Let's Just Talk™
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Communications and collaboration are essential components for any organization. There is an entire industry that has been built around developing effective communications skills and teambuilding, and there are dozens of communications experts out there. Good communications, however, is a...
Voice over IP (VoIP) was a good start. It took the groundbreaking idea of treating sound like data and made it work. That was 20 years ago, and though VoIP providers continue to work on stabilizing VoIP, problems still exist in terms of echoes, jitters and latency. In particular, small...
Voice over IP (VoIP) is establishing itself as the new de facto backbone in business communication as aging land lines are replaced with fiber or simply no longer serviced.
There are many varieties of VoIP deployments though, from on-premise to cloud-based to hybrids, and many newer technologies...
Have you ever tried to call Amazon or Uber? These ecommerce giants and many like them could certainly afford a contact center, but they have made the conscious choice to discourage customers from contacting them over the phone.
Is that a good idea? Here are three ways ecommerce and SaaS...
When it comes to communications technology, business owners often adopt the attitude “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” They have a working office telephone system, so why upgrade? As with any technology, the reason to upgrade is to take advantage of new features and functions, but has the...
Every business has multiple moving parts, and like plates spinning in the air, failure to pay attention to any one of those parts could spell disaster. Some business mistakes can be fatal, while others will impede business growth. Common business mistakes are the result of erroneous assumptions...
In the wake of the internet revolution, many businesses were able to start up and even run without an actual business phone system. Smartphones and apps changed everything and allowed people to truly go cordless.
People ditched their landlines, using their smartphones and tablets instead, and...
How do you create a culture where people solve problems and work together?
It’s simple: you have to have regular, direct conversations.
However, in our internet age it doesn’t seem so simple anymore. People are drowning in email correspondence while productivity is plummeting. Text and chat,...
Are you wondering if a business phone system is still a worthwhile investment? With a mobile phone (or two or three) in every pocket, is there really any need for a fixed line phone?
Can you cut the cord and go completely mobile while still running a professional business?
The answer is an...
Voice over IP (VoIP) phone service has become the common communications platform for business. VoIP offers business users a number of advantages: superior audio quality, scalability, integration with other technologies, and most important of all, low cost. If you have an enterprise network, then...
Do millennials love their phones?
Chatbots are hot. Video is hot. Emoticons are hot.
If you only read the headlines, you might conclude that business communication has gone 100% visual in 2017. What is the true value of voice now? Does voice still have a role to play in the future of work?
All the evidence says, “Yes.” Voice is...
Everyone is on the hunt for the next great tool or perfect solution that will help them take their company to the next level. In our digital age, it’s easy to be so focused on social media and digital channels that you overlook a one powerful tool that is free, always available, and incredibly...
As technology advances, systems come together, and the price of technology drops. This is certainly true in telephony. Whereas businesses once had to allocate a substantial part of their operating budget for telephone services, today they can include telephony as part of their IT infrastructure...
There are a lot of reasons why people decide to start their own business, but a common thread runs though many stories about the entrepreneurial journey. Entrepreneurs are often fiercely independent, self-driven and self-reliant individuals. Because of this, communication can be a challenge. You...
Better business tools promote better business efficiency, so it’s important to choose the right tools, especially the right mobile business phone. Productivity relies on access to people and information when and where you need it, and your mobile phone is the lifeline that keeps you connected...
It’s not fair.
It's possible, even common, to work hard on your small business without any result, then see a break open up for someone else who hasn’t put in the sweat equity you have.
It can be discouraging to struggle while others seem to get lucky. It can even make you doubt whether hard...
Even in the age of email and the web, a lot of business is still conducted by telephone. Granted, more people are using email, instant messaging, social media, and other communications channels, but when a transaction is important or you want immediate service, the first thing you do is pick up...
The vast majority of professionals in the US, and in most parts of the world today, carry mobile phones. It’s hard to survive in the business world without them. The research firm Gartner recently found that that 80% of employees bring their personal devices to work and more than half are using...
Business growth doesn’t just happen. Scaling a business requires careful planning, commitment, and—most of all—teamwork. No one individual has the skills and resources needed to scale a business; it requires a team of professionals with complementary skill sets, all dedicated to the same vision...
The world is now mobile-first.
For many small business owners, Budgeting Season and Halloween go hand in hand as the most terrifying time of year.
There are many challenges to small business growth, some of which are unique to a specific business model or market, but many of which are universal. As the owner of a small to medium-sized business (SMB), your job is to identify the specific issues that are impeding the growth of your company...
While some small business owners worry about improving their profitability in 2018, others are struggling with basic survival issues.
In both cases, “reducing expenses” sits at the top of the priority list.
Location matters for all businesses, not just for those in retail and restaurants. As...
