123outsource.net Outsourcing Blog

Those of us who are smart are concerned with our SEO for our site. A handful of us evey obsess about it. The main thing is that our site will show up well on Google. I recently had a problem where some bad review sites were coming up on the first page of Google when you Google one of my company names. I tried many ways to solve the problem. Posting other high ranking content using Twitter and Google+ had some effect on what showed up on the Google search results. But, the one thing that I did which got powerful results was using my newsletter to link to interesting pages about us and our various new social media accounts. I have a dozen social media accounts for my main site. I am not active on all of them, but I do have a presence.

Keep in mind that my success with the newsletter is not something that came overnight. It took me three years to build my newsletter to having 4300 followers. Additionally, the SEO success from posting links to great content on my newsletter took about a month to show results on Google’s search results. Google doesn’t always like to give instant gratification. They prefer to keep you guessing about what worked and why.

So, if you want to keep your clients close, and get some increased site traffic and have more control over what happens on Google, consider a newsletter. It is a huge investment of time, but it is one of my most powerful marketing channel after Facebook. Facebook is currently giving me 6000 visitors per month to my blog while my newsletter is not far behind at around 4000. Of course these numbers could vary depending on how actively I use them, but for use that I consider to be “moderate” those are the numbers!

All I can say is, “wow,” SEO strength doesn’t come easily, but thank god I have what I call SEO muscle!

What is the cost of a screwup?

February 2, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Management | Tagged Business Mistakes, Management, Screwup, Screwup in Business | Leave a comment

Do you run your own business or manage one? Do you screw up? I do too. But, not that often. When I try new things, or am too overwhelmed to be able to attend to things — screw ups happen. Generally the screw up is that the person I hired didn’t do what they were supposed to and didn’t give a damn either. I am too busy to babysit people. So, those that screw up are at the bottom of my list.

So, there are different classifications of screw ups. There are experimental screw ups where you try a new approach and see if it works. If not, you learn something. If you invest too much in going the wrong direction, then you lose big. There are hiring screw ups which are far more common. If you test people out over several months to see if they do good work and don’t lose interest, there will be fewer screw ups. Then there are major screw ups where your data got compromised or you lost a key employee due to an argument that would have better gone un-argued.

My main point of this quickie article is to keep screw ups small. It is okay to screw up, especially during experimentation. In fact, I wouldn’t even call an experiment, or trying something new a screw up if the results weren’t good. I would call it a success because you succeeded in learning what not to do next time. Until next time — I have things to screw up.

How marketing is just like being a pirate lad…

February 1, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Marketing | Tagged marketing | Leave a comment

In another blog entry, I wrote about a lad in the 1700’s whose elders decided was best suited to be a pirate. That lad was reborn and went to one of the best Chinese hacking schools that existed. Then, he learned the art of market disruption and did startups for a while. After a few years of failed startups, he had his first success — but, the venture capitalists took everything he made. The boy was angry because after all — he was the one who was supposed to be the pirate. But, I guess there is no honor among thieves.

After that, the young man decided that what he really liked was trying to do the modern equivalent of being a pirate like what he was in the 1700’s. He would shoot at other people’s boats. Swing over to their boat on a rope, fight them with swords, tie them up, plunder their gold and other valuables, and then set the ship on fire and watch it burn! His favorite part was waiting til the fire hit the powder kegs and watching the entire ship explode! Arr laddie! Twas a sight to be seen!

So, the man quit the startup business and went into mergers. He drank rum, sang pirate songs and coordinated mergers where the managers of the firm being bought out would all be fired and would go down with the ship. He went a step farther to hire a graphic designer to create graphics of the managers going down with a ship with a flag of their company. He enjoyed this career immensely. Then, he went into marketing for a while and enjoyed finding artful ways to steal the clients from particular businesses and watch them go bankrupt. Arr — the pleasure can’t be beat, even with two pints of rum!

