Canadian Business Blog » 10 Quick Tips

10 Quick Tips for Telecommuting Successfully

Yael Algranti — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:38:45 +0000

Telecommuting is an employee’s fantasy as it combines work with comfort and relaxation. It allows you to stay in your pajamas all day, walk the dog, and cook a fabulous meal for yourself while you complete a business project. Although this is true, telecommuting often turns in to an employee’s worst nightmare if they aren’t prepared to handle the obstacles that working at home has to offer. Telecommuting isn’t impossible; it does however take a lot of commitment to avoid the things that will distract you most at home.
These are 10 tips to help you telecommute successfully:

Create a routine. One of the main problems of working at home is that there becomes no distinction between work life and home life. This is one of the reasons while telecommuting fails for most people. To avoid this from happening create an early morning ritual whether it be, a work out before work, a shower, or eating breakfast to start your day off. The key is to give yourself an indication that you’re starting work and leaving home behind.
Groom Yourself. Some people may enjoy staying in their pyjamas all day which is definitely comfy, but not always the best way to be productive. Having a shower, eating breakfast and getting dressed will make you feel more awake and energetic and in turn more productive while working.
Make a plan. When you begin your work day it’s often difficult to just pick up from the day before and start working. Making a plan will help you pick your tasks and projects accordingly to ensure the structure of your day is organized efficiently. This will ensure you do not forget what you need to get done and that you complete everything necessary.
Find silence. Make sure you find a separate room away from blaring tv and screaming babies to complete your work. This is important to ensure you don’t get distracted and get your work done to the best of your ability.
Have a good work space. Your work area should not only be quiet but large enough for you to work comfortably, and store necessary files and supplies you might have. Having an attractive work area that you enjoy working in will make you happier about working and will result in a more productive work regiment.
Disconnect and minimize interruptions. If you have a hard time staying focused and tend to check your emails, text message your friends or surf the web, you might want to disconnect from everything that distracts you so you are able to concentrate. Ask the people that are constantly emailing you and talking to you to not interrupt you while you are hard at work.
Avoid the couch. It’s extremely tempting to move your work to the couch, but this can often result in watching tv or falling asleep. It’s hard to return to work after relaxing on the couch or in bed so try to stay at your desk to stay as productive as possible.
Communicate. When working from home it is immensely crucial to communicate with the people you are working with. This includes what you’re working on, the progress you’ve made, what you’ve achieved, and any assistance you might need. To avoid being accused of not doing your work, communicate regularly with fellow colleagues.
Don’t babysit and work. Mixing childcare and telecommuting is not a good match. Although telecommuting is good if you need to be flexible in regards to your children, you must have someone else to look after your children to ensure you have maximum productivity while working.
Set limits for work. Make sure to have a starting time and ending time to work. Without this you will find yourself working through the night and not leaving any time for your family. When your work is finished and your limit is up, wrap everything up, shut everything off and spend some time with your family.

Ten Tools To Increase Your Productivity

Courtney Wilson — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:02:39 +0000

One of our goals in business is always to increase both our productivity and the productivity of our team members. Here are ten tools that can be used to help with increasing productivity through our daily activities:

