Category Archives: Outsourcing Articles

The 2 Minute Contact Rule!

June 22, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles, Popular on Google+, Semi-Popular | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The 2 Minute Contact Rule

For those of you in marketing, what I learned in my years can be reduced to a few simple principles. One of these simple principles is something I will spend the next two minutes explaining to you — it is called, the two minute contact rule.

If you are prospecting for new clients or calling existing clients, contractors, subcontractors, or people you work with, the rule still applies. Business is about relationships, and the key to relationships is mastering the stages of a relationship. You get to know someone, you consider working with someone, you start work with someone, you develop your working relationship, and then from there it either ends or it blossoms!

As a general rule it is good to make quick regular contacts with people you work with. It strengthens your relationship with them regardless of who they are. You will be in the front of people’s minds if you keep in regular contact. They will be more likely to want to work with you, and they will be likely to do better work for you too.

Prospecting
If you are prospecting for new clients, the most important thing is NOT to make a sale right away. It is hard to sell to a stranger, so the first hurdle is to make the stranger an acquaintance, and one who likes you. It is good to make a quick contact with a decision maker. Be nice and be positive. Let them know that you are there to help and listen to what they have to say about their needs. Nobody likes a pushy salesperson with a deal they want to push down your throat. Never be pushy! Be gentle, friendly, and prove to them through knowledge (not force) what a helpful asset you can be to them. Your first call to a prospect could be as little as two minutes where you introduce yourself and your company, and what you could offer them. It is not even about price or availability at that point. The point is people connecting with people — it is powerful and it is effective for future sales. The fact that they have gotten to know you a little, and that you were pleasant and helpful makes you 100 times as likely to get a deal out of them than some other clown (not that you are a clown).

Calling those who you work with
If you hire people, or work in conjunction with others, it is great to make a two minute call from time to time. It is a little like throwing another little stick on the fire. It keeps the fire going, and momentum is everything in relationships and business. You can just say hi, and bring up one or two quick points in a casual way. If you live in India, many of you need to learn to be more casual in your business relationships — being uptight just isn’t pleasant for others (at least not by my standards). The people who you work with will work better with you as a result of your quick call. They might work more efficiently for you or put in more hours just because they are thinking more about you, and thinking in a positive way.

Calling existing clients
People who succeed in business do so generally by having many long term clients. Building momentum and trust is everything. Giving your existing clients a quick call is a wonderful thing to do. I do this all the time. They might have questions which they never thought to email you about. Your call will stimulate these questions, and thoughts about purchasing more. I notice that when I contact several hundred people in a two day period with quick calls, there will be many new sales as a result of these quick talks. Not everyone buys something, as a matter of fact, relatively few purchase anything as a result of the call — at least right away. But, a few will make a purchase within 72 hours, and then others in a week or two, and a residual sale or two will pop up a few months later as a result of your quick calls. If I put a dollar or rupee value on these quick calls, it might be worth $200 or more per hour to me in the long run. That is a lot of money by my standards!

What to talk about?
In a quick call, you could ask the other person if they have any questions. Or, you could ask a few quick questions, or quick discussion topics. You could also make quick pointers or customized suggestions for a client. NEVER make general suggestions, because it can turn people off. It shows that you care and are paying attention if you offer suggestions that are taylor made for the individual you are talking to, and this applies to emails to. If you segment your email blasts to target companies with similar needs, then you are sending companies information that is particular to them which they are very likely to appreciate!

Let bygones be bygones?
On the other hand, it is part of efficient management technique to know when NOT to contact someone. If a relationship proves to be fruitless, you need to know how to identify how fruitless it is in order to stop all contact. Don’t waste your time contacting companies or individuals who are just not worth it. Become an expert at assessing other people’s worth — and don’t listen to those religious types who say, “Judge Not” — that doesn’t apply to business. Judge! And judge effectively!