In any case, this is a silly article, but hope you had fun reading it. It’s fun to think about what people would do if they were reincarnated into another time. I was actually a warrior in many of my earlier lives, but I evolved into a healer. From killing people to healing people — what a transition in my soul’s evolution. I no longer do Native American healing like I did in my shaman past lives. But, I do healing on myself. However, the warrior past lives from way back — several thousand years back in many cases seem to help me out in my business career. Business is like war. It’s hard to keep the troops together. So, defeating the enemy is one goal, but keeping your troops loyal these days is an even harder goal.

How selling to a difficult client prepares you for outsourcing

January 26, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Sales | Tagged Outsourcing | Leave a comment

I think that the people in the Midwest who live near those defunct factory buildings need to think about this. If your only goal is to force people to pay you far more than a market wage for your service by creating artificial market conditions, you will end up in shatters. The key to winning the game of business and or outsourcing is to be able to maintain a constant demand for a service, and not just to be able to hold companies temporarily hostage using unions.

If you live in America, it is easy to make money here. But, what if you trained yourself by trying to sell in Asia. Asians are tough customers, and it is a lot harder to sell to them. First of all the culture is different. Their needs are different. The language is different. Their perception of you could count very badly against you as well. Last of all, price competition in Asia could count against you.

In America, people command huge wages. Even for unskilled work, you sometimes have to pay up to $20 per hour. Our neighbor Canada is not much cheaper, although their sluggish economy lends itself to somewhat lower prices. Mexico has abundant inexpensive labor, but their manufacturing is not as well developed as China unless you are in an industry they excel at.

So, if your goal was to sell to the hardest customers in Asia, if you survived, you would be the toughest, most adaptable, innovative bastard that ever lived. I would bow down to anyone who could meet this challenge.

Guys like Mark Zuckerburg, love challenges. That is why he is so successful. He is in China now running in the smog. He calls it a smog run. He is a loveable nut, and out to make a difference. He even learned to speak excellent Chinese if you overlook the fact that he speaks this tonal language in a monotone.

For America to compete in outsourcing, costs need to be low, and a lot of innovating would be necessary to get those costs down.

For people in India to do well in outsourcing, quality needs to be a lot higher. Indians try to over-capitalize on price. But, if the quality of your service is horrible from the first time you answer your phone until the last email where you get dumped, you are not going to excel as a company. You can compete on price, quality, customized service, or anything else. My suggestion is to be competitive in as many ways as you can. That way you can win the game.

I don’t know what BPO owners do. I know that call centers are very competitive. But, the other outsourcing industries do not seem to have bosses that ask themselves daily — what else can I do to compete? Maybe they should!

Is it better to motivate workers, or to inspire those already motivated?

January 26, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Motivation | Leave a comment

It is not so easy to motivate people. Motivation comes and goes. You are safer hiring people who are already motivated and then inspiring them to greatness. But, how to you spot greatness?

Most employees don’t care about their job and want to do the minimum — at least with lower level jobs. The secret is to see who will do extra. In the long run, if an employee is going to last and do amazing work, if they are not willing to do a little extra, they won’t be worth much. But, how can you test people out?

1. Ask people to come on the weekend
Especially if you ask people at the last minute. Most people value their weekend time. See if they come. See if they complain about coming or hold a grudge after.

2. Ask people to meet a deadline earlier than necessary
If people are cooperative about meeting an early deadline, that is excellent. Of course in the long run it is about consistency, not one time performance. But, if you get a good first perfomance, you might get a second and a third.

3. Email
See how fast people respond to emails when they are off duty. My experience is that those who answer business emails on the weekend will be better workers. Maybe not super stars, but better.

4. Calls
Ask them to call you when they are done with something. Most people you’ll never hear from. They wait for you to call them. Initiative means they call you.

5. Dropping the Ball
Most employees specialize in dropping the ball and not taking responsibility. Find a way for another employee to spot the employee that dropped the ball and pick up the ball. This means when an employee flakes on a particular responsibility, find that other employee who will spot what happened fast and correct the situation. Otherwise you are the one who has to solve all of the problems at your company.

