October 29, 2009 – 9:35 pm
I often find that the wonderful world of the web can be far too distracting. You know how it is, you make a quick visit to the BBC site to catch up on the news and the next thing you know it’s midday and you’re reading about how starfish control their body temperature (they pump up with cold sea water before exposing themselves to the sun). Like all good procrastinators I also find that I like to do this sort of displacement reading when I have something unpleasant to do, like my VAT return.
So in an effort to be more productive, I’ve taken to the Pomodoro technique, which is basically the concept of working in short 25 minute focused sessions. I find it works really well and you can get a tremendous amount done in what seems a relatively short amount of time. You can find out more about this at www.pomodorotechnique.com .
If you’re not so keen on this idea but would like to know if you are wasting time online, there are plenty of ways to find out. I like Manic Time which just
tracks the active windows on your PC and gives you a detailed breakdown of where your day has gone. It can make interesting reading.
October 29, 2009 – 9:28 pm
The Royal Mail strikes have been causing havoc recently for small businesses. All very annoying. However, it’s a good opportunity to look at your processes and see if you could do more things online and dispense with the physical paper.
I’m convinced the physical bill that arrives in the post is fast becoming a thing of the past. Most businesses now offer the option of electronic billing and payment can be made via internet banking. Much easier than writing out cheques, putting them in envelopes, sticking on stamps. If you’re still receiving paper bills and paying with cheques, perhaps it’s time to review your procedures. Likewise with your outgoing invoices. Most clients would probably be more than happy to receive invoices by email and you would save money on postage costs.
Businesses that don’t start bringing their payment procedures into the digital age will soon be forced to do so anyway. The Inland Revenue are phasing out paper VAT returns and payments starting in 2010.
It’s a no brainer right? If you’ve got a small business website then you probably have a contact form on it. It makes it easy for prospective clients to get in touch and if they’re browsing your site already the chances are they are interested in your services.
All sounds good so far, qualified leads coming right to an email inbox of your choice from your website contact form. Great. That is, of course, as long as you remember to actually check that inbox. I say this because in the last few weeks I’ve contacted no less than six smallish businesses via their contact form to enquire about services I’m interested in. I like using web contact forms – they’re quick, easy and I often don’t want to go to the hassle of picking up the phone and calling their offices and getting put through to their sales department, etc. However, out of those six enquiries I’ve had one response. That was to say they no longer provide the service they have advertised on their website. So that was a good waste of their time and mine.
I was really surprised by the lack of responses, why on earth would a business leave enquiries unanswered? Especially in these tricky financial times. Are they not checking their emails? Do they have the enquiries set up to go to some unmanned email inbox? Or are they just doing so well they don’t need my business? Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think it’s the last option as in fact two of the companies I was contacting were fairly large estate agent firms – you’d think they’d be desperate for the business at the moment. It seems not.
At One Hour PA any enquiries come straight into my inbox, so I don’t have to check anywhere else. Occasionally one will go astray into junk mail, but by enlarge I’m confident we respond to all the enquiries we get. (Except of course those ones where people want us to help them transfer millions of US dollars from the account of a high ranking government official in some never heard of country – honestly, are people still falling for this junk?).
So, if you haven’t had an enquiry via your website contact form lately, you might just want to make sure that you know where those enquiries get sent and that someone is actually checking them.
As I’ve said before – we love Google calendars! For a free online calendar it really takes some beating. Here are five great things you can do with it:
1. Invite attendees and let Google keep track of responses. When you create an event in Google calendar on the right hand side of the screen you’ll see the option ‘Add Guests’, click on this and it’ll take you to a box where you can type in the email addresses of those you wish to invite to your event. This can be anyone you have an email address for, it doesn’t have to be just other Google account users. Click ’save’ and Google will prompt you to send out the invitations. It’s as simple as that. Invitees then receive a neat looking invitation with the option to decline or accept. They can also submit an accompanying message if they wish and there’s a specific option to add any companions. So if they are coming +1, they can let you know this. Google will then add the +1 into your total event numbers. To check on your running total of attendees just click on the event description in your Google calendar and all the details will come up. Who has responded, who is still outstanding, who is coming with a companion, who has declined, your total number of confirmed guests, etc. It takes a lot of the headache out of organising events and large meetings.
2. Set up reminders. If you’re the forgetful type you can automatically set up Google calendar to send you reminders before upcoming appointments. To set this up click on the ‘Settings’ tab when you’re in your Google calendar account. From here click on the ‘Calendars’ tab and you will see the notifications section. Just follow the steps on screen and Google will then send you reminders of your upcoming events to your mobile. You can choose to receive 10 hours or 10 minutes before the event, it’s up to you.
3. Create a task list. You can now create different tasks and list in Google calendar. Just click on ‘Tasks’ on the left hand side of your calendar and it’ll expand the task list window on the right hand side. You can create different lists of tasks, e.g. personal and business. If you choose a due date for your task it will also show up in the calendar header on the correct day. It’s simple, as a good task list should be. You don’t want to spend so much time categorising your task lists that you don’t have time to do any tasks.