You might also like:

Capitalizing on the shock factor in sales
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/06/03/capitalizing-on-the-shock-factor-in-sales/

6 strategies for growing your outsourcing business fast
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/16/6-strategies-for-growing-your-outsourcing-business-fast/

Types of tweets that win the game
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/15/types-of-tweets-that-win-the-game/

Promoting your products with humor and information using social media
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/28/social-media-promoting-your-products-with-humor-information/

Untraditional solutions to unemployment

April 30, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged | Leave a comment

A radical solution – hour control
In America, there is a 40 hour work week.  It is ironic, that those who are not paid by the hour are forced to work over 50 hours a week in many professions.  The 40 hour work week was created to protect workers from the oppression of having to overwork. But, since only some industries follow the time parameters, it only protects hourly wage slaves some of the time.  Here is a radical idea.  What if certain industries have fewer jobs, and many are out of work.  Rather than let some of the people be unemployed and have nothing, crippling their family’s finances, and depressing them emotionally, here is another better solution.
 
Let’s say that there are 1000 jobs making widgets.  Let’s say that suddenly, 10% of those jobs disappeared.  If the government took the liberty to have different work week standards for different industries and job-types, they could reduce the work week for widget makers to 36 hours which is a decrease of 10%.  That way everyone would have a job.  Another solution would be to have a government agency ask which workers would be interested in being retrained, since the widget industry was drying up. That way people could voluntarily change industries instead of ending up on the sidewalk on their rear end!
 
There are many different industries, and creating different length work weeks, and adjusting the length of the work week every quarter would be a cumbersome task.  But, would it be worth it?  
 
Hour reduction?
When workers make too many mistakes, they might lose their bonus, or even get fired.  But, this creates a sociological problem of unemployment.  Why not just reduce their hours for six months instead of firing them. In a flexible system of hour control, that would be a viable option.  The worker would still be able to pay their rent and basic expenses.  The worker would be in financial stress, but would not suffer the disaster of unemployment.
 
Government work programs
During the American Depression, the government created jobs for people to build trails in the mountains, build bridges, and do many other types of work.  I say that governments worldwide should create jobs for unemployed people.  Maybe these jobs might not be glamorous, but we always need more jobs done in society. Cleaning up the streets, fixing up older homes, building solar power infrastructure, and the list goes on. These jobs always need to be done. It doesn’t make sense for someone to be at home twiddling their thumbs when there are jobs that desperately need to be done.
 
Conclusion
There are many ways to reduce unemployment, but maybe it’s time to investigate some innovative plans.

Particular offices and how they effect your work

April 14, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged | Leave a comment

Offices and how they effect your work
 
I am unusual in that I work from home.  Of course, in today’s virtual world, more and more people are working from home as employees and freelancers. I own my own company and hire others who work from their home as well which is also unusual. Unfortunately, there is no way to keep an eye on employees working remotely, so you have to pay them by the job as sub-contractors which works well… generally…
 
But, I am thinking that at one point, I will need to get an office in able to be able to grow my company to the next level. I run several bustling online directories, and there is a lot of work involved. Having a few people in an office to do phone calls, emails, and database management would really help in the future.  Some people think that people work much better in an office environment. The focus is purely on work, and there are fewer distractions than being at home.  I think this is generally true, but we need to look at each environment one by one.
 
My visits to local Los Angeles office buildings – Downtown
I visited office buildings in many parts of Los Angeles, and the types of buildings were all very unique.  I started in downtown in a high-rise. They had special deals on office spaces as they had many empty units. They were in prime, A rated office space.  We were up on the 36th floor in a very professionally managed building with high security.  The small rooms with no windows on the inner side of the building were relatively cheap for the area starting around $600 per month.  But the nicer rooms with windows were much more expensive.  My main issue was air.  The air was recycled, and not fresh — with a low percentage of oxygen which is not tolerable if you have a heart condition.  I would suffocate if I worked there more than two hours.  I thought of bringing in many plants which would convert CO2 into Oxygen… I wonder if that would work.
 
Midtown –  a dream shared office
The next building was a shared office loft.  There were several companies with mini-suites there (no walls), and a whole bunch of entrepreneurs. The atmosphere was vibrant with creative energy and hard work.  I liked the manager very much, and the air was freshly pumped in from the room (the manager was the architect who designed the place).  Wow!  So, I went back and tried working there.  You can rent by the afternoon, day, week, or month at reasonable rates considering how attractive this place was.  I did 76 phone calls in two hours and five minutes. I’m not sure if that is a record, but my concentration was very good there, and lots of work got done!
 
