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Thursday, November 3, 2016
Monday, September 12, 2016
You Need a Support Team to Grow Your Business
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting two very special people in my life and business. For the last 10 years I’ve worn many hats in my business. From trainer to marketer- product developer- copy writer- editor-customer service and everything in between. I outsourced a little bit but mostly handled everything myself.
You see, I thought If I didn’t do it all myself, I wouldn’t be a good business owner or example to my clients or students.
Being a Good Business Owner Doesn’t Mean Doing it All Yourself
Boy was I wrong about the way I was handling my business. The whole reason behind leaving my job and starting my business was to travel and be with my daughter. As I got busier, that freedom started to drift.
The time I wanted to get back from my corporate job was slowly replaced with more “stuff” working in my business, not on it. What good was doing myself, Brian, or Hanalei to allow “stuff” to take all of my attention. That is not the Freedom-preneur life- it’s the corporate life- the one I left behind.
Outsourcing is The Answer to Growing Your Business
As much as I loved the 4 Hour Work Week idea of outsourcing, I still couldn’t give away the control or trust that someone else could do as good of a job as me. That is a misguided thought for sure. No one will do the job the same way I will do it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do an incredible job.
The Outsourcing Company I Trust
Earlier this year, I was introduced to Jenny Jordan whose company, Need a VA specializes in creating space for busy entrepreneurs. They offer outsourcing solutions and build teams for organizations to become more efficient.
My world shifted almost immediately.
I now work on my business not IN my business. I now spend my time with my family and my clients and not spend my time on organizing my day but building and growing my business.
I had the pleasure of meeting my assistant Larcie Martinez Tulao for the first time in person, and our “Sexy Blog Artist” Mark Ryan Holanda. These two are the heart and soul of my organization, they keep me organized through the day and take care of our clients needs. There is a huge amazing team behind them that is a full support system that I now cannot live without.
What I’ve Learned From Outsourcing
There are several things that I have learned from outsourcing and the biggest thing is that developing a team has helped me grow in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Now that I allow people that are specialists in their areas handle different aspects of running the Unstoppable Family, I’m able to hone in more on my own specialty.
With the time I’ve regained, I can help more people. I’m even better now at what I do than I have ever been before.
The moment I brought on a team of others to help was the moment I was able to meet the needs of my clients. That is what it is all about- helping others reach their business goals.
Need A VA Was Founded To Meet The Needs Of Individuals
& Small – Medium Sized Businesses
Source: Unstoppable Momma
Monday, August 22, 2016
TIPS on Customer Service That Make Your Business BOOM
Customer service is the key to keeping your business bubbling along, without this important element supporting your business you will lose customers as quick as your attracting them.
There are many ways that customer service grows your business its the human element of just wanting acceptance and become part of the community in which could be as simple as welcoming the new member, or having the virtual assistant watching your new Facebook group that you have formed and being there to answer simple questions and comments.
AMAZON - SHOPIFY - EBAY STORES
These stores rely heavily on you the owner to have the best customer support possible to help keep people with quick response times to questions, to give login information and be responsive to reviews that they write to know that they are being heard.
These simple steps are the way to have repeat customers that turn into raving fans that bring you more business. Doesn't it make sense to spend advertising dollars once and then to keep them for repeat customers they're after all then costing you absolutely nothing to retain.
Many customers just want to have their questions answered or follow up their orders or how to apply a code to give them the discount off the full price you are offering. To keep the customer happy it all comes down to quick response time to questions in order to avoid frustrations, which leads to refunds and buyers remorse.
Research reveals that customers want human interaction not something that frustrates them like a recorded message or phone prompts they want to speak to a human voice to answer questions quickly.
It may be something as simple as logging on people get stumped and annoyed when they can't get access to products that they have just purchased. This delay in getting back to them with a solution to their problem gets them upset and writes reviews that are sometimes unpleasant and will hurt your future business.
With all the hard work that goes behind a launch of a new product or service with advertising and webinars I have seen personally the numbers of new sign ups drop off dramatically between 25-30% due to no customer service. This is leaving money on the table.
WEBINARS
What about shopping cart abandonment this happens a lot and many businesses just send an email to get lost amongst the many emails that people get sent wouldn't your company stand out from others to pick up the phone and ask them "was there a problem - how can we help you?"
WELCOME CALL
There are some clients who will say nothing and will never take the next step because they are unsure of the next step in your program or service. A follow up call warms the person and shows warmth of your company.
This only takes a few minutes and something like "Hi Mary this is Dan from ABC Company, just giving you a courtesy call to first to welcome you to our company and to see if I can help you with and questions."
How good does that customer feel now, first they are acknowledged and secondly they have an opportunity to say if there is a problem and have someone help them.
We at Need a VA have known the human touch is so important in growing your business we personally help variety of businesses, product launches and services increase their bottom line just by being there to help their customers.
