As COVID-19 stabilises and countries reopen their economies, the global stock markets rallied this week. Louis Tse, managing director of VC even declared “We have entered a bull market” in a South China Morning Post article. Those that have invested during the lull period are reaping their rewards and those that did not are lamenting at this missed opportunity. While the Nikkei Asian Review was hopeful, others such as CNBC and Barron’s warned of a possible bubble. There’s much more to investment apart from investing in the stock market. Missed this bull run? Fret not, here are 3 things to invest in post-pandemic.
1. Invest in your mind
In life, you gain some and you lose some. People you love, your job, your money, your house, your reputation, your car or even your dog – they all come and go.
But you can’t lose skills as long as you keep working on them. This is especially important as a diversity of skills is becoming increasingly valuable in today’s VUCA business environment.
According to Knowledge@Wharton, the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, more companies want to assemble teams to complete projects instead of having one person who specialises in a task. Businesses want employees with a diversity of experience and skills.
Don’t know where to start?
Benjamin Franklin once said “Money makes money. And the money that money makes, makes money”.
Yet, we often forget that there are other sources of wealth, such as the wealth of knowledge.
If you prefer reading during your commute, check out how you can read 12 books at once through surgical reading.
Or if you’d prefer to challenge yourself to pick up a new language or even skills like UI/UX design, take a page out of Scott Young’s playbook.
Scott Young, the author of “Ultralearning”, learnt the MIT undergraduate computer science curriculum in one year compared to the usual four, gets you started in his blog post.
He took 6 months to research the material and after finding and studying the material over a year, he took the final exams.
Impressive, ain’t it?
2. Invest in your health
What tops both the “Most Popular New Year’s Resolution” and “Top 10 Commonly Broken New Year’s Resolution” lists? Funnily, the answer is exercising and getting fit.
We’ve all heard the phrase “Health is Wealth”, but how many of us actually act on it? According to the World Health Organisation, worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. That’s astounding considering how obesity is preventable.
Furthermore, there have been studies that show that healthy employees are more productive, with better nutrition, more exercise and less stress contributing most to the gains.
COVID-19 gave us a second chance at fulfilling that resolution, letting us get back into shape and become more productive at work. But how sustainable is it as employees start returning to offices?
Goals vs Systems
According to Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert (yes, it’s a different Scott!), Anything that requires willpower is unsustainable in the long run.
He added, the most important thing to know about staying fit is: If it takes willpower, you’re doing it wrong. Adams puts his success (and weight loss success) down to an alternative approach to “goal” setting, known as “systems”.
In Adams’ book titled “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life”, he wrote “Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do.”
And true enough, one such reader devised a system and it allowed him to lose 70lbs and even pick up the piano!
Now get up and start implementing a fitness system!
3. Invest in your company
COVID-19 no doubt accelerated our adoption of new technologies such as online learning and virtual meetings. However, that’s literally the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what tech has to offer to the world.
According to Forbes, tech stocks poised to break out after coronavirus pandemic. And while you might want to stock up on tech tickers, you will also want to adopt new technologies to supercharge your sales and drive your revenue to new heights.
One such technology to keep a lookout for is conversational commerce. Let’s face it, the buying never stops, whether it’s online or off. When conversations shifted online due to COVID-19, retailers experienced a surge in online queries from different messaging channels. Thus, highlighting the importance of customer service.
Retailers with large customer support teams responded well. On the other hand, smaller businesses struggled to cope as they were either overwhelmed or were ill-equipped to. As customers increasingly use instant messaging to communicate, it is important to connect with them on their favourite channels.
Always remember, customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition. An increase in customer retention of merely 5% can equate to an increase in profit of 25%. This is because repeat customers are more likely to spend more with your brand — 67% more, to be exact — which then results in your business having to spend less on operating costs.
Consumer spending is poised to grow as economies recover and you can get ready by investing in the right technologies and platforms.
Customer Messaging Platform
One such platform you can look into is SleekFlow, a centralised messaging platform that has one user interface for all channels.
With native capabilities from messaging apps, you can easily merge social profiles in one click, with each channel retaining native features such as send-read recipients and audio notes.
In addition, the business team inbox also allows you to reply to customers as a team. This allows multiple staff to log in simultaneously on both web and mobile app. Furthermore, teams can also use automation workflows to segment contacts and assign customers to designated staff.
Last but not least, it serves as a centralised social customer relationship management platform. Thus allowing you to send rich-content broadcast messages to individual contacts and groups, on the channel they care the most.
Forget email campaigns as messaging campaigns result in a whopping 98% open rate and 40% reply rate on average.
A whole new world
As the world moves on to a new normal, commerce, companies, as well as our personal lives and habits will have to adapt to the change and challenges that lie ahead.
These are the 3 things to invest in post-pandemic that will most definitely pay off in the long run. Why? Hard work forever pays and change is the only constant! So keep up, keep (a look) out and keep husting.
Here’s to all the exciting adventures to come!
What are your 3 things to invest in post-pandemic?
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