Beverly Hills – a nightmare office
I saw a realtor near the border of Beverly Hills.  He was very nice and arrived early, and so did I.  However, the square footage of the office was not what the specifications said.  I learned that they include hall space in the specifications.  The building was really old and very unattractive.  But, at least the windows opened, so I could breath.  
 
Midtown again…
I saw a nice office with two rooms separated by a wall with a huge window.  I found that the size of the rooms wouldn’t meet my future needs. I needed the back room to be smaller since it would be for me personally, and the other room to be bigger as it would need to accomdate three people during peak usage…  
 
The 1920’s building.
This was a real cultural experience.  The landlord was really nice and showed me around. The entrance had a wonderful classic Spanish architecture and a domed arch near the entry.  The tenants were an ecclectic mix of creative people including a singing teacher, an acupuncturist, and many varieties of small business owners.  I thought it was a really interesting place. 
 
Conclusion
It is hard to determine where would be the best work environment and why.  But, the work environments were so diverse, that it was an interesting tour of my own city, that lead to my eyes being opened in new ways.  My favorite was the shared office.  But, in the long run, I’ll need to find that perfect office that is the perfect size and configuration.

Evaluating the work of outsourcing companies

March 23, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles, Semi-Popular | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Evaluating the work of outsourcing companies
 
People who do analytics analyze various metrics, and might come up with formulas to evaluate market performance, or perhaps the performance of people’s work.  It is sometimes easy to evaluate the work done by a particular company, but there are so many variables, that it is not easy.
 
Quantity is an easy metric to concern yourself with. If the average employee working on your project at a particular call center can do 30 calls per hour, that is a metric you can use to see how valuable they are.  You might find that one employee averages 25 calls while the other averages 40.  Is one being lazy, or are they more thorough?  Do they spend too much time chatting with clients when they need to move on to the next  customer?  Or is it good to spend a little time being personal.  In this busy world, many people are in such a hurry, that they don’t have time to get to know others or to make small talk.  Many discipline themselves not to make any small talk, but to frantically move on to the next call.
 
Quality is not such as easy metric to look at.  If you hire a call center (call centre), and they do many calls for you, you have to listen in on their calls, or get feedback from clients as to how good they are. Call center work is actually quite involving.  There is the way a clerk speaks which might be clear, too quiet, or they might have poor pronunciation.  Some clerks don’t answer questions clearly. It is common for call center employees to show empathy if a client has suffered at the hands of the company, while other call center employees behave like they couldn’t care less.  Some employees might suggest solutions to problems, or even be able to talk a client into making an additional purchase.  If you made an evaluation check list, the list might get longer and longer the more you look into these types of issues.
 
Flexibility — is the company you hired able to adequately handle your changing workload or are they rigid? Do they nickel and dime you too much with hidden charges, or are they accomodating and working for your convenience instead of theirs?
 
Reliability — Many companies have a very “fluid” workforce. People are being hired and fired regularly, so you are always having to deal with new employees. You might have an old worker you learned to trust, but then they might disappear.  Or, the boss, might allocate his workers to another project leaving your project on the back burner going slowly.  Are there strange things that happen to your account from time to time, or is it always steady?
 
There are other metrics to think about, but these are some basic ones.  Good luck figuring out how to assess the strength of your outsourcing partners!

Tweets:
(1) Measure the quality & quantity of work done at various outsourcing co’s to compare!
(2) Flexibility & reliability are metrics that are even more important than quality & quantity!
(3) 1 way to compare outsourcing companies is to see how long they keep the same workers!

You might also like:

How good are you at estimating jobs?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/09/how-good-are-you-at-estimating-jobs/

If your client criticizes your workers, who do you side with?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/19/if-your-client-criticizes-your-workers-who-do-you-side-with/

Traditional remedies to unemployment

August 10, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Unemployment is a problem throughout the world.  It is psychologically devestating as well as financially ruinous.  I remember when I had just arrived in California from Massachusetts.  It was a six day trip in my pick up truck.  I had come to get a job in international trade.  But, that never happened.  There were no such jobs in Massachusetts, so I saw that Seattle and Los Angeles had many jobs fitting this description, plus Los Angeles had a large Chinese community, and my back up plan was to teach English in the Chinese community. 
 
