Even with all the technology we have today, no one knows the future or can predict the state of the economy with 100% accuracy. So, here’s 4 ways to maintain business stability regardless of the economic forecast.

1. Make customer satisfaction a priority.
2. Sign more long-term deals. Close more long-term sales.
3. Expand relationships with existing clients.
4. Form alliances & joint ventures.

Maintaining business stability is an essential part of leveraging your business for success. If you find it too overwhelming…do NOT give up! Take advantage of my 1-on-1 (no cost/no obligation) consultation and discover how to get the help you need while creating stability in your business.

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.

What if someone else did all the leg work for you and all you had to do was follow-up with the prospect(s)?

Sounds too good to be true but it’s very possible!  I will show you how to eliminate the time you spend locating speaking engagements while increasing your public speaking opportunities.

The steps are fairly simple, involve the support of a qualified Virtual Assistant, and are outlined below.

1. Email your Virtual Assistant a list of organizations you would like to contact or send speaking proposals.
2. Your Virtual Assistant will use the list of organizations you provided to conduct both on-line and off-line searches to locate local/national chapters, contact names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, meeting times and upcoming events.
3. Your Virtual Assistant will compile the data into a spreadsheet and email it to you and…Voila! The leg work has been done!
4. You now have a list you can quickly skim to identify those organizations you would like to contact about potential speaking engagements.

Note: Be sure your Virtual Assistant determines the preferred mode of contact for each organization. Some will require email contact, some will require to be contacted via phone, while others will request proposals or press kits.  It is also a good idea to have your press kit ready along with a sample proposal that can be easily tailored based on the organization you are contacting.

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.

You must:

1.  Put response systems in place to ensure you are responding to client requests in a timely manner. Be sure to consider a response system for phone, email, and U.S. mail requests, as well as complaints.

2.  Create a Response Time Policy (RTP) for your business and make staff and clients aware of it. It should include response times specific for each category. For example, for client requests received via the phone, response time may be 24 hours, 2 hours for email requests, 10 business days for U.S. mail requests, and 48-72 hours for complaints. Be sure this information is readily available to those needing it. Keep in mind that response times can vary greatly depending on the product or service being provided.

3.  Put a system in place for monitoring and tracking response time to client requests. By monitoring and tracking response time, you can determine if response systems are working properly.

4.  Anticipate and avert problems. Simply put, be proactive and try to keep all unnecessary issues/problems from reaching your client. It’s the same analogy we use with kids – out of sight…out of mind.

Poor response time equals loss of revenue. By minimizing your response time, not only will you improve client satisfaction but also your bottom line.

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.

1.  Prepare an outline to control the flow of important phone calls.  When you know you want to cover three or four main points, write them down ahead of time, and explain the outline to the other person as soon as you reach him/her.  Example: “I want to fill you in on the results of yesterday’s staff meeting, hear your ideas and comments, and decide what actions you and I should take before next week’s meeting.”  Then, when you have covered the points, say thank you, and explain that you must get back to work. 

2.  Explain the purpose of your phone call.  It’s a fact that people find it a relief to hear immediately, “I need to request a printout of my boss’s travel expenses for last year,” or, “I need you to make a decision about how we will resolve this customer complaint.”  Stating your goal clearly at the beginning of a call gives focus and direction to your conversation.

3.  Use your computer or fax machine to save phone time.  Before making a call that will cover a number of details, draft an outline and email or fax a copy ahead of time to the person you’ll talk to.  You both can check off the points as you talk and end the conversation as soon as you have covered them all.

4.  Project warmth, but efficiency too.  Whether you make the call or take it, start out by clearly stating that your time is limited – but do so with a laugh or in a warm tone of voice.  For incoming calls, you might simply say, “Great to hear from you, and I’d love to catch up, but I’m really busy at the moment.  What can I do for you today?”  Or if you are calling, say, “I’m under a tight deadline to complete this job, so let me get to the point right away.”

