Some days, when you look at your schedule, you probably think that an extra pair of hands would be helpful. Unless you’re a mad scientist working in your mountaintop laboratory, it’s not likely that you’ll be able to attach an extra pair of hands and arms from your shoulders any time soon. [Insert mad-scientist-style cackling laughter here]. You need another set of hands to help you get more done, and you’ll need a person to go with them.

• No additional phone line
• No computer or printer
• No desk or office supplies
• No additional light/power/heat charges
• No interviews and resumes
• No sick-day replacements

Contemporary VA

In the last blog we talked about how businesses can hit a wall and how business owners need to figure out what they want to accomplish in their business before they move forward. And one of the solutions to moving past that "wall" is to hire someone.

The hiring possibilities are wide open, thanks to our highly connected world. This gives business owners a huge advantage because they no longer have to hire whoever is fits the equation: local + skilled + broadly capable + has potential to grow with the business. Instead, they can find people on the web who are tightly skilled in just one area.

In our earlier post we gave the example of Mary who runs a web-based store selling hand-painted decorations. She can hire a virtual assistant to do a variety of administrative and customer-facing tasks. She can also find someone who can do some of the hand painting.

Depending on what your business needs are, you can probably find someone online to do the jobs you need, no matter how specialized they are. In fact, the more specialized the jobs are, the easier time you’ll have finding someone to do it.

Aside from an assistant, you might consider hiring a marketing guru, a sales associate, a bookkeeper, a webmaster, and a telephone receptionist. Going from a "small business" mentality to a "big business" mentality doesn’t mean that you have to hire all of these staff for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Using sites like Elance.com and Guru.com, or finding part-time contract staff through Monster.com, allows you to put experts into all of these roles while building slowly.  You can even utilize a Virtual Assistant Firm that has individuals focusing on their areas of specialty.

So here is how to do that effectively:

1. Figure out what roles you want to fill. Start with non-revenue-generating activities that you perform right now and make those among the first things you delegate out. Also, consider things that you might not enjoy or might not be good at. Mary, from our example above, might be great at hand-painting decorations but might not be good at sales so she might want to hire a commissioned sales person.

2. Get onto Elance or Guru (or find a site that provides some of those services, like Contemporary VA for a virtual assistant) and look for service providers in the areas where you need to focus. Don’t make the all-too-common mistake of hiring the lowest priced professional. There’s a reason that they are the lowest priced! You may not need a "gold-plated" professional who charges an arm and a leg but you should find someone in the upper-to-middle price range who will likely deliver the best service for you.

3. Set out your parameters. Describe what you want to accomplish. Most importantly (and often overlooked) describe your vision for your business and how their service or deliverable fits in with what you do. That way, they’ll have a clearer understanding of what they’re contributing to and maybe they can draw from their own expertise to give you some ideas that you didn’t consider yourself.

4. Set up goals and a deliverable calendar for each role based on the types of things they need to get to you. In the case of a marketer, this might be easier; in the case of a sales person, this might be more difficult. (The marketer will need to deliver marketing materials to you within a certain date but it might be unrealistic to expect the salesperson to deliver customers to you within a certain date; instead, expect them to report back to you on how many they contacted or how many presentations they made).

5. Review the project with your professionals from time to time. If things aren’t working the way you envisioned, solicit feedback from them to make it work or find a new professional.

By hiring this way, you can move your business past that wall in a way that makes sense without over-committing yourself to an employee who shows up each day at your office expecting to get an assignment from you.

Contemporary VA

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The sales funnel or sales pipeline is a short-hand way of referring to the steps you take to generate leads, qualify prospects, and turn them into customers. You need to generate so many leads to find so many qualified prospects to convert them into so many customers. The numbers are different for every industry, of course, but those are the basic steps.

Do you know what your ratios are? I would venture to say that most businesses do not. If you want to transform your business, to take it to the next step, to knock it out of the park, to step on the gas (or whatever other metaphor you want to use), start with knowing your pipeline.

First: Know the specific steps you take. Chances are, they are similar to the "leads – prospects – customers" steps mentioned above, but they will be more specific. Perhaps you generate leads from a lead generation site, you qualify prospects with positioning material, and you convert them into customers with a proposal and follow-up call. (That’s the sales pipeline of a consultant I know). Or maybe you generate leads from people who call a 1-800 number for more information, you qualify them by sending them an information kit, and you convert them into customers with a face-to-face call. (That’s the sales pipeline of several insurance companies).

Second: Know the numbers at each step. Do you need to generate 100 leads to get 10 quality prospects to sell to 1 customer? Those numbers won’t be far off for a lot of people and I’m willing to wager that yours will be higher than you were expecting.

Third: Improve backwards. Using the ratio mentioned above – 100:10:1 – your first thought might be that doubling your customers requires you to get 200 leads and turn them into 20 prospects to get 2 customers. But there is another way. Instead of trying to generate more leads (which is working "forwards" through your pipeline) try making adjustments to your customer conversion process, testing various methods to turn 10 prospects into 2 customers instead of 1. If you hit upon the right method, then you’ll have a much more dramatic impact on your business than if you simply tried to generate more leads. See it in action: The less effective way of getting more clients would be by doubling your lead generation: 200:20:2. The more effective way is to improve your efforts further down the pipeline: 100:10:2. Then, if you do decide to double your lead generation, it will have a greater impact on business: 200:20:4!

