Some essential business practices would include providing a good product or service, utilizing marketing strategies and techniques to get the word out about your product or service, establishing wise budgeting habits, and keeping good records for your business expenses.

We want to talk about that last one.

Record keeping is an important part of every business but is usually far from being our favorite thing to do.  Few business owners are accountants or have much bookkeeping experience, so the books don’t always get the consistent attention they require and that can lead to problems and headaches down the road.

Ask any CPA or Tax Professional in April about the record keeping acumen of their clients and you’ll soon find out it’s a pretty big problem.

Most small business owners don’t have the resources to hire an accountant or someone to handle their books so the chore falls on either the business owner or a spouse who then creates a spreadsheet to track income, expenses, mileage, etc., or they might purchase one of those high-end, high learning curve software programs.

Even with a system like this in place forgetfulness and procrastination can creep in and you may go days, weeks, or even months without sitting down to record the business expenses.

This leads to the mad scramble at the end of the year as you try to backtrack and reconstruct the year, going through piles of receipts, bank statements, and post it notes and laying it all in the lap of your tax preparer with the hope he or she can come up with a last minute tax saving miracle…

Your business does provide tax advantages you don’t have as an employee, but even with those advantages at your disposal your tax professional is only as good as the information you provide him or her.

In our next post we’ll reveal a new tool that will eliminate the worries of forgetting or procrastinating when it comes to good record keeping and tracking those important business expenses.

How would you like to put this very important and essential business practice on auto-pilot?

Our next post will show you how to do just that.

We wandered the strip for a few hours, had a couple of meetings in the afternoon, and during one of them we saw this car that just exploded on the ground 60 floors below!

We got tickets to Chris Angel at night. I couldn’t believe some of the stuff he did. It is a really good show and definitely worth attending if you’re here.

Today we’ve got the booth all set up at the conference and are just about to head down there to get it started. If you’re here, let us know! We’d love to meet you and we’ll post again later or tomorrow

For the conference, we’re staying at the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas Hotel… It’s huge! Very cosmopolitan. But, we couldn’t get in there for our first night, so we were meant to be at a different hotel Wednesday night… One problem — they had plumbing problems in the tower we were meant to be in so they sent us to another hotel up the strip… At least they sent us in Style!

We had a great dinner at an Irish pub and then walked the strip back to our hotel.

Today the plan is to check out a few more sights and then tonight will be prepping for tomorrow’s conference. Stay tuned to the blog over the weekend as we’ll be blogging at least once a day during the conference. If you’re going to be here let us know so that we can meet you in person at the Oprius booth!

This can definitely be done with Oprius, and this video will give you a quick overview of how you can use one set of Sales Process Groups to effectively manage two businesses.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSv0JuKgurk

Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnlYNV5YJLM

Get Your Team’s Custom Registration Link

We’d love to help you promote success within your team. Click the link above to learn more about the webinar and generate a custom link for your team to join. You can earn free Oprius for yourself while introducing your team to a system that is going to increase their follow-up and sales.

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https://www.fuzemeeting.com/replay_meeting/3a21281b/2295289

About this webinar

Join us for this 1-hour webinar to learn how to maximize your subscriptions to your email list. We will discuss Permission based email marketing, and explain what types of email you need Permission for, and which you don’t. Finally, we’ll provide some strategies for building relationships, and maximizing the number of people that subscribe to, and remain on your email list.

https://www.fuzemeeting.com/replay_meeting/3a21281b/2295289

Spam has become such a serious problem online these days that it feels like navigating your way to the inbox is taking way more time than it should. Join us on our Oprius Academy Webinar on Feb 28 to learn how to maximize the number of people subscribing to your list, what types of email require confirmation, and which ones don’t.

Sign Up Now, as there are limited seats available!

Our first course was all about how to Master The Sales Process by setting up simple Groups and Plans to make sure that you are focusing on the important activities and not getting bogged down in administration. Check out the recorded webinar at the link below and please let us know your feedback in the comments.

https://www.fuzemeeting.com/replay_meeting/3a21281b/2284853
(We apoloize, but this was the first time we were using this screencasting software, and made a little mistake on the recording. There are 16 minutes of silence in the recording before we actually start, so once it loads, fast forward to about 16min20sec and you’ll be at the start of the webinar.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTHuY7pQKKU

Studies have shown that people need to hear from you 5-9 times on average before making a purchasing decision. 

But, how many of us actually connect with people that many times before we get frustrated, give up, or lose track?

Email is a great way to warm people up to the idea of your offer, but you can’t hammer them over the head with it. Let’s imagine that you’re selling paperclips, and somebody signs up on your website to get your e-book or request more information. Chances are that you’re going to put them on a follow-up autoresponder. That’s great — Step 1 is complete, and you’re on the way to making sure that this lead doesn’t slip through the cracks.

There are two common mistakes, however:

1) You set up your autoresponder to tell them about your amazing 2 for 1 paperclip offer, and you tell them about it in every single email, sent every two days over a two week period. This strategy will undoubdtedly fail. If all you do is tell them about your offer and nothing else, they’ll stop reading your emails after two or three, and you’ll never connect with them enough times to get to the purchase decision.

2) They receive and read all your emails, but then you don’t do anything else. Let’s imagine they’ve received all your emails and like what they’ve read. You’ve included information about how paperclips can change lives, some anecdotes about funny things to do with paperclips, and peppered the emails with a few mentions of your amazing 2 for 1 offer. Now what? The next step to getting to a purchase decision is probably a phone call. In your last email, try some wording like this: “I can’t wait to connect with you on the phone to find out more about what your paperclip needs are. I’ll call you sometime tomorrow. If tomorrow isn’t good for you, just email me back and let me know when you’d like to connect.” Doing this gives them the opportunity to reach out to you, and also lets them know you’ll be calling. It’s a win-win.

We know that the fortune is in the follow-up, but that follow-up needs to be varied. Email is great, but it’s a one-way street most of the time. You can use any autoresponder tool to set up your emails to go out, but make sure you monitor where people are, and mix in other activities like sending cards, calling them, or posting on their Facebook wall. You can use the Relationship Builder in Oprius to automate those tasks, and make sure that none of those customers slip through the cracks. If you can automate a few of those 5-9 contacts, you’ll have more time to focus on the two most important ones of discovering your prospects needs and closing the sale.

Free Expert Autoresponder Review

Fill out the form below and an expert Oprius team member will review your Autoresponder or plan and provide you with written suggestions that will improve your sales results. Your email and information will not be shared with anyone.