4. View different time zones. If you do a lot of business overseas then a really handy way to keep the time difference visible in your calendar is to go into ‘Settings’ and simply add your additional time zone. These will then display side by side on the left hand side of your calendar.
5. Share your calendar. This is really easy to do and very handy for teams. Just click on the ’settings’ tab on your calendar homepage. This will give you the option to ‘Share this calendar’ click on here and you will need to enter the email address of those people you wish to share your calendar with. You can also choose whether you give them full access and the ability to edit your calendar, or whether you want them simply to be able to view. You can even just let them see when you are busy but hide the details of the exact event. So you can choose different, appropriate levels of access for those you want to share with.
Of course if this all sounds very good but you just don’t have the time to get your Google calendar set up. Well, One Hour PA can probably help you with that!
When you’re running a business it can often feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. There are of course hundreds of time management books to help with this issue. But can you find the time to read them?
I’ve read a few of them in recent years and whilst I’ve gleaned some helpful hints on occasion, I really wouldn’t say any of them have particularly transformed my working life. I’m just not that big a fan of those kind of self help style books. So when somebody recently recommended I try Tim Ferriss’ “4 Hour Work Week”, I was sceptical to say the least. But this was a book that was worth the read.
If you’re a business owner struggling with the sheer number of things you have to do, Ferriss’ take on working life will prove an interesting read. But it’s particularly his take on time management that I found refreshing. In a nutshell his advice is to forget the concept of trying to cram more activities and tasks into your day and instead focus on eliminating those that are ultimately pointless. He believes that for many of us our day to day “busyness” is simply a way of avoiding doing those things that are important but difficult. Looking at your activities ruthlessly and getting rid of those actions that really won’t give you much return on your work seems to me like the real way forward with time management. If you think it sounds like your kind of time management too, then take a look at this great post from Tim Ferriss’ blog – “The Not-To-Do-List: 9 Habits to Stop Now“. It’s well worth the read.
Most small business owners obviously spend a great deal of time and effort looking for new business, as we all need to do. However, don’t neglect your current clients in favour of exciting new ones. It’s worth finding diverse ways of keeping in touch with clients, after all if they’re already buying from you – they must like what you’re selling. But they probably don’t want to keep receiving the same tired, old leaflets.
Lately, we’ve been mulling over ways to keep in touch, here’s what we’ve come up with:
Surveys/Questionnaires
When was the last time you asked your clients what they think? Feedback is important because not only does it alert you to any potential problems, it can also provide helpful insight if you are thinking of lauching a new service or similiar.
Personal notes/emails
These can take many forms but should be appropriate and relevant to the client. It could be something as simple as a note to say thank you for a referral, or a newspaper clipping of something that is relevant to their business.
Newsletters
I don’t think your newsletter should be a thinly disguised sales pitch. People are bombarded with sales messages all day along, everyday – give your clients a break by providing useful, free information. So, if you run a dog training school give them ten tips on dog training that they can implement. Or if you sell IT support to home users, give them some advice on choosing anti virus software. A restaurant newsletter might carry an article on seasonal recipes, or choosing a good cut of meat. Get it right and your newsletter will become something that your clients actually read rather than just another piece of junk mail.
News
If you are starting a new service or promoting a new product, drop your clients a note to let them know. You might think they won’t be interested in it or it’s not appropriate to them, but you never know. Just because you might have a client who is a dentist, for example, it doesn’t mean they are only interested in teeth!
Special occasions
Christmas is obviously an ideal time to send cards to clients and perhaps suitable gifts. However, you could be more inventive and, depending on your record keeping, send clients a thank you gift
after they have been doing business with you for a year. For example, if you know they are particularly fervent gardeners buy them something for planting rather than a bottle of wine. That way they’ll think of you everytime they look in your garden!
If you work virtually with clients and rarely see them, keeping in touch is particularly important. So whatever you choose to do, do something. Your clients are what make your business so let them know you’re there.
February 26, 2009 – 11:39 pm
I don’t know if it’s just because I’m focused on it at the moment, but lately it seems everywhere I look there’s a social media marketing expert. I was even recently tempted to cough up some cash for a social media training course. But then I stepped back and had a bit of a think.
A lot of social media training courses look really interesting and they use all the right buzzwords. But the sheer glut of people offering training on the topic got me thinking. When can someone actually call themselves a social media expert?
The reality is there’s no certification, no way of checking up on people’s credentials. They might just have a really convincing website. Or perhaps they’ve got a Linked In and Facebook account and know just a little bit more about it than your average Joe. Or perhaps they took an online course in social media marketing. Or perhaps I’m just a horrible cynic!
Self proclaimed experts are a common phenomenon on the internet. A similiar thing has happened to the virtual assistant industry. In 2004 when I started One Hour PA, there wasn’t much training out there for VAs and most of the resources for VAs were US based. But recently it seems that everywhere I turn someone is offering a new How To Guide for VAs – either an e-book or a training course, or telephone seminars. Yet, quite often the people running the courses have very little actual experience of running a VA business. Like the social media industry, the VA industry has no standard recognised certification so anyone can set up and start training others.
