Archive for March, 2012

Does Your Business Telephone Number Show Up Correctly in a Google Search? Here’s How to Check it (and Fix it…)

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin
Is-your-phone-number-produced-when-your-business-name-is-google-searched

The whole point of having a business phone number and a published listing is so people can call you and do business with you.

But until customers and prospects commit your phone number to memory or your business phone number earns a spot on their speed dial list, how do you suppose they’re going to find your number?

Pull out the latest 10-pound printed phone book from their desk drawer – no.

They’ll Google it, if course.

But does your business phone number, your address and a little map pop up as the top listing when your business name is Googled by customers and prospects?

If not, you need to fix that. It doesn’t cost anything and it’s pretty simple to do

 

Google Business  Listings 101

To see an example of what a semi-proper Google listing should look like, Google search “ATEL Communications”.

Below is an example of what this search delivered the day I wrote this blog post. Click on the image to see it bigger.

Atel-communications-google-search

If you click the image above to see the normal size presentation of this Google search, you’ll see what is delivered.  In addition to the address, phone number and a map, you’ll see searchers are also provided with a web link to the business website as well as a list of business reviews.

Not only does a search result like this produce your phone number, it reaffirms to your customers and prospects that you really are in business. If your competitors Google business listing looks this good but yours does not, follow the simple steps that follow.

 

Google-places

Step 1:  Go to Google.com/Places

This is where you can edit your listing if someone’s already created it or initiate the listing if it does not yet exist. (You can also get to this starting point at Google.com/Local/Add or Google.com/Maps.

 

Step 2:  Follow the Listing Directions

You can put in all the details about your business address, your phone number and a description along with your web address. You can also add photos and a video.

To ensure that only you can create a listing for your business, after completing your free business listing you need to wait about two weeks to receive a postcard in the mail from Google with a confirmation PIN to finalize the listing.

 

Use-a-card-like-this-to-solicit-customer-reviews

Step 3:  Promote Your Listing & Solicit Customer Reviews

If you run a B2C (business to consumer) type business (dentist, tax returns, veterinary, etc.) you definitely want to solicit reviews by asking your customers to scan a QR code with their cell phone or by giving them a card with a short link to your Google Places page.

Google frowns on “paying for” customer reviews with coupons or discounts but setting up a computer “review station” in your office waiting room appears to be acceptable.

While soliciting reviews might seem a little bit scary for businesses that annoy as many customers as they make happy, once you are successful getting your phone number to pop up in a Google search of your business name you certainly do not want it to look like none of your customers care enough about your business to give it a rating.

To get some good reviews started, send out a letter or email to all your best customers and ask them to give you an honest review.

To avoid negative published reviews you might want to invest $25 per month in a service like TalkBin from Google that allows customers to immediately communicate via text or email with the people in your business in charge of making customers happy.

 

Other Resources to Consider

I found the following when writing this post.  If you’re really interested in taking your “local search marketing” to the next level you certainly want to make sure your marketing person is all over this stuff.

Blumenthal’s Blog I don’t know who writes this but they are all over “local search”. Here’s a specific blog post that summarizes what the blog author thinks has been most important in 2011.

TalkBin by Google If you’re serious about immediate customer feedback while there’s still time to fix a problem (so you don’t read unhappy reviews on the web about your business later) then this seems like a great program.

Customer Lobby This appears to be an online customer review publishing service you pay for ($69/mo after $199 setup). Click here to read a PDF overview of the service.

Using QR Codes to Get Reviews This is written by an SEO specialist who gives a step-by-step instructions for getting reviews from “off line” customers

Yelp A large review site.

Google+ For Business After getting on Google Local you should probably sign your business up for a Google+ site as Google seems to be serious about taking on Facebook and other review sites. Click here to view “9 ways Google+ can help your business”. Here’s another good post on the same subject

Express Update This portal feeds WhitePages.com & 411.com

Yext This site claims to make sure all the Internet business search engines (other than Google) have the right listing for your business

 

 

 

Want to Keep Competitors From Talking to Your Best Customers? Talk to them more yourself via web conferencing!

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin

Talk-to-your-customers-more-with-web-conferencing

When your best customers don’t have any problems they don’t want to talk to any salesperson.

When they do have a problem they want to talk to the very next sales person they think might be able to solve their problem.

And that’s a BIG problem — for you!

 

Web Conferencing Keeps Your Best Salespeople in Front of Your Best Customers

Your main and ongoing advantage over your competitors when it comes to your customer’s limited attention span for “sales pitches” on new solutions or solution upgrades is that your best customers have already purchased from you and probably even like you.