Remember the Milk. This is one of my favourite online tools – I am a natural list maker, so an online application that allows me to create as many lists as I need, while allowing me to access them wherever I am, well! Due dates can be set, priorities made and tasks can be set to repeat as often as needed. Remember the Milk is a great tool to keep on-top of your To-Do list. link.
Campaign Monitor. One of the best online tools to assist with sending online campaigns, newsletters, etc., to your clients. Campaign Monitor allows you to see stats of how many people opened your campaign, how long they read your campaign, what links they clicked in your campaign, and whether they forwarded it to a friend. link.
Sharepoint Online. One of Microsoft’s online tools, Sharepoint allows you to access, modify, share and create new documents with other users, while still using the Microsoft Office suite (as opposed to an online document editor). link.
Google. Google is so much more than just a search engine – there is Google Docs, that allows you to do document sharing; there is Google Calendar, where you can share you calendar with many people; Google Analytics helps you keep a tab on what is happening on your website (how many visitors you get, what keywords bring them there, etc). Google Alerts is one of my favourites, as you get an email whenever a website or blog on the Internet mentions any specified terms (for example, you could get an email whenever someone mentions your company’s name). link.
YouSendIt. Those files that you need to send to a customer that are too large in size for your (and their) email server to handle? Instead of mailing them a disc with these files burned on to it, YouSendIt allows you to upload the file to their website, so you just have to send a link where they can download the file to the recipient. link.
RescueTime. RescueTime is an online time management application that allows you to track and optimize the time you and your employees spend on each task they are faced with. link.
Roboform. A lot of companies have password-protected areas of their websites for their clients. Roboform allows you to easily keep track of your username and password for each of those sites, and automatically fills in those forms with necessary information. link.
Replace Text. This program allows you to search and replace strings of text from multiple files at the same time – a much faster way to accomplish this than going through every file that may have that string of text in order to search and replace that text! link.
Evernote. Use this program to save your ideas, likes, dislikes, thoughts, etc, and access them again using any computer or mobile device. link.
AutoHotkey. Hotkeys are keys on your keyboard that, when hit, will perform a specific action (such as “Ctrl+C” to copy text or images). AutoHotkey allows you to create your own hotkeys to help make processes you do faster. link.

10 Quick Tips For Success at Trade Shows

Courtney Wilson — Tue, 18 May 2010 19:09:27 +0000

Plan ahead. Set goals and objectives for each trade show that you will be attending – know why exactly you are displaying at that trade show, and what you want to accomplish there. Is it the number of hot leads that you want, the number of business cards you want, the number of booths you want to visit?
Select the right shows. Make sure the that shows you are displaying in are worth your time and the money that you will be spending on it. Confirm that your potential customers will be attending these shows – we’d hate to hear that you attended a show without anyone else there.
Get the best position available for your booth. Booths situated in high-volume areas, as well as corner booths, both do very well at bringing in traffic to see what is being displayed.
Wear comfortable shoes. You are going to be on your feet for most of the day – make sure that you are wearing shoes for the full time you spend on your feet without hurting yourself.
Be involved in seminars and workshops. See if the organizers are looking for someone to present a seminar or workshop on a topic that you can be considered an expert on.
Let your customers know that you will be there. Whether they are displaying at the trade show as well, or whether they are just attending to walk the show, this is a great opportunity for you to build your relationship with your customers. Invite them to stop by your booth. Or, if one of your customers is displaying at the trade show, stop by their booth to say “hello!”
Select the right people to attend the show. The staff that you have manning your booth could be the first impression that potential customers get from your company – make sure that it is a positive first impression by selecting people who are knowledgeable, excited about your products/services, and who are good people-persons.
Don’t forget your business cards. Trade shows will allow you to meet not only potential customers, but also potential suppliers, or potential service providers. You want all of these people to be able to get in contact with you.
Follow up with those you met through the trade show. This is no different than any opportunity where you would meet potential customers – you need to follow up with them. The follow up is the next step to building a relationship with your customer.
Keep an eye on costing. Oftentimes, we can get carried away while planning for trade shows – thinking we need more and more items for it. While getting ready for the show, don’t forget to take a look at the cost of items – the costing can often grow to be a lot more than you had originally anticipated.

