As we grow our professional services practice, there are two key areas we can focus on to drive growth in profits.
Firstly growing revenue generation with new offerings, attracting new clients and working closely with exiting clients so that we build long term sustainable relationships with them - all areas we focus on here at Biz Growth News.
Of course the other area we can focus on to grow our profits is managing our overheads i.e. we control costs.
I spend a lot of time using the phone to connect with clients in Ireland and overseas, to record podcasts and also to deliver teleseminars and webinars and use a variety low cost service providers for telephone services.
One favouite resource of mine is Skype and I especially enjoy the fact you can arrange conference calls with it and you can instant message people - a really fast way to connect to colleagues rather than having to wade through emails.
Skype was invaluable as a resource for the recent telesummit “A Brand You World Global Telesummit” when fellow event organiser, Kirsten Dixson and I could keep in contact for the full 24 hours of programmed teleseminars and manage technical hitches including the fact we lost one of the speakers who dialed in and one of the event hosts had problems with their battery on their phone died! Note to anyone organising events that span several hours - remind your attendees if they are speakers or hosts to phone from a land line and not use a hands free set that has a limited battery time!
We also use Skype to record the weekly podcast with The Podcast Sisters.
However I NEVER recommend using VOIP for especially important events that you are recording as it can prove very troublesome and I have had some people call in to my teleseminars cause problems with the quality of the line wen they have used Skype.
If you are interested in exploring VOIP for your business and are in Ireland, you might be interested to note that the Irish Internet Association is holding an seminar on VOIP technology on 6th December between 8am to 10.30am at The Westbury Hotel, Dublin 2.
Speakers will be from telephone service providers providers eircom and Glantel and a online hotel booking company Bookassist who use VOIP in their business.
The workshop will outline the benefits of a VoIP system for your business, highlight the things that need to be in place (including infrastructure, security and firewalls, Quality of Service (QoS)) and will explore the types of solutions you can use ranging from an outbound only solution to a fully hosted solution. You can book to attend this event at the IIA website.
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