Are you involved in fundraising for nonprofits or are you a small business manager who sees a business opportunity in helping a nonprofit organization? You researched your cause and have volunteered to help your local community organization? As a solo business owner you may have a home based business and you have determined that helping out is a good way to meet the community and give back. With that decision, you are now helping and yet you would like to be efficient as possible. As an office automation specialist I propose you look at your internet, office, voice and customer relationship (IOVC) tools that you use in your normal business and apply them to your nonprofit work.

To do this first let’s look at your normal membership building process and then let’s apply your IOVC tools and process to a non profit or any membership building process. To start, usually we initiate an event that will interest a number of potential members. For our purposes an event means an email campaign, a snail mail campaign, a telephone callout campaign or the classic neighborhood in-person event at the local establishment.

Once we decide on the type of event, we start distributing information to interested prospects. For a phone call out you call and gather information and send data to those who are interested. For a mail program, you get the group together, you start folding forms, licking stamps and sending documents in the regular mail or postal system. If an in person type event, you have your sign-up forms and you encourage folks to leave their names. If you produced an ad in the newspaper, then you wait for the form to be mailed backed in. When done, you get your names; you head back to the office or home and start the data entry process, entering name by name into your organization’s database.

When you review the above, it is extremely manually oriented process, very time intensive and requires a lot of your member’s personal time. While this works, it is not necessarily efficient. Then when you see how most organization or non profits operate, especially local neighborhood ones, resources are scare and proactive members with lots of time are even scarcer. As the pressure mounts to build your membership numbers you start looking for ways to improve your efficiency.  Applying your normal IOVC business automation tools that you probably have in place already can make a major difference in your membership building process.

So you ask, what tool would you use to radically transform the IOVC business building process? Would you believe it’s your website, your autoresponder, your phone system along with the aid of your prospective members that can make a difference? It sounds simple and obvious but the way you put them together can make a huge difference in building your membership base.

Does your company have an urgent need to get clients now? Do you wonder if there is a systematic way to get clients when you want them? Do you wonder if some of the newer internet technology solutions can help you? Are you uncomfortable with the claims of some of the internet marketing gurus that claim miraculously payback from their solution that is suppose to get clients now. However you want and need a client attraction solution that combined with a technical solution that produces results. If you are using the get clients now solution, do you want for a way to increase your effectiveness through the use of an internet strategy and technology? Some of the benefits of this IOVC strategy and technology are that it will produce theses results.

1. Help you build your client base faster in any field
2. Help develop a system for generating prospects
3. Be instrumental in building a valuable customer follow up system
4. Be very effective at helping you close your sales
5. Build effective long lasting customer relationships
6. Provide the ability to reschedule an appointment in real time.
7. Demonstrate to the customers that you have a fast and efficient operation in place.
8. Increase sales through better timing due to anticipating needs based on historic trends
9. Allow you to manage your time and activities with the help of pop-up reminders.
10. Provide an up-to-date, efficient and relevant FAQ system using real time data.

As you can see above, there are strong benefits and even some not readily evident. But when you combine get clients now with a truly office automated IOVC strategy and technology solution the benefits improve tremendously. To start taking advantage of IOVC strategy and technology solutions you need to decide which of the listed benefits are of paramount important to you and that you feel will make a more immediate difference.

Then consider do you want to increase your chances of success by getting additional benefits from all of the IOVC Strategy and Technology areas to really help you and your business develop now and well into the future. You owe it to yourself to make client attraction and management easier so have a discussion with your internet consultant that understands your get clients now process.

As a licensed facilitator of the get clients now process, I know its not enough to just keep pace with what is occurring around you and that in this increasingly competitive global economy, one must also understand and use internet based strategies and technologies to help your business prosper, beat out the competition and exceed your customer expectations.

Resource Feeling overwhelmed, kind of technophobic about internet technology based solutions, well then you owe it to yourself to take advantage of a free pdf that describes how to build a profitable business using IOVC Strategy and Technology.

