How I prove that Time does ACTUALLY equal Money - and how to get more of both...
If there's one thing that I've learned during my time as an Internet Home
Business owner, it's that the most precious resource that I constantly waste is
Time.
Time is finite - it's measured and what's there is ALL there is and once it's
gone, you can never get it back (at least Stephen Hawking says so...).
I mean, you can always get more money, but you can't get more time. And part of
my on-going learning experience as a e-biz owner is that the more "Good Time"
you can devote to your business, the more money you can make OR the less you
need to work in order to live.
Now, in the course of any given day, I've come to the uncomfortable realization
that I need to manage my time FAR better than I do now if I'm going to grow my
business.
You see, Audrey and I are at a point with A Squared Artifacts (our primary
corporation - it owns all of our other interests) where we need to make a BIG
decision...
We need to do one of 3 things:
1) Hire employees so that we can continue our growth.
2) Stop growing and tread water, or...
3) Find a way to better manage our time in order to grow.
Now, I'm not a fan of having an employee. I used to be one, and I have to say, I
was a handful. I'd like to think that even though I was difficult to manage, my
skills and dedication made up for it. But still - I would not want to have me as
an employee!
Just so you know, some of my old co-workers receive this newsletter - They'll
probably all agree with me...
Anyway, having an employee requires a whole laundry list of services and
management considerations that, in my opinion, for our business, are just not in
the cards.
The other option is - stop growing.
BUZZZ! - Wrong answer. I like having my own business! I like having a business
that's big enough that we get noticed by other folks that want to do business
with me. I think that the efforts that you undertake to grow your own business
create opportunities. And these opportunities can often come full-circle and
benefit your company in marvelous ways. But you've got to grow to get noticed!
So, no - NOT growing is NOT the answer.
The answer then is #3. Find a way to manage our companies' time better.
And the first target, the first issue, the first eater of time that we're taking
head on?
The phone.
Yes - we're putting our phone on notice..."You're not going to monopolize our
time anymore!"
"Oh, and by the way, Mr. Fax Machine - you better buck up, too!"
"Hey YOU! Mr. Email - watch you're step - you're next!"
Communications - Business Telecommunications specifically - have, in the past 3
months, occupied more time, eaten more human resources and resulted in more
delays and set-backs than ANY OTHER ELEMENT of our business.
It's true. And I'll prove it.
I'm a metrics freak. Not in terms of meters and kilo's, but in terms of business
measurement. I keep track of EVERYTHING!
Like, how many pay per click ads need to be clicked on in order to result in a
sale,
The close ratio between search engine traffic and paid traffic,
The close ratio of each on of our affiliates,
The up time and down time on our servers,
The traffic stats on days that we publish e-zines,
The response rate from our JV invitations,
And the number of time I make speeling errrers in my articles (needed a large
computer for that one...)
So, 3 weeks ago, when I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with A Squared Artifacts,
mostly because I felt that I couldn't get ANYTHING done, I started to keep track
of the time that I was one the phone...
Wanna guess how long I spent on the phone that week?
Okay, let's say that an average workweek for Andy is 56 hours - actually, you
don't need to say that, it's true - I keep track of that too...
Now, during that workweek, my efforts address a broad range of responsibilities.
The most important responsibility, in my opinion, is growing our company.
However, the things that I do to grow our company are hard to measure. They may
take the form of brain storming, outlining new products, searching for new
markets and suppliers, looking for new affiliate opportunities...
The point is, the techniques that I use to grow our company don't often fit
neatly into a "To Do" list.
And since they don't, they are the first things that get canned when -
The Phone Rings.
During the first week in March, the one that I averaged 56 hours of work, I was
on the phone for 18 hours.
That's nearly 25% of my workweek.
25% of my time with a phone glued to my ear.
I should have known it was this bad. I actually have 2 cordless handsets for our
business line, and I generally need to have one on the charger at all time, or
I'll cut folks off in the middle of a call.
Now, let's be clear - Some of that phone time is very productive. Between Audrey
and I, we might take 7-10 phone orders a week from folks that don't trust the
Internet with their credit card information...
