Beryl Powell Consulting

In today’s society, we are all looking for ways to make our daily tasks easier to manage. This is important in business as well. Outsourcing has been a way to save time and money for a while, and businesses are benefiting. Another area of business that can be outsourced is email. But, before you do, consider whether your business needs to do this.

Outsourcing is contagious. You could be on the Home Depot website trying to get customer service help and your customer service representative could be answering your questions from India. Computers and the Internet allow us to perform a number of tasks from anywhere in the world. Now, email is becoming the newest thing we decide to outsource. Here are some of the pros and cons of doing so.

Pros:

Outsourcing saves time. For highly successful businesses, email inboxes can receive upwards of thousands of emails a day. If you were to sift through that yourself and answer each one, there wouldn’t be time in the day to do anything else. Your emails would dwindle, but nothing would get done on the marketing side of the business.

Outsource to an individual that you trust. You can hire a virtual assistant whose job it would be to answer these emails. This person would have to spend time with you learning how you think and what types of responses you expect. As a business professional, they would know what messages needed your attention and which ones they could answer. Their expertise would have to include setting up email servers and folders to effectively manage the emails.

You may outsource to an email service that does nothing but handle email. Their services would provide the servers needed to handle multiple email accounts and the features that make organizing that mail easier. Because they deal with email exclusively, they continually implement technology that will benefit you.

Cons:

Can you trust another person reading your email? Any other source that you use to deal with your email has to be secure. You wouldn’t want sensitive material being accessed by just anyone. Using an email service that is not secure is asking for trouble.

There is something to be said for reading your own email. An assistant or email service can answer for you but they are not you. There is the potential for emails to be answered incorrectly when someone else is doing the job. An email may get filed into the wrong folder and missed.

Outsourcing is not always necessary for smaller businesses or businesses with only one email address. To solve the problem of massive emails, choosing an email provider who has the features you need is a more viable option. It could be a matter of filing them automatically so that they are easy to look at later when you have time.

Depending on your needs, outsourcing email is an option to pursue. But, before deciding on a plan, it is wise to consider the pros and cons of all options.

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Every business has to deal with the administrative side of their enterprise. If you have a business website, people will use your business email address to contact you for any number of needs. Each day you will see your inbox grow exponentially as more people discover your business. The trick will be to get all of those emails addressed without pulling your hair out.

I used to love it when my AOL chimed, “You’ve got mail.” It meant that someone wanted to contact me. With a business, however, email can seem like the enemy. I closed my eyes when I hit INBOX because I was afraid of how many new messages I had to look forward to.

Getting emails from customers, potential clients, and the like is a major part of your business. Don’t be afraid of it. But, it can be overwhelming when there are other issues to deal with, like marketing your business to others. So, let’s look at some ways to lessen the pressure.

Decide when you will check your email. Some may think that this is a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many people check their email when they get a free moment. This could add up to about ten times a day. No one has time for that if they are actively working their business. There are other things that need to be tended to.

Check your email at set times. At most, check it three times a day. It goes without saying that if you are in an active correspondence with someone that you will have to check it more often, but on a normal day, email can be checked in the morning before you begin your day, in the afternoon, and in the evening before you close up shop.

When setting up your email, use a separate account for business. Using your personal email is a lot like using your home telephone number for business. You can miss messages or accidentally delete ones that you think are SPAM. A personal email account is set up to filter differently than a business email account would be.

Email providers offer more features than we normally use. Mostly, we use the features that we are familiar with when we set up the account. If your email is getting out of control, explore these other features to see if they can help. Microsoft Outlook has many features that are perfect for handling business email. Emails can be flagged to view later and they can be filed in folders that you set up so that you can deal with similar issues all at once.

Create templates that can be used to answer emails. If you just don’t have the time to deal with customer service issues at the moment, having an automatic email template that can be sent out will save you from having to write a new email for each customer service one you receive.

Email doesn’t have to be the terror of your day. Organize your emails by using the various features offered by your email account provider to make the job easier.

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When you start a business, there is a lot to do. Depending on your business plan model, the business may be running out of a physical building or a website with a virtual storefront. If all of your research is correct, you will have found a market that will serve you well. But, one person trying to handle all of the work can be overwhelming.

What is a savvy entrepreneur to do? The daily administrative tasks need to be done as well as the marketing and business strategy. Once clients start to roll in, a new set of variables is added to the equation. Your day just got a bit more hectic.