After months of searching and getting rejected for various types of commodities trading and international type jobs, I was running out of money. Living on ramen noodles is no joke, month after month!  Two months of unemployment almost crippled me financially. I finally gave in and started work doing landscaping for a while, and then did tutoring in the Chinese community which made me a meager living.  Not knowing where my next meal was going to come from effected me mentally for years.  I have never enjoyed the emotional security that others have, since I feel they have more to fall back on.  I have only a hard sidewalk to fall back on which explains my seven day work weeks, week after week.  I want security in my businesses — and I’m determined to work for it!
 
Solutions to unemployment
Training is a great solution.  Not everyone can afford training or knows what to engage themselves in.  It would be wonderful if governments could provide services to determine what type of job a person is best suited for.  The tests given might not be completely accurate, but it would be a wonderful start. 
 
Market analysis could reveal which markets need more workers, and there are many doing this type of market analysis and trend analysis.  The trick is to combine the knowledge of which industries need more workers with training programs and mentoring programs.  To a certain extent, this type of system is already in place, but not all unemployed individuals are guided into the right industries — only some of them.

Who is using 123outsource.net?

June 14, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Who is using 123outsource.net?
 
The answer to this question is very bizarre.  When 123outsource.net outsourcing directory was started, it was supposed to be a directory to help American and U.K. companies find Indian software and BPO companies to help them with their work.  I figured that the majority of the clicks would come from India, the Philipines, and perhaps about 10-20% of the clicks would come from America.  The findings are completely different.
 
The Arabian Gulf
Most of the companies who use our directory are looking for service providing companies in their own country. Filipinos are looking for Filipino companies, mainly call centers in the Philippines, and Indians are looking for BPO companies in India. Americans were slow to even query foreign pages for service providers which was a shock to my system.  My whole business model was taken off track by zenophobic Americans.  Our country is the most diverse on earth, so why are we resistant to look overseas for services?  It is five countries in the Persian Gulf, namely: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar that are using foreign companies the most.  
 
Africa
We were not advertising in Africa much until quite recently.  Kenya is now our 8th largest browser on our site.  It was actually #3 for a while right behind the Philippines if you can believe that.  It is such a small country, with not much presence in the outsourcing industry.  But, I believe that they will grow to be prominent in the call center and BPO industry.  People speak English well there and have good social skills.  It is just that the economy and financial markets are so backwards there.  The infrastructure and internet connections are really behind schedule in Kenya.  But, over time things will change.
 
A bizarre happening
Our facebook is showing up on google more in it’s Korean version than its English version. Its very strange.  When I look up blog posts, they show up on google in the Korean Facebook, but the actual blog entries are not yet showing up.  Maybe in a few weeks they will start to show up.
 
India
Indian companies are using our site the most.  They are hiring other Indian companies to do their back office work.  Data conversion and data processing tasks are the most common.  Surprisingly, the software page in India was going to be our most popular page, but it is actually one of our least popular pages.  People are looking for data entry and call centers, not programmers.  It is my belief that India will lead the world in programming one day.  But, maybe today is not that day — at least not for us.
 
Looking for outsourcing jobs
It seems that a huge portion of browsers on our directory are looking for jobs. We get resumes sent to us all the time. We are creating a database where job seekers can enter their information and specialties.  Maybe one day it will be a popular page for companies to search for prospective employees in their area. We’ll find out!

123outsource.net’s growth

May 7, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

123outsource.net’s growth

123outsource.net outsource directory is growing, but not the way we thought.   When 123outsource was created, we thought we would cater mainly to India with a strong presence in South Africa, Philippines, Argentina, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as an outsourcing directory.  The surprising fact is that Filipino call centers and other companies in the Philippines did not respond to our internet presence.  Pakistan and Bengladesh responded, but in a way that was far less efficient than  was necessary to continue advertising in those areas.  Additionally, South Africa and Argentina did not respond well to our web presence.

