An Old-School Idea that Could Transform Small Businesses

    It seems there used to be a certain ideal people had about doing business—maybe there were many ideals—but the one entrepreneurial imperative that always captures my imagination is the one that drove entrepreneurs serve their customers without cutting corners.   New small business owners are also on to something good, but the old-fashioned guys and gals from decades ago believed in building something to last. Now we’re all about building it fast, and as much of it as possible.   Of course there is a lot of money to be made and I won’t knock the hustle, but in the interest of old-school values, to the new wave of would-be tycoons I have to say: We can do better.   Consumer Durables There was this term, “consumer durables” that was used in the field of economics to describe something that consumers only had to buy once and be …

Is a Virtual Phone Number the Same as a Standard Number?

When you first hear about virtual phone numbers, you might be a little apprehensive about using them for your business because it seems as if this is an entirely different kind of number, but it actually works just the same, and in some ways better than a number you would get from a phone company. A virtual number is not a soft phone number, it is not a VoIP number, and it is even more versatile than a conventional number. A virtual number works just like the numbers you’re used to. When you say, “virtual number”, it sounds like it’s not quite a real number, or that there’s something strange about it, but this is not the case. You receive calls in the same way, and when someone calls your virtual number, they will be instantly connected to you from anywhere, as you would expect. They can also be local …

Divert Calls to One Platform by Consolidating Your Phone Numbers

  As your small business grows, one thing that can become hard to manage is your phone numbers. You may only have one or two main business lines in the beginning, but as you gain more customers, hire more employees, or open stores in new locations, more phone lines become necessary to handle the call volume.   Is the cost of expansion becoming too high? It’s a wonderful thing when you begin to experience growth and success, but the problem is that so many phone lines can get really expensive, and really complicated.   Traditional service providers will charge you hundreds, even thousands of dollars to manage all of your business’ phone numbers. You can use Talkroute to consolidate all of your phone numbers into one place, and not only that—you can manage all of them from your control panel.   Gather all your numbers into one, centralized platform. Consolidating …

Are You in the Wrong Business? These Symptoms Will Help You Decide

    Is your business making you miserable? Does success seem to elude you? Well, that could mean that you need to keep fighting the good fight, or it could mean that you should consider a new line of work.   Consider the following, and if this sounds familiar to you, it might be a sign that you’re in the wrong business.   You hate going to work every day. A lot of people hate their jobs right? But the difference for a business owner is that you are not working for anyone else (except for your customers, of course), and the whole point of being your own boss is to work how, when, and where you want to work.   When you have this kind of freedom, and you still hate going to work every day, then there’s a good chance you’re in the wrong business.   It’s difficult …

User Experience 101: A Philosophy of Simplicity

There is a subtle element of design which cannot be stressed enough and is absolutely necessary to creating a positive interaction with your customers, and that is user experience. Everybody’s talking about UX now, but good designers have understood its importance long before the term was ever coined. What does this mean for business owners? It means a lot because if you want to keep your customers, they have to be able to easily navigate your website, mobile app, or whatever platform it is. Allow users to seamlessly perform tasks. What does a good UX feel like? It might be best to first ask, What does a bad UX feel like?Quality UX design allows the user to perform an operation seamlessly. If they are hindered, frustrated, or confused by the process required to perform the desired operation, then that’s bad design—and it’s really that simple. The difficult part is engineering …

3 Indispensable Practices for Any Business Deal

The days seem to fly by most of the time, when you’re running a business. You go into work, catch up with all of your emails, putting out fires here and there while you continue the endless search for new opportunities to promote your business… and then one day something really big comes across your desk. Whether it’s a new investor who’s really interested in your company, or the chance to move into a new building, making big decisions in business requires some careful thought before you dive in. The following checklist outlines a couple of steps you should take before signing off on any big decision. 1. Do Your Due Diligence There’s no substitute for doing your homework. Anyone who has ever embarked on a venture or project of any kind without doing the research first, either made a mistake or got really lucky. There is something to be …

What Does VoIP Stand For, and What Does it Mean?

VoIP is an acronym that sounds weird at first—“vŏy’p”—but is actually fairly straightforward in application. It stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, which, in the simplest of terms, means the type of phone service that works over an internet connection. To be clear, VoIP is the prevailing method of internet telephony that floated to the surface after around 20 years of a varied succession of attempts to make internet calls accessible to consumers, and I am admittedly glancing over many stages of its development. This type of phone connection has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its low cost to the user and its versatility for business, as well as personal use. It’s possible that you have used a VoIP connection without even realizing it. Have you ever used Skype? That’s a VoIP call—and in fact, they’re one of the companies who made it famous. VoIP phones have …

Different types of phones

Porting a Phone Number to a New Provider: An Introduction

So you’ve decided to transfer your business number to a new provider. Most likely, you’re apprehensive about a few things, and you’re certainly not the only one. Anytime when it is very important that you don’t lose your current number—whether for professional or personal reasons—you are going to be concerned about the transfer. Most of the apprehension concerning the porting of your number to another provider is due to a lack of knowledge, which is why we are providing this series on the process of porting a phone number. To start, let’s go over the most common concerns about transferring a phone number to a new provider. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to keep your number, and you just have to hope that your new provider lets you. Let’s clear this up right now: You can absolutely keep your number, no matter who the provider is that you’re …

5 Strategies Big Businesses have Known for Decades

    1. Beware of the S-curve around the corner. You can bet that this bedrock principle is an integral part of any established business’ growth plan. As outlined in a lucid article by Dave Power on barriers to growth, 70 percent of growth companies are sold before they reach the $30M mark.   It’s all about continuing innovation, he explains, and this idea is foundational for startups or any scaleable company because a growth-orientated business will inevitably stagnate if it fails to regain value for its market.   So, what happens is this: A startup with a great product opens for business and enjoys explosive growth for a few months, or even a few years.   After a while, however, revenue begins to plateau as the first version of your product starts to lose its sparkle, competition arrives increasingly as entrepreneurs discover that there is a large market for …

Top Tech for Tracking Online Customer Behavior

For small businesses trying to grow, the pursuit for tools that give you a clearer picture of what makes your customers tick is never-ending. Methods for understanding your customers’ interest and motivation used to be basically limited to what your customers buy and what they tell you, but now that customers interact with small businesses so much online, the quality and variety of information that can be known about customer behavior is much more readily-available. It’s Not Just for Online Sellers You don’t have to run an ecommerce site to benefit from online tracking tools that can give you a deeper understanding of what your customers are looking for. In fact, if you’re not using these tools, then you’re missing out on some pretty valuable information that can stimulate growth for your business. First Things First—Do You Have a Great Website? Before you begin tracking customer behavior online, the first …