Some of that phone activity revolves around answering questions from customers,
and THAT often results in a later purchase. Some calls are from folks that just
want to talk to a human before they place an order.
But...
But...
The majority of those phone calls are a waste of time.
I really don't need to engage my leasing company in a conversation about the
benefits of re-financing my Mustang GT for another 8 years after it's 4-year
lease is up.
I love it when customers take an interest in our products, but when a 12
year-old calls to tell me that one of our Lord of the Rings Swords does not have
the same hilt that was used in the last episode of the movie, I find it
difficult the cut the kid off.
Here's a good one - our competitors call and ask us how we have such good search
engine positioning and could we help them out?
I like the call from a wholesaler that we got - she told us what a mistake it
was for our company to be using Drop shipper X, and even though her drop ship
fee was twice as much as our current vendor and their prices are higher, we
should switch.
Our house is 8 years old - I don't need new windows, or a new roof, or a new
mortgage, or ANOTHER finished basement, or a 10'X10' deck that costs $5,200 -
presumably to replace our 15'X45' deck that I built myself - for $3,100.
To use a phrase from our UK friends - BUGGER OFF!
It's a problem - a real one, and it's threatening the long-term growth of our
business.
So, we have decided to do something about it.
Now, this is our situation - yours may be different, but I think that the value
of what we are doing for our business can be used by ANYONE that has a phone
number on their web site, or needs to send and receive faxes, screens their
calls, or have access to some form of business communications when they travel,
or take holidays...
I get a lot of questions from new eStore owners and Home Based Internet Business
folks about managing customer phone calls.
Our old solution was to have multiple phone lines with a sophisticated answering
machine. That works, but it's clunky, and after looking at the numbers (both
financial and temporal) - it was much more expensive and not nearly as elegant
as having a digital call center...
A Digital Call Center.
So, let me tell you what this is all about. Now, if you're just starting out and
you're wondering if you're going to use your own personal phone number for your
business number, or if you're considering getting a second line for your
business, and maybe even another line for a Fax machine - please consider this
before you do...
Our digital call center service let's us put a Toll-Free Number on all of our
web sites. Now, when a customer calls that number, they get a recorded greeting,
like this;
"Welcome to A Squared Artifacts. Please choose from the following list of
departments; For A Squared Armory, Press 1, for Yahoo! Store Profits, Press 2,
for Like A Pro Media, Press 3...For our other e-commerce stores, Press 4, 5, 6
etc..."
Let's say that the customer presses 1. Our digital call manager (DCM) has
already been instructed how to handle the call. Here are the options we can give
it, all of it depending on how we're handling calls that day...
The DCM can transfer the call instantly to our home phone. The nice thing here
is that our home phone number is hidden from the caller, meaning we don't have
our home phone number out there on our web sites...
Then if we don't pick up on our home phone, we can tell the DCM to try 3 other
numbers, all in sequence.
That's cool and all, but this is what we actually do...
We have some software from the DCM installed on our laptops. So, when a phone
call comes in, a little window on our computer pops up - just like an instant
messenger window. In that window is the name of the caller, what extension they
tried to reach and their phone number.
Right below it is a list of options like:
1) Send to Voice Mail,
2) Accept Call and send it to our one of our phone numbers...
3) Reject Call,
4) Type Response with Text to Speech. If you really feel like giving that
telemarketer the Heisman, you can use the DCM software to take a message that
you TYPE into the DCM window and transfer it to SPEECH. Can you imagine?
Now, if you decide to send the call to voicemail (which is customizable), you
can actually listen to the message that the caller leaves from your computer.
How convenient is that? The DCM creates a call log with time of day, duration of
message and the message itself that you can access from your computer, from any
phone, any time, anywhere. If you use your phone, you can use the Auto-Reply
feature and the DCM will dial the callers phone number for you, too...
