The WayCommunicator

Volume 4, Issue 2 - June 2007

In This Issue:

• A Wealth Of Telecom Choices Explained
• Reach Out And Touch Your Customers
• WayComm President's Message
• News & Noteworthy ... Networking Tidbits

A Wealth Of Telecom Choices Explained

A virtual smorgasbord of telecommunications selections these days means entrepreneurs have to choose what is best for business, and the choices for business telephone services have exploded in the past few years.

What's more, some of these choices represent completely new product categories that did not even exist until recently. If you are baffled by all the choices, you're not alone. Here is a quick reference guide explaining the differences in some of the most common telephony choices and when and how to use them in your business.

Landline telephones -- Traditional land line telephones once were the only choice we had. Today, land line phone service is just the starting point. Traditional land line service is still the basic telephony service of choice for most businesses due to its reliability, sound quality and relative ease of getting started. Competition from new telephony alternatives like VoIP is starting to drive down the cost of business landlines. Shop around and look especially at providers that also offer wireless services. Many times they can bundle wireless and land line services into one cost-effective package.

VoIP -- VoIP lets you make calls over a broadband Internet connection instead of over traditional telephone lines. Options range from low-cost packaged solutions such as Vonage, which currently offers a small business package with unlimited local and long distance calling for under $50 per month, all the way up to sophisticated IP phone systems that require pricey hardware. VoIP gives you a lot of control over your phone system, letting you reconfigure it quickly and easily to accommodate new hires or changes. VoIP also can coordinate employees in multiple locations under a single phone system.

Wireless phones -- Will the need to count wireless minutes become a thing of the past? Today's wireless offerings, with unlimited night and weekend plans, calling circles, and rollover policies are inching us closer to that day. An increasing number of solo entrepreneurs are going 100 percent wireless and are eliminating land lines. Most likely though, this is not a practical alternative unless you are a consultant or other sole proprietor. For businesses larger than one person, wireless phones are a supplement to the main telephone system.

PDAs -- Personal digital assistants, palmtops and the latest term-du-jour, smartphones, let you make phone calls like standard wireless phones. Compared with standard wireless phones, these devices add many more functions and features, including larger screens and sometimes typewriter- like keypads. Blackberry and Treo are well-known brands. These devices are the tool of choice if you regularly need access to e-mails, documents, or calendars while out of the office. While it may be possible to send and receive e-mails on a standard wireless phone, it's agonizingly difficult. A PDA or smartphone is a far better choice. Plus, on business trips, a PDA that slips into your pocket or purse can even replace a laptop.

Virtual switchboard and voicemail services -- In the past few years a whole new category of telephony service has entered the picture. These new software-based services provide a menu of options to beef up your existing phone system: central automated attendant, advanced voicemail features, conference calling, toll-free numbers, fax-to-e-mail, voice-to-e-mail, customized on hold messages, and more. These new services are layered on top off -- not in place of -- basic phone connectivity. They work with land lines, wireless, and/or VoIP phones and require no extra hardware. GotVMail, RingCentral, and Freedom800 are three brands in this space. For a low monthly fee (as little as $10) these services can make your small business sound bigger and more professional.

With all the choices available today, you can have a more robust telephone presence at a lower cost than most of us would have dreamed possible a decade ago. These alternatives can keep the cost of doing business down and make telecommunications services available to employees throughout your company, no matter where they are, but it is a decision that you, as a small business owner, must make on a case-by-case basis.

Reach Out And Touch Your Customers

Whether you know it or not, your database of current and past clients is your best source of new clients. “Prospecting” for a new client is time consuming and expensive. Often salespeople complain that keeping in touch with past clients takes too much time, effort, and money. Considering the return on investment, this really is not true—at least for most salespeople. The key is finding a way to communicate that is time efficient, relatively inexpensive, and effective.

Studies indicate that in order to keep your name at the top of your customer’s mind, you need to “touch” your customer a minimum of 14 times per year—more if at all possible. What is a “touch?” It is any communication from you to your client—email, telephone call, snail mail, postcard, holiday card, in-person meeting, or any other method of getting in front of your customer. Constructing a campaign using a combination of these methods could be a very effective program. For instance, setting a marketing calendar to send 4 postcards per year, 6 emails, 2 snail mail letters, one phone call, and one holiday card during the course of the year allows you to touch your client approximately once every 3 ½ weeks during the course of the year.

But, what do you send? What do you say 14 times during the course of the year? The content of your communication is just as important as the fact that you sent something. Whether or not your communication campaign is effective will depend on what you are communicating. If you send junk, just to send something, your customer will quickly learn to ignore you and your communications. On the other hand, if your communications offer something of interest and value, you will train your client to pay attention to you.

To train your clients to pay attention, and, therefore, to keep you at the top of their mind, you must figure out how to send them communications that give them value. What you send does not have to be large or costly—it just needs to be of interest to the client. A program such as this requires thought and considerable customization of content, but the payoff can be enormous. Think about what you are sending and what it will—or will not—communicate about you and your business. If you want your clients to think of you and not ignore you, then take the time and the effort to make sure you are sending value. If you are not sure it has value, it probably does not. Marketing to your client database should be at the top of your “to do” list and your campaign should be constructed with the thought and care as if you were marketing to the most important people in the world, because for you, they are.

President's Message —Wayne Sos

Well, it’s finally summer and here at WayComm we are very excited to embrace the warm weather and bring our business to scorching levels of success in the upcoming months. We’ve got plenty of events on deck and will be hitting the ground running in our sales department.

The heat does, however, bring some downfalls such as power outages and down phones which can be a nuisance to any business. We are always ready to help, and anything we can do to help expedite getting your systems back up and running we are more than willing to do.

So enjoy the warm weather in the coming summer months, stay safe, and remember—if. — Wayne Sos

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