Toshiba Phone Systems and More

How do you buy Telecom? I want  to know! Imagine this, you have been put in charge of buying a new phone system for your company, your boss gave very simple instructions: make sure it has all the features we need, that the company will provide great service, and that most importantly you get the BEST price! Sounds simple right?

I ask customers all the time what is the top three things your going to base your decision on when you buy your new Telecom system? Lately the number one thing is price! Is that how you buy your Telecom?

Let’s  break down all your needs into three buckets, Quality, Service, and Price. I am going to suggest to you that you can get two out of three of these but the third will have to suffer.Makes sense doesn’t it? How can you get the best service with all the best features for the lowest price?

So what should be the priority? Should price be the number one factor? Will you be happy with less than all the features you need or with a company that doesn’t support the system the way you expect? I want to know! How do you buy your Telecom?

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?