Building a business of any size is never easy. Growth doesn’t just happen. It takes perseverance, hard work, and most of all a well thought-out business growth strategy. You need to have a firm understanding of your business’s strengths and weaknesses, identify market opportunities that will...
What held you back last year? Which of the biggest obstacles to growth are still standing in your way? Despite the wide variety of businesses and business models out there, small businesses all across the country are facing many of the same problems.
In a study of more than a thousand small...
Is a hack a good thing or a bad thing?
The word is used in contradictory ways. Generally, the headlines say that hackers are bad, but growth hackers are good. On the other hand, some people will tell you that growth hacking is nothing but a new name for old-fashioned marketing or a bunch of...
Phone systems have been a necessary but painful component of any viable business for over century now. At the heart of communication, customer service and sales, the business phone was crucial to getting deals done, providing service to customers, and communicating internally. For the most part,...
If your business isn’t expanding, it’s failing. Business stagnation means you are falling behind the competition and losing market momentum, so no growth is really negative growth. Every business needs to have an expansion strategy, and the best way to ensure success is by creating an action...
A startup isn’t necessarily a tech company, although technology empowers startups, and it isn’t just for radical new ideas. A startup can take a traditional product to market, innovating other aspects, like how it’s manufactured or delivered. Many startups bought, invented or built nothing new,...
The short answer to the question in the title is "Up to 88%." For details, read on.
In the past, two of the biggest expenses for in starting a small business used to be the office lease and the phone system. These were assumed to be the backbone of the business and it was hard to imagine...
Office telephone systems are still an essential communications tool. Even with the proliferation of email, chat, and online communications, the phone is still the most efficient tool for information exchange and is the preferred means of contact for many customers. At the same time, the...
How hard is it to start a business? Too many people are putting off living a more authentic life as a business owner because they:
Sometimes it seems that the more we use the telephone, the poorer our business phone etiquette becomes. Smartphones are now the primary tool for business communications—email, text messages, chat, video chat, and phone calls. Carrying a smartphone is part of the always-on culture that marks the...
Way back in the 1990s, small companies were finally able to afford a PBX phone system and there was a burst of entrepreneurship. By 2010, new VoIP providers made enterprise-level phone service even more affordable for those with plenty of bandwidth and a reliable local network.
You don’t have to have a lot of employees to be a major player in any industry. Tech giants like Wikimedia, Automattic (Wordpress), Tumblr and Craigslist all operate with under 100 employees.
Small businesses are the engines of the US economy. In 2017, there are more than 30 million small businesses (under 500 employees) in the US.
What is preventing you from starting a new business? Are you waiting until you have more money, more time or a good idea?
VoIP was a good start. There's no doubt it can reduce the cost of a small business phone system by 50% or more. There's a new alternative, though, that can drop phone costs by 80% for businesses of 3-30 employees.
Think about how many times you’ve been deep in the middle of an email or chat thread and thought, “If you would just pick up the phone, we would solve this in 2 minutes!” Here are seven times that saved the day.
How much time and money would you save if you started managing everything from your phone? At the first Code Conference in 2014, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced:
"I run my business entirely on my phone. I believe this is the future."
That future has arrived. Business owners all over the...
It’s often been observed that nothing is possible until it’s practical. While science websites like to discuss promising breakthroughs (Q-bits! Graphene! Anti-gravity belts!), the markets dictate what’s actually possible (Apple 8’s wireless charging).
Technology changes rapidly, including telecommunications, and the best business phone you use today may look very different a year from now. For example, the Apple iPhone just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Consider how much your world has changed over one short decade because of smartphones...
In a recent blog, we talked about defending your time against people and things that try to pull you off course. After you secure your time boundaries, there’s another critical resource that you need to protect.
It’s not cash, it’s not your best employees, it’s not your market differentiator,...
As a business owner, time is your No. 1 most valuable resource. Unfortunately, not everyone values time like you do. Whether it’s a relative who can’t seem to understand why you’re so busy, to a customer who can’t appreciate the concept of limits, people will take as much time as you’re willing...
As landlines are coming down across the world, IP telephony companies are gaining market share and disrupting traditional business phone service. But what do you do when the disruption is on the line? Jitter, latency and packet loss can add up to poor call quality, dropped calls, and can even...
Digital disruption continues to shake the business world, and this megatrend is only accelerating. A study from Constellation Research analyzed the rate of churn for corporations entering and exiting the S&P from 1958 to 2011. If the rate remains constant, three-quarters of enterprises on the...
If you run a small business or you in the early stages of starting one, there’s a good chance you are drowning in conflicting advice. Some of it is clueless, some of it is well-intentioned, and most of it is designed to entice you into a sales funnel.
The one piece of advice that may be in short...
