Tips to Save Time
Time Management – Phone Calls at Work
How to keep personal phones calls from interrupting your business
If you depend on the phone for business, you need to find a way to keep the lines clear for business. If not, you can find yourself getting annoyed, frustrated and less productive. Take note of how many calls a day you take or make that are related to your business. Then write down the amount of personal phone calls you get that interrupt your business calls and work day. This will give you an idea of the importance of the calls and how much time you spend on each.
The one thing that you have to do is figure out a plan that will help you keep your calls in order. You don’t want to be interrupted when you are trying to talk to a potential client and have the beep of call waiting make the prospect lose focus on your conversation. Interruptions are considered something that is ‘not necessary now’. Of course you want to know immediately if you have a death in the family or if something bad has happened but there are certain things that you should not bother with at work.
It is important to figure out what is getting in your way and stop it. Most of the time, people find out that friends and family may be causing a dip in productivity – especially when you work in a home office as I do. Ignoring the problem will not help you at all.
One day I had a relative call during a training session with a client and I had forgotten to turn off call waiting (my practice during important calls). Lucky it was a good and patient client. My relative called my office line, home phone, cell phone and then the office line again. At this point I excused myself a moment and took the call only to ask her “Are you dying, is Mom in the hospital? If not I am talking with a client which is why I did not pick up any of the phone lines and you need to leave me a message.” She apologized when we talked later that night and it has never been a problem since.
Some options?
- Having two different phone lines may be the right answer if you want to ensure you receive personal calls.
- You might want to answer personal calls only on your cell phone and the business calls managed by your office line.
- If you are working away from a desk you may want to have two cell phones on you at all times. Then one would be used for work only and the other would be for your personal calls to be handled.
If two phones are not an option you may just want to keep your cell phone off during the day so that you are not bothered with personal calls. This may be the best way to handle the problem of being bothered when you are trying to make or receive calls.
Remember running a successful business is one thing that you do not want to forget about. Make certain you are putting enough time into your clients and business and not talking on the personal line all the time. Some tips to help you manage these types of call or interruptions are:
- Mark off certain times of the day for your personal time. You might want to make all the calls that you need to for business in the morning or before two in the afternoon so that you are not being bothered with other things.
- Let people know your schedule so that they are not calling during the important times. This is going to help eliminate the problem calls that you are getting so you will not have to stress over it.
- Use Voice Mail or let the machine get the calls that can wait.
- Use Caller ID to help you make the choice of a call that can wait or not. Turn it off during very important calls where the beep can be distracting.
- If you have a problem caller – tell them otherwise they will never change their calling habits.
Learning to manage your time is one of the most efficient ways to make your career soar. You want to be able to have time to work on your business as well as give your family and friends time too. The only thing that you can really do to rectify the situation is make time for both. Figure out a plan of action that is going to work best for you and never let either one interfere with the other.
What tips to you employ to make certain you can connect with family and run your business?
Pitfalls to Avoid in Social Media Marketing
No one likes being pitched to all the time? How do you feel about telemarketers calling to sell you a new service? What about your neighbor who talks about how great he is all the time? If you are like most people, you are turned off by these behaviours. The same is true for social media!
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Friends, Connections and Followers are People Too!
Value their time just as you value yours. Just because they are on Twitter does not mean they are right for your target market or that you are for them. You will have much greater success connecting with like minded people.
If someone adds you to their network, check them out. Is there a relevant reason they may be interested in you and your business? Check out their profile. Many people have a rule that they do not follow anyone who doesn’t include a photo in their profile. Over time, you’ll have to set some boundaries about who you follow and who you let follow you. These boundaries will allow you to form greater, more meaningful connections with those you want to do business with.
For instance, if your business is centered around creating products that help parents keep their kids away from non-kid friendly sites online, then you obviously don’t want to be talking with (or associated with for that matter) someone who owns an adult-only website. Yes, that’s a bit extreme, but you get the point. You really should pay attention to (or hire someone who can monitor) who follows you and who you follow in return.
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Social Media is about connections NOT sales.
One of the surest ways, short of posting completely inappropriate content, to lose all credibility is to use your social media for selling yourself and your services exclusively. No one wants to be chased at a store by a sales clerk any more than they want to follow someone who is constantly selling something. It is okay to tell people about your products and services but this has to be a part of your interaction, not your only interaction.
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Having unrealistic expectations
Please don’t expect that you are going to create a new account, start posting great content and immediately see your sales and traffic increase. It will happen, but it takes some time and effort. One of the amazing things about social media is that your efforts are multiplied over and over when people who you are connecting with share your content. Social media is very powerful and can and will benefit your business, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will a list of thousands of followers all ready to purchase from you. Based on my experience with more than 50 clients, you can expect to take 3 to 6 months to build a presence which you can then use to build your business.
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Letting your social media involvement become a time drain
It is easy to lose track of time with your social media networks and unless you keep on task, it can become a time waster. You need to learn how to make it work efficiently; read about how to do this here.
There is no right or wrong way to work social media into your schedule, but it is essential to find a system that works for you. Be aware of your time and make plans on how and when to use social media to help market your business.
Hopefully these 4 tips will help you stay on track with your social media marketing. Feel free to ask us how we can help on our facebook page, or simply post a comment here – We’d love to hear some of your tips and pitfalls to avoid.
Share your Screen with Skype
Have you ever tried to teach your Mom – via phone – that the google search box is NOT the address bar on her browser? And that the website won’t open if she types the ‘www thing‘ in there. Life cannot get more frustrating than this!
During one – on – one training sessions with clients, I sometimes run into the same type of frustration as I help them learn to maneuver about in their twitter and facebook accounts. Teaching them what to look at, what to click and where to go to find something. Describing the screen and where I want them to click or visit can get frustrating because descriptions of buttons and links don’t always sink in easily.
Lately, I have started using Skype’s Share Screen feature with people to easily be able to show them what I mean. It allows you to chat via Skype with your computer screen visible to the other party – they are not logged in and cannot use your computer, but they can see it and more importantly, your mouse. In my case it allows the other party to see what I am talking about and we make much more effective use of our time and with less frustration.
Skype can be used for text chat, video chat or phone chat as well, in order to use the Share Screen feature, you need to be upgraded to the latest version which has the Share Screen function. Check it out and save yourself some frustration. Of course you may need to walk ‘Mom’ though the download of Skype – but it will be well worth it!
Here’s a quick video on using the share screen function…
and thanks to Grace White of Virtually Amazing for helping us on the screen share video!
Twitter Password tips
>> Please note this post is intended for people who use Twitter and related applications. If you are looking to start out on Twitter and other social media channels but are unsure how/what to do, please contact Time on Task – we can help!
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This past week I ran into several issues I did not realize were happening until a few days later – all related to Twitter passwords and some external twitter applications.
In a nutshell, you have to keep in mind what applications you are using that require your twitter username and password. If an application requires this for use on a regular basis and you change your twitter password, you may have to change the password on these external applications as well. Two prime examples are Tweetdeck and Tweetlater. Read the rest of this entry »
It's Tax season… Are you ready for your Accountant?
If you have a great expense tracking system for your business and can say the word “Accountant” right now without having bad thoughts of something hidden in your closet, then this column is not for you.
If however, like many busy people, you have been stuffing slips and receipts into an envelope or box – you may be feeling a bit stressed at the mention of the words tax and accountant.
Finding a solution to keeping track of expenses and invoices can be as simple as hiring a virtual assistant (VA) to do them as a special project right now, or to be even more efficient, on a regular basis during the year. Keeping up to date also means you have a better picture of where you stand financially.
Recently, I took on a client to do just this for her during the year – this will take me about 1 hour a week to keep her on track – and will save her double that in time, as well as allowing her more time to work directly with clients and invoice them.
More revenue and less time wasted, one of the major benefits of hiring a Virtual Assistant. Hiring someone for one or two hours a week is something most businesses would never think of doing. VA’s make this a possibility. They work for several clients and only for the time needed, and can take on a job that may only require one or two hours a week as well as ones needing 10 hours a week.
My advice to you as a business owner, is to look at your bookkeeping system and how effective it is. If you are in a position right now where you will have to take several days to sort and organize everything in order to get your taxes done, may I suggest you look at a time saving alternative such as hiring a virtual assistant.
Call our office for a consultation and learn how you can be ready to smile at your accountant every time you see him or her.
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