Countries that responded well
We always knew that India would be the star of the show, and Indian outsourcing companies respond very well to us. We get new sign ups from Indian companies daily.  But, the other countries that responded well to us was a surprize.  United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Singapore are some of the lead countries that use our site.  We got some good responses from Costa Rica as well.  Singapore is our leading browser country with browser volume that surpassed the United States on many weeks.  They did so well, that we separated Singapore from our regular advertising campaign, so that we could manage them more carefully. But, why do these particular countries do so well with us?  I believe its because they have huge populations of Indian nationals who are closely tied to the motherland.  America has many Indians too, but our Indians have business or jobs that are not connected to India.  Our Deshis are tied to the local economy.

Turkey anyone?
We have just started marketing outsourcing services in Turkey.  Turkey has many startup call centers and other BPO operations, primarily in Istanbul.  We are not sure if they will respond well to our advertising, but we will see.  Advertising in India averages one sign up for every 300 clicks, so it will take another month to see if Turkey gets a sign up in its first 300 clicks.

China, the next frontier.
China is huge, and will overtake India in the Software outsourcing niche by 2015 according to current trends.  Unfortunately, the Chinese have never been as linguistically adept as the Indians, so communicating with them is not always easy.  We will see if China responds well to our new advertising presence for software outsourcing and other specialties.  We got 10 clicks from China on our first day of advertising, so we expect the click volume to be higher as time goes on, and as the next business week begins. We hope that many companies in China will sign up to be on our directory.

Costa Rica
Most people don’t even know where Costa Rica is.  Its a tiny country in Central America with a thriving web design and call center industry. We will start advertising there shortly.   The language difference is an issue though. The national language of Costa Rica is Spanish, and we speak English.  Luckily, I have a staff member who speaks very clear Spanish as a second language, but our ads are in English, and the search terms we advertise for are in English to.  We could try to use a few Spanish terms and see how it goes. We did that for Argentina, but with no lucky. Argentinians are talented in art, but not in business unfortunately.

New Signups are Coming in Fast

May 4, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , | Leave a comment

New signups are coming in fast
 
123outsource.net is relatively new as an outsource directory, and just started being promoted in November. At first, sign ups were very far and few between.  We would get inquiries from people wanting a job, and a few inquiring about the directory, but hardly any signups.  Then, after a while ,we started getting more serious inquiries after we had been around a bit longer. The breakthrough was ridiculously simple. We added a sign up form instead of asking people to email us.  Sign ups tripled overnight on our outsource directory.  We highlighted the sign up button with red.
 
Sign up today!
If you want to sign up to be on our offshore outsource directory, we offer free listings to any serious outsourcing company.  We get hundreds of visitors daily from Singapore, USA, Canada, UK, and many other countries, so companies who need your services will be able to find you.
 
Categories
Our most popular categories are Data Entry, Call Center, Accounting, Programming, Medical Transcriptions, and Medical Billing.  Up and coming categories are LPO, Web Design, SEO, and KPO.  BPO is a strange category because every type of outsourcing is in a sense a BPO, but because we have such specific categories, we use the BPO category more as a miscellaneous category.
 
Countries
India is by far the most serious country, with Pakistan in second place.  We have yet to have any signups from the Philippines, South Africa, Bengladesh, or Nepal.  To my happy surprize, we got on call center in Costa Rica.  Lets hope we get more Latin American companies on board!
 
Placement
We are happy to give free listings away, but to get ahead in your internet presence, we recommend having a listing in two or more categories with high placement. Browsers tend to search from the top of the list on down.  Just ask us what we charge for higher placement and we’ll give you a customized quote.
 
Future
What is the future of our directory?  We have more than ten years in the internet directory business, so we are very familiar with the evolution and optimization of websites.  We are actively promoting our twitter and blog which help in promiting our site.  Additionally, we are always working on optimization and our pay-per-click search networks too which gives us fantastic exposure which is only going to get better.  The more listings we have, the better we will show up on search engines.

How to Start an Outsourcing Company

April 24, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles, Popular Posts | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

How to start an outsourcing company

To start a BPO, Call Center, or Data Entry outsourcing company, you will need a lot of skills.