So the upshot is that people want information on what seems to be a hot new online topic and “experts”, who know a little bit about the topic, are piling in. It’s the noughties’ equivalent of the gold rush. It’s part of what makes the internet so exciting, new industries are springing up all the time – and people who really do know what they are talking about can make a lot of money. But there’s also a lot of people out there who sort of know a little bit about something trying to sell their mediocre information.
There’s always people lining up to take cash from small business owners. So before parting with your hard earned cash it’s worth checking out who you’re paying it to. Are they really an expert? What’s their background? How long have they been in the industry? How do they support their claims of expertise? Do they claim to have “all the answers” – because that’s probably a sure sign they don’t know that much!
February 20, 2009 – 9:50 pm
One of the criticisms that people level at Twitter is that it is yet another form of communication in a world where we are all overloaded anyway. Most of us have enough to contend with just dealing with our emails and voicemails, without having to worry about tweets as well. But how about using Twitter to cut down the amount of information you have to deal with? I was interested to read this article this week about a journalist who is now encouraging PRs to pitch to him through Twitter. The upside of it being that they have just 140 characters to pitch in. If nothing else it’ll save him a lot of reading time!
http://www.businesszone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=195043&d=1095&h=1097&f=1096
February 17, 2009 – 11:50 pm
Continuing my mini project of dusting off my social media profiles I recently went back to my Ecademy profile that I set up about four years ago. This time I resolved to give it a proper go. So I updated my profile, added my photo, did a quiz that tells me what sort of person I am (a high red apparently and from the summary I sound quite unpleasant), joined a couple of clubs. I started getting emails from people wanting to connect with me, I visited the threads of the clubs I had joined – I made a bit of an effort. But really despite putting a bit of time into it, I’ve just today deleted my profile from Ecademy. I’m just bored with the whole thing again.
Now I know lots of small business owners love Ecademy and there’s hundreds of people around who will step up and vouch for the many benefits they’ve got from being a member. Which is what made me feel bad about not making a proper effort with it. But ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I just don’t like Ecademy, it all feels a bit fake. I think there’s several things about it that put me off.
Firstly, it’s a very “busy” site, almost too busy. When I land on the home page it just makes me feel tired and confused, there’s too much going on – there’s NetNews, featured Blackstar members, contact requests, ads, etc, etc. It just makes me feel slightly bewildered and think I don’t actually have time for this.
The pushy, “high achievers” type language grates with me Blackstars, Power networkers, High Reds, …it’s all a bit too “Join our club and we’ll show you how to make millions”. And everybody knows that the only one making millions in those clubs is usually the person running them. As if to underline that this is the ethos of the site, one of the featured ads says, and I quote, “I cracked the code to making money. See how I make $3 million per year doing nothing and how you can too”. Yeh, right. If I want to see this sort of thing I can just open up my Junk email folder. I don’t need to go to a networking site to get it.
The contact requests actually also put me off, most of them came from “we can change your life and help you make millions” type businesses and it was really like just being signed up to receive spam.
So, Ecademy’s not for me. That’s one less waste of time in my day.
February 17, 2009 – 10:12 pm
We do a lot of virtual diary management for our clients and if you’re looking for a free online calendar we absolutely love Google calendar. But making diary management work effectively between a virtual PA and a client isn’t as simple as choosing an online calendar and getting on with it. In order for it to work successfully there are a few things you should consider if you’re thinking of having a virtual assistant manage your diary.
1. Make your virtual PA aware of any standard structure you have in your week. So, for example, do you like to finish early on Fridays? Do you try to keep one day a week free of any appointments in order to catch up on other aspects of your business?
2. Let your virtual PA know about your time management style. Some people are happy to have 5 meetings packed into one day with a minimum amount of time in between, whereas some would find this kind of pressured schedule a bit stressful. Some may prefer to have no more than 2 meetings a day. It’s up to you, but make your preferences clear to your virtual PA from the start and you should avoid any future problems.
3. Make sure you actually use the online calendar. It sounds obvious but if you are just converting to an online calendar from another system, then you may find initially that it takes a little time to get into the habit of using a new system. But it’s essential that both you and your virtual PA are looking at the same version of your calendar. If not there are endless possibilities for doublebookings and errors.
4. If you like diary entries ordered in a particular way or to contain particular details then let your virtual PA know. By default we always put in the contact name for the meeting, the location address, any relevant directions and notes that we may have about the meeting. But everyone is different so if there’s something specific you like to see in your calendar just tell your virtual PA.
5. Don’t be afraid to delegate. Handing over your diary to be managed by someone else does require a certain degree of trust. There’s no point in giving your virtual assistant one meeting to book and telling her specifically what day and time she can book it in. If you’re going into that degree of detail then you might as well just call up and book the meeting yourself. You need to have the confidence in your virtual assistant to be able to say “I want meetings set up with these 10 people over the next couple of months, book them in” and to let her (or him) get on with it. That’s really saving you time because you’ve delegated with confidence.
The real key to effective diary management is to have clear, specific guidelines about how you like your day managed at the start of the working relationship. Like all types of virtual working, much of its success depends on good communication between client and virtual assistant.
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