While your “after sale margins” on one customer or another may not afford you the ability to have your best salespeople physically visit “sold customers” after the sale, you can achieve almost the same effect with a monthly “lunch and learn” webinar that you can invite all your best customers to dial-into via their computers or phones.

In the comfort of their own offices, your clients and prospects can see the latest and greatest solutions that you and your vendors are bringing to market. Even an emailed or phoned invitation to your customers to register them for a monthly solution webinar is another “touch” that re-establishes your credibility and expertise with customers you’ve already sold to and prospects you’ve already presented to.

If your sales people are too busy or too shy to get on your own monthly customer “lunch and learn” webinar invite your best suppliers or vendors to pony up one of their sales people for a short 10-slide solution webinar that showcases a recent customer case study. (more…)

What To Do When Public Business Internet Providers Fail? Put Your Business on a Metro Ethernet or MPLS Private Network

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin

Ready-for-a-private-business-network-275

This past week it was reported that business customers around the globe suffered unexpected network service outages when two of the largest public Internet provers, Level3 and Time Warner, encountered routing problems with their Juniper Network hardware devices.

The outage only appeared to last for less than an hour but millions were affected in the United States and Europe.

 

Problems for Multi-Location Businesses

The public Internet being down for an hour or a day is certainly problematic for any business that relies on access to public business solutions like SalesForce or similar services.

Public Internet outages are doubly problematic though for multi-location businesses that use the public internet to connect their offices over a VPN (“virtual private network”) that creates a “private tunnel” but still uses the public Internet for the connection.

For multi-location businesses using the public Internet for there wide area network VPNs, when the public Internet goes down, so does their access to all their other offices.


Private Business Networks vs. Public Internet VPNs

Combining the public Internet with VPNs was seen by many multi-location businesses as “step one” of a very good idea.  Step two was to replicate the VPN using data transport facilities that do not use the public Internet.  Viola! Private business networks were born.

While point-to-point private networks have been around forever, their high cost and lack of flexibility was what drove multi-location business networks to VPNs on the public Internet.

With today’s MPLS and “metro Ethernet” solutions however, multi-location businesses can once again enjoy the security they had with expensive point-to-point circuits along with the flexibility, cost savings and convenience of using a network that someone else owns and maintains.

 

Which Private Business Network to Use?

Just as multiple phone companies were stringing phone wires down every street of every large city at the turn of the last century, today multiple telecom companies are building out their own private data networks for their multi-location business customers to securely connect to one another without touching the public Internet.

The best way to determine which telecom company and private network is best for you is to consult ATEL. We know which companies are providing the best service at the best price.

ATEL also knows which carriers can be mixed and matched if that’s possible. Integrating different networks is sometimes required when even the largest telecom company does not have a private network that touches every location a larger business might have.

Is the Public Internet a Bad Place for your Business Internet Traffic?

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin

When I sold my first Internet T-1 to a business customers a decade ago I was amazed that a business would spend over $800 a month to have their data “go really fast” as compared to what they would get with a slower dial-up Internet connection. Since that first “DIA” (dedicated Internet access) sale of mine the cost of a similar 1.5 meg business T-1 connection to the Internet has plummeted to under $300. Why?

I don’t claim to really know why. More capacity, more fiber, more competitors? But does it really matter? As a business owner myself I’m pretty happy that my business phone calling costs is a fraction of what it used to be. And while my data costs are higher than what I used to spend with dial-up Internet, I now appear to have access to more Internet bandwidth than I can use over a consumer grade Verizon FiOS fiber connection out of my home office.

Is my business at risk?

Maybe – since I distribute a lot of audio, video and use VoIP phone service.

Everything seems fine now but where will I be in a year? Will all my clients be able to view my videos, listen to my audios or even understand me when I speak to them on the phone? I pay for an Internet connection to the “public Internet” but I don’t believe I’m paying for the Internet myself. I know when I fill my car with gas, 18 cents of every gallon goes to highway taxes to maintain the nation’s highways, but am I paying business taxes somewhere to ensure the Internet stays robust enough so my business Internet traffic is not impeded in any way? I really don’t know – but the fact that I’m running my business Internet traffic over the public Internet means I likely won’t have much to say about it if and when something goes wrong.

So what do I advise my business clients to do with their business Internet traffic? Pay attention to A) what your Internet traffic consists of, B) how it gets from one place to another and, C) is it a problem if it gets there slow? (more…)

Should You Backup Your Critical Business Data in “the Cloud”? Can you afford a cheap solution?