6. Study Requirements
Ask employees to study something on their own on the weekend. See who actually does it. Tell them it’s not required. Most people won’t do what is not required. But, those who do are special.

7. Spy on Them
If not asked to clock in, see who takes an extra long lunch break. See who is on Facebook when they are supposed to be working. See who is gossiping instead of getting work done. If you are observing people without them noticing, you’ll learn a lot.

Summary
Basically, your job as boss and manager is to accumulate a small army of people who are super loyal and super responsible to run your company in your absense. Then you can concentrate on growing the company. Those high quality people should get paid more, should get respect, and should be given harder responsibilties so they know that you take them seriously. People who are just fooling around do not merit a good salary, especially without having paid any dues by sticking around at your company. Judge salaries by longevity at your company and track record — not number of years in the field or test results (although those are factors.)

How do I find a company that does online surveys?

January 24, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Data Entry | Tagged data entry, Online Surveys | Leave a comment

123outsource.net has a wide variety of companies involved in various data entry related tasks. One of the popular specialties is online surveys. Additionally, we have call center search results where you can get phone survey work done and KPO companies that can do marketing research and interpret the results of your surveys.

Just visit www.123outsource.net and then visit the:

Call Center Search Results
http://www.123outsource.net/international_outbound_call_center_lead_generation.htm

Data Entry Search Results
http://www.123outsource.net/data_entry_outsourcing.htm

KPO Search Results
http://www.123outsource.net/marketing_support_outsourcing_KPO.htm

The best business dream I ever had was about lions & giraffes

January 23, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Of Interest | Leave a comment

We all love to dream.
Some of us dream while we are sleeping while others daydream at work during a boring assignment. But, my life got a whole lot more interesting when I learned to analyze my dreams. I have been seeing Walter for years now. He is a gifted psychic as well as a talented dream analyst. Not only did he teach me what my dreams meant, but he taught me some of the basics of dream analysis. I am nowhere near as good as he is, but I generally get about 40% as much interpretation out of my dreams as he does which is not bad — plus I’m getting better as time passes.

I dream about all types of things.
Once I dreamed that my wallet was in a stream. I picked it up and then there were some coins there. My income was sky height that month. I dreamt about co-workers and what was going on in their life. I dream about what I’m going through emotionally as well. Some of my dreams are about childhood while a few are about things that happened in past lives, or even a few years in the future like my trip to Dubai insh’allah! I have a 300 page journal filled with all of my dreams for the last ten years. It all started when I had a dream of a whale surfacing from the deep and my guru refused to interpret it for me. It turned out to be a dream about my spiritual group. But, my psychic explained all of the symbology to me until I got it.

Lions & Giraffes
Animals in dreams are fun as well as meaningful. Each animal could represent a part of you. On the other hand, the character of the animal is even more important than which type of animal it was. Was it angry, happy, or taking a nap after licking its paws? My favorite dream of all time was me walking in Africa. There were some large lions walking down the road straight towards me. I didn’t run out of the way. I walked straight towards them and bumped against them while walking by. That is such a macho New York type of behavior for people in high school by the way. Then, I saw a herd of baby giraffes who were cute. The real meaning of the dream had nothing to do with how beautiful and cute these giraffes were.

What did the dream mean?
The lions in the dream represented my robust side. I have gone from being timid to being angry to confident. Me walking straight towards those lions represented fearlessness — the best attribute a warrior can have — and business is just like war in many ways. The giraffes represented being able to see the future. Since giraffes have long necks they can see who is coming from far away. My giraffes were still babies, but they show that the ability to see the long-term is growing within me fast these days.

Pay attention to your dreams.
I don’t know what type of dreams you have, but if you write them down, they might be more interesting than you can possibly imagine. Dreams are information encrypted with universal symbols. The information in dreams is real, but might be past, future, or present and often doesn’t have a provable or definitive meaning. However, I feel that dream information is valuable. So, keep track of what you dream — you never know how important that information could be for you in the long run.

