Looking To Cut Operating Costs?

Looking to cut operating costs?   Monthly Real estate bills taking a bite out of your receivables?  Insurance premiums on the rise?  Payroll costs soaring?

These are all major concerns for today’s small and mid-sized businesses.  These day to day incidentals are necessary evils to stay in business and keep your company operating.  Or are they?

These escalating expenses are perhaps the largest concern of business owners and operators today.  Many product lines require a certain number of staff and inventory in order to keep the operation running effectively.  Over the last 5 years, a new class of businesses has been developed to address just this area of concern.

“Business Process Outsourcing” or “BPO” companies have sprouted across the country.  These BPO companies have made it their business to offer the back office services that many of today’s smaller businesses require to operate.  BPO companies can provide the staffing necessary to service, maintain, connect, deliver, invoice, and collect for the services your company may offer today.  All of these services are available without the overhead of real estate costs for the call center or warehouse facility.  No insurance premiums to cover health, dental, or life insurance for the employees.   No lost or down time because of short staff during the summer months when vacation time is at a premium.

Outsourcing has been around for many years.  I’m sure all of us have heard the commercials featuring

“Bob, from Account Temps”

where an employee is attempting to disguise his voice, calling in sick to his manager, only to be told

“Not to worry, Bob’s here.  Bob from Account Temps.  Bob has finished the reports you’ve had on your desk and reorganized the President’s files.   Why don’t you take the rest of the week off?  We’ll be fine.  Bob’s here!”. 

Well, you know the rest of the storyline but you understand where I’m heading.

Outsourcing for back office business needs has become a big business in and of itself.  The BPO companies are able to take advantage of the “demand” for staffing and services by providing the “supply” of labor and IT products to fulfill the needs of their customers, the small and mid-sized business owner.   Need a new phone switch for your call center?  Don’t spend $300k to $600k on new switch and phones.  Consider “Outsourcing” it to a BPO company and let them do the work for you.  Maybe outsource the call center function as well?  (and don’t be concerned about shipping jobs “overseas”….. There are plenty of BPO companies operating 100% within the United States).  

We all know the best way to grow any business is to add new  revenue producing customers.  Improving back office equipment is great when times are good but in today's tight economic situation why not consider an alternative?  In exchange for reasonable pay as you go fees, you can take the capital saved on the asset purchase and put it towards marketing and sales, which will help grow your business, not simply keep it operating in place.

In earlier years, outsourcing was limited to on site replacement labor of temporary workers.  Today’s BPO companies have taken it a step further and moved to providing off-site labor and IT services, covering a wide variety of on-demand business services as needed.  All benefits and salaries, real estate fees, insurance premiums, and operating licenses are the responsibility of the BPO companies.

If you are interested in outsourcing some or all of your business needs, or have any questions or comments,  please leave a comment here on the blog or you can reach out to me directly at @DaveHanron on Twitter or you can email me at dave.hanron@ildmail.com

If I don’t have a product to meet your needs, I have lots of business contacts I can get you in touch with to help……

How to Close Deals With No Credit

Are you looking for more revenues for your internet business? Tired of all the web page statistics showing how many people abandoned your checkout page without a purchase?

If you’re one of the many internet businesses feeling this pain….then I have a solution for you!

Let’s start by figuring out why so many people don’t complete their on-line purchases. There are a couple of main reasons….

Price….Many people, like it or not, use the internet to comparison shop. They’ll “Google” a product before going to a local store to set a price point for the item. Once they get the price point they’re willing to pay, many consumers will then continue their shopping, searching for the lowest price…period. These consumers might return and make a purchase, they might not. These are the hardest abandons to close. Your only tool against these customers is simple…..keep your price competitive!

Trust….if you’re a digital merchant selling through sites like Amazon, pay close attention to your ratings. Email follow ups to consumers who’ve recently purchased your product, asking for a recommendation, are an absolute necessity. Make this a priority. Good reviews help increase your rating as a merchant and increase sales. Every Customer wants to think they made a good decision, and buying from a merchant others have trusted reinforces this emotion.

Payment methods…this is an important one.

Does your checkout page contain purchase options other than credit card or check? If not, you need to add them. Consider adding Paypal. Paypal can be set up quickly on-line and allows consumers a safe alternative to revealing their credit card information. Paypal helps to eliminate payment security concerns for many consumers. However, even if you add Paypal, there is still a sizable group of consumers who for a multitude of reasons, simply will not make a credit card purchase on line.

This could be caused by identity theft concerns, credit limit issues, lack of a credit or debit card, or a simple aversion to using any type of recurring credit. Problem is, this group of people can represent up to 20% of your potential customers who do not have access to traditional credit (http://tinyurl.com/ybaecdv )

So, how do you make sure you have a purchase option available to 1 out of every 5 potential customers? By adding a “Bill to Phone” option.

Landline phone billing for digital goods has been around for many years and has developed a mixed reputation because of some past fraud from some of the merchants. While this was a troubling trend in the past, the local phone companies (like Verizon, CenturyLink, and AT&T) and the billing clearinghouses (like ILD Teleservices) have worked hard to clean this payment method up to the point that it is now a truly valuable asset to add to your online business. Merchants will go through a stringent approval process before the OK is given to begin Local Exchange Billing (more commonly referred to as “LEC Billing”) with the phone companies.

The rapidly growing mobile phone market has added yet another curve to the phone billing market. Early returns a couple years ago using “Premium Short Message Service” or otherwise known as “PSMS” billing methods had mixed results for merchants.  The merchant would ask the consumer to enter their cell number on the checkout page and then the consumer would receive a text message which, if accepted, would automatically add a predetermined $ amount to the cell bill.  The consumer would then receive a code to enter on the checkout page to complete their transaction.  As the wireless companies kept a sizable portion of the sale, the returns were poor, representing typically less than 50% of each dollar being passed through to the merchant. The PSMS method did increase closed sales, but because the returns were so low, it wasn’t fully accepted as a truly viable option.  If you're still utilizing this method at your company....keep reading.