5.  Schedule follow-up calls before you hang up.  A great way to minimize the chance of “phone tag” is to schedule a firm time for any needed follow-up calls.  Example: “I’ll go through my files, talk to my boss, and call you back at 1 pm tomorrow with what you requested.” 

6.  Return all phone calls at a set time each day.  Setting a time to return phone calls; whether it’s the first half of the day or the second half, greatly minimizes the time you spend on the phone.  You can even add a message on your answering machine or voice mail letting callers know the time of day you return phone calls.

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.

“An ezine is an electronic newsletter that subscribers receive via email.”

You can use ezines to:

• Increase sales
• Market to your ideal client
• Gain online exposure for your product or service
• Grow your ezine subscriber base
• Decrease postage & printing associated with printed newsletters

You can promote your ezine by:

• Adding a subscription link on your business card
• Adding a subscription link to both your written & email signature blocks
• Adding the subscription details to your company voice mail greeting
• Promoting your ezine on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn
• Legitimately collecting email addresses
• Telling others about it

I found a really great article on the Internet that lists 46 Ideas for Ezine Marketing.  It’s an article written by Larry Dotson that provides some very intriguing ideas on how to market your ezine.  I even use several of the techniques myself.  So, if you are really serious about publishing an ezine, you’ll definitely want to take the time to read his article!

By publishing an ezine, you can create additional platforms for your client base.  Let’s look at a large church with a pre-school for example.  The church could essentially publish two ezines.  One ezine could be published for church members and the other for parents of pre-schoolers.  This would create two additional church-related platforms for keeping everyone in the loop.

Because ezine publishing allows you to deepen the connection with your target market, it only makes sense to at least investigate your options.

Here’s a few resources you can check out to find the ezine solution that’s right for you:

• Aweber
• Constant Contact
• iContact

A Few Additional Pointers
You’re responsible for providing the written content for your ezine.  After all, it is your ezine.

The written content should consist of at least the following:

• A chatty intro about what you’ve been doing
• An article your customers will find valuable
• Announcements, Ads, etc. (optional)

Ask yourself the following questions when writing ezine articles:

1. Is this an article my customers would be interested in reading?
2. Does it contain information my customers can use for added value?
3. In what way(s) will this article help my customers?

Remember, when writing your ezine articles, it’s extremely important to make sure the articles are valuable.  No one wants to read a useless newsletter, no matter how pretty the colors.  I stress this because valuable articles will greatly impact the growth of your subscriber database.

Eliminate the Work – Partner with a Virtual Assistant (VA)
As you get more into the art of ezine publishing you may find it’s created additional work for you.  Even if it’s not time consuming, you still have to work on professionalism, quality, content, and marketing.  There’s just absolutely no way around it!

The simplest solution is to obtain the services of a qualified VA to handle the work associated with publishing and distributing your ezine.  Of course, you’ll need to make sure the VA you partner with has the skill and ability to handle this task for you.  Or you can quickly get the help you need by contacting Portable Hands.  Specializing in ezine services, Portable Hands can easily manage publication and distribution services, including subscriber database management.

If you decide to partner with a VA, I highly recommend setting up a monthly ezine publishing schedule that clearly defines all deadlines for both parties.  Here’s what yours might look like:

• Week 1: You work on written content/article
• Week 2: You complete written content/article & submit to VA
• Week 3: VA completes design, content, layout, & testing of ezine
• Week 4: VA publishes/distributes ezine

Still have questions? 
Get answers to your ezine questions by posting them on the “Discussion” tab of our Fan Page.

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t set out to become overworked individuals who are struggling and stressed.  They’re goal is always the same…to perform work they truly enjoy while making a decent living along the way.  But without proper management of their workload, they often times find themselves in a state of total chaos!

Before you ever head down that road, or maybe you’re already there, here are 6 tips to ease your workload and help take some of the pressure off.

1.  Evaluate Your Current Workload To See Just Where You Stand In Your Business
How are you really spending your time in your business?
What obstacles are standing in your way?
Where are your time and energy busters?
Is your business progressing according to your business plan?

2.  Effectively Manage Your Time…And That Means All Of It!
Effective time management will keep you working on your business, not in your business.  Client work, running a business, and marketing a business all take time and must happen on a regular basis in order to experience growth.  Taking a closer look at these areas and putting systems and processes in place for each will keep you from becoming bogged down with all the work there is to be done.

Client Work: Decide how many hours you’ll spend each week actually performing client work.  These are billable hours for which you expect to be paid.  Schedule this time on your master calendar, planner, or appointment book for the next 3 months.  When scheduling client work, you may choose to work with clients on specific days.  For example, you may choose to work with clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays and have Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays available for business-related operational tasks and/or marketing activities.  Block scheduling also makes for effective use of your time because it allows you to work on a particular client’s work during a specific timeframe.  It also provides the added benefit of allowing you stay focused on the task at hand giving your client’s work your full, undivided attention.

Project Management: Project management is nothing more than organizing and managing resources to complete work/projects within defined scope, quality, time, and cost constraints.  Project management skills are essential for organizing and managing client work and holding others accountable for their responsibilities.  When you improve your project management skills, you learn how to get things done quickly while documenting the results.  Great project management skills are the key to meeting goals for both you and your clients.

*Note: Project results are best documented by using a set of project management forms that take into account defined scope, quality, time, and cost constraints.  You can develop your own set of project management forms or Google the Internet to locate templates using the search term “ project management template”.

Business–Related Operational Tasks: Operational and administrative functions must go on to keep your business alive.  Unless you want to use up every weekend and all your free time handling these functions, you’ll need to see aside one day a week to take care of these matters.  Commonly known as an Admin Day, entrepreneurs and small business owners typically choose Monday as the day to handle operational tasks and functions.  Monday is the start of a new work week, is generally slow, and gets you in the groove for the rest of the week.

Business Development & Training: Growing your business takes planning, time, and lots of marketing.  It also means maintaining your current skill-set and obtaining any necessary training to continue to meet the ever-changing needs of your clients.  For these reasons, you should set aside at lease one day a week to work on business development and training.  You’ll be surprised at the results!

3. Learn to Delegate Authority To Get The Help You Need
Poor delegation keeps a small business from growing.  It is the direct result of trying to do everything yourself and wearing too many hats.  Plain and simple…it’s a trust issue on your part.

Learn to delegate authority by collaborating with others or contracting out the appropriate responsibilities.  Look for opportunities within your business, workload, and activities to delegate your authority, then just do it!  It’s not as scary as you might think.  When people you collaborate and contract with understand their responsibilities, what’s expected of them, and how you will monitor their results, your level of trust will increase and you’ll begin to delegate more easily and whenever necessary.

Because time is money, the ability to delegate authority will put more money in your pocket.

4. Find More Efficient Ways To Get Things Done
Taking time to review current systems and processes can greatly reduce the amount of time you spend each hour, day, and week on your business, workload and activities.  Think about your current systems and processes.  Can they be simplified or automated in any way?  If the answer is yes, then it’s time to get to work revamping them.

5. Create Your Own Safety Net By Building A Strong Support Team
A support team is a group of trusted individuals whom you can count on to lead, guide, and advise you.  They are a safety net of skilled individuals that, when utilized properly, is there to catch you before you fall.

At the minimum, a strong support team consists of a banker, a lawyer, an insurance agent, an accountant, and a business mentor.  Is your support team in place?  If not, your business is only operating on one cylinder.  Put your business on full throttle and increase your efficiency by talking out ideas, trouble points, and opportunities with your support team.  Good sound expert advice is always worth its weight in gold!

6. Realize Your Dream – Self-Discipline vs. Passion
Working more effectively takes tremendous self-discipline in order to get a handle on your business, workload, and activities.  Because it’s never enough to just be passionate about it, self-discipline is the most important element to eliminating stress and realizing your dream.

