One of the biggest challenges facing small businesses today, especially as they start growing larger, is how to integrate and automate key business management systems and software – customer relationship management (CRM), financials, e-mail, calendaring, contacts, etc. The basic idea for all small business owners is for everything to work together efficiently and not end up creating extra work or new problems.
This article discusses two of the latest softwares available on the market today which can help you automate your business and breathe easier!
The first software is BizAutomation. This is an all-in-one solution with CRM (Customer Relationship Management)and big business-style Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) at its core. It has modules covering virtually every business management function, including financials, projects, inventory, price books, e-commerce, documents and business portals. The product also includes pre-built integration with QuickBooks and other small business accounting systems. It installs on the same server as Microsoft Exchange and uses Outlook Web Access (OWA) or regular Outlook for its user interface.
The second service is that provided by Nsite, a Pleasanton, California-based company offers an online service that it says “automates manual processes that require judgment, decision making and approval and are being done today through e-mail, spreadsheets and paper forms.” The company’s Predictive Routing Engine simplifies the automation process and requires no modeling or coding on the customer’s part. The first time you initiate a process – say for invoice approval – you create a route path that lists all the people the electronic document must go to. You pick the names from a drop down list of your registered employees or vendors.
Creating the route path is a one-time event. From that point on, the system automatically knows where to route the document. The Predictive Routing Engine lets you make changes on the fly. You can add or delete people from the routing, and you can even make real-time changes to a form that’s already been routed. Since the service is based on the ASP model, you can use the service anywhere as long as you have access to a Web browser.
By using such helpful tools, entrepreneurs as well as small businesses can benefit greatly by automating their processes and saving a lot of time in the manner.

I recently gave a presentation at the Jack Humphrey’s Authority Summit on how to get more done in less time. I talk about my three-prong approach to running your business which includes:
1. Process Creation
2. Automation
3. Outsourcing

You can grab the PDF of the Powerpoint slides for your use. Enjoy!

View Process Creation Powerpoint

Barbara

The trend towards self employment is creating a new generation of home-workers who value quality of life over commuting to a corporate job. With this new lifestyle comes more freedom of time, income, and self determination. It also carries with it challenges that do not exist in the corporate world. Working independently involves a unique set of challenges that many new entrepreneurs do not consider when they start their own business. Some common challenges are:

Loneliness when working out of home
Too much freedom can result in procrastination
Lack of separation of home and office
Cabin fever when your office is in your home

Successful entrepreneurs have developed coping strategies to overcome the challenges inherent in self employment.

Use Technology: Today’s technology can both aid in creating a cocoon in which to work, or help us reach out to others. Email and instant messaging are both excellent ways to feel connected during the days in your home office. The most popular messaging services are Microsoft Instant Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. Both are free downloads and once installed on your computer, will allow you to virtually “chat” using your keyboard instantly with your friends who are also on that service.

Create Routines: When you work in an office, routines are normally established for you. Without that structure at home, it’s easy to be distracted and scattered, and get little done. Some routines you can create are a consistent rising time, a regular breakfast, check email and phone messages, etc. And remember, since you work for yourself, you don’t punch a time clock. Figure out when your energy is at it’s highest, and you’re the most productive, then schedule your work time to take advantage of your body clock. If you’re not a morning person, then start your day a little later, and schedule your worktime later at night. Remember, you’re not punching a time clock, and you’ll likely be more productive because you accomplish more during your high-energy times.

Masterminding: Creating or joining a mastermind group is a wonderful way to develop lasting relationships with supportive entrepreneurs. A mastermind group is a small (4-8 people) group of likeminded individuals that can met physically or virtually to discuss specific business or personal development matters. Each group has a specific theme such as real estate investing, marketing, relationships, etc. The purpose of a mastermind group is to support each members’ growth, and hold all member accountable for their goals.

Conferences: Seminars and Conferences are a great place to re-energize your intellectual engine, and meet like-minded people. It’s also a great place to meet your next customer or strategic partner. You’ll certainly add to your list of Instant Messenging buddies! Seek out events that offer topics that will help you reach the next level in your business, or personal growth and development. It’s important to have a mix of intellectual and emotional/psychological training. Mind and heart shifts often result in insights into your business goals and personal aspirations. Often when were too close to a problem it’s difficult to see it clearly. Attending a conference away from home can provide a new perspective as you get out of your daily environment, and meet people who may share a fresh outlook.