What if you had your aptitude tested in the 1700’s?

January 11, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Of Interest | Leave a comment

Aptitude tests are important. They tell us what we are smart at and what needs improvement in our brain. However, they might not tell you what you are passionate about. If you are mediocre at something, but passionate about it, you might become amazing at it in time.

Aptitude tests in England in the 1700’s
Just out of curiosity, I went into a trance and went back to the 1700’s in England to see how aptitude tests were given. I saw an older gentleman in one of those triangular hats watching a few strapping young lads take a written examination. They were being sized up to see what type of career they would be good for. They were from a good class, well dressed, and their futures were bright. At the end of the hour long exam, the elderly man looked at his hour glass and said, “We’re out of time lads.” He looked at the score results from Tommy and said, “Tommy, you’re best suited to be a pirate!”

A boy was deemed best suited to be a pirate!
Tommy was so happy. “A pirate, that’s what I’ve always dreamed of being!” The old man said, “Hope you don’t mind having a wooden leg and tropical birds as friends.” “No trouble, I’ll be so drunk on rum I won’t even notice — I’ll get out my sword for some sword practice right away sir …. a pirate I shall be, a pirate I shall be — a pirate, a pirate, a pirate I shall be.”

In any case, the way aptitude tests were given back in the day stressed very basic scholastic skills. Most people did whatever their father did and were locked into a rigid caste system. These days, you can do whatever you are qualified to do. It’s harder since your father generally teaches you nothing if he is even ever there! But, the bottom line here is that if you are the reincarnation of that kid from the 1700’s, you might be destined to be a computer pirate! When they put a virus on your computer, it would be more interesting if they said, “Walk the plank!”

But, these sophisticated tests test how smart you are. What really counts is your commitment. Many who go to mediocre schools rise to the top because they stick with something year after year. It is harder for women to become CEO’s, but those who stick to the program at the same company for 20 years often rise to the top while the men go job hopping. So, forget about what you love, and do what you can commit to. Doing a job is like a marriage. You have to stick to it in sickness and in healthy. Your temporary love affair with a particular job might not last in the long-term.

Don’t do what you love
Do what you can commit to

Not enough energy to achieve? Try this!

January 6, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Success | Leave a comment

Having enough energy is tough these days. We have stress, pollution, and not enough sleep. How can we possibly amount to something in our businesses? In America, people eat burgers, fries, chicken, pork chops and other dishes. The standard American meal is 30% vegetables with perhaps a piece of fruit during the day. Indians think they are so healthy because they eat mostly vegetables. However, Indians are eating greasy potato dishes, lentils, rice, wheat in the forms of chapati, naans, etc. Indian staples are not healthy in such large quantities. So, what is missing?

I notice that for me to have energy to perform at night, I need enzymes, something India gets not enough of. I knew only one girl in India who ate salads regularly. She was Assamese and her father was a doctor. No wonder she was so healthy. Salad is good because it has raw vegetables. Vegetables have lots of minerals. But, when eaten raw they have prana or energy in them. Fresh fruit drinks also have energy. However, if the liquid sits around for more than three minutes, you lose most of the energy.

I drank juice from the juice bar at Whole Foods that made juice fresh for me. I felt good and felt better the next morning. But, when I had juice that had been sitting for six hours, I felt only 30% of the result. The answer is that humans need fresh energy. Most people have too much meat and starches, but not enough water rich foods like fruits and vegetables. Tony Robbins claims that you need to be eating 80% water rich foods and only 20% meats, fish, rice, bread, etc. That is hard for most of us to do, but if you do, you will have tremendous energy.

The rest of the solution is to keep fit, exercise regularly, or at least walk 90 minutes a day. Keep your weight at a healthy level, and breath fresh air.