Increase your success rate by getting a handle on your business, workload and activities today.  Although it requires serious forethought and planning, taking the time to ensure that your workload is reasonable will allow you to focus on profit generating activities, bill out more of your time, and increase your revenue.

Remember, your business is your baby…but it doesn’t have to keep you up at night!

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.

• a merchant account
• a shopping cart
• an affiliate program

As your business grows, you may certainly need the higher cost, more complex services offered to fill the needs listed above.  However, there are ways to be frugal and still implement an e-commerce program that works!

Don’t Throw Away Your Money On Fees Unless You’re Selling Product!

• Merchant Accounts established with financial institutions through service providers have minimum monthly fees regardless of whether you sell anything or not.Why would you want to give money away unless you’re selling product to cover those costs?I know that we all want to be positive about our success possibilities; however, success rarely explodes onto the scene the moment you open your doors.  It takes time.  It takes time to connect with your target market.  It takes time for you to benefit from the trial and error process of sales and marketing.

  So why not try a risk-free system first?

  If you’re on a shoestring budget, it makes sense to only pay fees if you’re getting paid first.  That’s why services such as PayPal™ and 2Checkout™ are so popular with solopreneurs.

  With the Merchant Service called Website Payments Standards at PayPal™, there are no monthly fees to maintain an account, no setup fees, no gateway fees, and no fees for multiple eBay and merchant tools.  Up to $3000/month in sales, you pay a 2.9% commission on each transaction plus $0.30 charge per transaction. Above $3000, the commission decreases to 2.5% up to $10,000/month and to 2.2% after that.

  With 2CheckOut™ you pay a 5.5% commission on each transaction plus a $0.45 charge per transaction.  In addition, you do pay a one-time set-up fee of $49.

• Shopping Cart Services can be very costly depending on how carried away you get.  1ShoppingCart™ and InfusionSoft™ are designed to combine the shopping cart and email marketing aspects of your ecommerce as well as other services.  Once you have established a monthly income that will pay for their monthly fees and other monthly expenses connected to selling your product(s) online, you will certainly want to indulge in these more sophisticated services.I discovered Mal’s eCommerce site as a frugal alternative quite by accident.  The cart that costs you nothing, is so easy to use, and does all the things a solopreneur needs to have a functional online store.  Plus, the free cart works beautifully with PayPal™!2Checkout is only available with the Premium account at Mal’s eCommerce.  The good news is that the Premium account is only $8 per month – more than 4 times less than other shopping cart services!
• Affiliate Programs can cost big bucks depending on whether you invest in software or services.Why not experience having an affiliate program that doesn’t cost you anything for as long as you want? This way you get a chance to experiment with your marketing efforts without money flowing out the door.Again, Mal’s eCommerce is the place to go.  Not only can you get a no-cost shopping cart, you can also setup a no-cost affiliate program service.

The Bottom Line

Whether you’re on a shoestring budget or not, it only makes sense to spend your money wisely.

• So, get a payment processing service that only costs when you sell your product which eliminates money flowing out without money flowing in.
• Get a no-cost shopping cart that comes with an affiliate program service.

Then when you’ve gotten your feet on the ground financially and through trial and error have laid out your business path, you can move on to the more sophisticated systems.

About the Author:
Dannye Williamsen is owner of MindSlap! and is known as The Solopreneur’s Coach. Visit her site for no-cost articles and resources in The FAST System™. To take your business to the next level, sign up for the 12-week Intensive eCourse called The Success Model for the Solopreneur.

Just as your subscribers are responsible for providing accurate email addresses to ensure they receive your ezine, YOU are responsible for making sure the ezine is deliverable.

More often than not, most deliverability issues occur during the ezine preparation phase. Here are 7 tips to enhance your preparation efforts and guarantee deliverability every time.