Get Family Buy-in: When you work at home, your family might construe your presence in the house as constant accessibility to you. Explain to your family what you are trying to accomplish and schedule time throughout the day when you are available to be approached. You can also set rules such as shutting the office door when you are not to be disturbed. For older children (and your spouse), you can suggest they email you any non-essential requests that you answer when you take a break. While this might seem silly to do when you’re in the same house, it is essential to maintaining your ability to run your business. Too many distractions break your concentration and reduce your effectiveness, regardless of what business you’re in.

Make Play Dates: Remember how you looked forward to recess everyday when you were a kid? Somewhere along the way to adulthood, we stopped having recess. As an entrepreneur, you can choose to reintegrate play back into your life. After all, quality of life is a big reason you chose to break out on your own. Enjoy it! You must schedule time to play, whether it’s a Friday afternoon movie, a walk in the park with the kids, or a date with your spouse. Develop a local network of friends and colleagues for lunches, dinner get-togethers, movies, workout buddies, etc.
All work and no play makes for a burnt-out entrepreneur.

Get a Pet: Sound silly? Research has shown that pets of all kinds can reduce stress levels. Sure, you can’t have a two-way conversation with most pets (certain birds not withstanding), but having a pet around provides much-needed companionship when the work-at-homer starts feeling isolated.

Nurture Your Body: This secret is one of the most important. It is imperative to fuel and move your body to maintain your energy level, and psychological and emotional health. Create a daily food routine that includes a healthy mix of protein, fruit and veggies, whole wheat, and avoid fried, fatty foods, and refined sugar. Ask yourself this before you put something in your mouth: “Does this food nourish my body, or sap my energy?” Getting the proper fuel is only half of the equation. You must also move your body. (Be sure to check with your health care professional before beginning a work out routine.) Regular weight training and cardio is essential to maintaining your health, and life outlook. Let’s face it… we feel positive and optimistic when we take care of our bodies. Keep in mind that a trip to the gym is not the only way to stay physically fit. Try social activities like hiking, dance lessons, or a family bike ride. For weight training, try doing squats while you hold the back of your office chair, while you’re on the phone. You can do arm curls with cans of soup as you wait for your coffee to brew. Make it fun, and you’ll be amazed at the results!

Use Time Blocking: Often, the hardest part about any project is actually starting it! A handy kitchen egg timer is a great way to trick yourself into beginning a project. Simply set the timer for 5 minutes and start your project with the intent to do just ONE five minute task. Soon, though, momentum takes over and before you know it, you’ve continued beyond the five minutes! Also, many projects are not tackled because they just appear too big. Break the project down into manageable five minute tasks to overcome the feeling of overwhelm. You’ll quickly see results and over a period of time, the project will get done.

Hire out Admin Tasks: When looking at your To-Do list, ask yourself “Is this task the BEST use of my time?” Now mark each task that YOU do not have to accomplish. Now locate a $10 an hour student and outsource those tasks. Would it be worth it to you to buy back 5 hours a week to accomplish tasks that bring you more business or income? That’s $200 a month for administrative help, that will potentially net you new business worth thousands, if you use that time wisely. As an entrepreneur, it’s not in your best interest to clean your house, grocery shop, take the car to mechanic, drop off the dry cleaning, or any other myriad of busy work we do that keeps you from building your core business. Outsource NOW.

The work-at-home population is growing by leaps and bounds as ex-employees realize their dreams of starting a profitable business, doing the work that they love, adding value to society, and spending quality time with their loved ones. According to the Small Business Administration, there are an estimated 42-million home-based business owners and home-based businesses make up 53 percent of the small business population. With rampant big business layoffs, and people increasingly concerned about quality of life, this number is bound to increase in 2005. According to Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, authors of the Millionaire Next Door, entrepreneurs and small business owners more often achieve millionaire status than any other group of individuals. So take heart, employ your coping strategies, and join the growing ranks of enlightened, successful entrepreneurs!

I was at Mike Filsaime and Tom Beal’s 2007 Figure Business Workshop one of the hot questions for the expert panel was “Are Interview Products Dead?” With yours truly being just one of the around twenty ‘experts’ on the stage I didn’t have an opportunity at the event to put in my two cents on this subject so I’ll do it now. Interview products in the Internet Marketing niche are not dead if and only if you have a unique slant or marketing approach that will stand your interview product apart from the crowd. If you’re doing another “me-too” product that is nearly identical to bunches of other products already done your chances of having great success with that product are pretty slim.