10 Quick Tips to Stay Ahead of Your Competition

Courtney Wilson — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:59:44 +0000

Know your competition. Know what they’re doing, what their strengths and weaknesses are, who their target market is. Know what they want to do. The more you know about your competition, the better you can position yourselves in comparison to them.
Attend industry seminars and trade shows. Go to the panels and workshops. See what’s new from your suppliers, or what new technology is out there that will help make your job a little bit easier. Discover new techniques to do what you already do. Never stop learning.
Test your products. Depending on the type of product you have, you may need to do focus group testing, or usability testing, or stress testing. No matter what needs to be done though, testing is vital for any product – it keeps that quality of your product high. High quality products typically result in happier customers, and happier customers are more likely to stick with you than head to your competition.
Keep your current customers happy. We are always thinking about how to get new customers, and it’s not unusual for us to forget about our current customer base. Keeping our current customers happy is one of the best ways to keep ensuring our customers don’t go to our competitors.
Know what your customers want. This goes hand-in-hand with the above point. If you know what your customers want, then you can be sure that you are giving them what they want – especially when your competition isn’t. Be careful, though, to make sure you don’t become too preoccupied with what your customer wants, as you could lose focus on the big picture of your product.
Don’t get stuck on what has happened in the past. Focusing too much on the past won’t let us get a clear picture of what is happening currently, or won’t let us work towards where we want to be in the future. Whether it is something good that has happened in the past, or something bad, it can give us a skewed image of where we are right now.
Promote yourself and your products in different areas.
Don’t feel the need to compete on price. There are other ways that you can compete with your competition, than through pricing. You have to take into account the quality of products, the target market, and other considerations as well as pricing.
Never stop innovating. Products and processes can constantly be improved upon – innovation can happen at any point in the design process. Even after a product has been released, innovation can happen to make future product releases better.
Take advantage of government grants, loans and tax incentive programs. The SR&ED program is a great example of this – the SR&ED program will provide you with a cash refund or tax credit as a reimbursement for money that you have spent on creating and improving products and processes. Additional sources of funding can give you the much needed cash flow to invest in your business that will allow you to remain competitive.

Ten Quick Tips to Improving Your Business Presentation

Courtney Wilson — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:44:21 +0000

Whether we enjoy them or not, we all need to do presentations at some point in our careers. Here are ten quick tips to ensure the presentation goes as smoothly as possible.

Practice in front of an audience. Nothing is better than having the opportunity to practice in front of people – they can tell you whether you are talking too fast or too slow, whether you are loud enough, or whether what you are saying makes sense.
Have backups of all presentation materials. Imagine you are all set-up for your presentation, and have your presentation material on your laptop, but for some reason your laptop doesn’t communicate with the projector. Do you have a backup of the presentation on a different laptop? On a CD or USB key? If you can’t get any of your digital files to work with the projector, will you be able to do your presentation with digital files?
Allow yourself to be nervous. Nerves are a good thing – and most people feel them before a presentation. You can use these nerves as an adrenaline rush to make your delivery of your presentation more enthusiastic.
Anticipate the questions your audience will ask you. If you can anticipate the questions you will be asked, you can prepare your answers beforehand. When asked a question, you won’t be left floundering for an answer, but will already have a good idea of what to say in response.
Have one strong hook at the beginning to lure the audience in. There’s nothing worse during a presentation than looking out at your audience and realizing that no one is paying attention. A strong opening hook can grab their attention right from the beginning and will make them more attentive throughout the whole presentation.
Make short notes for yourself. We can all get sidetracked in the middle of a presentation, or momentarily forget what we are talking about. While having a full copy of your presentation is discouraged (it may cause you to read directly from the paper as opposed to speaking to your audience), having short points that you can take your cue from are always helpful.
Keep eye contact with the audience. Not only does this help the audience feel you are communicating one-on-one with them, but it also helps to keep their attention tuned towards you and your presentation.
Watch your posture and your body language. Body language can be quite dangerous if not used correctly. Keeping your arms crossed can give the impression that you’re not open to communication from your audience.
Have a conversation with your audience. You don’t necessarily have to have an actual conversation, but keep the tone of your presentation conversational. This makes the material you’re covering presented in a much more relatable way.
Expect to make mistakes. If you expect to make mistakes, you won’t let the ones that you do make fluster and unnerve you. Everyone makes mistakes, and if you just flow with it, most people won’t even notice that you have actually made a mistake.