Does Your Business Need an Answering Service?

   

Telephone answering services – answering services, for short – are companies that take calls for other businesses. In addition to simply answering calls and working as receptionists, answering services also perform a variety of other tasks, including appointment scheduling, customer service, order entry, service dispatching, and more.
For small businesses looking to enhance their image, improve customer service, and boost efficiency without drastically increasing their costs, an answering service may be the perfect solution. So, how do you know if an answering service is right for your business?

Examine your needs

Before you can decide whether an answering service could be helpful to your business, you need to examine how the phone is being used in your organization and how those processes could be improved.

For example, say you are a small HVAC company. You have a few people that work in your office, and a few technicians that handle work.

On a typical day, you probably receive several calls inquiring about your services, a couple more scheduling appointments, one or two confirming or changing their appointment, and a handful of other calls from vendors, telemarketers, and the like.
Now, because of your size, you likely maintain regular office hours. Since there’s a need for your service after hours, it may be beneficial to provide the same level of support after hours as you do during the day. Thus, you have a need for a service that answer calls and provide service similar to what your office does during the day.

Compare to answering service capabilities

Once you have examined what your business needs and where telephone support could be useful, you need to look at different answering services and consider whether they can realistically provide what you are looking for.

While telephone answering services are typically able to provide similar services, some are more advanced than others. For example, some services may only take and deliver messages while others may integrate with your business software and perform more detailed tasks.

If you need really advanced work, like technical support, then an answering service may not be able to meet your needs.

Is there an overlap?

Now that you know what you could benefit from and the capabilities of answering services, look for overlaps. If answering services can perform the services you need, then it may be a beneficial relationship. Since answering services typically charge based on usage, they are a cost effective option for companies who need support but don’t want to pay the cost of hiring and staffing additional employees.

About the Author

Melanie Cartwell is a blogger with Continental Message Solution, a leading provider of small business telephone answering services and call center outsourcing solutions.

Growing Your Business Without Hiring a Sales Team

Growing Your Business Without Hiring a Sales Team

If you own a small business, there are a few key functions that you just can’t get wrong.

• You need to have a good product or service.
• You need to have a reliable method of distribution.
• You need to be able to collect money and pay your team.

And you need to be able to sell.

A great product and a great company without sales will be done quickly. But lots of entrepreneurs would rather have a root canal than go on a sales call…let alone do cold calling and prospecting.

Hiring a sales team is both expensive and high risk.

So how is a small business supposed to grow?

Consider sales outsourcing. With sales outsourcing, you find independent sales professionals who already selling to your target market. The sales professionals learn your product or service and then offer it to their existing client base, sometimes growing that base around your offering as well.

So let’s say that you are a small business owner, and your company makes custom jewelry. You can hire a sales rep who will offer your jewelry to retailers and through trade shows within his territory. You will pay him a salary for his time and efforts, and you will probably pay him a bonus for meeting or exceeding his sales goals. And of course, you’ll pay payroll and other employee taxes. If his starting salary is $60,000, then his fully loaded cost with taxes, expenses, etc may well be $100,000 or more. He’s going to have to sell a lot of jewelry…and fast. You own 100% of that risk.

If you outsource your sales, you’ll probably contract…not with ONE sales rep, but with several sales pros. They won’t represent you jewelry exclusively; they may carry other partner products and services – like different kinds of jewelry and accessories; maybe belts and scarves and watches. You will pay a commission to these sales reps when they close sales. You pay them from received revenues. There are other costs, like company literature, samples, communications and field support, but generally these costs are fixed, regardless what type of sales team you have. With outsourcing your sales, you accomplish two key elements of successful business ownership:

• You hold onto your cash, not paying salaries/taxes/expenses where you can hold your money until the sales are completed
• You pay on performance. Just like you are paid, as an entrepreneur.

If this is such a great strategy, why doesn’t everybody do it? The harsh truth is that it’s hard work to have a successful outsourced team. Independent sales reps are demanding and time consuming and often push you to grow your product in new ways. Great independent sales reps are not great ‘team players’. They are just great ‘doers’.  There are trade-offs with sales outsourcing. But the rewards can be so sweet.

If you want to learn more, we’re here to help. We’re all about independent sales reps and the companies that contract with them. http://www.repright.com.

More Jobs in Calgary than People to Fill Them

More Jobs in Calgary than People to Fill Them

The number of available jobs in Calgary continues to increase. In December, according to the Metro Help Wanted Index produced by the Conference Board of Canada, online job ads increased by 6.7 percent. The survey looked at 79 different job posting websites, taking into account the number of new jobs posted, while discounting the repeated offerings.

The report noted that Calgary was the only city in Western Canada that saw an increase. All other areas studies saw their job ads stabilizing. Economist Alan Arcand with the Conference Board of Canada noted that this meant hiring in Calgary would likely show a marked increase in the next few months.

Calgary also had a score below one in the labour tightness indication. This means that the number of job ads were greater than the number of unemployed people seeking work. Three other cities, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina also scored less than one. Some places in Eastern Canada saw the reverse. One is St. Catharines-Niagara where for each ad there were 9.9 people unemployed.

The fact that Alberta saw such numbers wasn’t all that surprising. The unemployment rate province wide for December was 4.5 percent, Canada’s lowest figure. That number was also lower than the 4.9 percent seen in December of 2011. Statistics Canada’s figures showed that Alberta saw 55,500 jobs created in 2012. That is over 25 percent of the jobs created nationwide.

The province’s low unemployment rate has opened up opportunities for firms that specialize in matching companies with prospective employees. Peak Technical, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, opened an office in Calgary this past June, the first in Canada. It has been bringing U.S. Engineers north to fill jobs in Alberta’s energy industry.

Companies, such as KarmaHire in Vancouver, that produce online recruiting software have also shown interest, hosting online career fairs, the next being on January 24th. Right now the firm is concentrating on the technology field, but will be branching out into the energy industry.

Another idea is to court freelance drafting technicians and engineers. CAD Crowd does just this, letting companies post projects online for bids. This allows these Alberta companies to take advantage of talent found world-wide.

Calgary Re/Max 

« Previous Page — Next Page »