Be an expert in your field
You need to be an expert at your field, so that you can supervise work and know who to hire. If you know nothing about data entry, and have no clients, nobody will hire you, because you don’t know anything. People want to hire responsible experts, so if you are not an expert, please become one.

Get clients
How do you get clients?  Many people tell me they want to start a 20 seater BPO, but they are asking me how to get clients.  My advise is start with one seat, and then when you get more clients, get more seats.  The clients come before the seats.  No clients = being out of business. If you are asking me how to get business, you are really in trouble, because I am not in the call center business — I’m in the directory business with 10 years of experience.

Contact other call centers or data entry companies and see if they have any advice or overflow.
Contact call centers or other outsourcing outfits in America by phone and ask them if they need your services.
Contact companies in India by phone and ask if they need your services. Create a beautiful website and advertise on web directories
Facebook can sometimes be a great way to market a business too, as it is a way to network with more and more computer literate people.

Have a decisive offering
If you want to create a call center, but don’t know what you are offering, you will sound uneducated to your potential clients.  Figure out what types of services you offer, and then figure out what type of price categories to assign your various services. My advice is focus on being flexible and helpful if you want to attract lots of business. The other call centers are rigid, and half of them want to cheat their new clients. In the long run, the helpful and responsible companies win the game!

Free trials – am I crazy?
If you want to offer people free trials, thats even better.  Many companies will be skeptical about using a new outsourcing company who they never heard of before.  If you have an amateurish phone manner, they will question whether you even are a business, or some unemployed guy who is desperate for work.  If you offer a few hours of free trial work, so that the client company can test you out and get comfortable with you, you might win over some good long term contracts.

Short contracts or no contracts
Established call centers have a reputation and contacts. They can demand six month contracts for at least three seats and get away with it. If you are starting off, its best to let companies try you out for a short time and see if they like you.  It will be hard to get long
contracts when nobody has ever heard of you before.

Equipment?
This is not my industry, so you have to ask other local call centers what they use.  You need good computers and good phone connections for all of your seats. You will need to ask local utility companies what type of connections they can offer and how reliable they are. VoIP is popular these days, but thats all I know.

A place of business
If you have no clients, and want to get a 15 seater office, how do you intend to pay salaries and rent for fifteen people, when you have not a single client, and no knowledge of how to get a client.  Find a real estate broker, and find a small place to start off in while you get your business acumen  in ship shape condition.  Start small and learn the business is you are starting a BPO

How do I start a call center or outsourcing business?
Have a database of people in the area who can work part time.  Lots of ladies with kids don’t want a full time job.  Interview these people, make sure they can function well, and try them out on small projects. While you are doing your outreach calls, you will hopefully get a few contracts.  Hire these part time folks when you have work, and if the work dries up, they can go back home to their family life.  They can be your “on call” staff members.  One week you might be very busy, and the next week you might have hardly any work at all.  Once you develop some long term clients who are comfortable with you and your services, then you will have regular work, and can think about that 15 seater office.  Don’t jump ahead of yourself though.

Training?
Being a small company doesn’t mean you are worse than anyone else. You might have less resources, but you might have more caring!  If you have a system of overseeing your workers and coaching them so they can be their best, you might really impress your clients.  Obviously, you should start out with workers who have good skills, but refining their skills, and customizing their skills to the needs of specific clients will win you tremendous popularity and customer loyalty. You have to be on top of your workers, or they will not function optimally, and you will lose your business.

Where do I advertise my company?
Advertise on www.123outsource.net.  We offer free and paid advertising for all types of outsourcing companies.  Advertise in our Call Center, BPO, Data Entry, Software, or any other category.