There are many internet, office, voice and client strategies and technologies, termed IOVC Strategy and Technology today that can have major benefits for your business. This means you as the business owner have plenty of technical details that have to be dealt with on a day by day basis to make your business successful. Technically inclined or not, once you understand the business benefits of IOVC Strategy and Technology, you will want to consider how to use and reduce your cost to talk using the VOIP to Voice element of IOVC Technology in your business. As there are many benefits to be gained, it all depends on the current needs of your group so listed here are ten benefits related to the Voice to VOIP element of IOVC Strategy and Technology. <!–[if !supportLists]–>1. <!–[endif]–>From an expense reduction perspective, VOIP has a proven track record of substantially reducing your costs. Not only do most packages offer a flat rate service, but also most VOIP service providers offer unlimited service coverage to all of US and Canada.

When on the road, VOIP has an advantage over wireless. VOIP saves money when you travel and are in a hotel or office. You save money by directing your incoming calls to a VOIP line and the minutes used are free or at least covered by your plan.

Save money at home because the installation of this technology is relatively straightforward, and you can set up multiple extensions around your home because it can all be done off of one base VOIP phone.

Contributes significantly to the enhancement of your office business process productivity. With this tool, you can use the internet to track your phone calls, play your calls, and store them in history for retrieval at another time.

VOIP also greatly contributes to the cutting down on transcription time. Most service providers record the calls and they can be stored for future use. Hence I listen to the call but have no need to record every detail when I can just go back and listen to it later.

Integrates with existing desktop applications like Outlook. Have you ever wished you would have saved that important voicemail? Or wanted to easily listen to voicemail while traveling abroad? Would you like to share your voicemails with family, friends or coworkers? With VOIP services, you can.

Call number portability which means you no longer have to change phone numbers when switching telephone service providers or moving to a new area.

Provides convenient and inexpensive conferencing and there are a bevy of free service providers.

VOIP can provide visual voicemail that integrates with existing telephone services. Text to speech translation services are provided by some VOIP service providers.

For those individuals who travel a lot for business, VOIP offers the really neat ability to take your number with you all around the world. When you set up an account with a VOIP software provider like Skype, you also download the service directly to your laptop computer. Therefore wherever your computer goes, your service goes as well.

When making a decision a business owner on acquiring the benefits of IOVC strategy and technology you should start by selecting which of the benefits are most important to you and your current situation. You need to make sure that you feel will make a more immediate difference. With this Voice to VOIP element of IOVC Strategy and technology, consider do you need to reduce your costs to talk and have your telephone be more then a vehicle that just helps you talk. T

o motivate your thinking, here are some of the questions to ask, do you need just a product or a product and a service? Do you need the service because you have the product already? People buy the product without the service and never implement the product. You saved money but never get the benefits of the money you spent and hence you lose money while the solution sits.

In this increasingly competitive global economy, it is not enough to just keep pace with what is occurring around you, one must also understand and use voice over internet protocol based IOVC strategies and technologies to help your business prosper, beat out the competition and exceed your customer expectations. Resource Feeling overwhelmed, kind of technophobic about internet technology based solutions, well then you owe it to yourself to take advantage of a free pdf that describes how to build a profitable business using IOVC Strategy and Technology. Visit www.iovetechnology.com

Have you sat down and reviewed the importance of goal setting? Have you looked back at the planning and goal setting programs that you used and all the results are nicely stored somewhere in your computer?  Do you think it is too soon to sit back and review where you stand in terms of your goal setting objectives? Well you can wait for the end of December later this year and hopefully have hit your mark or you can stop now and make sure you are on course to meet and or exceed your goals and objectives.

If you decide to do the wise thing and reflect on where you are now and each month going forward, here is a plan to walk your self through as you plan to live up to your goal setting activities.

