Turning Office Small Talk Into Smart Conversation

You’ve heard the saying ‘time is money’; this is true in most elements of your life but especially true when you are thinking about starting a company or building your business.

Creating your own small empire is a fantastic idea and one that can bring a number of awards, success, potentially fame and security. But getting from a small startup or even a medium sized business to the big leagues takes time, money and effort.

Having a conversation with a colleague

Fortunately there are several ways in which you can smooth this process along. The ability to convert your office small talk into smart conversation is an important skill to learn; it will help to grow your reputation and your business.…

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How to Improve Customer Outreach and Your Business Reputation

Communicating with customers is an important part of running a business. If you want a healthy cash flow, you need to understand and effectively conduct customer outreach. Especially if you are selling products online, like this exclusive 100% Kona Coffee from Greenwell Farms. The perfect coffee for every coffee lover. But, without effective communication with the customer, Greenwell Farms would leave money on the table. Luckily their customer communication skills are excellent.

Customer outreach

Customer outreach is meant to benefit your business and encourage more people to buy from you. But, it can end up hurting your business reputation if it isn’t carried out right.…

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5 Reasons Why Good Communication With Your Employees Will Boost Your Business (and How To Do It)

When you communicate well with your employees, work relationships are generally hunky-dory. Good communication enables you to build good relationships with your staff. With good working relationships, any problems tend to get aired sooner rather than later, allowing you to nip potential problems in the bud. If you don’t bother putting in the effort to communicate with your employees, you could be hurting your business more than you think.

Good business communication

So, what is good communication? At its most basic level, communication is the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium. That can include email, text and chat applications.…

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3 Simple Ways to End Internal Communication Woes

In military forces around the world, top-notch communication skills, or a lack thereof, are considered a life and death issue. After all, any slip in the communication lines can result in catastrophe – soldiers can lose their lives, innocent civilians can be killed or harmed, wars can be lost. Big communication blunders are rarely forgiven, those who make the small ones are often subjected to the “three strikes and you’re out” rule.

Internal communication woes

In business, some workplaces have their communication down pat. Others are terrible, yet refuse to learn their lesson when blunders happen time and again. A study from a few years ago labeled “The Cost of Poor Communication” made it abundantly clear that communication woes cannot be treated as a casual issue.…

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Why Use VoIP for Your Small Business?

VoIP is an up and coming internet-based communication method. Often touted as a replacement for traditional land telephone lines, VoIP’s many features beyond traditional voice calls are making it the choice for many small businesses.

Businesswoman making VoIP call

What is VoIP?

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a technology developed to allow users to place voice and video telephone calls over IP networks. The technology was developed to allow users to make phone calls from remote places in the world and is rapidly becoming the preferred type of telephone network for small businesses across the world.

To use VoIP you need either a handset specifically designed for the protocol, or software for your computer.…

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Desk Phones Vs. Softphones – Which one is better?

Desk phones are going out of trend. In fact, most of the decision makers have already migrated to soft and VoIP phones according to recent Frost & Sullivan survey.

An Executive using VoIP

Softphones are more interactive, responsive and offer better productivity. It is hardly surprising why many firms in first world nations have switched to softphones and left PBX-based phone behind.

So what should you pick?

Here are some of points to consider before you make a decision.

Upfront Costs

A mid-grade, voice only desk phone costs nearly $100. Add video calling and other perks and the cost goes well beyond a hundred bucks.…

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What Is Great Customer Service and How Can It Help Your Small Business?

What Is Great Customer Service and How Can It Help Your Small Business?

By definition, customer service is what you offer an individual before, during and after a transaction. While this concept seems simple enough, truly exceptional customer service is getting harder to find. Why? Perhaps it’s because stellar customer service is an experience that not only gets customers from point A to point B, but enhances the overall level of customer satisfaction – an idea that can seem mind-boggling to some.

If you ask any virtual receptionist, however, she’ll tell you that offering quality customer service is no harder or more time-consuming than what you already do. The difference is that the personal connection you make with prospective customers adds value to your brand.…

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Achieving The Right Balance In Employee Interaction

employee interaction

Operating a business, no matter which industry you enter, is vastly competitive. It comes as no surprise then that small business owners are especially critical of how productive their employees are. Low productivity is bad for business, we don’t need to be rocket scientists to figure that out.

One of the most common (and most obvious) reasons why there is a decrease in productivity is employee interaction. In a dog-eat-dog world, there’s still such a thing as too much and too little and both can result in loss instead of profit. Striking the right balance is crucial in ensuring that productive time is exactly what it should be: productive.…

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Reaping the Soft Benefits of Email Marketing

In my previous article, Making Money: The Economics of Email, I discussed the customer acquisition cycle and how email marketing fits nicely into that effort, acting as the grease to speed the process along. Email has direct financial benefits, but there are also a number of other benefits that are difficult to track. For example, if your logo appears in an email, you might not see sales from people who drove right over to your store to make a purchase, but it might make your website seem more familiar to a visitor who has seen the email, and that might make her more comfortable making a purchase at a later date.…

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Business and IT – Adversaries or Partners?

business relationships with ITDoes your company’s Information Technology area act more like competitors rather than partners with the business?

A poor relationship with IT can be extremely detrimental to the efficiency, productivity and cost-effectiveness of your organization.

Watch for some of these warning situations:

“¢ Everyone knows HR cuts payroll checks, and finance pays vendors. IT doesn’t always have the opportunity to regularly show its value and can be taken for granted. People don’t want to talk until something is broken, or frustration has mounted to the point of eruption. IT is regularly in a reactive mode.

“¢ IT helps make operations more efficient, but change in organizations can be stressful and can create uncertainty.…

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