Category: Operations

It’s that time of year when we start to hear about setting goals for 2013; make 2013 your best year ever; up level your business in 2013; and all that other stuff. However, what’s being overlooked is that there are still 45 days left of this year … and you can achieve a lot in just 45 days!

I know we have a Thanksgiving Holiday (for those of us in the US) and Christmas/New Year’s too, but that’s really no excuse to slow down and not take action.

You just need to plan around these holidays.

So, let’s take out 2 days for Thanksgiving, and say 5 days for Christmas/New Year … that still leaves 38 days, and a LOT can happen in 38 days.

Here’s how you can take action and finish the year on a high!

Step 1: Take Out Your Calendar

For me that’s taking a look at my Google Marketing & Action Plan calendar; use whichever planner is right for you.  Where are your gaps?  Can you run a quick 3- or 4- session program over the next 38 days? Or, can you follow-up with past clients and prospects?  Whatever you decide to do over the next 38 days, be really clear on how that activity will impact your bottom line.  If it doesn’t make a difference, then don’t do it.

Step 2:  Create a “Project of the Week”

To keep you focused and highly productive (especially during December when we’re distracted by Christmas parties and all other fun, social events) create a “project of the week”.  What will you do each week, for the next five or so weeks that will keep you focused on building and growing your business?

Some of these projects may not directly impact your business for the last part of this year, but will give you a kick start for 2013.  Again, be clear on how your project is the week is going to impact your business.

Step 3: Take It One Step at a Time

Now that you have your next 38 days all planned out, just take everything one step, or one task, at a time.  Stay focused, keep implementing, and you’ll find your baby steps will grow into giant leaps.

And here’s a quick glimpse of what I’ll be working on over the next 38 days:  creating and opening registrations for my 1-day, live virtual workshop; adding a second module to the Business Planning Success program; speaking at a virtual telesummit; and hosting a workshop.  And I have all this planned out with a “Project of the Week”.

To get more clients and grow your profits, you must be willing to collaborate and to seek help from others. Whether it’s a coach, a copywriter, a programmer, a virtual assistant, or any other type of support staff, you’re going to need someone. You may even need a combination of “someones”.

When starting out, handling all the tasks involved with your business may not be too difficult. But as your business grows and things get more complicated, it can begin to feel as if the small details are taking up the bulk of your time and drawing you away from things like marketing and innovating—i.e., the activities that only you can do. Your support staff can help take the pressure off by unburdening you of those tasks that anyone can do. This will boost your productivity and take your business to the next stage.

As you’re reading this, you may be thinking, “That’s sounds great, but I can’t afford to hire a support staff.” This is an understandable concern, but the thing to keep in mind is that hiring this support staff will give you the time you need to get new clients, build your business, and bring in more income. It’s an investment that, if done right, can give you great returns.

Think of it this way: If you could get rid of those repetitive everyday tasks, how much more time would you have to work on your marketing campaign? If you had someone to help you, for example, with your phone calls and emails, wouldn’t that save you a huge chunk of time every day? And couldn’t you reallocate this time to focus on things that help build your business? Meanwhile, if you were to hire a coach to help you develop a new business plan and marketing strategy, wouldn’t this help your bottom line in the long run?

If you’re still having trouble justifying bringing in support, consider this finding from the International Coach Federation’s Coaching Client Study: “The ROI for [coached] companies can be significant . . . with a median return of seven times the initial investment. In fact, almost one-fifth (19%) [of coached clients] indicated that an ROI of at least 50 times (5000%) the initial investment, while a further 28% saw an ROI of 10 to 49 times the investment.”

Those numbers are based on hard data. With this in mind, you can’t afford not to have support.

I hear from many clients and newsletter subscribers who say that they are amazed by how much content I am capable of putting out. They commonly ask, “How are you able to be in so many different places at once?” They think I have some magical secret, never sleep, or have an identical twin they don’t know about. But the real answer is much simpler than that: automation.

It’s easy to increase your visibility across your social networks by linking your sites to one another with automatic posting mechanisms. Not many of us truly have the time to separately manage our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, sending out relevant updates, connecting with clients, and keeping people updated on our business-related developments. In fact, some people get so overwhelmed by this aspect of their business that they resort to Social Media Managers-a job title that has sprung up in recent years.

If you can’t afford a social media manager for your business, here are some things you can do to improve your social networking presence.

Automate

Start by linking your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to one another so that whenever you post on one, your content gets cross-posted on the other sites. This way, you can send out messages across all platforms with a single click.

Do a quick Google search to find the latest cross-posting apps and software, or you can ask your assistant for help in finding the best one. I am available for recommendations if you don’t know where to begin, just comment on this post and ask.

Update Every Day with Compelling and Relevant Updates

Of course, even with all this cross-posting, your social network marketing will not be effective if you are not willing to send out updates on a regular basis. Many people find that posting even once a day can become a time-consuming chore.