Coworking spaces are springing up around the country, and not just in downtown business districts. From lofty industrial spaces to cozier dens tucked into smaller towns as well as urban neighborhoods, you can find everything from pool tables and urban gardens to meditation rooms and rooftop...
Everyone loves free stuff. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get your business telephone service for free? That’s what a lot of small to medium-sized business (SMB) owners are looking for when they try free voice-over-IP (VoIP) services. There are dozens of free VoIP services available, including
There are two paths that small businesses can take to profitability – revenue growth and cost containment.
It’s hard out here for an SMB. Changing conditions, unexpected events, uncertainty and confusion are a matter of course in an economy that, despite lackluster growth, manages to be full of surprises. In other words, VUCA.
What is VUCA? Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Coined by...
You might have gotten into business because you had a great idea you wanted to share with the world. But—surprise—now your days are filled with people. Not surprisingly, many first-time entrepreneurs and small business owners find themselves brushing up on soft skills, especially those that give...
Growth-oriented small businesses can’t really afford to experiment with sales. They need a reliable way to open up wider pipelines of leads and shorten their sales cycles. Those are both areas where social selling techniques tend to excel.
Branding matters, even for small companies. In the digital age, your storefront is online, and a professional presence can make all the difference to consumers who are clicking, typing and tapping their way to your business through a noisy digital marketplace.
How can you stand out?
Following a tempestuous election year, 2017 has proven to be a positive year for business, with a booming stock market and increased confidence among small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that the economy is strong. In fact, SMBs are continuing to grow at a record rate, and 99.7 percent of all...
Dealing with difficult customers is probably one of the most frustrating tasks a small business faces. It’s easy to get defensive, because difficult customers can be a real threat to your business.
They can end up using more resources then they bring back into the business, and drain you of...
Great news! Old selling techniques don’t work anymore. The latest sales statistics on customer sentiment reveal that:
2017 is a great year to launch a business. If you want to start a business, but you haven’t yet, take a moment right now and list the obstacles that are stopping you. There's a good chance that you have the ability to break through those barriers with the right knowledge.
When you start a small to medium-sized business (SMB), startup costs are always a concern. Where is the best place to invest capital to ensure yours is a winning SMB? Do you put more cash toward inventory, marketing, staff? One area where every SMB can make a smart investment is technology....
In the old world, people met in the marketplace or via a network of friends and family. That’s still true, but now both the network and the marketplace have online components. Growing your business depends on optimizing your business communication with strangers, but practice alone won’t make...
What kind of communicator are you?
Do you like to write off long emails, copying every potential stakeholder, and including all the details in interest of full disclosure?
Finding, developing and retaining great talent has become a major problem for businesses of all sizes, across all industries.
In fact, US employers report the highest global talent shortage since 2007. But it isn’t just a national problem. The talent crunch is global, and together with dismal...
Choosing the right telephone system for your company may be the most important decision you have to make about your business infrastructure. Like it or not, the telephone is a necessary evil. The telephone remains an essential link to customers as well as a vital tool for internal collaboration....
Picture managing a team in space. You can't get any more remote than that. How confident would you be? Confidence in your team can be deadly if it’s not based on a solid foundation of honest communication.
You've got 14 seconds. The clock is running down. How are you going to capture the attention of whoever you have on the line?
Here's what we've found: The first step is to hit reset on how you think about time.
Employees are more productive when using their own phones as business phones.
Email overload and conversation avoidance aren’t two problems. They are only one -- seen from different angles. The problem is inefficient communication that arises from using the wrong channel, and the all too human impulse to resort to the path of least resistance.
There are two types of churn that SMBs need to contain: talent churn and customer churn. These are not just problems for SMB owners, HR managers, or customer service. Everyone in a small business has a role to play in reducing churn because this is critical to business survival.
On the bright...
Business communications strategies have changed as email, the web, texting, and social media take an increasingly important role in staff and customer communications. However, the telephone is still an essential business tool.
Nothing is more efficient or more compelling than the one-to-one...
Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are driving the U.S. economy.
Many small businesses have switched to VoIP in search of better scalability and better reliability. In a study from 2014, those were the top two features that drove the VoIP purchase decisions and 57% of these were first time VoIP buyers.
Somehow, when we weren’t really paying attention, the coworking movement grew up from its counterculture roots and became a mature, economically viable ecosystem of shared infrastructure, empowering technology, collaboration and community.
Remote work can mean many different things to many different people. Some cherish the opportunity to work at home where they can be close to family, while others thrive in the vibrant atmosphere of the global coworking community, with new spaces popping up all over the world.
You may have heard that the future has already arrived, but it’s not equally distributed yet. That’s a good description of the state the following futuristic business technology trends.