Today, the brand new concept of direct “Mobile Carrier Billing” allows merchant to place a product directly onto a potential customer’s cellular invoice and list the merchants name on the bill, reducing chargebacks and adjustments. Returns have improved to match or even exceed the returns realized through landline phone billing and provide a valuable tool to help e-merchants close the sale with that “1 out of 5” consumer who doesn’t have access to traditional credit. E-merchants will typically see a 20% “lift” in sales when they implement a bill to phone campaign, utilizing both landline and cellular billing. “Direct Mobile Carrier Billing” can be set up and approvals received to start billing as quickly as 3 weeks, meaning within a month, you could be closing sales with the group of “1 out of every 5” consumers that you cannot sell to today!

If you are interested in learning more about adding a “Bill to Phone” program to supplement your current e-merchant business payment options, contact me @davehanron on Twitter or via e-mail at Dave.hanron@ildmail.com. My company has processed in excess of 1 billion phone billing transactions and can help your business gain access to this growing market.

I’d enjoy hearing any experience you may have had in the e-merchant sales world, good or bad…..after all, we can all learn something new each day……

3rd Party Landline Billing

Lot’s of press these days…some good, some bad on landline phone billing as a payment option for digital merchants. Let’s face it, in today’s recessionary economy, credit is getting tighter and tighter…banks are lowering credit limits and raising interest rates on credit cards. Maybe our parents had it right…my father once said ”Dave, whenever possible, don’t use credit…it only gets you in trouble. If you can’t afford to pay for it, you don’t need it”.

More and more, today’s consumers are looking for alternate methods to pay for their purchases. This has led to the onslaught of new payment options, from Paypal, to pre-paid subscription cards, to Google checkout, to Amazon Payments, and yes, Bill to Landline.

One common factor in all these alternatives other than Bill to Landline is that they all ultimately refer back a credit or debit card provided to the processing company. While Paypal, Google, and Amazon all deal with the consumer settlements for the merchants, the funds are still ultimately under control of Mastercard, Visa, or AMEX.

Bill to Landline is the only true alternative giving the consumer the option to purchase a digital good WITHOUT the use of some type of credit card. Merchants that use Bill to Landline must go through an extremely thorough background review, including company and officer background and fraud checks, marketing material reviews, sales and sales verification script reviews, post-sales confirmation reviews, and customer service policy reviews.

I know, you might ask “Can an unscrupulous merchant sneak through the approval process and cause bad social media reviews for a Bill to Landline company?”

Unfortunately, as it is with all the other methods, the answer is “yes”. It happens. Not all people are trustworthy and occasional a bad merchant might sneak through and cause bad press for the billing company. Today, please be assured that the billing companies are working hard through social media monitoring and engagement to deal with these issues as quickly as possible and to shut down any merchant found to be in violation of their set of standard billing & practices policies, up to and including issuing refunds to the consumer on services and goods not received or not properly authorized.

That aside, the Bill to Landline service offers a great revenue stream to merchants, helping to capture a sale from a consumer who otherwise would have left the checkout page without ever purchasing the digital good.

To find out how Bill to Landline can help grow revenues for your e-commerce company, please contact me at dave.hanron@ildmail.com

ILD Outsource Services Targets Cellular Market

ILD Corp's Outsource division prides itself on delivering the industry's highest level of service, utilizing state of the art facilities to provide automated and live operators to assist in completing collect and credit card calls from pay telephones, hotels, hospitals, universities, and businesses. In today's ever-evolving market, calls to cellular numbers continue to increase and now represent in excess of 50% of the attempted volumes. Traditional billing methods for collect calls to cellular numbers do not apply as the wireless companies have so far refused to enter into similar billing arrangements that the clearinghouses have been able to attain for the land-line Local Exchange Companies. ILD's clearinghouse, ILD Payment Processing, continues to negotiate with the wireless carriers to obtain these agreements. In the interim, Outsource Services continues to explore various methods of completing and billing calls to cellular users. Currently, several beta tests are in process and will hopefully prove successful in our efforts. While details of the beta tests are proprietary, Senior Vice Presient of Outsource Services, Robin Collins recently stated that "It's time we trusted the Consumer to pay their bills". Check back later for further updates on the results of the tests!

ILD Corporation starts new division Social Strategy 1

ILD Corp. has started a new division called Social Strategy 1. Social strategy 1 will provide small to medium size businesses the opportunity to outsource their reputation and brand management needs at a reasonable price. As the internet and smartphone markets continue to expand, fewer consumers are using traditional methods of business research such as yellow pages or newspaper advertisements. More and more consumers are turning to the internet search engines to find the company they're looking for. With this trend, the need to maintain a good, positive business reputation on-line is growing rapidly. Social Strategy 1 will provide monitor of web hits for both positive and negative mentions of a business, have a team of seasoned analysts determine the best approach to engage the consumer, and recommend courses of action for the comapny to take to address the comments. If necessary, the Social Strategy 1 team will even perform the interaction with the consumer on behalf of the business. The Social Strategy team can also assist in search engine optimization (SEO) which helps determine how high on the first pages of the search engine the business appears. For far less than the cost of hiring a full time marketing rep plus providing benifits, contracting with a web-crawler company and the time to respond to all of the mentions on the internet, the Social Strategy 1 team will fullfill all these functions. Contact Dave Hanron @ 781-937-0420 or visit www.social strategy1.com for more information