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You might also like:

How to start an outsourcing company — 2016 version
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/12/29/how-to-start-an-outsourcing-company-2016/

Marketing your BPO outsourcing firm from A to Z
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/05/22/marketing-your-bpo-outsourcing-firm-from-a-to-z/

Compilation of best posts about how to get clients for your BPO
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/20/how-to-get-more-clients-for-your-bpo-or-call-center-compilation/

Marketing your outsourcing company
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2010/11/24/marketing-your-outsourcing-company/

How to get clients for your call center — CONTRACTS
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/04/05/how-to-get-clients-for-call-centers-contracts/

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The Japan Earthquake of 2011

April 16, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Japan Earthquake

The earthquake and tsumani in Northeast Japan near Sendai were devestating.  Its ironic, but I had two dreams several weeks before the earthquake where earthquakes happened. I interpreted the dreams to mean that there would be an upheaval in my personal life.  Maybe that is yet to come in a few weeks. We’ll see.  After the Japan quake, I had another dream that I was visiting a friend’s cottage on a river in Greece which was an hour by boat from China.  There was a terrible earthquake at the cottage where I was staying.  It lasted more than a minute, but I kept my cool in the dream.  I wonder if I could be so cool in real life?  After meditating on this dream, I interpreted this dream to mean that China would have a large earthquake, but on the coast or on a river.  But, my psychic said that the dream was about a future personal upheaval.

The death toll passed 18,000 and hundreds of thousands were left homeless.  It is hard to see such hard working people left helpless after one of nature’s statements.  What is more scary is the nuclear situation at Fukushima.  There is a high exposure to radioactivity and there have been many incidents where people have been injured due to high radioactivity. One worker was hospitalized due to possible high exposure to the skin in their foot.  None of the reactors will be able to be saved as well.

Radioactive water is spilling into the ocean and the radius of the effected area is growing.  But, Japanese authorities seem to be treating too small an area as the disaster area, where they should prohibit entry to a much larger radius for safety reasons.  Its hard to do testing when disasters happen so fast, but radiation readings need to be done in the seawater every single mile to see how far the damage goes.

My bigger fear is for the long run.  How will Tokyo fair in the long run?  They are only 150 miles from the power plant.  Their radioactivity was 23 more than normal, but is that dangerous?  How dangerous will it be in the long run for them to be there?  How will the countries economy be in the long run after this disaster.  What if they have another disaster?  2012 is around the corner and many of us feel that there will be all types of frequent disasters throughtout the globe, but potentially more if you live near an ocean or fault line like the Japanese do.

How does this effect outsourcing?  Will Japan outsource less due to this horrible quake and tsunami, or will they be more reliant on countries around them?  Will they be weakened so much in the long run that China might gobble them up?  Its a growing concern for many, and some people regard it as inevitable.  A lot of Japanese outsourcing is done by Japanese nationals who have taken up residency in nearby Asian countries such as China or Thailand.  However, if Japan’s situation gets much worse, they will be forced to accept help from people who are not culturally Japanese, or they might perish as a nation!

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How to start a website for an outsourcing company

April 15, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How to start a website for an outsourcing company
 
Since the 90’s, it has been the in thing to do to start a website.  Having a website can drastically improve your marketing presence, and get you many more clients. Unfortunately, people are not aware of the costs involved in having a website, or how difficult it is to promote a site.
 
Sites for general outsourcing companies
There are different purposes for having a site.  One, is to be able to refer people who you already know or met to a site online so that they can easily get an overview of your company.  The other, is so that potential clients who do not know of you can find you online and perhaps contact you to purchase your services.  Just having a site which you don’t market much is a challenge in itself, but marketing a site can be murder.  
 
What to put in the site
The main components of a site are a flashy home page, a contact us page, an about us page, and a services page.  If your services are very involved, you might have several back up pages to elaborate on your various services.  The home page should have an easy to use navigation system that links to the various additional pages.  The site should look good, be functional, and information should be easy to find.  The hard part is that good artwork and layout are not easy and can cost a lot of lakhs to do a good job.  The mere act of finding someone capable of doing a good job in web design is also no easy feat.   If you are in India, the other websites in your country may be a bad role model.  Some of the fancier travel sites and web design sites may have flashy styles, but the other sites are very plain and unappealing. India is modernizing fast, so the trend is to have flashy sites, but this trend is unfolding slowly.  
 
Maintaining your site
Most people just want some price quotation of how much their site will cost.  The cost never ends.  Hosting goes on as long as you keep your site.  You have to renew your registration with the DNS.  And then, updating information and fixing things that break (especially in databases) is a real hassle.  If your information dosen’t change, then the server’s platform, or something on internet explorer might change.
 