Fourth: Use it in decision-making. It can be tempting to jump into new marketing methods because they are popular (can anyone say "Twitter"?), but they are not always the right decision for right now. New marketing methods can be good, but only if they can contribute to your business effectively. When you’re tempted to devote resources (time, effort, or money) to a new marketing method, think about what role it will play in your sales pipeline and how you will use it to nudge people along your pipeline towards conversion. You might find that the latest and greatest craze – whether Twitter, Facebook, Guerilla Marketing, BuzzMarketing, or the zillion other trends, fads, and marketing temptations out there – just isn’t right for your business.

Contemporary VA

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

Today’s "top business tips":

Top 5 Business Tips – a long list of "5 tips" lists on many business topics.  I like this because it cuts out a lot of the fluff and gets right down to important tips on each topic.

4 Ways You Can Use Quickbooks to Manage Prices in a Down Economy – nifty tips for managing in today’s economy.

Use Invoices That Encourage Action – I really like this one.  I will be implementing this in my own business strategy.  Using a "call to action" has always been taught in business and marketing, makes total since to use it to collect your money.

Determining Your Personal Return On Investment – I really like this.  So many of us try to do it all just because we can. 

Karen J. for BestBusinessExpert.com

What are one of the key things that EVERY business and solopreneur needs? 

Exposure.  

We’re all after it, right?

Whether you’re a real estate agent, a VA, a musician, a designer, a salesperson, etc., you need exposure.  If no one can find you, or you’re so far buried under your competition’s exposure, how can your talent be utilized?  You have to put yourself in front of them, and the Internet has paved endless roads to the success of your exposure.

We recently talked about Word of Mouth Advertising and a few ways you can guide your WOM campaign but it’s a must that you utilize the Internet’s many avenues.  There are many tried-and-true, oldies-but-goodies, Internet marketing tactics and Web 2.0 has opened up many new interstates for your travel to Destination Exposure.  

As social media marketing has developed, there have been many skeptics but a lot of those skeptics have been jumping on the train in recent months.  And there are many businesses who are still becoming familiar with Internet marketing and social media marketing; and, many others who still don’t even know it exists much less realize the impact it can have on their business – no matter what they’re business is.

We’re in a day and age where people turn to the Internet more and more, rather than traditional phone books.  I’m not even sure why they still deliver me one.  I can’t tell you the last time I used an actual, paper, phone book.  First, I have to flip through it.  Second, the listings don’t tell me much about a business except for their phone number and address.  Third, I can’t see what others are saying about the business.  I know, some of it might seem lazy but the Internet is much faster and I can gather so much more information on the business/service I’m seeking. 

You know the saying, "Google it"…and that’s exactly what people are doing.  If I can’t find you on the Internet, I’ll end up using another business/service that I can find on the Internet. 

And there are many social avenues that peak my interest in something I wasn’t even thinking about.  I frequently veer off of whatever I was originally doing online because something catches my eye.  It might be a service, some goods, information or something else but because it was exposed online, it attracted my interest and I followed the link to see where it led.  if it didn’t have any exposure I may have never found it, whether I was looking for it or not. 

There are two main components to online exposure.

1) Build links to your site, which will increase your rankings in the search engines, and

2) Drive organic traffic

Tying in these components will expose you!

And what’s fabulous is that most of it, if not all of it, can technically be done for free.  It takes a lot of time so you can always pay someone to do it for you, or you can do it yourself without spending much money at all.  All it takes is the knowledge of what to do, how to do it, where to do it and a bit of dedication.

Visit Online Marketing Wizards and have a look around.  OMW discusses online marketing tips, information, resources and strategies.  You’ll find information on finding the proper keywords, utilizing your anchor text, submitting your site to directories, using social networking and social media to gain exposure and links, utilizing articles and much more.

What are your thoughts on businesses benefiting from online marketing? 

Karen J. for BestBusinessExpert.com

Today, we wanted to share some interesting, insightful, business-related posts that any business can benefit from:

 6 CEOs Share Their Biggest Regrets – you can reduce your own regrets by finding out what others would do differently.

11 Businesses You Can Start In Your Pajamas in 2009 – great, thriving, business ideas…and working in your pajamas isn’t so bad!

Cutting Start-Up Costs – start up costs can be scary!

Minimize Your Exposure to Fraud – we’re all exposed to fraud, as individuals and businesses, but there are ways to minimize the risk.

Top 5 Ways for Small Businesses to Succeed in a Down Economy – It can be done!

We’re in the business of helping other businesses thrive, and it can, with the proper resources.  So check these out and share your thoughts.  Do you have anything to add? We’d love to hear it, and so would others searching for business resources!

Karen J. for BestBusinessExpert.com