Manage Your Email Before It Manages You

Manage Your Email Before It Manages You
Email is one on the most valuable timesaving tools
available in the business world today. Imagine if every
time you had to get a message to a client, supplier or
employee, you had to pick-up the phone or meet with them in
person. The lost hours could be astronomical. Thankfully
email allows us to save the time potentially lost to the
chit-chat and idle gossip that can occur as a result of
talking on the phone or in person. But as much time as
email can save for some, it is a major distraction that
actually causes the loss of concentration and time for
others.

Let's face it, with email being such a quick and simple
form of communication, most people don't think twice about
responding to emails as they arrive or sending a "quick"
note on just about anything. But, all those "quick" notes
can quickly add up. If you find that way too much time in
your day is being lost to email, the following tips may
help you regain the precious time that was meant to be
saved by email.

1. Set a schedule to read and respond to emails. For most
business owners or employees, reading and responding to
your emails at scheduled times at the beginning, middle and
end of the day will prevent the loss of concentration that
can be caused by responding to email as it arrives. For
some, it's vital to check emails almost constantly
throughout the day. If this is the case for you, only
respond to the most urgent emails, and reply to the less
pressing ones during your scheduled email response times.

2. Set up an email organizational system. You can program
your email to automatically sort itself for you based on
certain conditions such as, the sender or the title. Some
email programs such as MS Outlook will even let you color
code your email, to allow you to sort them more efficiently
and differentiate between important and non-urgent emails.

3. Set-up an autoresponder for general client inquiries.
An autoresponder will automatically respond to emails sent
to it. This means you can respond to frequently asked
questions automatically while for other inquiries, you can
let the client know that their message has been received
and give them a time frame in which you will respond to
their inquiry.

4. Don't be afraid not to respond to friends sending you
chain emails or jokes. If you don't have time to read them
and/or respond, just delete. Most people won't be offended
by not receiving a "ha ha, very funny" email in return.

5. If you have an Administrative Assistant, allow them to
sort your email and send general responses to the less
important ones. An Assistant can also check your email
throughout the day and notify you of anything that needs to
be responded to urgently. Exchange servers facilitate this
timesaving method. If an Assistant isn't feasible for you
due to space or monetary considerations, you could consider
delegating this task to a Virtual Assistant.

6. If a considerable amount of your time is being wasted
sorting through junk mail, if possible, heighten your email
security. If this is not possible, performing a simple
internet search for "stop spam" should give you a selection
of programs designed to decrease or eliminate spam.

Email was developed to be a timesaving device. Don't let
it run your business day by making you less efficient. By
simply organizing your email and setting specific times to
respond to it, you can gain back the time that was
initially meant to be saved by email.

----------------------------------------------------
Kelly Sims is a Virtual Assistant and President of
Virtually There VA Services. To find out more about
virtual assistance and how using a Virtual Assistant can
simplify your life, visit her website at =>
http://www.virtuallythereva.com . While you're there,
don't forget to sign up for her free monthly newsletter
providing useful information that enhances and simplifies
the lives of busy entrepreneurs.

Selling is an Effective Conversation

Selling is an Effective Conversation
Everybody is talking! It seems like that phrase has been
around for some time. It is so true, more so today than
ever before. Everybody is indeed talking. Our society and
technology have made it easy, effective and inexpensive. We
talk on the land phone, cell phone, conference call, voice
mail, email, letters, notes, signs, radio, television, the
web, direct mail, blogs and seemingly countless other
means. We talk directly, indirectly and covertly, behind
someone's back. Our communication is both positive and
negative, and operates at a wide variety of volume levels
from the sublime to the skywriter. It seems that everyone
has something to say.

Salespeople, marketers and companies are listening too! We
are all paying attention. In a day where the viral action
of a mere blog post can reach more people than almost any
other form of media, we are more aware than ever that there
is real conversation going on at every level imaginable.
Consider the RSS phenomenon. I have RSS feeds keeping me
abreast of new developments and conversations in virtually
every area of my interests. I have even combined some of
these feeds from a variety of sources within a single
industry for my viewing and listening pleasure. That is
correct, we are no longer limited to simply the written
word, but may enjoy video and audio from an almost
unlimited number of sources, custom delivered right to our
desktop!

So why are we discussing this here? We are in the Age of
Conversation. Consider how fast information is now becoming
available. A mere century ago, we relied on newspapers,
telegraph, cryptic radio and telephone and the mail to
spread the word. As a result, change was slower to occur.
Speed up the rate of communications and you increase the
rate of change. Today, information that may alter the face
of an industry is available instantaneously; at least for
those who are paying attention.

These conversations are becoming critical to both our sales
focus and marketing efforts. Today, marketers can survey an
entire market segment by monitoring applicable blogs and
pod-casts in their industries. Companies that are paying
attention can adapt and tailor their marketing, sales
strategies and tactics on the fly. They can be flexible,
quick to either cut their losses or to change course and
immediately pursue an alternate opportunity.

The savvy salesperson is positioned to be a foot-soldier
and a ground-level conversationalist. Having an "ear to the
ground" or "nose to the grindstone" so-to-say enables us to
respond to market changes more rapidly. Product, market and
application information as well as troubleshooting
assistance has become almost immediately available,
enabling a sales call to be a completely beneficial
experience for both salesperson and customer. This daily
conversation then, becomes part of the growing community of
conversationalists where everyone has the opportunity to
make both deposits and withdrawals. Your participation in
your industry conversations may become your most effective
sales strategy.

Every entrepreneur, marketer and salesperson needs to be
participating in the numerous conversations found on
countless blogs everywhere. Communicate. Share your
expertise and get to know your community. Opportunity
abounds, but you have to be prepared, know where to look
and always be ready to act.

----------------------------------------------------
Daniel Sitter, author of both Learning For Profit, and
Superior Selling Skills Mastery, has garnered extensive
experience in sales, training, marketing and personal
development spanning a successful 25 year career.
Experience his blog at http://www.idea-sellers.com

The Five Essential Entrepreneurial Skills

The Five Essential Entrepreneurial Skills
Harold S. Geneen, the President and CEO of ITT from 1959 to
1971, said that the five essential entrepreneurial skills
for success are: Concentration, Discrimination,
Organization, Innovation, and Communication. In this
article, I will discuss each of these skills and give you
some tips for using them to make your practice more
successful.

Concentration: To concentrate is to focus. If you aren't
focused on starting your practice, to the exclusion of just
about everything else, it won't get done. It's easy to get
distracted, by a current job, or financial worries, or
fear, or just busyness. You must put all of your energy on
getting your practice started and keeping it going. Taking
your eyes off the ball causes you to waiver, and wavering
means failure. Each day plan the three most important
things you need to do that day. If a crisis comes up
(personal or business), deal with it only if you determine
it's more important than those three things. Concentrating
on getting your practice started or on keeping it moving
forward will pay big dividends in creating a wildly
successful business.

Discriminate. To discriminate, you must differentiate
between the important and the unimportant. This is the
80/20 principle: 20 percent of anything will bring 80
percent of the results. For example, 20 percent of your
clients will bring in 80 percent of your sales. By looking
at sales figures, you should be able to figure out which is
the 20% in any situation; by discriminating between the 20
and the 80, you can concentrate your energies on the
important, where they will be most productive. Here are
some ways to apply this principle: If you have an employee
who is in the 20 percent and causing problems, let the
person go. If you have a client or patient who is just not
productive and is draining your energy, let that person go.
If you have a patient who is bringing in lots of
referrals, focus on that person. In other words,
discriminate, by focusing on the standouts. If the
standout is positive, encourage this. If the standout is
negative, ignore or dispense with it. Once you can do
this, you will see a dramatic difference in your energy and
in your practice growth.

Organize. Organizing is keeping track of all the tasks
involved in managing your practice, and systematizing these
tasks for efficiency. Here's an example: Collecting money.
Set up an organized systematic process for assuring that
you collect the money owed to you by patients or clients.
Determine how often you will bill (every two weeks).
Determine how and when you will contact non-payers (by
phone? by letter?). Determine how and when you will take
someone to collections. To organize means to assure that
you have a system. Otherwise, you will let events take
control of you, instead of you taking control of them.

Innovate. Never stop thinking about how to make things
better. This relates to areas like marketing and
promotion. How can you promote your practice to gain new
clients? Some people call this "thinking outside the box."
I'd call it "new ideas for changing times." A wise doctor
I know said, "You have to re-invent yourself every six
months." Your patient or client base never stops changing;
you can't rest on your past successes. You must keep
changing and adapting. If you don't think you're clever,
find people who can help you with these new ideas. Call
an advertising agency and have them give you an hour to
toss around new ideas. Or go to your local Small Business
Development Center and see if they have a marketing person
who can help. Use your powers of creativity and innovation
to adapt to changing times.

Communicate. This one is most important of all. To be a
successful practitioner, you must be a great communicator -
with your patients or clients, with your staff, with
vendors, with everyone. This means you must be able to
connect immediately with people one-on-one and in groups.
If you don't think you're good at this, then you need to
learn how. Take a Dale Carnegie course. Practice looking
people in the eye. Go to Toastmasters to learn how to do
public speaking. Join a networking group, like BNI. In
other words, practice communicating and you'll become a
better communicator. So, to be successful in your
practice, you need to concentrate, discriminate, organize,
innovate, and communicate. That's all. Whoever said it
was easy? That's why they call it "practice."

----------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2007 Jean Wilson Murray, MBA, PhD.
Dr. Jean Murray has been advising small business owners
since 1974. As the founder of Planning for Practice
Success, she specializes in assisting health care
professionals with business plan construction and startup
details. She can help you gain the knowledge to act and the
confidence to begin. Learn more at

http://www.professionalpracticesuccess.com