Great marketing alone can give you a chance – but how many of us are great marketers? Your interview product is in a more specialized niche then you’ll probably find very few interview products even exist in your area. If you can identify the experts in your niche (not Internet Marketing) then an interview style product is still quite viable.

Here’s an interesting note. Speaker Fulfillment Services duplicates and fulfills products for a lot of information marketers. Here are the top 5 topics which we currently ship products on:

1. Nutrition
2. Stock trading
3. Dating women
4. Playing the guitar
5. Cake decorating

What don’t you see on that list? Internet marketing. There’s a reason for that. There is more money to be made in specialized niches. Find your niche and avoid the overcrowded markets with all the “me too” interview products.

For more information visit www.SpeakerFulfillmentServices.com

Information marketing can be a tricky business. Avoid these 10 biggest mistakes I see information marketers make to increase your chances for success.

1. No upsells in their on-line ordering system

You’ve got them on your order page – primed and ready to purchase your product. They’re in a buying mood. Yet, you don’t offer them additional products they can purchase right then and there. Bottom line – you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. I’ve seen up to 90% of purchasers take the upsell that was offered on certain products. And I’ve seen upsells work well where the “upsell” was priced at 3 times the price of the original product. You’re only limited by your creativity, but if you aren’t offering any upsell you know what your results will be – zero.

2. No ride along offers with their physical product shipments

Similar to the upsell, you’ve got a new customer that has just received your product. Assuming you’ve delivered as promised on the quality of your content and you have a sharp looking package, then you have a prime prospect to purchase additional products from you. So include a promotional piece or two in your physical package that offers them additional items of yours to purchase. The only cost is the printing cost of the pieces you choose to include.

3. Trying to do their own product duplication and fulfillment

I always ask people the question “Are You a Speaker or a Fulfillment House?” When you’re first starting out the economics may require you to do it all yourself. But once you’re rocking and rolling you’ve got to ask yourself the question “What’s the best use of my time?” Is it running of manuals at your local copy shop, burning CDs one at a time on your computer, searching for boxes and packaging materials, and running products down to the post office or the local UPS store to ship out everyday. The answer should be no. The most valuable use of your time is sales and marketing of your products and services and new product creation.

4. Not investing some time everyday in marketing

Your products won’t market themselves. Yet so many information marketers get caught up in the day to day of working in their business they don’t spend any time working on their business. You must invest some time everyday in marketing. Do at least one thing a day that will help you to build your business. Write an article, make a call to a potential joint venture partner, send out a promotion to your list. Whatever, do something each day that is an investment in building your information marketing empire.

5. Selling their product for too little

Too many information marketers price their products way too low. If you think you’re going to make it in the information marketing business selling products for $15 then you’re probably kidding yourself. The only exception would be if you have massive retail distribution selling thousands of units. Don’t undervalue your products. If you’re selling physical products for less than $97 you’re going to have a tough go of it in this industry. Figure out how you can bundle a few things together to come up with $297, $497, $997 or higher priced products.

6. Trying to make it perfect

Just get it done. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I’ve seen product launches delayed months while the creator was crossing every “t” and dotting every “i” for the fifth time. Yes, I think you need to have your product proofread by another set of eyes. But it does not have to be perfect. Get it out there and start generating some revenue. You can always tweak it on future production runs. Should it look professional – definitely. But don’t let your obsession with perfection get in the way of getting your product to market.

7. Selling a product that isn’t yet fully developed

This one tends to be a bigger problem for platform speakers than for regular information marketers, but here’s the gist of it. A speaker offers a package from the platform that includes some components that are in development. They think it will take two more weeks to finish everything up. But, invariably, it ends up taking two months or more to complete. So you end up with a lot of unhappy customers who want refunds because delivery promises were not kept. The real key is to manage expectations. People will wait some period of time before things are in their hands, but if you keep pushing that delivery time out it will bite you.