Marketing your site
Optimization is a world of its own.  I do optimization ten hours a week for my sites. I analyze where traffic is coming from, and what various types of clicks are worth to me.  I create new content to support certain keywords and do linking strategies to link my internal pages. I also have a network of people who link to me in exchange for advertising.  Analyzing what content to put on pages, or what pages to link to what other pages is not easy.  There are many factors to consider there.  How many people click on the link, how good the content is you are linking to, and how relevant the information is.  Where you put the link and what type of artwork the link is housed in is critical as well.  With these multiple factors, you could be analyzing all day long for months. 
 
Keywords
The place to start with a small website is to identify which keywords you want to stress, and promote them on selected pages.  Having an analytics account to track what incoming keywords come to your site is irreplaceable for the analysis that you will need to do later on.  Regional keywords are critical, because there is less competition for the key word “Web Design Darjeeling”, than there is for “Web Design”.  There are hundreds of thousands of web designers world wide, but only a handful in Darjeeling.
 
Ask for help
Need help with optimization ideas?  Ask us at 123outsource.net.  I am not a professional optimizer, but I have four years of experience optimizing my own sites with considerable success!
 
SEO
What is SEO?  It just means search engine optimization.  It is a fancy word for optimization.  SEM is search engine marketing that can be done with pay-per-click networks such as google adwords. That is a fast way to get clicks and see which keyword variations generate traffic.
 
Please visit
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India SEO Search Results

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Outsourcing in Japan

April 10, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Japan Outsourcing

Japan has always been big on outsourcing, but it takes a different form in Japan than in other countries. Since Japan gained economic strength in the 1980’s it became very expensive, and they had to outsource labor and services.  It was common for Japanese to fly to Thailand to get some dental work done and then relax at the beach sipping on coconut water and enjoying some Rad Na (noodles).  Japanese would even go overseas just to go on a shopping spree. Of course, now the Japanese economy has been suffering for a long time. I could never figure it out. Japanese are the most efficient people on the planet, but they are no longer in the top ten for per capita income.

The primary country for outsourcing is India, and the primary language used is English.  Japanese have never been strong in their foreign language skills.  Since they are East Asian, and there are many local countries to outsource to, they might often prefer outsourcing to China, Korea, or Thailand.

Many Japanese nationals are moving to foreign countries to outsource themselves.  One call center employee moved to Thailand to get a job servicing Japanese companies.  The overhead is a fraction of the cost in Thailand, and the noodle dishes are just as good too!  American companies are happy with  English speaking Indian employees in India, while Japanese companies prefer to hire their own nationals transplanted in foreign soil.  The linguistic handicap of the Japanese people is one of the reasons for outsourcing to their own nationals, but cultural condusiveness and politeness is another.  Japanese are not very tolerant of those who have not mastered their infinitately complicated forms of etiquette.

Companies such as Transcosmos and Masterpiece have created call centers, data entry offices, and technical support services in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.  Other jobs are going to Jakarta, Indoesia, and other places.  Many of these jobs are for larger companies, while the freelancers have gained a much higher market share recently.

Although Japan is the most efficient country on earth in my mind, their inability to outsource work to well established outsourcing countries like India is a huge handicap.  India can get programming, data entry, call center work, and any type of BPO, KPO, LPO, or other work done very quickly and for very reasonable prices.  The Japanese reliance on their own culture is a handicap that is very inefficient in this age of globalization.  I am personally happy that I am a universal human being and not addicted to any particular culture . You can put me in an African, Latin, Indian, European, Arab, Israeli, or American cultural environment and I’ll be quite happy.  But, for our friends in Japan, few will ever have the flexibility that I have due to their culture which traditionally is not accepting of foreign ideas.  The word for different in Japanese is the same word for “bad” unfortunately.

To end this post with a joke.  There was an old Woody Allen movie from many decades ago where a beauty pagent winner was giving a speech. She said that it’s okay to be different, just as long as you are not TOO different.  That was just too funny,  because it was an honest version of what otherwise would have easily been a hypocritical speech.

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