send are run through a system so that anything that’s intercepted can’t be read or looked at.

Protecting Your Mobile Data

And though it’s not necessarily encryption, protecting your data on your mobile devices falls into the same category of privacy and safety. You can set your devices up with a password, and if someone fails a certain number of times, all of your data will be erased, which means that no one can access it after a failed hack attempt.

When starting a business, most of us look to banks for financial means of operation.  Bank lending, however, has many hang-ups, can be tricky to navigate, and may be difficult to qualify for.  This makes our means for developing or gaining momentum in our business difficult—it may seem impossible to start or get ahead!

Did you know?  There is another option!

What is “Factoring”?

Factoring is a finance option that offers freedom that bank lending does not.  This means of financing is not so much a loan as a transfer of services.

Typically, a business would need to wait for the receipt of payment for either product or services rendered before financing more product, or funding operations to keep providing service.  When factoring is used, the need to waiting is removed!

A factoring company will take over for your business directly after the goods are sold or the service is rendered.  These companies pay cash to your business up front, then pursue the payment from clients independently.

Benefits of Factoring

Financing from factoring companies can be much easier to obtain than bank loans, because factoring is not based on your business’s credit history—it is based on the credit history of your clients.  This can be invaluable when starting a business from scratch, or building a business with prior credit problems.

With factoring, your business does not suffer from a “lag time” between overhead and profit, thus providing the financial freedom to grow your business and become more efficient.  Having access to the unlimited capital that factoring provides allows your business to grow exponentially without worry of running out of cash to pay your bills.  Some companies even advance up to 95% of invoices within as little as 24 hours.

Imagine, your wholesaler is offering a great discount on product if you act quickly, but you haven’t yet received the cash from all the credit card sales generated over the last few weeks, so you don’t have the capital to take advantage of the wholesale discount.  With factoring, this would never be a problem.

Beyond business growth, factoring companies are beneficial because they act in place of highly skilled employees, or even whole departments of employees, that your business won’t need to hire.  This alone will dramatically reduce overhead and eliminate stress over billing, account settlement, and client credit.  Additionally, your business will be more likely to attract and retain financially responsible clientele because of the factoring company’s collection process.  

Since factoring is not a loan of money, your business credit will appear to be more favorable when buying expensive equipment or making larger investments that do need to be financed.

Factoring provides a great option for small startups to grow quickly without limits.  Consider it as an option if you are developing a business!