8. Not testing your on-line ordering system prior to launch date

You’ve put months worth of effort into creating your fantastic new information product. You’ve lined up joint venture partners and your offer is being blasted out to thousands of people. Then someone tries to order and they can’t get their order through. Oops, you forgot to check your shopping cart system out ahead of time. Does everything work as it’s supposed to? Is your fulfillment house getting copies of all your orders as they come in? Don’t scramble around after the fact trying to get your ordering mechanism in place and fully tested.

9. No “Read this First” or “Getting Started” document to guide users

You’ve assembled a comprehensive new course that’s the latest and greatest on subject “x”. It consists of 12 CDs, 6 DVDs, and a 400 page manual that arrives at your customer’s door in a big box. You’ve definitely got “thump value”. But when your customer opens the box he is overwhelmed by your product because he doesn’t know where to get started. So include some type of “Read this First” or “Getting Started” document that will outline for your customer step by step how to consume your information. If they immediately put your product aside because they don’t know where to begin then chances are they’ll never get going with it. Which means there’s a significant chance they’ll return it and nearly a 100% chance they’ll never purchase anything else from you. So, tell them how to “consume” your product in a logical manner and you’ll be ahead of the game.

10. No unannounced bonuses in package

Everyone likes surprises. When you send your package to a customer be sure to include some unannounced bonus they weren’t anticipating that further increases the perceived value of your product. It doesn’t have to be another physical component – it can be a bonus they download or an additional file contained on one of the CDs or DVDs they weren’t anticipating.

Regardless of whether yours is a small or large business, chances are that you can benefit vastly from outsourcing some of your business functions to outside vendors or contractors. This would ideally ensure that even after giving work to a contractor, you are working on your business, and not in your business.

Starting up a business and positioning it for sustained growth requires many different key functions. Many new small business owners attempt to tackle all functions on their own, and find that they work long hours and tire out easily after a while. By outsourcing some of your routine tasks, you can leverage your time to spend on the functions that you do best in order to grow your business.

If you are having trouble determining the benefits of outsourcing…here’s some food for thought: Start by determining the worth of your time in monetary terms. A simple way is to estimate the amount of money you want to make in a year, and dividing that into productive work hours. The basic fact of life is that most of us are generally productive for only two to three hours a day. For example, if you’d like to make $200,000 in 2007, and you work two to three productive hours each day, for five days a week, then one can estimate that your time is roughly worth $250 per hour. Keeping this in mind, you would benefit from outsourcing any function that you can pay someone to do for less than $250 an hour.

In order to create a successful client-contractor relationship, it necessary for you to understand your own business requirements and processes. Take time out to write down the various job descriptions you apply in your day-to-day business. This might include tasks like entering your invoices and receipts, generating new leads, following up with clients, writing press releases for promoting your business, etc. Now determine which of these functions you wish to accomplish yourself, and which you can benefit from if given to a contractor to fulfill. This exercise will also help you determine which function you would like to outsource first.

In looking for the right contractor, you have several options. Firstly, start by checking with others in your industry to see who they use to outsource their functions. You can choose from a variety of options including virtual assistants, freelancers, or an outsourcing firm.

The basic doubt a business owner has in outsourcing work to a contractor is that they feel they are losing control over their business, or that it will prove to be difficult training a new person to do the job you believe you are best at. In order to break this mold, you can start off by outsourcing some very simple and routine tasks.

Do make sure that you set up clear expectations with your contractor at the start itself. Do let them know about where you see your business heading, what is their function in helping your business grow, etc. You can also offer incentives from time to time to ensure that a specific work is well done, or you can also set a budget for the contractor. It is also important that you take the time to clearly document how the work should be performed.

By training and motivating your contractor, you can ensure that both yours and the contractor’s business benefits from the interaction. Outsourcing some of your business functions will not only free up a lot of your time, but you will also have time left to work on your business, rather than in your business.

Some common guidelines you can follow include:

Carefully think about what business function you want to outsource.
Put in the time and effort to find the specific expertise you require.
Be prepared for challenges.
Always keep a lookout for hidden costs.
Plan out how much you want to spend on your outsourcing venture before hand itself.

Get a quote on your project by contacting Stella at research.integra@gmail.com

I’m thrilled you’ve decided to move your business forward, and I plan to give you every last drop of help, information, and guidance that I can.

My goal is to aid you in moving past those business and psychological blocks that often keep us spinning our wheels.

Look for regular posts as I evaluate new resources, and locate individuals, products, services, and tools that will help us all move towards freedom from our thriving businesses.

Barbara