Reaching the break-even point with new BPO customers is possible if you personalize

January 6, 2016 by admin

Categories: BPO | Tagged bpo, call center | Leave a comment

Getting new clients is hard and costly. Losing clients is easy. Most BPO companies I deal with specialize in losing clients (and getting threatened with lawsuits) just as quickly as you gain a new one. You cannot build your business if you lose clients quickly, nor can you turn a profit. Research from established call centers show that the break even point with a customer is after they have been with you for 12-18 months. This point depends heavily on what you charge them, etc., can can vary from company to company and customer to customer. But, 12-18 months was a standard for one company.

The point to remember is that customers who have a good experience stick around while others do not. One way to make sure clients stay is to customize your offerings to their personal needs. If you cater to every whim and desire you will not only keep most of your clients, but get referrals too.

What are some ways you can cater to client needs? If you give your agents more training, and train them more how to deal with the needs of that client, you’re on the right track. If you let the client pick their own agents from a pool of applicants and fire people they don’t like, that is good too. If you have monthly meetings to discuss the performance of each rep on that company’s account, that is also something most call centers just wouldn’t even think of doing as that is call center business and none of the client’s business — or is it? After all, the client is paying for this and is the entity who will lose if there is bad service.

99 ways to die in social media — choose one!

January 5, 2016 by 123outsource

Categories: Social Media | Tagged blogging, Social Media, Social Media Network | Leave a comment

It sounds like the name of a movie! How exciting. I can picture one social media manager with a gun and another about to die. But, it doesn’t really work like that, does it? There are many ways to sabotage yourself in social media. People do it all the time. The question is, what are we doing to ruin ourselves, and how do we do it? How can we stop doing it? Here is my list of ways to ruin your social presence on the internet.

1. Not posting regularly
If you post five things at the same time and then do not post for a few days, your audience will not grow or be engaged properly. Use an auto-posting software system so that you can post on a regular basis. You might post every four hours, or only during peak hours of engagement which might be during the day. Or you could post twice per hour twenty-four hours a day to attract an interactional crowd.

2. Posting too much
If you post too much, you are spamming your audience. Each social media platform is different. On Twitter I would not post more than 40 posts per day, and 20 is much more ideal. On Facebook I would not exceed 10 posts per day. LinkedIn and Google plus I would do only 5 per day.

3. Posting content your audience doesn’t like
I test my content out before posting it. The first time I post something, it the crowd doesn’t like it, I’ll remove it after an hour or so. If I retweet something, if the crowd doesn’t favorite it at least once, I’ll get rid of it. Post stuff your audience likes — or perish!

4. Monotony kills
If you post the same content or the same kind of content too much, your audience will get bored. Yes, focus on your core industry specific niche, but also have related content from semi-focused specialties. If you specialize in widgets, you can post about the economy, and manufacturing of other related projects as well, plus news and some pretty photos.

5. Not following people
If you don’t follow enough people on social media, your audience will never grow to critical mass. You need to follow as many relevant people as you can.

6. Now following people back
The easiest way to experience slow growth on social media is to fail to follow people back who follow you. They will unfollow you if you don’t follow them.

7. Focusing on too many networks
It is best to focus on a single social media network for your business. I would devote your social media time 50% on blogging, 40% on your primary social media platform and divide the other 10% on all the other networks combined. If one of your lesser focuses starts panning out, you can always change your focus. Social media is always changing, so your primary network today might no longer be benefitting you in a few years.

8. Not having good content
If you have a blog, the number of posts you have is not a critical number. What matters is how many really popular posts you have. If your blog has 2000 posts and 50 of them are super popular, then you can promote those posts regularly on your various social channels and get a ton of traffic.

9. Following the wrong sub-groups (profiles) of people
If you follow people who are relevant to your industry, but from a sub-group that doesn’t interact much, you lose. I attract many people who call themselves “entrepreneurs.” I think the term represents people who lack a day job more than people who run their own business. Entrepreneurs did not share my posts much at all. However, small businesses that were not relevant to my industry were sharing my content as I run a business blog and they are businesses. CEO’s and HR people also shared my contents. Keep track of who is favoriting and sharing and then profile them like they do on the TV show Criminal Minds. I guess being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean as much as I feel it should mean.

10. Asthetic appeal
It is hard to be informative, interactive and also good looking. Publishing good looking photos on your feed is easy. They might not get shared much. However, you will attract more followers (a lot more) if you have breathtaking photos between your posts. Track your progress each way. If you follow 500 people per day, post just tweets for two days, and then publish tweets and amazing photos mixed together for another two days and see how many more followers you got. Please note that weekend traffic is very different from traffic Monday to Friday so do your experiment starting on a Monday.

11. Regurgitate the right amount
Some people publish the same stuff over and over again. That could be a mistake if that is all you do. Others realize that popular content from the past should be shared again, but mixed in with other stuff. The key is to figure out when your crowd is absolutely tired of your old material and phase it out. I’ll favorite my own stuff that gets results. When I post the contents again, I unfavorite it, and then favorite all over again if it did well. That way if it doesn’t do well the 3rd or 7th time around, it will be dropped permanently from the favorite list. This system gets me a lot of traffic since people like my popular posts!

12. Failing to have lists
Lists help me organize posts from my absolute favorite sources. I retweet from my favorite sources regularly. But, I also mix in retweets from sources that are unknown to me if I see something hot. Many people are not that organized. But, Twitter allows you to have lists — so use that function.

13. Failing to interact
Interacting doesn’t work well on my Twitter profile, but the pros say you need to grow your following by interacting. If your crowd likes to mingle, ask them questions or respond to their posts. Get to know them. It is easier in a niche business. But, regardless, try it and see what happens and try different approaches.

14. Posting at the wrong time of day
In my industry, posting at night is fine, but posting on the weekend gets you ignored. For my other Twitter, daytime is the right time and after 4pm is not optimal at all. Find out when your crowd responds most and focus on that window of time.

15. Foreign languages?
If you are multi-lingual, it might be better to pick a language and stick to it. If I see posts in Spanish or Arabic, I am tempted to un-follow such a person as I am weak in both of those languages. I stick to English. You might be better off having two profiles — one for English, and one for Arabic for example.

16. Putting too many followers on a list
If you have lists, but put 4000 followers on a list — you’ve defeated the reason for having a list. Lists are to focus only on specific profiles that deliver high quality focused results. How can you be focused if there are 4000 people on a list? My biggest list has 52 people, and they are all very focused. I have other lists with only about 10 to 12 accounts. Stay focused my friends.

17. Commenting too much
When people see your profile for the first time it is often in a pop up window which shows commentary. If you make a dumb comment on someone else’s post, your new prospects will not follow you. Your commentary needs to be attractive to a stranger as well as to the person who you are commenting to — as long as it is at the top of your feed. If it is buried then it doesn’t matter. If you do comment, post some good material after and spread your comments out.

18. Not sticking to it
The biggest mistake you can make on social media is giving up, or having lapses. If you want to grow big, you have to keep at it. Make it a priority or do it on the side. But, don’t half do social media. Social media needs to be done either 90 minutes a day or 5 minutes a day. Anything in between will waste too much of your time without getting you the right long term results.

19. Photos help get you more attention
If you tweet just text, you get less attention than posting with photos. Picking dull photos won’t help much either. But, if you pick very relevant high quality photos, your account could really grow — so try it. Experiment with different photos and see what happens.

20-99. Sorry, that I don’t have any more ways to die on social media. But, you can see what mistakes you make and learn from them. You can read otherpeople’s recommendations as well.

Compilation of best management & success blog entries

What is the cost of a screwup?

How marketing is just like being a pirate lad…

How selling to a difficult client prepares you for outsourcing

Is it better to motivate workers, or to inspire those already motivated?

How do I find a company that does online surveys?

The best business dream I ever had was about lions & giraffes

What if you had your aptitude tested in the 1700’s?

Not enough energy to achieve? Try this!

Reaching the break-even point with new BPO customers is possible if you personalize

Categories

Search Blog

Popular Pages

Archives

Meta