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Home Business Solutions - 60 Minute Money
You would be working from your home around your existing schedule. You would earn an income commensurate with what you produce and not what a traditional corporate structure, politics or your educational background dictates. The advantages to this...
How Your New Years Eve Bash can Grow Your Career
How Your New Years Eve Bash can Grow Your Career.
You can have some real fun with this. Enjoy.
The New Years Eve party is a once-a-year terrific opportunity to open new doors into your future, your sales career and income, your business, and...
Retire Debt FREE!
Retirement. We dream about it, whether it is five years or 15 years away. We fantasize about the day when we march into the boss's office and declare that we are retiring in one month and plan to take off to Bora Bora to unwind from decades of...
Why is it more profitable for an Indian to take up Work At Home Business?
I am writing this article to help all fellow Indians
understand the fundas of working at home. How can you work
at home and make money online? And how do you, as an Indian
resident advantage more from it. You must ofcourse have guessed
it by...
Why Would Anyone Hold a Bad Meeting?
Pssst, want a stock tip that will make you rich? Okay, here it is: phone a public corporation and ask to speak with the CEO. If a secretary tells you that the CEO expects to be busy in meetings for the next six hundred years, call your broker and...
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Business Like Image
So you want to start a home based business. Just think, you can work in your slippers when you want to - what could be better? No commute, not having to play office politics, no income - Whoops how did that sneak in?
Let's have a reality check about your home business. Can you work in your slippers? Sure, no problem. If you aren't going to be meeting face to face with your clients, it makes little difference how you're dressed.
Can you work when you want to? That really depends on a lot of things. If you are a freelance writer with little, if any contact, with the public, yes you can. However, if you are selling a product or service, and the public will be contacting you , that may not work.
The normal office is open during the working day, but wait a minute. Typical office hours are 9-5 and if you call their number, you expect an answer. If you don't get an answer, you will most likely try another source. But with the Internet, wha are typical office hours? If you live in New York you are on eastern time, how about all your prospects on the West Coast? When you're wrapping it up for the day, they're just getting back from lunch.
So do you increase your office hours to cover all time zones. If you're on the west coast, open earlier in the morning - if you're on the east coast close later at night. Right - wrong. That will be self defeating, as far as running your own home based business. Before you worked 8 hours a day and since you decided to get out of the "rat race", you now have to work eleven?
The first thing you should do is to post the hours when people can talk with you on your web site. But it is amazing how little attention some people pay to this. Calls will be received at all hours of the day and night. Now, remember that anyone who does call, is a more serious prospect than one who simply responds to an email.
Should you have a toll free number? While many will argue that this is a more professional approach, it will increase the number of calls from people who are
referred to as "tire kickers". If they have to spend "their dime" for the call, they will be less inclined to call unless they are serious.
But this doesn't answer the question - how long should you be available to take calls, and what should you do with people who call outside your posted hours? Recognizing that there is a three hour difference for many people, you should try to be available during that period that overlaps the different time zones. If you live on the east coast, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM will provide decent coverage. Voice mail or an answering machine should be available for those hours you are not actually taking calls.
While voice mail or an answering machine will provide coverage, you must respond to inquires received on a timely basis. While you have a better chance of closing the sale if you are available when they do call, this is the next best alternative.
Another thing that you should do, is to try to capture their telephone number, the best time to return the call and their email address if they do call outside your normal working hours. This works especially well if you follow up with an email sending them a carefully crafted message. In that message thank them for their inquiry, and if they respond, be sure to return their call. If they don't respond to your email, you should still follow up, however, the odds of making a sale have decreased dramatically.
No matter what you do, you will not close a sale with everyone who calls. If you present a "business like" image, the odds that you will be successful, will increase dramatically, and you will realize that dream of no commute, not having to play office politics, and hopefully there will be some income.
About the Author
Did you know that subscribers to Bob Osgoodby's Free Ezine the "Tip of the Day" get a Free Ad for their Business at his Web Site? Great Business and Computer Tips - Monday thru Friday. Instructions on how to place your ad are in the Newsletter. Subscribe at: http://adv-marketing.com/business/subscribe2.htm
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