You are not the first person that this has happened to. It is normal to be overwhelmed when you are the chief. At the beginning the work is plentiful but the money is such that you are the only employee the business can afford, especially if this enterprise is an Internet business.

For a physical office, the pot gets a bit stickier. Use the extra funds that you built into your business plan to get some help. Identify where you have the greatest need and tackle that area first. With employees that will be coming into the office, there is also the matter of benefits, insurance, disability, payroll checks, and other issues. Having this paperwork in place when you develop your business plan eliminates that as another pressure heaped on your head.

Even one person working with you can lighten the load. The object is to grow your business so that a positive cash flow situation is created. There aren’t enough hours in the day to handle every task every day. But, two heads can do double the work.

For an online business, the task of finding someone to help you may come faster. Advertising in forums can yield someone with the right expertise to complement your business. Since you may not need them all the time, hiring contractors is often a good idea.

A contractor means less paperwork at your end. They are working their own business and you are a client. With tax obligations, they are responsible for that. As far as paying them, researching current pricing will help you offer a competitive wage for their work. If they agree, you are ready to delegate.

Being overwhelmed is normal for new business because there is so much to do. You may have learned to survive on little or no sleep and have made it through this phase without the assistance of another. But, the time is coming when the business will grow. That is what we all want — to be more and more successful. At any stage of the game, asking for help can make the bittersweet job of running a business that much more enjoyable.

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Let’s face it, every job has stressful periods (no pun intended) and it is going to happen to you when you work from home sooner or later. A deadline sneaks up on you, you are dealing with an annoying client, or your computer messes up at the worst possible moment. One of the problems with working from home is that you can’t avoid bringing your work home with you – it’s already there. So how do you unwind when you get stressed in your home office? Try a few of these tips.

• Walk Away – Just step away from your desk for a few minutes to relax. Stretch a little and take a few deep breaths. Remind yourself why you wanted to work from home in the first place and that in the big scheme of things this really isn’t so bad. After you’ve calmed down, take a look at what you can do to get through this and get to work.
• Exercise – One of the best ways to combat stress is to work out. Get some type of exercise at least three days per week. Join a gym, go for a bike ride with your kids, or find a friend who will take walks with you a few times a week. Find some type of exercise that you enjoy and get moving each week. When you have a particularly stressful day, take a few minutes to stretch, go for a short walk or do a few jumping jacks. It’ll help you relax and releases some endorphins that will make you feel better right away.
• Talk To A Friend - Grab your phone and call a friend. Spend a few minutes complaining about what’s stressing you out. Just getting it out in the open helps you feel less stressed. Even better, call a friend and meet for a cup of coffee or for lunch. You get away from what’s stressing you out for a bit and get to talk to a friend.
• Indulge Yourself – After a particularly stressful day indulge yourself with a hot bath, read a good book or prepare your favorite comfort food. Other ways to indulge yourself are to go to the movies, schedule a date with your hubby or go shopping. In moderation almost any type of indulgence that will help you relax and feel better about yourself is fine.
• Reexamine The Cause of The Stress And Adjust – If you find yourself stressed a lot, it may be time to take a closer look at what’s causing all that stress. Once you determine the cause, do something about it. If a particular client is the main reason you are stressed out, it may be time to find someone else to work for. If a particular task is stressing you out, consider hiring someone else to take care of it for you while you focus on other work.

Sure, there will always be some stressful moments in your life. Just do what you can to minimize the stress and eliminate it where you can.

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When starting a business, there is so much to do. This fact doesn’t change as the business gets older. In fact, there are more things to do to keep the entire operation going. So that your brains don’t get scrambled, learn the value of “To Do” lists as they pertain to your business.

I have often employed this type of listing in other areas of my life. Lists help to keep your thoughts organized. When grocery shopping, a list keeps you from purchasing items that you didn’t need or only wanted because you were hungry. “To Do” lists also function as an alternative to the hair-pulling technique when it comes to managing a household.

So, how can these lists help in business? First of all, “To Do” lists prioritize your work. Today could be the day you hold a teleconference with a big client. Preparations need to be made for the meeting. A list ensures that you have all of the research, documents, and other information needed for the meeting. The last thing that you want to do is have a client hear you riffling through papers trying to find a document that you forgot.

