Trying To Find Alternatives For Your Business Mail As The USPS Struggles

At one time, the entire country depended on the U.S. Postal Service to get messages around. Postal workers went about their rounds proud of how they practically held the country together delivering personal and business mail.

And then, the telephone became popular, FedEx and UPS became inexpensive and affordable and more dependable. Postal workers began to "go postal", the postal service began to lose money and salaries and benefits were cut. The worst came around Thanksgiving last year when they said they were closing down thousands of post offices and around the country and they began issuing pink slips to hundreds of thousands of postal workers.

How does all of this affect your business mail needs? If you are a small business owner, you are likely to see prices rise for for your postal needs. Perhaps it's time now to take a second look at your business mail needs and find cheaper, more reliable ways of getting your mail around.

The first thing you can do to help cut down on your business mail costs would be to review your mailing list and see how current it is. Perhaps there are people on there who are really not interested. You could send a postcard out to everyone on your mailing list and ask them to tell you whether they wish to stay on.

Whenever you need to send products to your customers over the mail, try not to use overnight delivery. It costs a lot of money. Instead, advertise longer delivery periods. Your customers will still only get their deliveries when they are told they will, and you'll save a bundle.

If you want to send brochures and flyers to your mailing list, you may consider sending virtual ones out instead of real physical ones. They'll help save the environment, too. All you need to do is sign up for MailChimp or AWeber for one of their e-mail marketing programs, and they will design a really attractive looking flyer or brochure for you and send it out. All you need to do is to send postcards out to your mailing list and ask everyone if they would like an e-mail opt-in.

It will be an added bonus that they'll give you their e-mail IDs, too.

Private electronic mail by companies like Zumbox is really taking off now. You get to send your promotional material to customers' virtual e-mail boxes, and it'll be cool.

Outsourcing Payroll Can Mean Major Cost Savings

There are any number of reasons why businesses choose to go with outsourcing payroll. Surveys have found one thing - that almost nine out of ten businesses, when they choose to outsource, do it to save on the cost of maintaining an in-house department. While they save considerably on the hassle, that doesn't really figure that high on their list.

So if you are considering outsourcing payroll at your company, chances are, that your company is interested in it for the cost savings, too. But is it possible that those kinds of savings will really not come your way? Are those cost savings real or illusory?

Well, outsourcing payroll, without doubt, can save a business money - up to 20%, by most accounts. But it really depends on the exact circumstances of the company in question. Not every company will stand to save as much.

Let's look at what those circumstances might involve.

The first circumstance to consider is the size of the business. The bigger the business, the more they're going to need to spend on maintaining a payroll department. They are likely to see huge savings in absolute terms. Small businesses are likely to see savings too even if they won't be much. For a small company though, the savings can truly mean a lot more.

Payroll usually falls within the HR department in most businesses. If outsourcing payroll becomes a point to consider, companies should begin to think about outsourcing the entire HR Department. They call it HR BPO, and the savings can be great. When a business decides to go the whole hogand outsources the entire department, they can expect savings of up to the third. That can mean quite a lot in these times of financial difficulty.

Companies might wonder - if they were to run an in-house payroll department, but if theyh equipped it with cloud computing software instead of on-premise software, would the savings achieved make outsourcing payroll unnecessary?

Not exactly. Major studies done on the matter say that while you can save something this way, it's nothing compared to completely outsourcing payroll and everything else.

The reason many businesses fail to consider outsourcing payroll for the cost savings seen therein is that they don't correctly calculate what it's costing them to maintain an in-house department. If theyy would only take everything into account, they would quickly see how spectacular the savings can be.

What Should The Medical Billing Companies Do Come 2015

Electronic health records are going to become mandatory by 2015. This will come amid resistance. The medical billing companies aren't happy at all. When electronic health records come online, the software will be able to automatically find out what insurance codes go where and it will look for submission errors. This is the kind of work that the medical billing companies are doing right now. When all of this is automated in the future, they'll be left without a job.

Most experts believe that there will be all kinds of opportunities for the medical billing companies. For instance, hospitals and other medical establishments will need a lot of help learning how to use electronic health records. This is a new area of business for the medical billing companies that they are eminently suited for.

There are a number of things that EHR cannot do, too. When a hospital gets the medical billing company on the line and begins to hem and haw about how their services aren't as useful as they once used to be, the billing company just needs to talk about all the things that EHR cannot do. For instance, how about collection calls from people who won't pay? Or how about attaining supporting documents or follow-ups? Software can just not replace this kind of thing.

Medical billing companies need to really work hard on preparing a sales pitch on how EHR cannot do everything. Once they get that through, there's another step. They need to tell their medical business clients that the transition to EHR isn't going to be easy, either. It could take years to make everyone become fluent its use. And who better to do it than the billing companies?

Seriously, those aren't even the oldest services that medical billing companies can provide hospitals that have EHR on the brain.

The EHR companies don't provide troubleshooting or tech support. They don't provide template customization. And even if they do, the medical billing companies can really go to town with it, providing personalized  high-quality service. That alone should keep them in business.

They have to help your client hospitals understand that it's a waste of time for them to invest themselves in learning about their EHR systems or finding out about tweaking them. It's not the kind of thing a medical professional is supposed to do. They're supposed outsource this to someone - like the medical billing companies.

Basic FAQs In Human Resources Outsourcing

In Western Europe, business process outsourcing is nearly universal. Nearly every company outsources at least something. Outsourcing in  human resources though, isn't that prevalent yet. Seeing as how it is one of the most expensive departments to run in any company though, interest in outsourcing HR should start growing. If your business is interested in this, there is probably some industry body in your country that you can look at. In Britain, the HR Outsourcing Association is the place to head to.

Outsourcing in HR is relatively new, and understandably, everyone has questions about it. Let's take a look.

The main question that anyone's likely to have to do with human resources outsourcing, understandably, is how much money they can save  doing it. Price Waterhouse Cooper, the auditing firm, puts the figure at 33%. That's how much your average company can hope to save by outsourcing the entire department. Even if businesses begin to look into human resources outsourcing for the cost savings potential alone, they do need to look into how it can possibly result in reduced quality of services.

It isn't just that when you outsource something, that the outsourcing service provider may not take enough of an interest in the whole thing or that they may not be equipped to deliver the quality required. It's also that  every company has its own way of running things, and when an outside company comes in and tries to take the whole process off their hands, it can be very difficult for them make sense of what goes where.

Basically these days, outsourcing service providers do not try to look at every client with fresh eyes. They won't try to provide a unique system for them. Instead, they provide a standardized service, and ask each client to rearrange  the HR department in the company according to the model provided by them. This way, one can be sure of an efficient, well-tested model.

Often, businesses stay away from human resources outsourcing for the simple reason that they see a lot of opposition among their ranks. Employees usually don't like the idea that HR should be outsourced. They fear for instance that they won't get the kind of support that they have always depended on.

If there's a mistake with their paycheck for instance, they worry about how they might get it fixed. Basically, it's up to the management at any company to make sure that the rank and file are made to completely understand and accept how these things work well.

And then of course, there's the actual move to outsource. How do you find a good company? Well, Accenture, IBM, Chen tax, HCL – all these major names in outsourcing provide excellent services in general. Basically, you need to look for monthly reporting, flexibility, great communication and so on.

Janitorial Cleaning Services

Your business may be running smoothly, but there is one chore that you hate. You have to clean when you could be doing other more important things, or you have to stay late to do so, leaving less time to spend with your family. Even worse, you may be paying your employees to do it when they should be waiting customers, dealing with inventory, or other chores that you feel are better served during operational hours. If you find cleaning is a bigger chore than you thought, think about finding janitorial cleaning services that can come in after hours to take the burden off of your shoulders.

There are many janitorial cleaning services that work with small businesses exclusively. They are tailored to clean businesses and not homes. This means they know what you need and can get things done quickly, saving you time and money. This may be just one person, or the company could have many employees. Look around your local yellow pages or ask around to see what companies or individuals in your community offer these services.

When you choose a single person that does not necessarily work for an established company, but they offer janitorial cleaning services, there are a few things you should do. For one, you have to run a background check on them whether they are going to be there while you are or after you have left for the night. A background check cannot tell you if someone is going to rip you off if they have yet to be caught, but they can alert you to someone with problems in their past. You can then make your hiring choices accordingly.

You also want to be sure the most important things are done in the time that you can afford to pay your janitorial cleaning services. If you want five hours a week, you want to make a list of the things that should be done first on down to optional things they should do if they have time to do more. This will be tailored to your business. If you have a restaurant, obviously eating room and kitchen cleanliness will come first. If you have an office, you may think that restrooms and vacuuming are at the top of the list. Any good cleaning company will tailor their services to your most urgent needs.

Lastly, expect the best from your janitorial cleaning services. If they are not up to snuff, be sure to talk to them about what is wrong and what you want done differently. If you are not getting what you want after that, do the same thing you would do with an employee that was not performing to your standards. You are going to have to find someone else. Most make mistakes only because they have not been instructed. The cleanliness of your business is important so make sure you get it right. One of the biggest reasons people avoid a business can be about something as simple as how clean the premises is or is not.

With Sales 2.0, Businesses Want an Even More Complete Picture of the Customer Than Ever Before

Remember how a couple of years ago, you couldn't go anywhere without having people bring up Web 2.0? You knew what it was, but if anyone were to ask you for an explanation, you'd struggle - because there are so many parts to it. It's kind of that way now, for sales 2.0.

To people in sales, the whole 2.0 thing makes them quite uncomfortable. Sure, anyone who comes in trying to promote it has wonderful stories to tell about how you can expect better sales and commissions and less work. But often, they just roll their eyes at it - they suspect that the person talking is just spouting some spiel the way they do when they need to sell something to someone who doesn't need it. At the end of it all, they suspect that if management seems this interested in having them buy sales 2.0, it must be because it gives them a way to keep them a short leash. And you know salespeople - they love their independence.

As well, perhaps they think this way, because face it - salespeople tend to be cynical about how honest people can be when they try to sell something. In truth, sales 2.0 isn't a management tool. It's something that salespeople can use to get better results. The thing is, there is so much hype and buzz surrounding it, that it's hard to see it for what it really is.

Let's try to define it now - with no buzz or hype. With sales, the  way it's always been done, it's always been about data harvesting. That's how sales departments get to know about where to head for the next the lead. With sales 2.0 though, it's mostly about customer engagement. This isn't as difficult or new as it might sound.

Customer engagement is about keeping all the information you need about a customer in one place so that you have everything you need to pursue the sale successfully. It's about creating a digital breadcrumb trail of everything one knows about a customer, and using that to establish contact with him at all times.

But even this doesn't adequately explain what sales 2.0 does. This is only superficial engagement - as when you use your registered number to call company, the number right away puts your name on the call-center person's screen and they address you by name. Everyone knows that this is just phony. Sales 2.0 is about going deeper with the customer engagement thing then just this.

Traditionally, the data harvesting sales techniques have just been about keeping a record of everything the customer has done with the company in the past and assuming that it's relevant information. If a customer comes in once to buy four bottles of Chivas for a boss who is retiring, they'll keep sending e-mails about new more whiskey. That's not the way sales 2.0 works.

In this system, you try to build a complete picture of what the the customer's life really is like. They'll try to learn why exactly of customers buying something.

One way to do this is, they use software to track every single move a customer makes when he arrives at the website. It's all about speed, it's all about taking advantage of the moment, and it's about the complete picture.

Keeping Your Eyes Trained On Your Business Credit Score

As the owner of a small business, be it a new one that's just finding its feet or an established one, you do know that there are few things on your plan that are more important than the job of managing your finances properly. Your ability to manage your business credit record responsibly and effectively should be one of the most important things you do here.

Business credit doesn't work much differently than individual credit does. You do need to realize though that the credit rating that your business enjoys should be kept separate from your own. If your business is to stand up on its own and survive as a separate entity, it needs to be able to establish and maintain an independent credit reputation.

Why does your business need to stand on its own reputation? The answer is simple - when your business needs to borrow money, it will get far lower rates if it has a great credit score. You need to keep your business finance completely separate from your personal stuff. Your business has its own credit cards, its own business account and there's no reason they should ever mix.

Of course, there's a lot more to getting your business a good credit reputation than just that.

The first thing you need to do is to establish one name for your business that you decide on. You need to use it everywhere and for everything. It has to be the same name, address and contact information right from the start. This is the only way the credit reporting agencies will be able to keep track of your business and to know that it's been a responsible and dependable entity for a long time.

Whatever purchases you make for your business, you want to pay them through checks written on your business account. You want to make sure that vendors you do business with actually do report to the credit agencies. Make sure that you pay even before payments are due. You get extra credit for that.

When you go in to apply for a loan for your business at any time, the lender will usually ask to see earnings statements and tax records for your business. They also want to see how well you plan for the future of your business - they want to see a business plan too. This kind of thing goes in your favor.

For businesses, Dun & Bradstreet has a big name and credit reporting. As soon as you get into business for yourself, apply for a DUNS number. It'll take a month to arrive. Once you do that, you want to make sure that whatever business your business deals with, report to D&B. You want to milk everything as far as possible.

And finally, do check your business credit from time to time. PAYDEX is the firm that compares credit scores for businesses. The top score for businesses is 100. Get anything above 80, and you are doing well.

Putting an SEO Team at Your Business

Just about everyone who runs a business now knows that they need a website and they need search engine optimization to make the website come up for all relevant searches. The question is, what is the best way for a small business owner to get said SEO done on his company website? Should he outsource it to a company that's skilled in this kind of thing, or should he build an SEO team in-house right from the start?

Well, you have to understand that it's always an SEO team. It's never just one person tinkering about with the website. For instance, a search engine optimization person cannot do anything for your website if he doesn't have content creators who write large amounts of content for him or create videos or something for him to put on there. So when you hire an SEO person, you will need to give him perhaps two or three creative people to work with.

He will need other experts to help manage the whole project and to do data analysis for him so that he'll know what kind of keywords are bringing in what kind of traffic, and so on. It's also a full-time job for one professional, to do link building - an activity whose importance cannot be over-emphasized. In short, when you hear that you need an SEO team, no one's just saying that.

