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 …

talkroute mobile app call path

The Simplified Call Path: How Your Mobile Dialing App Works

Though the connection is virtually instantaneous when you call someone, there is a surprising number of operations that have to take place before the call completes. Each of these operations is vital, sometimes quite complex, and they all happen in a fraction of a second. In this article, we will explore one type of call that, if you’re a Talkroute user, you’re probably very familiar with—an outgoing call from your Talkroute mobile app. Using your cell phone as a business line. As one of our specialties at Talkroute, the system makes it easy for business owners who have a cell phone that doubles as a business phone. The mobile app was created so that you are the only one who knows that you’re calling from a mobile phone. To your customers, you could be sitting at a desk in your office, wielding the handset attached to your corded desk phone—which …

Black Hat SEO: Is It Really as Evil as They Say?

    There is a lot of discussion about the strategies that are used by SEO marketers today, and rightfully so because this medium is the greatest driver of online traffic to company websites.   There are a variety of ways to generate traffic to a site through search engine ranking. Some strategies are effective, and some are not; some tactics are ethical, and some cause more trouble than they’re worth.   It’s really a matter of how closely you want to toe the line between what’s ethical and what’s not because even the bad guys of SEO have some success.   The good folks over at Google. Google puts a great deal of energy into filling their index with quality, relevant information, but the main reason they pay attention to that is because they want everyone to turn to them for information.   The good folks at Google are …

6 Helpful Tips to Transfer Calls More Efficiently

Managing and transferring customer calls is a vital aspect of customer service. Not only do you have to provide helpful and accurate information to assist customers on the phone, but you have to make sure that, if you must transfer the call, that it actually gets through to the next agent and that the customer is taken care of throughout the process. The following are some points (obvious as they may seem) that will help you and your team to provide great customer service, even during a transfer. #1 Don’t hang up. On behalf of those of us who have been dropped by an agent while waiting on hold, please avoid this at all costs. Not only will it infuriate your caller, but if they hear a dial tone instead of being successfully transferred, you might have just lost this person’s business. It seems to me that while most of …

How to Port a Phone Number from AT&T to Talkroute

Have you decided to move one of your AT&T numbers to Talkroute? Our porting team is happy to transfer your number to our service, and in fact, AT&T is one of the oldest and largest phone companies in the industry, so they are no stranger to phone number ports. This article will cover how to port away your landline, wireless, or other number from AT&T. Follow these steps completely for a successful and seamless port into Talkroute. As soon as you put in a request with us to port your existing phone number to Talkroute, one of our porting specialists will contact you by email within (1) business day and provide instructions for completing the port. Your porting specialist will walk you through the process, but if you want to prepare beforehand to save time, the following are all of the steps you will follow to port your number to …

Setting Up an At-Home Office for Your Small Business

With more than 22 million self-employed workers and 543,000 new businesses opening each month, office locations have begun to shift from traditional building settings to individual homes exponentially in recent years. In fact, 52% of small businesses are now solely based from home! If you are one of these budding entrepreneurs, you should know that a properly equipped and strategically structured office can make all the difference when it comes to productivity. With just a few easy tips, your at-home office will have you feeling constructive and creative in no time. How Your Small Business Can Succeed Across the board, small businesses bend over backward to try and become profitable from their inception. However, this struggle can eventually lead to a business’s demise if proper financial and business concept planning aren’t considered. But by following these tips, especially in your business’s infancy, you’ll be well on your way to ensuring …