Contact us through the website http://needava.com or email us at info@needava.com today to see how we can help you.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9503224
Saturday, August 20, 2016
A Virtual Assistant Bookkeeper Is Gold For Your Business
I want to share a story with you that I know will ring true for many of you that produce a shoe box full of receipts and pay big dollars for the CPA to make sense of the contents in the box.
To be truthful I was using the shoe box accounting systems where friends would laugh as I opened the box carefully and shut it quickly to squeeze yet another receipt in.
The box was full to the brim and I had made my way in for my appointment with the CPA and faced him with a large pad of paper in front of him as I tried to recall events, dates and different expenses I was trying to write off. Then the Accountant took off his glasses looked me straight in the eye and said "I am only as good as the information you give me!"
"Just imagine in this room if I had the tax department sitting around the table would your stories satisfy him?"
This truth hit me straight between the eyes I can still remember the sinking feeling when I thought that my poor record keeping would get me into hot water sooner or later and I virtually became obsessed about finding a virtual assistant to help get my house into order.
Tips to Get Your Started:
It's always hard starting anything new but to be prepared to spend only an hour a day to tackle this task, as it will overwhelm you.
Definitely do not do this task late at night or you will find you can't sleep.
Go purchase either a filing cabinet or do what I did and buy color-coded concertina boxes so you can easily find the year that you're looking for.
Clear the kitchen or office desk and first sort out in year then date order.
What I did is look for a virtual assistant bookkeeper and found much more than I bargained for she is she is a qualified CPA and she journals all of my receipts straight away directly onto QuickBooks and for the Australian clients MYOB.
We now have clients all around the world with many like how I was and they either started out with good intentions but just either got busy or lost the enthusiasm for book work and started to fall behind.
A good bookkeeper will save you money two ways as there will be less for the CPA to do, the cost of a virtual assistant bookkeeper is thirds of the cost of an accountant. The records will be kept beautifully and will stand the scrutiny of the tax office.
At Need a VA we are a virtual assistant outsourcing company that have expert qualified accountant/bookkeepers on hand to do your books no matter if you are in the US, Australia, Canada etc contact us TODAY at http://needava.com or email info@needava.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9500128
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
ARE YOU GETTING YOUR NAME OUT THERE? - Branding Yourself Online
But the question is what name are you getting for yourself?
What do I mean I can hear you say?
What do I mean I can hear you say?
Tell me this, what do you think when you watch an ad on the NIKE brand?
You think of super fit athletes all in the sports that they are famous for each one of our sporting heroes all wearing NIKE shoes and clothing.
You think of super fit athletes all in the sports that they are famous for each one of our sporting heroes all wearing NIKE shoes and clothing.
Totally amazing, it even gets you a little excited to watch the ad to see who is featured…right?
Coke ads are similar all featured with happy laughing teenagers having a great time together and you then associate having a great time while drinking Coke.
I must see dozens of websites a day many of them have an idea in mind but its not reflected in their website or any of the social media platforms. The message is lost and disjointed and in a lot of cases I either have to ask what are you wanting to be known for as I can’t get what they are wanting to promote.
Even stranger they get lost for words they start to give you an answer saying I want to be able to promote this product or I still want to be an affiliate but want to be known as an authority.
What you need when you are getting your name out there you need branding something when you see ads people will know its you right down to the colors you choose from your site that shows more about your personality, logo and tagline these all tie into making this all about tying the brand together.
Even when you are new you and you join a program and they tell you just put a site up and drive traffic. Be very careful when you join a program that you do not get swallowed up in their brand and lose yourself.
I go to new websites and honestly need to wear sunglasses as the person has gone to the back of the affiliate area and put every flashing banner they could find.
Nothing could be more of a turn off than landing on a page like this. When you have a website built for you ensure that YOU are made the authority, for instance if you are coaching people the front page should be about you with links to book a session with you etc. You can promote other products through “resources I use”
With your own website it does not matter if the company you are an affiliate for goes belly up – you still have your real estate your own website.
Need a new website? Contact us at http://needava.com or email at info@needava.com
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Slack Is One Of The Best Essential Tools For Teams
Slack is One Of The Best Essential Tools For Teams.
What is Slack?
Slack is a messaging app that works as a very effective collaborative tool, and brings together all of your team communication in one place. Slack offers real-time messaging, search and archiving for teams. It integrates with a number of external services and applications and comes with built-in sharing options, so that you can share your files or emails with anyone, either internally – within a team, or externally.
Why Do You Need Slack?
While it has only been two years since it was first introduced, Slack has become very popular with business executives in many Fortune 500 companies. It is easy to see why. The problem is with the nature of email. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, most of the email one received – 70% to 80% - was from another person. So much of the email communication received was important enough to be viewed.
But now, only 8 to 10% of the emails one receives is really important, and comes from an actual person…while the rest of the 90% comes from machines, email marketing companies, Facebook comments, Twitter responses, monthly bills, bank statements and so on and so forth.
When you are working in a competitive corporate environment, picking out the emails from within the organization or from your team members from the rest becomes a real headache. That’s why Slack can be so useful. Slack is One Of The Best Essential Tools For Teams.