Now if you go with building an SEO team in-house, you may find that you don't really have to hire new employees. You can just create the department, and staff it with people pulled from other departments part-time. You may find that you don't really need people who are trained in this. They may have the right kind of skills obtained from other areas that help them. All you need is to get someone who will train them a little bit. There are online training courses too by the likes of the University of San Francisco and Bruce Clay Inc.


If you just don't have the kind of staff that you need to build an SEO team from scratch in your own company, an outside SEO consultant might be a good idea. You could retain such a professional, and you could get your SEO project underway in no time flat. It could be cheaper and quicker. Usually, they charge you per-project - it could cost you anything from $2000-$10,000.

Your SEO professional will tell you if perhaps, your SEO needs are far too involved to be wrapped up in one single project. If that's the way he feels, you might have to  build an SEO team from the ground up - at about $100,000 a year.

3 Ghastly Family Mistakes As A Home Business Professional

"What are these ghastly mistakes?" you ask.

They are:

1. Don't listen.
2. Don't care enough.
3. Do move full speed ahead.

*** Ghastly Mistake Number One: Don't Listen ***

Walking in the front door of your home, you hear your spouse say: "I need you to listen to me for a few moments (or more) and I need your attention."

And glancing his or her way, you do "listen" -- at least to a degree.

You hear, but you don't hear the heart.

You take the time but you come up just shy of really "being there."

You give attention, but in reality it falls short of the dedicated attention you would normally give to a business associate who needs your assistance.

"Listening" in this way, the one interacting with you immediately senses the reality of your presence in the room: you are not "there."

Not totally.
Not for them.
And not tuned in to their needs.

*** Ghastly Mistake Number Two: Don't Care Enough ***

During the middle of your normal 60 plus hour business week, your child hints at going to the park...

Or visiting the pet store,
Or taking a ride,
Or getting something for school,
Or playing catch,
Or anything else her or she might enjoy.

You, however, remain too busy: again. And your "being too busy" was not the first time: not by a long and very, very sad shot.

*** Ghastly Mistake Number Three: Move Full Speed Ahead ***

You don't listen because you must keep moving.

You do not stop to enjoy, care or spend time because you must keep moving forward or "it will never happen."

And what is this somewhat illusive yet never too far from the home front "it" that must take place? Answer: it is whatever occupies your time, energy and/or personal space at the expense of the needs, joys and realistic desires of those in your home.

You simply move forward because successful, on target, purpose-driven business people keep moving.

They set the pace.
They keep up the momentum.
They make things happen.
_________________________________________

How To Avoid The Three Ghastly Mistakes!
_________________________________________

1. Listen.
2. Care.
3. Move Forward In Wisdom

*** Avoiding Ghastly Mistake Number One: Listen ***

Listed below you will discover three suggestions that will help you avoid this all too common blunder made within the home environment:

1. Decide in your heart that you will listen: *truly* listen.

2. Train your heart to hear the heartbeats of those closest to you.

3. Don't give up!

Simply deciding helps. Easy? Is it easy to *truly* listen?
Absolutely not.

But it is absolutely necessary.

Honestly decide to improve your skill set as a listener.

Learn.
Grow.
And train your heart.

You train by trying, failing, getting back up again on the inside and working at it again and again on the outside.

1. Work at hearing the heart and not just the words being said.

2. Watch the body posture, listen to the voice tone, look at the eyes.

3. Work at carefully listening to the spoken and unspoken needs of those closest to you.

*** Avoiding Ghastly Mistake Number Two: Care! ***

Care "enough."

That is, care just enough so that the other person:

Knows it,
Feels it,
Senses it,
And is Grateful for it.

Can you guarantee "being grateful" for your efforts? No, you cannot.

You can, however, know from the inside out that you: (1) took the time you needed to take; (2) listened as best as you could; and (3) loved as you would love to be loved.

Allow your caring heart to drive you deeper and deeper *toward* those you love as opposed to farther *away* from them as you care for the needs of your business.

Keep working at caring in these ways and your own heart will guide you in the process of caring yet more.

Listen.
Listen to your heart.

As you listen, act and respond in love to the promptings of your own heart, you will increase the probability that those around you will feel in their hearts that you are caring... "enough."

*** Avoiding Ghastly Mistake Number Three: Move Forward In Wisdom ***

What does moving forward "in wisdom" mean?

It means that as you learn, grow and develop in the disciplines of listening and caring for those closest to you, that you:

1. Pay attention to your shortcomings and correct them as you go.

2. Affirm your worth as you continue to grow and experience your various "at home successes."

Notice the two concepts involved: personal correction and personal affirmation. Moving forward in wisdom means carrying on a healthy balancing act between these two important aspects of self-development.

*** Now Go And Do! ***

Listen.
Care.
And Move Forward In Wisdom as you do!