I hate sending faxes. It's 1980's technology. When I send a fax, I've to type
the letter, print it out, type the cover letter, print it out, walk over to the
fax machine with the fax number on a sticky pad because you have to put the
paper face down for the fax to work, and then send it 3 times because the paper
either gets stuck or pulls all of the pages through at the same time...
No Ma'am! Not anymore. The DCM let's me fax from my computer - and guess what
else it does? It lets me get faxes TO my computer. So, when I get a fax, the DCM
sends me an email with the fax attached as a graphics file... If I need some
data from the fax to use in an email or a document, I just run the
digital-quality fax through some OCR software and copy and paste. Incidentally,
you can use the same toll-free number for both voice and fax - the DCM is smart
enough the recognize either...
Aside from the time saving benefits, aside from having all of our communications
now unified - there is one other key benefit that we got with our DCM that was
totally unexpected:
Creditability.
That's right. We now have a toll free number on our web sites. When people call,
they are now greeted by an announcement recording with options to select an
extension (just like a Fortune 500 Company would have). When folks call, they
are presented with a company infrastructure that's professional and easy to use.
We get a lot of phone calls, and it's easy to loose important numbers. That's
changed. Our DCM logs every call, and keeps a record of every message and every
fax and we can keep it all on our computer, all in one place.
Wherever there's a phone or Internet access, we can respond to our customers -
and that smells like "Big Company" customer service.
But most importantly, we save a HUGE, HEAP'O time.
If you've been concerned about how you're gonna handle phone traffic when you're
just starting out - this is the answer.
http://www.online-store-profits.com/dcm.htm
If you've been tearing your hair out trying to manage multiple web-site phone
traffic or customer service calls - this is the answer.
http://www.online-store-profits.com/dcm.htm
If you're 4 year old has ever answered your office phone when a customer was
trying to place a phone order - this is the answer.
==>
http://www.online-store-profits.com/dcm.htm
Oh, by the way, the service starts a $9.99 a month - and that gives you 100 toll
free minutes. And they offer a 7 day FREE trial.
I'm not going to kid you, the service plan that we use is more expensive than
that because we have many different extensions and we would have gone through
the 100 minutes of time in 1 day, but the $9.99 plan is what we started with.
Look, I realize that this is not a sexy or exciting as a new e-book on search
engine optimization, or a piece of software that automatically generates content
friendly web pages for you - I know it sounds kinda boring...
However, there will come a time where you will shiver every time the phone
rings.
There will come a time were you're right in the middle of something important
and someone calls you and asks if "They could have just a few minutes of your
time, and no we're not selling anything".
You'll loose sleep over whether or not you should close your eStore or web site
when you go on vacation.
All of these things will happen if you choose to make your living selling
anything to anyone on the Internet - I know, I've got the metrics to prove it.
So, check it out. I've got friends that I've turned on to this service that use
it for other things besides running their business, it's that flexible.
Their web page is at:
http://www.online-store-profits.com/dcm.htm
If you want to grow your business, you've got 2 options...
Pay for services and opportunity or,
Use your own time in place of paying for services and opportunities.
I've opted for the later, and it's worked out beyond my wildest dreams. And now
that I have more time - my business should grow even faster.
Visit:
http://www.online-store-profits.com/dcm.htm
Other things...
I was down in Florida last week to see Chris Malta and Rob Cowie at World Wide
Brands - the Drop Ship Source Directory and Market Research Wizard people.
http://www.online-store-profits.com/News/DropShipSource.htm
Go and get on these guys newsletter list - now. They have some announcements
coming up that will blow your mind.
They are so cool that I can't talk about it! I signed a Non-Disclosure
Agreement, and I'm glad I did. These folks are about to turn the world of
e-commerce, drop shipping, market research, online auctions and wholesaling ON
IT'S EAR. Get on their email list, read Chris's free e-book and stay connected
to these people. They are, without a doubt, and I don't care who says otherwise,
the most honest brokers of resources, information, and goodwill on the entire
Internet.
http://www.online-store-profits.com/News/DropShipSource.htm
Till Next Time!
Andy Jenkins
http://www.online-store-profits.com