Lists avoid the dreadful issue of wasting time. This is especially a big issue when you work from home or conduct an online business. It is easy to get mired down in details and lose sight of the big picture. After an entire day of wading through emails and spending hours searching for records, you may wonder what you actually accomplished during the day.

Tackling the invoices and filing paperwork is important, but not at the expense of your business. By this I mean that the main focus of your business is to grow and make a profit. To do that, you stay in contact with clients, work on your marketing strategy, and most importantly, deliver the product.

Some items are more important than others. A list separates the "need to be done" tasks from the tasks that can wait until the weekend when the pressure is off. Impending deadlines are usually reserved for the top of the list so that nothing gets overlooked and a client doesn’t go away angry because they didn’t get their product as promised.

Most people scribble their lists on pieces of paper. However, the type of “To Do” list we are talking about here is more organized. Have a notebook or spiral binder that is dedicated to your lists. Each day, date your list. Check off each item as it is finished. What doesn’t get finished can go on the top of the list for the next day if it is highly important that it get done right away.

It is a major feat to keep facts, figures, meetings, and projects in our heads all at once. It is easy to forget one of them. Avoid the headache and utilize “To Do” lists.

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle.

Emails are a big part of the business of doing business. Clients and business associates will contact you through your email. It is much easier than answering the telephone. You can still get your work done when people correspond by email. In the event that your emails are leading you to the breaking point, consider setting up email drafts to handle the load.

Email providers offer a variety of services. Usually we don’t use even half of the features that they offer. They not only provide solutions for personal email accounts, but also for business account holders. Finding out what they offer lets you know if that provider will work for you and your business.

A feature that will help you handle the gobs of email you will potentially receive each day is email drafts. A draft is a message that you save to send at a later date. It could be that you started an email to a client seeking help but you were interrupted. Instead of scrapping the email entirely, save it in a draft folder; come back to finish it later. When you are ready you can send it out.

When you have an email that needs to be sent to a group of people, create a draft. How do you do this? Well, address the email first. Include the addresses of everyone who needs to receive this email. If you don’t want them to be able to see each other’s address, fill them in under “BCC”. The blind copy feature lets you send the email without the addresses being revealed.

This email could be a response to potential business clients who want more information about your business. Create a draft email specifically for this purpose. When you have people asking for this information, you can use that draft, change the address recipients and send it out.

Create a draft for customer service, requests for catalogs, requests for more information, etcetera. Depending on the types of email you typically get, you can set up drafts for anything. The drafts keep you from having to respond to each email individually if they are all asking for the same information.

Be careful, though. All email, as you know, may not require a draft. There will be plenty that you answer one by one because of the nature of the email. A draft is designed to help you out with emails that are not addressing a specific issue. The trick is to make even the drafts ring with your personal touch and not a stock answer.

Email drafts can be useful to business owners who are overwhelmed with emails on a daily or weekly basis. Use them with discretion, but by all means use them as often as you can to handle the volume.

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle.

In the beginning we love being able to get up, grab a cup of coffee and walk to the “office” in our pjs. Who would ever want to go back to those crazy commuting days? After a while we slowly begin to miss those chats around the water cooler and being able to walk over to a coworker’s desk. Being stuck at home and isolated from the rest of the adult world is one of the biggest challenges we face working from home.

In the long run, this isolation can make you unhappy and even depressed, not to mention that your family might not appreciate being “tackled” the moment they walk through the door because you are desperate to talk. Take some of these steps right from the start to avoid feeling isolated in the first place.

• Build a network of other adults around you that you can call upon. This can be a mix of old friends, the neighbors and even other folks who work at home that you meet online. Just make an effort to stay in touch via phone or IM and get together for lunch or grab a cup of coffee with anyone that lives close to you.
• If you are feeling particularly isolated on any given day, just pick up the phone and call a friend to chat for 30 minutes. Or pack up your gear and head to your local park or coffee shop.
• Join local groups and organizations. It forces you to get out of the house and meet other business owners.
• Remind yourself that your business doesn’t have to take up all of your life. Find some new hobbies, or rediscover old ones and become active in that area. Take a pottery class, or join a book club. You may feel guilty at first, but believe it or not, your business will survive and your family will thank you. In fact both your family and work will benefit from the fact that you will return refreshed and reenergized.

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle