Picture this: you’re on the biggest sales call of your career. You just need a few more minutes to close the deal. Then it happens — you lose the connection. And the sale.

A solid business phone system would’ve prevented that. Today, many cloud-based systems bring together voice, video, and text messaging. (Software such as Nextiva’s dashboard can display a customer’s entire history, including everything from texts to emails, and generate reports using AI.) These tools dramatically improve both the customer experience and your business’s productivity.

Check to learn more about the best phone systems for small businesses.

Travel: Will 2024 mark the return of business trips?

Doritos: One helicopter of a marketing stunt

Confession: Solving the case of the missing staplers

(Source: Shutterstock)

Although post-COVID “revenge travel” may have peaked, next year could see the return of business trips.

Nearly 8 in 10 office travel managers expect their companies to book more flights in 2024 than in 2023, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Bookings for conferences and team-building gatherings are increasing 20% year over year, Omni Hotels & Resorts president Kurt Alexander told The Washington Post in August.

But what will it take to justify business travel after four years of Zoom, especially with employees minimizing their working hours as best they can? Packing clothes and toiletries is a big ask in the age of work-life balance, quiet quitting, and return-to-office struggles. Early morning Amtraks and cross-country red-eyes almost seem unthinkable.

Going forward, business trips will need a strong purpose. In its poll, GBTA found that the trip type and intent are driving 2024 business travel. Here are the most frequently approved:

• Sales or account management meetings with customers or prospects (28%) and customer service trips (14%)
• Internal meetings with colleagues (20%)
• Conferences, trade shows and industry events (18%)
• Employee training or development (9%)
• Supplier meetings (6%)

Travel purpose is one issue; travel length (and frequency) is another. Business travelers are taking fewer trips but staying longer, according to Dermot Crowley, the CEO of Ireland’s largest hotel group, Dalata. In other words: maximize the stay, minimize the travel.

🤿 DIVE DEEPER

• Is the U.S. Home to the World’s Most Remote Workforce?

Keeping your team organized is half the battle, but getting them on the same page doesn’t have to be a challenge. PandaDoc offers an intuitive document management system that makes creating, sharing, editing, and managing your business documents a piece of cake. 

Choose from more than 750 templates and customize them with a drag-and-drop editor to make something that’s truly yours. Then, monitor your document in real-time as collaboration tools allow other team members to work on it as well. And, with document workflow automation, you can save tons of time creating, approving, and sending proposals and contracts, complete with redlining and e-signature capabilities. 

With PandaDoc, you can make your business’s document workflow as simple as black and white. If you’re ready to level up your document management and collaboration, check out PandaDoc today.

(Source: Shutterstock)

Doritos pulled off an impressive act of marketing (and engineering) in Somerset, England, when it used a helicopter to dunk a gigantic chip into a proportionally huge bowl of nachos. The aerially suspended chip managed to cling onto a glob of cheese as it stretched, unbroken, for a whopping 49 feet.

A new world record was set, garnering media coverage from outlets like CNN and the New York Post — and thus ensuring that the Doritos brand will be enshrined in cheese history for years to come. When it comes to creative advertising, not even the sky is the limit.

Can’t afford to pull off a huge stunt like Doritos? See four marketing tactics proven to drive leads for businesses on a budget.

“We couldn’t keep staplers on the inventory list. They would disappear as soon as they were stocked. Eventually, we discovered they were being used for a makeshift office bowling game during lunch breaks.”

—Anonymous

What are the funny, surprising, or just plain weird stories from your office? Spill the tea at b.newsletter@gmail.com.

(Source: Instagram)

Written by Elizabeth Barton, Tess Barker, and Mike Berner.