Today’s economy is fueled by startups that grow into small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). In every industry, there are entrepreneurs using new technology and new business strategies to start something innovative, and no matter what their market, these fledgling businesses adopt the same...
There was a time when coworking spaces were marketed as a low-rent version of office space for those who choose OpEx over CapEx due to financial necessity.
Those days are long gone.
Coworking communities and the freelance lifestyle are defining themselves as destinations that are vast...
In the old-fashioned, traditional office everyone worked the same hours in the same place. While that had clear limitations in terms of business speed and talent retention, at least the communications structure was simple.
The boss handed down work plans directly to employees, usually face to...
It’s inevitable: Digital transformation will end up leaving some companies behind, and not just legacy giants. The mandate goes something like this: Be transformed, or get disrupted. Leaders at Cisco are among those predicting a major extinction event that will eliminate 4 out of 10 businesses...
Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you’re trying to shout something but no words come out?
Have you ever realized that it wasn’t just a dream?
The nightmare of being unable to communicate something critical at an urgent moment is lived out daily in the workplace.
How can you have a business phone line if you don’t have a physical phone system?
Apps and mobile technology have solved that. Business phone systems no longer live in bulky hardware and desk phones. They can be virtualized to function across your mobile phone infrastructure, offering all the...
Why would you need a virtual phone system?
That answer is easy. In today’s business world, no one is stationary and as executives and employees telecommute and travel, it becomes more imperative than ever to keep in touch by telephone. Virtual telephone systems offer “find me/follow me”...
"The most dangerous place to make a decision is within the office," -- Ulrik Nehammer, Senior VP at Salesforce
His message is clear: Go mobile to collect better intel and then you can make smarter choices about the future of your business. As your business starts to grow, though, it can be...
BYOD was just the tip of the iceberg. The mobile revolution, combined with the augmented workforce, are creating a new world of work where everyone exists as their own self-contained virtual office. Workers are even bringing their own business telephone services to the co-working space--right on...
It would be easier to manage your staff if all the employees were motivated by the same things and worked in the same way. Unfortunately, the speed of change in the workplace means that business tools and processes evolve quickly, and every new generation of workers brings its own values,...
It seems like everyone is selling a desk phone system these days, even as they race at the same time towards virtualization of the hardware in the cloud. The cloud is eating the channel. The graveyard of defunct business phone systems is growing. Yet, to be fair, the desk phone is still a...
Don’t accept office phone tag as just another cost of doing business. It’s wrong, it’s expensive, and it's relatively easy to fix. There's no reason this modern blight has to follow you into 2018.
Business telecom in the US is undergoing a massive restructuring on a scale that is both unprecedented and incomparable.
At the same time, evolving telecom technology is putting society through some radical changes. The result is a volatile legal/regulatory environment on the state and federal...
Good communication is the foundation of any business, yet effective team communication continues to prove elusive for many organizations. Getting people to understand one another and communicate efficiently has been a problem since man started walking upright. In the workplace, the problem is...
Some things are so simple, like a cup of coffee.
Other things, like navigating an IP telephone configuration menu, not so much.
Did you forget something? In all the excitement of running a business, it’s a dead certainty that something will slip your mind. Otherwise there wouldn’t be such an enormous market for reminders, to-dos, and automated task apps.
Technology should be giving you more hours in the day, not frustrating you and eating into your most precious, non-renewable resource: time.
Having the right tools is not the same as knowing the best way to use them. Here are five incredibly valuable SMB technologies along with the social...
Improving team communications is a sure way to improve operating efficiency and ultimately increase profits. If you appreciate that time really is money, then making the best use of work time is important. One of the simplest ways to make better use of time and increase operational efficiency is...
There are some technologies that change business so significantly that it's hard to remember what came before. That’s true of innovations like ATMs, the web, mobile devices, and ridesharing. You can probably come up with a few more if you think about it. The point is that one or more of the...
Did you know that this year is the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the Apple iPhone? In the last 10 years, the iPhone, along with each of the other iterations of smartphones, has revolutionized wireless communications and changed the way everyone thinks about their phone...
Hiring may be one of the most recognizable indications of business growth, but it’s not the most accurate or the even the best idea, in many cases.
It’s hard to keep pace with changes in technology, especially in the telecommunication sector. It seems that new telecom services and systems are entering the market every day, and many of these innovations can have a direct impact on your business. Tracking trends in business communication can...
Did you know that 99% of private employer firms are medium-sized businesses with less than 500 employees, and 89% are small companies with 20 or less employees?
Small businesses are the true drivers of innovation and growth in America today.
Did you know that it takes between six and eight touches to convert a sales prospect into a customer? Each touch requires a different set of marketing communications tools, with different degrees of effectiveness. For example, the top five tools for business-to-business (B2B) lead generation are...
