Business Tips Archives | Page 6 of 13

May 27, 2015May 22, 2015

Business Phones – Think New Technology

Bright Idea Tips to Help With Business Phones

I am moving to the Fredericksburg, Virginia area in July and August this year and as I plan ahead for my move I am revamping my home and business phone technology used to use new things.

Currently, I have a fax telephone line, a business phone line, a residential phone line, two line phones throughout the house, hard wired CAT 5 cabling, and over 9 computers. With my new move, I am going to streamline my use of old tech and move to some new tech.

For example, I am thinking of:

1. Using a Word document/Office subscription fax interface that will allow me to fax using my smartphone as well as to receive faxes this way too. I like MyFax at MyFax.com as my solution. I selected this one due to ease of use and low price – $10 a month. I’ll be needing to have a temporary fax solution for three months before I move into my permanent office and so want something easy to use and usable on a smartphone.

2. I am actually thinking of not having a separate phone line for my business and using my smartphone as my office phone. I already have set up a Google Voice number and will most likely use this number on my website and have it forwarded to my smartphone or home phone on certain days. I have already purchased a new local phone number from Google for $10, as once you have a number you have to pay to change it. I like the ability to control when Google Voice forwards calls. You can even group contacts and then create different answering messages by group. You can have family and friends get automatically connected without delay which is a nice feature.

3. I know that I will have FiOS as my new office. I already have been using virtual phone numbers which really give a terrific cost saving and use VOIP. I may continue to use this for my business or at least for a dedicated fax line and now only one residential line, but I am still thinking of what is the best and most versatile option for my future needs.

With so many new technological choices what you used to think you had to have in your office phone-wise, you now get to think over and reinvent when you move. What technology have you moved to that has cut costs and streamlined your life? Make sure to let me know by clicking and leaving a comment. I guarantee that I’ll check it out and may use it too.

April 1, 2015March 27, 2015

Five Productivity Tips for Your Work Day

Nancy McCord – my tips for productivity improvement.

I am an avid reader and have am currently working my way through this book “Level Up Your Day – How to Maximize the 6 Essential Areas of Your Routine” by S.J. Scott and Rebecca Livermore. I have changed my entire work and exercise schedule and am now feeling much more productive, on task, and energized throughout the day.

Here are the simple things that I have done to improve my own productivity:

1. I no longer workout in the morning. This hour was stealing time from my work day and setting my seriously back in my schedule. After breakfast I now get ready and get right to work. I can blaze through my schedule with laser beam focus. I moved my workout to 7:00 pm on my own time. I found my workout was taking a spot when I was at peak energy and focus throwing off my rhythm for the day.

2. I screen nearly all of my calls when I am working on a intense project. Even if my phone rings, I force myself to stay on task to finish as I found the interruptions of calls set my attention back; particularly when I had to really use brain power to analyze a trend as part of a report.

3. I started using Calendly for my conference call scheduling. I will typically have 20 or more calls a month and the back and forth via email along with client’s missing calls was really squelching my productivity. Now I let my clients choose when they want to chat based on their schedule. I even opened my schedule up to some evening calls in order to be more responsive. Calendly does the work of reminding the client and even shows the appointments in their own time zone. The app will even remind them of the upcoming calls on the schedule I choose and automatically adds the appointments to my Google Calendar which syncs to Outlook and my devices.

4. I now review my calendar at the end of every day, assessing what went right and what went wrong. Then, I plan and print out my schedule for the next day, after I have made adjustments from what I have learned. I have learned that I do not need as much time as I booked in my calendar for certain tasks and that there are some things that I should not do, but rather task my assistant to do to be more productive and profitable.

5. I shrunk and moved my planning time to late in the afternoon on Monday and Friday. As the tasks I do in these categories do not require intense brain power, I can be winding down or tired from my day and still be able to make a good decision. I do my blog writing for the week in this time and several other social media functions. Now I don’t feel pressured or that I have to work on the weekend to stay caught up. I just balanced my workload better over the times when I am working at the highest energy levels.

You may want to check out the book I mentioned too. There are great tips, some I have not tried such as meal planning which I actually think may make my personal and family time more productive. Thanks S.J. Scott and Rebecca Livermore, I am enjoying your book and changing my work habits with it!

December 3, 2014November 30, 2014

Keeping the “Family” Out of the Family Business – Can You?

Grandparents posing with grandchildren — Employing Family Members in Your Small Business Can be a Joy or Challenge.

Small businesses were just feted last week on Small Business Saturday and many small businesses are family operations. So, how do you keep the “family” out of a family business?

As a small business owner and family business owner, I have found that it is sometimes hard to keep the drama, that happens sometimes in family relationships, out of the business.

Here are my tips to keeping your family business professional.

1. Make sure that even with family members you keep it professional. When deadlines are missed, you’ve got to take corrective action just as you would with a regular employee. When tensions rise, it may be better to separate from hiring a certain family member than to jeopardize a family relationship.

2. Be careful who you hire in your family. Not every family member may be suited for working in your business.

3. If you hire your kids, make sure you put gates up between work and family. Your children can grow to resent that you are always in work mode and that they may feel that they are simply becoming employees.

4. Make sure to pay fairly so that family members do not begrudge your success or feel resentful by thinking that you have built your business at their expense.

5. Do not be afraid to separate from family members who cause too much work stress or drama for you. At some point you do have to consider that poorly performing employees (although they may be a family member) may need to be let go and that action may be a blessing for them and you in the long run.

Running a small business and especially when you introduce your children into your world can be exciting and stimulating for both you and your kids, but make sure that you are ready to take on the additional nuances that employing family members brings into your work world.

April 8, 2014April 5, 2014

A Guide to Placing Locally – One City with Multiple Locations

In this series of blog posts on placing for local searches on Google, I’ll take a look at a few strategies that work especially where you operate in one city with multiple locations. Over this week and next, I’ll be looking at other tougher to place scenarios and offering some advice on what to do as well.

The easiest scenario and the first I’ll focus on is where your multiple location business is all based on one city.

Here’s what I’ve found works well for placement for this scenario:

1. Make sure to put your locations with complete address and phone number in the footer of your website. If you have more than three locations this starts to be a little bit cumbersome, but for most businesses your two or three locations can easily be entered in the footer of all pages of your website.

2. Make sure to create a locations page in your website where you’ll list all your locations with full physical addresses, spelled out state name versus abbreviation, zip code and phone number. Link these locations to specially designed pages that show pictures of each location and give a little bit of flavor about what each location offers that may be unique. You may want to include cross streets, specialties, metro directions, and a blurb about the staff. It is crucial that you do not use cookie cutter content for each location simply change the location specifics. Make sure each page is unique and validates as unique using Copyscape Premium (my data checking tool of choice).

3. Set up a Google+ Local page for each location. Understand that there is no scamming Google on addresses. You’ve really got to have a business at the location you register. Google will send to that address a PIN number inside an envelope with no Google branding on it that looks like regular junk mail. It is important that you and your staff really watch for a week for this confirmation letter in order to complete the validation of your Google+ Local page.

The power of placing locally on Google for your individual locations is huge. The reach, potential visibility, and customer traffic you can get from following these very simple steps is not to be discounted. Google is preferring to promote local businesses first in the organic search results so it is very important to capitalize on this to boost your business’ exposure.