That’s why I like to recommend to my clients that they write a week’s worth of updates at a time. After you do this, you can enter them into a free or fee-based piece of software that automatically sends out the updates at scheduled times. My personal favorite programs for this purpose are HootSuite and SocialOomph. You’ll still need to schedule a little bit of time every day to manage your networking and follow up on things, but you will save time. Here are some things you should still try to do every day:

• Answer messages and social networking emails
• Respond to your comments
• Find interesting things to retweet
• Connect with others
• Participate in your groups
• Thank others for retweeting

All in all, with simple automation tools and a few minutes a day, you can use social networks to advance your marketing and bring in new clients.

Article Contributed by Michael Koploy

According to Forrester Research Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, online shoppers are expected to spend $327 billion by 2016–a 45 percent increase from this year. Obviously, now (more than ever) is a great time to get into the e-commerce game.

But it’s also a crowded sphere where many of the big-time players (think Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Macys.com) have the upperhand. It will be important for you not only to build an excellent website that converts traffic and bring visitors to your site through effective online marketing campaigns, but you have to also provide excellent customer service when it comes to fulfilling orders correctly, on-time and safely to customers.

The ability to provide good service often comes down to the efficiency of your fulfillment operation. Michael Koploy, Analyst at the SoftwareAdvice.com company, recently put together a starter’s guide for first-time ecommerce business owners looking to improve their fulfillment capabilities. You can check out the guide here: The Starter’s Guide to Effective eCommerce Fulfillment.

In his starter’s guide, Koploy pinpoints where new business owners should focus on the following to improve fulfillment:

1. Benchmark fulfillment metrics

Focus on the metrics that are closely aligned with the aspects of customer service that matter most to your business. For example, if speed of delivery is one of the more important aspects to your offering, focus on metrics such as order turnaround time to ensure orders that come in are quickly picked, packed and shipped.

2. Hire employees to specialize in fulfillment

As more and more orders come in, you’re going to need help meeting demand in a timely manner. As you employ others to assist with preparing orders, have them specialize in one specific aspect of fulfillment. For example, have one employee specialize in the organizing inventory and packing orders for eventual shipment. This way, these employees will become excellent at the one aspect of their job, and will eventually be able to pinpoints areas of improvement that a “jack-of-all-trades” may have not been able to realize.

3. Know when to ask for help for certain aspects of fulfilment.

Finally, it’s important to realize that stocking inventory and fulfilling orders for all of your merchandise may in fact be stifling your growth. If time, effort and resources are better spent on other aspects of your business, then it’s time to outsource. Fulfillment by Amazon, for example, allows merchants to either (a) place their merchandise directly on Amazon’s webstore, or (b) sell through an existing online storefront and just have Amazon fulfillment centers ensure orders get to the customer.

Alternatively, you can look into dropshipping certain aspects of your inventory. A dropshipper will own the inventory and fulfill orders as they are placed–for a premium price. For this reason, it’s important to consider which items in your inventory to dropship. It’s common to utilize a dropshipper for high-margin items that can afford a hit to profits or to high-volume items that you know will always be in high demand.

About the Author
If you would like more tips on fulfillment, reach out to Koploy on Google+.

Contracting a standard internet service like that you might use at home, may not be the best ISP solution for your business. Personal internet services often don’t offer enough business features, or a high enough Internet speed. A business needs additional features such as, a higher level of security and constant server monitoring to guarantee better protection of business documents.

Business Options

As with ISP home options, there are many different business internet service options; these include DSL, cable, wireless and satellite services. However, unlike personal home service the business package you choose should have a higher download, upload and bandwidth speed in any system you choose, except the wireless and satellite systems; these are only considered feasible ISP options in areas were regular high-speed internet services are unavailable.

Price

You can expect ISP services for businesses to be somewhat more expensive than standard services. The highest ISP business packages such as those offered by a T1 line can cost about $350 to $450 a month, depending on your location and how many T1 providers are in your area. Of course, you should consider the cost of your internet; but the right Internet Service Provider is crucial for your business. The package you choose will depend on the upload and download speed you need, as well as the number of computers you have networked into the internet line, so you’ll need to get a business internet service that covers all of your business needs.

Security

The contracting of this service also requires you be concerned for security. After all, if you own an e-commerce website or other type of site that deals with confidential financial data, one where you sell products online and take credit card information, then you have to ensure this financial information is as safe as possible. Even businesses that don’t have an online business, but keep trade secrets on your computer network, you still want to ensure you have security like that of the managed firewall by Megapath. A business ISP offering firewall and monitoring services, offers high-speed internet with constant antivirus, malware and data security is something every business needs; the lack of such software can cause virus, hacking and all kinds of infiltration issues.

Performance

When looking for the right ISP you should consider download and upload speeds; preferably, you want download speeds higher than 10Mbps and download speeds above 2Mbps. You should also make sure that whatever business ISP service you choose you have networking capabilities, allowing you to connect all of the computers in your business, firewall features like those of Megapath mpls security, all at a price your business can afford.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith