houndblog

What is BPO?

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:12:43 +0100

BPO is Business Process Outsourcing. We've all experienced it in one way or another. You call to sort out a personal bill or account and speak to someone in another country, reading a script to handle your customer service issue. Sometimes it works great. Sometimes it's frustrating. As with anything in business, the success or failure of Business Process Outsourcing depends entirely on planning.

What is BPO? How can BPO help small businesses?

Business Process Outsourcing might sound like it's just for big corporations who want to slash costs by outsourcing to offshore business process outsourcing providers, but let me stop you right there. BPO can help even the smallest micro-business owner. In fact, I'd argue that every micro-business should consider BPO if they have any chance of growing.

So, what is BPO? What do we mean by that? Well, what it says on the tin. BPO is any business process that you can outsource. Even the smallest of business will usually outsource their accounting and hopefully even their bookkeeping to an accountant. Why? Because they are better at it.

BPO UK - helping businesses to grow

Are you having a lightbulb moment here? Any size business benefits from evaluating all of their business processes to see what they can improve. Sometimes you do have the resources to make improvements in-house. Sometimes thinking about your 'business processes' highlights the frightening reality that you're just making it up as you go along. Many business already outsource their legal and accounting business processes, but how well are you really managing your sales process, your customer data, your content marketing strategy, your Human Resources.

Process is everything. But not all business owners are good process people. Sometimes, they might be the visionary, the person who has the industry connections or knows the industry inside and out. But that doesn't mean they can see the administrative steps needed to process a new client from marketing through to contract signed.

Is BPO UK right for your company?

Follow these 3 steps to find out whether BPO is right for your company.
1. List your current business processes

this could be as simple as what you do when you get a new sales call or ask complex as using a Customer Relationship Management system to track and report on every touchpoint a sales lead has from first contact to repeat customer
this is the 'how we do things' of your business
if you don't have many formal business processes, skip steps 2 and 3! You need some help creating some business processes. Contact OfficeHounds to schedule a free phone consultation. If your needs are too complex for our experience, we can put you in touch with someone who can help.

2. Evaluate which business processes on your list work smoothly, which could be improved and any areas of your business that feel disorganised or have no process.

decide where to put your improvement energy.
If you could wave a magic wand and have amazing processes in place in any area of your business, what area would you improve?

3. Start talking to BPO providers - get some quotes

don't assume that only your company can do things
business process outsourcing can free up your resources allowing you to grow your business
Contact OfficeHounds to see how we can improve your business processes with BPO

Growth tends to come from discomfort

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:55:15 +0100

I attended a Mindfulness at Work event recently. Although it was a sublime experience, one particular concept made me uncomfortable when I first heard it. The mindfulness practitioners used a phrase of 'not striving' as though striving is a bad thing.

I don't know about you, but to me, 'striving' has a good connotation. We often hear striving in the phrase, 'striving to achieve' ... a super positive phrase. I guess it's a pretty deep seeded belief I have that those who focus and push for what they want earn the rewards they receive.

I always did like good old Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, so what the hell, let's do like George Costanza in Seinfield and test drive the opposite.

What if 'striving' is a negative force in our lives instead of a positive one? This is my take on the concept of striving inspired by listening to smarter spiritual and much more 'mindful' people than myself.

The point of not striving is not to stop trying to achieve great things. The point is to achieve great things from a powerful and peaceful place of being. Sometimes when something isn't working to plan, acceptance or patience with the situation is called for. It may be possible to force a situation through, but there may be consequences in doing so or other opportunities may be missed because of this single-mindedness.

So for example, I am sharing this information about mindfulness and my thoughts now, because I genuinely believe that everyone benefits from learning techniques to bring peace and focus to our crazy work days. Surely, we can all benefit from being more peaceful, more mindful. You can download some mindfulness exercises on your mobile http://www.skillpill.com/mind/ to learn more. The rest is up to you. Once I've expressed my thoughts, it frees me to move onto something else without trying to push for a particular outcome.

Is it still important to push to get things done? You bet. It's more about being 'mindful' of the place of being that you push from.

What's so great about working with a Virtual Assistant?

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:30:00 +0100

Business owners, listen up. If you've never had a Personal Assistant, this is going to help you.

If you want to achieve more, you should learn to delegate to a Virtual Assistant. Sure, it's in my interest to convince you of this. I've made it my business to assist business owners.

But don't take my word for it. Just think for a second. What happens when you try to get a sales appointment with a CEO of a reasonably sized business? Why, it's a Personal Assistant; and what does that Personal Assistant do? She tries to establish who you are, what you want and whether you are a worthy interruption of her bosses' precious time.

A good Personal Assistant is a gatekeeper. She is a loyal protector of her boss' time. It's her job to guard and protect that time, and often she's actually better at it than her boss.

You may not know this, but busy and efficient professionals allow their Personal Assistants to screen their phone calls and emails. A trusted Personal Assistant can respond to emails on behalf of her boss. She can monitor the email inbox and use a system, to make it easier for her boss to see what is important and not get distracted.

Most importantly, a Personal Assistant is a right hand woman, who can file and collate information, format documents, respond on your behalf, reduce your workload, source supplier, hold you accountable for things you agreed to do for others and generally be like your second brain.

Virtual Assistant - a cheaper alternative to hiring a Personal Assistant

Many business owners simply do not have the budget to hire a full time Personal Assistant. If you're like a lot of small business owners, you've never had a Personal Assistant work with you and may be unsure how best to delegate tasks. In this case, hiring a Personal Assistant is not the right option for you.

Outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant is the way for you to go. You simply pay for support when you need it. You delegate the tasks you need help only with when you need that help. Over time, you will be able to delegate more and more tasks to your Virtual Assistant.

Remember Personal Assistants are professional organisers. We know what we're doing and can help.

If you think you would benefit from some help from a professional organiser, contact Maggie at OfficeHounds. (Go on, give me a ring on my mobile. I'd love to have a chat about your business. 07789 682960.)

Volunteers Needed - Productivity Experiment

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:10:38 +0100

I have developed a productivity system. I am currently writing a book about productivity featuring this simple system to get more done.

I know from supporting a variety of personality types as a Personal Assistant that accountability is a key ingredient to implementing plans. I am looking for 12 volunteers to participate in a Productivity Experiment.

My system called "The Planning Game" is a simple set of rules to help you better plan how you spend your time on a daily basis. I will send you the rules to The Planning Game and provide email support for any questions about how to implement the system. This is a 6 week commitment. The good news is that the system works for both personal and work related tasks, so it can help you get organised for the holidays and start 2013 with a productive bang.

The Experiment
Group A - You will receive details of the system and be able to email me questions about how to implement the system. In 6 weeks (14 January 2012) you will be asked to complete a questionnaire about the system.

Group B - You will receive details of the system and be able to email me questions about how to implement the system. In 6 weeks (14 January 2012) you will be asked to complete a questionnaire about the system. But you will also participate in a weekly accountability group led by a productivity expert along with 6 other volunteers to support your progress.

The experiment is to identify to what extent peer support and accountability helps productivity and the ability to improve work habits.

How to volunteer
Email maggie@officehounds.co.uk
Subject - The Planning Game Experiment Application
Include in the email:
Your Name
Your Phone Number
Your Group Preference A or B (Group B is likely to fill up fast, so reply quickly to avoid disappointment.)

If you select Group B - please confirm that you are able to attend a weekly 1 hour online meeting on Friday morning at 8:00 am. (If you can't attend a meeting, you will be expected to send me an update.)

Make 2013 a Productive Year
The end of the year is the perfect time to make improvements to the way we work. Let's work together NOW to start improving your productivity, so 2013 is your most productive year to date.

Remember I'm only accepting 12 volunteers and all of you will receive a free copy of my book when it's published.

Obama on Hope Election Acceptance Speech 2012

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:27:01 +0100

"I ask you to sustain that hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism; the kind of hope that ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all of the evidence to the contrary that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working to keep fighting."

President Obama

To the Startups who have big dreams but little money. Have hope.

To the entrepreneurs who are struggling to make ends meet. Have hope.

To the business owners concerned about making hard workers redundant. Have hope.

President Obama's 2012 election acceptance speech words of hope inspire anyone facing a challenge. I feel the message is especially poignant for entrepreneurs.

As entrepreneurs, we wake up early each morning to face uncertainty and challenge. We put our souls into our work and trade security with hope. It is the fearlessness and stubbornness of entrepreneurs fighting every day to grow our economy.

To the cynics, worried about the state of the economy. Have hope.

When action is raised on the shoulders of hope, the view becomes truly sublime.

Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

About the Author Maggie Langley - HELPaholic Virtual Assistant, copywriter, productivity hound & loyal protector of your time.

Swallow your Excuses

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 08:19:44 +0100

Truly successful people don’t make excuses. You may find my advice hard to swallow.

Stop resisting, complaining and blaming. Man up and swallow your excuses.

Why do people find excuses hard to swallow?

When things go wrong, it’s easier to make an excuse than take responsibility.

· We might resist the situation.
“It’s not my fault. I would have arrived on time, but I got caught up in traffic.”

Resisting the situation or circumstances shows a lack of commitment or imagination. When you are committed to arriving on time, you leave early. If being late was unavoidable, use your imagination and offer something extra to the person you kept waiting.

· We might complain to ourselves or others.
“It’s not my fault. I did start the project, but it was too complicated to get done by the deadline.”

Complaining infects everything it touches with negativity. The positive people you work with have a strong immunity to complaining but will feel annoyed. Hearing your complaints and excuses will strengthen negativity already present in natural complainers.

Dislike never excuses poor execution.

· We might blame others.
“It’s not my fault. The customer clearly didn’t know what she wanted.”

Blaming colleagues is bad. Blaming your customers is sinful. If the customer made a mistake, never make him feel at fault. Maybe it’s your fault for not communicating clearly. Do not make your paying customers dislike you. Nobody likes to be blamed.

How to swallow your excuses and gain respect

Making excuses is easy. Start noticing when you make excuses. Do you make excuses to yourself, your boss, your customers, your family? Do you resist, complain or blame?

If you catch an excuse before it flies out your mouth swallow it down. Excuses can be hard to swallow when you’re determined to prove it wasn’t your fault. You don’t always need to prove you are right.

When you swallow your excuses, you gain respect. When you resist, complain and blame, people will resist you. When you accept the situation without finding fault, people will accept you.

Not making excuses embodies the British ‘stiff upper lip’. Next time you make a mistake, put your shoulders back and swallow that excuse for Queen and country.

Cool Exercise for Finding Perfect Clients

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:49:13 +0100

Exercise to help you discover your perfect customers Watch this short video from the lovely Margaret Lynch.

She asks you to pause the video and write a letter to someone you admire. My letter is below. (After you watch the video, you'll see that I've shared something quite personal with you.) I won't say any more, because I don't want to ruin the surprise of the second half of the exercise. Enjoy!

Here is my letter that I wrote to Guy Kawasaki author of Enchantment and What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us

Hi Guy,
I admire you less for what you have achieved, although that is impressive, than for how you communicate. That Twitter blog you wrote gave me confidence to follow my gut instinct and continue communicating in a way that made sense to me. I am thrilled that I got a free copy of your book, so thanks for that.

Keep inspiring and informing those of us with less experience and knowledge!

All the best
Maggie Langley

Businesses on Twitter whatwedo 9

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 07:16:35 +0100

Congratulations to our #whatwedo featured businesses

Want your business featured in our #whatwedo blog?
Send a tweet to @OfficeHounds include #whatwedo with a brief description and link to your website.

@officehounds We help educate people on the Virtual Assistance Industry. :-)
— IVAA Marketing Dir (@IVAA_org) September 7, 2012

@officehounds #whatwedo is help small businesses to do what they do best (helping with online presence. CMS maintenance and social media)
— Tracey Bartlett (@_BusinessHelper) September 15, 2012

How to be a beloved Estate Agent

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:43:08 +0100

Attention Estate Agents: Do you want to learn to be a Estate Agent that your customers love?

I wanted to get you thinking about the frustration your customers feel when they hear a voice mail message.

I am speaking from personal experience as a consumer here, your prospects and customers will be more patient if they get to speak to a real person when they leave a message.

What do your customers think of you?

I am an American business owner who has bought and sold two properties since living in the UK. I was suprised and frustrated by the painfully slow process.

The first Estate Agent we used was great. No trouble at all. I came to realise that selling a house in the UK just takes time.

Stupidly, we chose a different Estate Agent the next time we moved This was ONLY because the first company didn't continue to market to us after we sold our house. When it was time to sell again, we didn't even think of them. I still can't even remember the name of the company. Do you send email marketing campaings to old customers? A quarterly email from my old Estate Agent would have been perfect for me personally. I would have unsubscribed from a monthly email.
Returning to my bad-experience-with-an-Estate-Agent story, there were delays due to some paperwork. I remember finding it very frustrating that I kept having to leave voicemail messages to get progress updates. This situation was made worse by my agent not returning the calls promptly. I would sometimes have to wait several days to get a call back.

It made me feel frustrated and disappointed that I had chosen to pay commission to a company who did not extend the basic professional courtesy of answering my calls. I'm sure you treat your customers much better than that!

I know being an American, I have quite high expectations of customer service, but I think everyone who is selling a home wants to feel that their house sale matters to their Estate Agent.

Making sure your calls are answered by a real person every time is a simple way to sooth your customers' anxiety about selling their home. You can even forward your mobile phones to our call answering service. Go on. Get in your customers good books.

Get started with 24/7 telephone answering

£25 per month - includes 10 messages - £1.50 per additional message OfficeHounds Telephone Answering In my opinion, if you want to learn to be a beloved Estate Agent, make sure your customers can speak to a real person every time they call. Your customers trust you with their home, their keys, their future. The least you can do is make sure they speak to a person, not a recorded message.

How Peter Pan can help you charge what you're worth

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 10:31:11 +0100

Entrepreneurs, myself included, often find it difficult to charge what we're worth. When we start our businesses, we grossly underestimate the value of our services out of self-doubt caused by inexperience as a new business person. In these difficult economic times, we hear that dreaded two letter word a bit more than we would like; 'no'. I don't know about you, but the combination of people saying 'no' and stepping up from a micro-business to a successful profitable business can cause some serious self-doubt. As we grow in confidence and pride in our services, the doubt moves from internal to external. We doubt whether our customers will tolerate such an increase in prices.

Are you afraid to charge what you're worth?

There are many reasons we might be afraid to charge what we're worth, but self-doubt is at the root of them all. If you've positioned your pricing at the bottom tier of your industry when you're providing just as good of a service, it's time to acknowledge it's time to make some changes. As long as your still proving more value to your customers than what you're charging, everyone is happy. But that's just the trouble, it's not easy to have confidence in our pricing.

Characteristic of a Successful Entrepreneur: Self-Doubt

If you think that successful entrepreneurs don't doubt themselves, you're wrong. Doubt plays an important role in the decision making process. Doubt and his brother instinct can look very similar at times. Successful entrepreneurs are better at seeing the difference between doubt and a good old fashioned gut instinct warning them not to do something. When successful entrepreneurs take action, they don't allow self-doubt to sabotage their efforts with hesitation. They act, move and don't skip a step if they do fail.

Peter Pan Prices

So what does all of this have to do with Peter Pan? Sir J M Barrie was paid to write a play for the theatre. This is when he wrote the famous story "Peter Pan", which had been an idea of his for some time. He doubted whether his play would be a commercial success, so he wrote a second play and presented them both to the person paying him. Instead of presenting his best work, he presented what he thought would sell. His error here was that he doubted that the public would pay what he felt "Peter Pan" was worth, so he also wrote a second rate play that he thought the public would prefer. Peter Pan was a financial success. The play where he cheapened his skills was a complete financial flop. Like Sir J M Barrie, you might have confident in your abilities and talents, but doubt whether consumers will appreciate them. He made incorrect assumptions about what theatre goers would want to pay to watch. People will always be willing to pay for quality. Focus on delivering quality and charge what you are worth.

Are your assumptions correct about what your customers truly think your services are worth? Do you think you should be earning more?

[Hey, I'm still working on getting comfortable with this one myself. I recently sent a customer satisfaction survey to separate fact from imagination. I'd love to hear how you feel about your prices. Leave your comments below]