1.  Sign-up with an ezine marketing service that will deliver your ezines to your subscriber list. Three great resources are Aweber, Constant Contact & iContact. Here are a few advantages of each.

Aweber - offers unlimited autoreponders, provides templates
https://www.aweber.com

Constant Contact - very user friendly system, provides great templates
http://www.constantcontact.com

iContact - inexpensive
http://www.icontact.com

NOTE: Do not send ezines directly from your email client. This creates a huge potential for both your ezine and email address to be flagged as spam and could possibly get you blacklisted with your Internet service provider.

2.  Prepare both an html & text version of your ezine for distribution. If you MUST choose only one version, stick with the text version. It’s readable across most platforms and easier to deliver due to the absence of html code.

3.  Set the character width of your text ezine to 43 characters per line. This ensures it’s readable in most email readers and on most cell phones. A great tool to use to quickly set the character width for your text ezine is formatit.com. http://www.formatit.com 

4.  Use a template, customized or provided in your ezine package, instead of none at all for your html version. This helps keeps things properly aligned and formatted. If you don’t want to use an html template, be sure to set character width to 43 characters per line using formatit.com.  http://www.formatit.com 

5.  After you’ve prepared your ezine be sure to check the spam score and address any issues that may arise. You should be able to check your spam score using your ezine marketing service.  

6.  Test, test & re-test links, formatting and display properties prior to distribution. It’s best to test both the html & text versions of your ezine in several email clients such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo & ISP email accounts. You also want to be sure to run a spell-check and proof the ezine for clarity and punctuation.

7.  Sometimes mistakes and misspellings will not readily stick out to you. Prior to distribution, send a test of your ezine (html & text versions) to someone else for review. Based on the feedback, determine if you need to make any final revisions. Once any necessary revisions have been made you can send your ezine with confidence.

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.

1.  MANAGEMENT IS KEY

There are tons of social software clients available to help you manage your Twitter account and maximize your social networking efforts.  Most are free and allow you to manage your Twitter profile, tweets, and other functions all in one place.  Here’s a few of the most popular ones.

HootSuite: If you manage multiple Twtitter accounts or share your Twittering duties with friends or co-workers, HootSuite’s for you. If you’re interested in tracking how many people click the links you tweet out, HootSuite can help. If you want to pre-schedule your messages or feed your blog (or any other rss feed) to Twitter, HootSuite has got you covered.
free: http://hootsuite.com/

Tweet Deck: Also available on iphone, Tweet Deck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more.  This is a great management tool for individuals with several social networking profiles to manage.
free: http://tweetdeck.com/

Twhirl: Another social software client, Twhirl is based on the new Adobe AIR platform that also allows web development techniques to be used to create desktop applications.
free: http://www.twhirl.org/

2.  SET A TIMELINE & STICK TO IT

Decide early on how much time you will devote to your social networking efforts on Twitter and how often (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).  Not only will this help you manage your time but it will also help you maintain your sanity and not become a Twitter addict.

3.  LEARN THE LINGO/LANGUAGE
What is a tweet, DM, RT or hashtag?  If you’ve not sure, spend some time learning the different acronyms because Twitter has a language all its own.  Here’s a quick reference guide of the most popular Twitter acronyms: http://wiredpen.com/2009/04/16/twitter-lingo-a-quick-guide/

4.  GET RID OF THE TROLLS

Take the time to get rid of Twitter spammers and trolls so they don’t clutter up your list of followers.  Here’s how:  http://twittercism.com/howto-deal-with-spammers-trolls-automated-direct-messages-on-twitter/
Be sure to follow Twitter Spam at http://twitter.com/spam to stay on top of the latest spammers and spamming techniques.

OTHER TWITTER MANAGEMENT TIPS
- Determine your ideal follower
- Follow those who are follow worthy
- Be follow worthy
- Prepare worthy tweets (helpful, supportive sprinkled with business tweets here & there)
- Practice the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

About the Author:

Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands, a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.