Toshiba Phone Systems and More

What does your email inbox look like? Mine is a mess! So many messages so little time, so many other things to be doing besides cleaning up my in box! What is the best way to handle all those messages? I try to archive things and that gets crazy, it feels like I’m a pack rat and can not throw  anything out! That still leaves all these messages that I should do something with or act on or what?

So what do I do, I leave a large number of messages in my in box, go back from time to time and delete some, act on some and the rest just sit. Then some where along the line I will say enough and go thru the inbox and do something with everything in it. That takes ALOT of time! There must be a better way but I have not figured it out yet, any ideas?

We have been working on new ways to get ourselves “found” on the web. More and more people are doing research, looking for products and services via the web. It’s not enough anymore to just have a website, you have to have a blog.  Google is still the master of the search engine, while Yahoo and Live Search are hanging in there- you need to be found by Google- do you pay someone to manage this ever-changing “mystery” of SEO. We tried that once, but it didn’t work, we spent a lot of money and got nothing. You need to be careful who you work with, there are a lot of people that profess to be SEO experts but there are scam artists out there. Video looks to be the next big thing – google likes video. I won’t do it but my partner has started to do some of his blogs in video-

Fresh content, social marketing sites, like facebook  and twitter will also help make connections, links and backlinks…all foreign to me but I have to say I’m learing a lot. It does take time to build and keep it going.

Here’s a great article on this topic from someone I follow in Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cnpnbq
If you’d like to find me: Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/5pllqb 

With the economy tightening up, small business owners have the luxury of being able to be flexible in the marketing efforts.  Larger companies can’t always be as flexible and respond as quickly to changes that need to be made. We were talking with our business coach yesterday about  this. When the environment you have been operating changes you can’t continue to do the same things and expect to achieve the same results. What’s the definition of insanity? “Do the same things over and over again expecting a different result.”  The numbers game just got a lot bigger. Is it harder to find new business? Absolutely but not impossible -you just have to be creative, respond quickly and change your thinking. I have been spending the last several days learning about social networking, trying to figure out a way to make this work. Working on SEO, partnering with other small businesses who we can forge a mutually beneficial relationship with. That means  re thinking everything we are doing on a daily basis. We are refusing to participate in this recession. One other thing you need to do is to stay POSITIVE. All the doom and gloom portrayed by the media is only adding to the worsening economy. We have new leadership but we all need to do OUR part. The  responsibility for your success lays within you. Think outside the box, be creative and innovative in your marketing efforts, test and measure, and move forward. I saw a good blog posting -  on growing your service business and it got me thinking, we are all in this together and can help each other out to more prosperous times. What are you doing differently to generate new business or hold on to your existing business?

There is a lot of talk recently about how Hosted VoIP has come of age, and that it brings a lot of features to small and medium size businesses. It may be bias but for me being in the business of selling Premise based equipment I think that going hosted is not the only way to take advantage of the great features of VoIP!

Small and Medium size business want to have a competitive edge, they need to be concerned with costs, and most importantly they need have services that are reliable. VoIP brings a lot of those needs together but there are trade offs we done with a hosted solution. With a hosted solution all of your eggs are in one basket. If your broadband service that feeds the Hosted VoIP goes down you go down! Now before you say it let me say Yes you can have a back-up circuit but guess what that costs more money! If you share your broadband for VoIP with your Internet services then you have to worry about having enough band width! Another concern is cost, with hosted VoIP the services are paid for monthly and they never reduce or go away!Also you only have one choice in most cases for your LD carrier and that typically is the host!

Now let’s look at the argument for Premise based. First Premise based equipment can give you just as much VoIP features as a hosted solution can. There can be VoIP phones for users both local and remote, there can be VoIP carrier services from a variety for carriers. Features likefind me/follow me , voicemail as email, and remote worker support are all available from Premise based solutions. Additional features like external paging and desktop integration with your CRM package are also available. If your broadband goes down you can also have copper lines integrated as a fail over and not skip a beat making and taking calls from your VoIP phone on your desk! The cost of equipment can show a ROI in months , in many cases. After that you would only be paying for services rather than services plus features.

I’m not saying that hosted is bad, I’m saying take a good hard look at Premise based first, it can work. This post was inspired by a Q&A with Bruce Chatterley http://tinyurl.com/7don5w . Tell me what you think. Can there be a case made for both or is there one clear winner in the VoIP arena?