• Define your Purpose - What is your current state? Document your numbers and goal setting activities as outlined in your plans. Where do you stand now in relation to those goals? Oh you don’t know your numbers well that is not good. You need to remember the past makes the future.
• Reflect on the Past - Next reflect on past business activities and decide what you will keep doing and what you will not do more of. You should review and find what goals you met, goals you exceeded and do more of those things that make success a lock.
• Decide what is not working - What about those activities that did not go well? A reflective way to look back is to evaluate what you did because you got caught up in the latest fad versus what you really like to do. We all believe we want to make money, but sometimes we have found we make the money and then are unhappy.
• Start working with profit in mind - make sure you are working towards profit. You would be so surprised to find how many people, are working because working gives you a purpose and makes you feel good. But is it a pofitable activity?
• Change your approach to training - One key activity that should change for all of us is to change your approach to training. We need a different approach to learning new activities that help you meet your business goals not just make money for the sales person. start workig yourself into win-win.

If you walk your self through this beginning phases of this goal setting process and really take this new approach, there will be many profitable benefits because you will be working on your passions and reaffirming the fact that your business goals will be reached.

While working through your business activities, you come across many internet, office, voice and client focused strategies and technologies, IOVC that can provide many productive benefits for your business. However if technology is not your thing, you hate it, just don’t have time for it but you know you need it, just what do you do?

The small business owner is usually busy and focused on the mission at hand and does not have time or the inclination to define benefits or payback from an internet technology solution. But once you understand the revenue producing benefits of applying the office automation elements of IOVC Strategy and Technology solutions, you will want to consider how to get your business into service with some or all of the key IOVC Strategy and Technology components. Here are some of the benefits to help you understand what an IOVC office automation solution for your back office can do for you.

1. Decrease the time spent on manual efforts<
2. Reduce the money spent on manual work
3. Increase the overall productivity of your office operation
4. Raise the quality of your business
5. Increase user and client confidence in your business<
6. Improve your ability to handle a larger volume of customer requests
7. Produce shorter turnaround time
8. Reduced limits on customer requests
9. Gain time to develop new services for customers
10. Reduce the cost of producing work now and in the future.

As you can see, some times the benefits of an IOVC Office Automation Solution are not immediately apparent when you look from the outside in. Sometimes it seems easier to keep doing what you have been doing but rest assured the old saying is true. If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will get what you always have been getting. Do you want more of the same? I think not. To get started review your business process by selecting which of the benefits above are important to you and that you feel will make a more immediate difference.

 To help stimulate your thinking, some of the questions to ask yourself are, do you need a product or a product and a service? A lot of people buy the product without the service and never implement the product. Other folks do the reverse. You saved money but never reaped the benefits of the money you spent and to get the improvements you needed, hence you lost money while the solution sits. In this increasingly competitive global economy, it is not enough to just keep pace with what is occurring around you, one must also understand and use internet based IOVC strategies and technologies to help your business expand, prosper, beat out the competition and exceed your customer expectations.

Resource Feeling overwhelmed, kind of technophobic about internet technology based solutions, well then you owe it to yourself to take advantage of a free pdf that describes how to build a profitable business using IOVC Strategy and Technology.

So, you are one month done with 2007 and now you are in the second month of 2008. Have you dropped your New Year’s resolutions already? I get the feeling and most of us do this every year, we have already stopped working on our planned goals? If you didn’t have a planning goal setting session, then you need to get your vision planning going and crank up that look into the future. But I know you did.

Since I know you did set goals, sit and ponder if you are on the right track to make 2008 profitable, fun and exciting. Think through that vision planning January goal setting session. What went wrong already? Because there is nothing wrong with goal setting activities, the problem revolves around the theory of goal setting because the importance of goal setting is really about having the correct mental approach.

Examine your goal setting approach because it is the situation we need to resolve. You like a lot of us, our vision is being driven by the dynamics of the web. Last year, it was coaching and speaking for profit. Then it moved to information products and membership sites became key. This year it is article writing and squeeze pages. And don’t get me wrong, these are valuable tools, we need all of them but should you be doing it? If these activities are not your passion, why spend more time and money doing it rather then having it done for you? 

Since history is a barometer of the future, you should see the futility, in continuing down the 2007 path for 2008. Instead, look at the past and let’s capture the good and dump the bad.  Here is my first action tip - use the secret I use to motivate me not to redo the bad of 2007 again. Go and review the web pages of the programs you took last year and I guarantee you will not be any near as excited as you were last year. That internal feeling of oh yeah and then hmmm it did not happen is a very telling feeling.

So what’s the solution - remember it is all about the proper real world approach to setting goals, whether it is career goal setting, setting a weight goal or you are setting your business goals for the year. So here is my recommendation for taking steps to refocus your vision and goal setting before taking another course. To make 2008 successful, I do not recommend taking any new standard classes or training because if you did the exercise recommended above, you should have convinced yourself that you already  spent enough time and money just training. What I propose is that you now take a situational learning approach to your training.

Before we get to the Plan - let’s examine situational learning to make sure the approach and benefits are truly understood. Let’s review the process.

Said another way - as found on the web at Being a Situational Leader - To direct, coach, support or delegate based on the commitment and competence of the team member in that situation ….. consciously practicing situational leadership  ….. ultimate objective is to be able to delegate a slice of work and get quality output. it works because ……Once there, the team member moves to higher challenges and we go through few of the other phases again. ……… success could be owed to the situational leadership model.

Bottom-line is you work on a piece of the pie with a focus and a committment to take theory and execute it in the teal world and make results happen now not after the training is over.

The Plan as proposed to move forward in 2008

1. Focus, Focus, Focus - Define what is your key focus and skill. What are you absolutely fanatical about? If not fanatical, then what one activity can you do and be happy, doing it now and every day? Still lost? Then look back over the last year and define what activity you did repeatedly regardless of income.  Here is another tip, look at what you naturally gravitated to when you wake up and get started. Besides being hooked on email, notice what you tended to do, address, solve or do first. That is your passion. Bottom-line is find what you can do effortlessly and continually on auto-pilot. That is a quick and sure way to get a niche without any time spent trying to learn your niche.
2. Target market - Who do you work with now versus who should you be targeting? This is painful for us because who we are getting our money from now may not be who we should be getting our money from in the future. Most of us started small and we want to grow. Like the need to focus on what we love, we need to focus on our end state target customer. This customer in most times is not our current customer. Reality bites, if the current set of customers can not pay for your projected high end product, then why are you staying and focusing on them? It is a never ending cycle of trying to stay afloat for now but never growing because you are just staying afloat. You have to break the cycle. Grow your customer to where you are going or if they can’t see being a high end customer, help them find someone who can service them.
3. Develop a Profit Project - Next I recommend you find someone, whether you pay them or not, doesn’t matter. What you want is someone whom you can work on a project that is a real profit potential project. Some project that leads to making real money and this will further incent you to stay the course. This is very specific plan and much deeper then being a coach.
4. Build a Focused Plan - Then I advise you stay within the activity you love and develop a year long plan around that set of activities. In this plan, you need to decide on a really bodacious, outrageous, bold goal.  This will additionally incent you to achieve, it should be a scary number, but attainable number. And outsourced all the rest.
5. Technology - the mechanics of how should not even be in your realm but you tend to get into it like all most of us because completing something gives us a sense of accomplishment. However this technology area can and does hold many people back. I highly recommend gets onto autopilot. Start an autoresponder and start building a customer relationship with customers. Start turning those customers into clients and keep in touch with those who are your true niche market.  Serving them is your passion.

In summary- refocus your goal setting and approach to 2008. Then follow the steps recommended.

• This step by step plan can help you stay focus because you will work at your passion and niche customers on a daily basis.
• Two, you will stay the course because the situational learning environment is extremely encouraging because you see measureable results almost daily.
• This tells your mind to not lose interest because you are working on a project that has profit potential at the end.
• Then having an outrageous, bold goal stops you from wandering and moves you towards success because it is easier to stay on your journey towards your bold goal when you have removed the painful activities
• Hence your naturalexcitement will build and encourage you to continue non stop towards success.

To conclude, pay close attention to this. You have heard this before, time is money.

You can change your mind and then change your life, if you look back, see what works and take that forward.

Now start working on your passion, start making your money, passion and time work towards profitability and excite your self by seeing success actually being attained and realized.