What Does Slack Do?
When you tap on the Slack icon, it makes available only the emails and other communication received from the people at your company or your team members. Slack creates a wall between your internal communication with your team members and the rest of the stuff you deal with, generally. So you know what’s important and what’s not and focus on only what you need for work.
Slack has advanced search features, filters and sorting functionality and makes it easier for you to get the files that you need. Slack has powerful native apps for both Android and iOS and can be synchronized across several devices – mobile phones, tablets, laptop and desktop computer. So if you read an email on your laptop, the Slack app on your iPhone will know about it and will mark the email as “read”.
There’s no need for status reports and stand-up meetings as Slack makes sure that everyone in the team is in the loop. This simplifies a lot of things for you and your team. All team communications on Slack are public, so everyone can see what’s going on elsewhere in the organization.
The marketing department can get an idea of the challenges faced by the customer relationship managers, and engineers are always aware of what the designers are working on currently, and don’t have to ask.
Slack has a searchable history of the entire team’s communication, which allows you to stay updated with what’s going on. With Slack, you can go through every decision made by your team, every discussion, link, or file shared. You don’t have to waste time on the triaging of emails and status updates any more. This saves time and does a lot to boost productivity at the workplace.
Slack – Price and Plans
Slack is available in four different plans.
- Free - no limits on time or users
- Standard - costs $6.67 per user/month.
- Plus - costs $12.50 per user/month
- Enterprise – costs $48 for the whole team/monthly
Conclusion
Slack is one of the best apps for online communication and collaboration out there. It works as a perfect private back-channel for members of a team within an organization. It provides for a seamless communication within the workplace, saves time and improves productivity.
Monday, August 8, 2016
YAHOO MESSENGER WILL BID GOODBYE THIS YEAR
If you’re still using Yahoo Messenger – Yahoo’s incredibly ancient application, you better start finding an alternative soon, as Yahoo plans to shoot the Messenger, no pun intended, on August 5, 2016. You can now switch to Yahoo’s new version of Messenger which is available as a part of Yahoo Mail’s desktop application, web app and as a smartphone app, or choose any of the more effective alternatives discussed here.
Yahoo Messenger has a rich history behind it. It was launched in 1998 under the name “Yahoo Pager” – which goes to show just how ancient it was – and was a big deal in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Messenger was very popular with users in Asia-Pacific in particular. It also had a very strong following among oil traders and other investors, who used the app to exchange news and gossip on commodities prices.
Yahoo Messenger’s traditional supporters have since moved on to bigger and brighter things such as Google Talk, WhatsApp and of course, Facebook; which means there are no longer any takers for Yahoo’s legacy platform any longer.
Yahoo has done its best to revive the ailing Messenger, by updating the Messenger app on both iOS and Android in December, 2015. It also introduced a brand new design for the Messenger, but it doesn’t look like that has helped much.
As Yahoo Chief Architect Amotz Maimon explains, “In December of 2015, we announced a brand new Yahoo Messenger for mobile, the Web and in Yahoo Mail on the desktop, built on a new modern platform. This complete revamp brings users an incredibly fast, beautiful and smart way to send – and unsend – messages, photos and animated GIFs in 1:1 and group conversations. While today we provide basic interoperation between the legacy product and the new Messenger, we encourage all of our users to complete their transition to the new Yahoo Messenger as we will no longer support the legacy platform as of August 5, 2016. We intend to continue our focused efforts on the new Messenger, with a goal of delivering the best experience to our users“.
So what of the new Messenger? Switching to the new platform is not as simple as Yahoo imagines it would be. For one, there is no replacement for the desktop tool as yet, although Yahoo promises to come up with a brand new desktop application of the new version of the Messenger for both Windows and Mac soon.
Now, while the login details of the old Messenger do work with the new Yahoo Messenger, there are some obvious problems here – you cannot transfer your contacts from the old Messenger to the new version. Also, the new Messenger logs out automatically after a short period of inactivity and requires you to confirm your password every time you want it back on.
Another issue is that the legacy platform used to store all conversations locally, while the new Messenger is cloud based, which means it stores all conversations remotely. This is a problem for the traditional users of Messenger, such as commodities traders, who require a definitive record of what was said and what was deleted – for the benefit of compliance officers.
So many of the old users of Yahoo Messenger have moved on – to
Skype, QQ, Slack and ICE Instant Messenger. Reuters and Bloomberg have useful messaging tools for traders as well. Facebook Messenger and WeChat are popular as well. LinkedIn has a useful chat application too.
WhatsApp, is the most popular messaging app in the world and it is perhaps the most obvious replacement for the Yahoo Messenger, especially now that it has launched a desktop version of its hugely popular mobile messaging app.
So, even as everyone bids a fond adieu to Yahoo Messenger, newsflash – the world has moved on!
Ref: https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/145715934739/q2-2016-progress-report-on-our-product
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