For a small business owner, there are many internet strategies and technologies available today that can have great benefits for your business. It can also mean that there are plenty of technical details that have to be dealt with on a day by day basis. This can mean that the decision to profit or not from internet, office, voice and client technology or IOVC technology may be determined by you the small business owner who is extremely busy and well focused on the mission at hand.

You may be clearly uncomfortable with internet based technology solutions and the payback to be gained from an IOVC strategy and technology even though you know there are revenue producing results that can be had as a result of a properly implemented IOVC strategy and technology solution. You should consider how to put into service some or all of these key IOVC business building strategies along with the correct technology component.

Here we discuss the 10 benefits you get from the “Internet component” of the complete IOVC Strategy and Technology Solution.

1. Describe your business in sound
2. Help expand your customer base<
3. Make information available 24 x 7
4. Gain access to a specialized market
5. Allow you to open international markets
6. Enable real time feedback from customers
7. Sell your products and services on the Web
8. Provide ability to answer frequently asked questions
9. Describe your product in a picture worth a thousand words
10. Improves customer satisfaction

Sometimes it seems easier to keep doing what you have been doing but rest assured the old saying is true. If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will get what you always have been getting. Do you want the new growth benefits above or do you want more what you got? I think not.

To help stimulate your thinking, some of the questions to ask yourself are, do you need a product or a product and a service? A lot of people buy the product without the service and never implement the product. You saved money but never reaped the benefits you wanted for the money you spent and hence you lost money while the solution sits. In this increasingly competitive global economy, it is not enough to just keep pace with what is occurring around you, one must also understand and use internet based IOVC strategies and technologies to help your business prosper, beat out the competition and exceed your customer expectations. Resource Feeling overwhelmed, kind of technophobic about internet technology based solutions, well then you owe it to yourself to take advantage of a free pdf that describes how to build a profitable business using IOVC Strategy and Technology.

The internet is proving to be a substantial venue for promoting products. If you have a retail outlet having a web site can be an extension of your store. With our busy lifestyles and dual income families, it can be easier for many people to simply go on line and make their purchases. This saves time and gas. If you have a store it would be prudent of you to have a web presence.

When customers come into your store capture their email address. You could have a form they fill out with a check box that they check off permitting you to send them a newsletter or sale notification. A large database of clients can be built by doing just this one thing. By having a web site and regularly sending out newsletters you keep your name in front of the client at all times. When they need a product you sell, they will most likely think of your store, as you are always reminding them of your presence.

Offer your database a special discount now and then for email subscribers only. Write an article of interest you think your clientele would be interested in, ie; if you sell golf clubs research and write an article on how to improve their golf swing, or if you have a dress shop write an article on what the next seasons colours will be. This will keep your site sticky (people will want to come back often as they get good information when visiting your site).

If you feel you don’t have writing skills you can go to www.elance.com and very reasonably hire a writer who can write small articles for you. Your return on investment would be worth it. Always update your site with new articles, new products and sales on a regular basis. Fresh content added often will keep your site high up on the search engines.

You can easily find software today that makes it easy for you to create a web site. Just visit your local software retailer and you will find many ideas for web site creation software. It is quite inexpensive as well. HTML knowledge is not a prerequisite for creating a web site. You can find software now that lets you simply follow a template in a WYSIWYG editor. This stands for “what you see is what you get”. If this is intimidating you can hire a web site designer. They are relatively inexpensive, depending on what type and how extensive your site is.

Make sure when you choose a domain name you give this a lot of thought. It is better to have the keyword that describes your product in your domain name, than something totally unrelated. The search engines will find you easier.

Once you have your site, it needs to be registered with the search engines or directories. This can be done manually or you can pay someone to do it. Common search engines are Google, Yahoo, Msn, Lycos, etc. Web shoppers use search engines when they are looking for specific information or products.

It is better to get a web site hosted by a company that you pay a monthly fee for rather than use a free one, as they can have a lot of advertising on your site, which doesn’t look professional. Just Google hosting companies and you will find a large number available.

There are a many excellent books in book stores that teach you all about marketing on the web. It is worth the read as it is very competitive out there. Knowledge is a definite plus! Good Luck!