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin

Can-you-afford-a-cheap-data-backup-solution

Steve-handelman-atel-7

As a telecom consultant and “VAR” (value added reseller) for my clients, I’m always on the lookout for new technology solutions I can offer my business customers.

By examining everything that comes along, I’m also in a position to consult with my customers when they get an offer from someone else that seems way too good to be true — like what appears to be an almost unlimited amount of cloud backup storage for next to nothing.

 

Who Does the Backup & How It’s Tested is More Important than Price

I recently ran across an interesting opportunity to resell “unlimited” cloud backup storage to my business customers for just $59 per month.  Now this seems like a pretty killer deal at face value.  For just $59 per month I could give all my telecom consulting business clients “free data backup”.

Who-is-backing-up-your-dataOr could I?

Hardrives “in the cloud” must be pretty cheap. I know this because big companies like Google sell me an extra 20 Gigs of storage a year for my Google Apps email storage for just $5 per year.

I’m pretty happy having 6 years and 60,000 old emails stored with Google because Google’s a pretty big company and I’m fairly confident they know how to build and manage a data server farm. (And on top of that, backing up one user’s email is fairly simple.)

But what about backing up “all the data” for “all your users”?

The biggest expense in cloud backup is not the cost of the actual hardrive sitting in a cloud somewhere.  The biggest expense is making sure a human that knows what they’re doing is backing up your critical business data properly (and not overwriting good backups with bad backups) so that when you need to restore your data, your backup data set is not corrupted.

 

So Who Are You Going to Trust?

While it appears that I can do it for you for practically free as we learned above, I’m thinking that maybe your best bet is to let me introduce you to the technology partners that have made proper cloud data storage backup part of their business.

Back in 2010, Bandwave Systems, a technology partner we do business with rolled out an online data backup solution after evaluating most of the “almost free” cloud backup solutions on the market like Mozy, Livedrive and others.

After analyzing all the possible solutions they came to the conclusion that the “human interface” part of the data backup solution was the key to success. Does the person doing the backup know what they’re doing, do they have access to competent live human support and are they interfacing with the solution using online displays that make the job easier to do right (and harder to do wrong)?

Since first looking into which vendors are best suited to manage our clients’ cloud backup, we’ve met others who can do a competent job as well and are trusted and recommended by us.

 

Call ATEL for a “Cloud Storage” Solution Review for Your Company

Thinking cloud storage for your critical business data? Give us a call so we can get you connected to the right cloud data backup providers – at a low price you can actually afford!

Will “Desktop-as-a-Service” or the “Virtual Desktop” Eliminate Your Need to Ever Buy Another Server?

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin

Desktop-vertualization-desktop-as-a-service

Steve-handelman-atel-7

For over the past twenty years I’ve been a business consultant helping my clients with their telecom decisions. For the majority of these two decades that’s meant choosing the best business phone system or the right local phone service provider.

For the past decade I’ve focused on helping my clients choose the right wide area data networks (WANs) like MPLS or metro Ethernet to connect multiple office locations across the country.

Now that many of my clients have robust data networks in place they are discovering that they no longer need to keep all their computer network servers in their own office spaces – often the most dangerous place for them to be.

With ample bandwidth and network security in place, many of my clients are looking to place their application critical servers in a public or private colocation or data center facility that better protects the servers from a multitude of dangers.

Still other clients are looking to entirely eliminate their need to even own servers. For them, computing is seen as a utility much in the same way as their electric lights or dial-tone.  They don’t need to own a phone company to make a phone call, nor do they need to own a power plant to illuminate their office. So many are now asking, “Why am I owning and maintaining all these servers when all I want to do is ‘compute’”? (more…)

Is an Employee “Out to Lunch”? This NEC Unified Communications “Presence” Video Shows You…

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin
Unified-communications-presence-screenshot-nec-UNIVERGE-SV8100

Steve-handelman-atel-7

Many ATEL customers already have or are considering the NEC Univerge SV8100 phone system.

Below is a video that simply shows how the unified communications “presence” feature works.

When watching the video be sure and click the “full screen” icon in the lower right hand corner.

 

What’s “Presence”?

When I first started selling business office phone systems 30 years ago, the phone on your desk helped you make and receive phone calls.

Today the desk phone is a “unified communications” device that is integral to the idea that all your customers and employees can experience “single call resolution” because between 8am and 5pm all “on the clock” employees can be found and contacted no matter where they are in or out of your office.

“Presence” is the knowledge of where all your employees are at any given time and what their “status” is (can they take a call to help a customer or prospect.) When a modern UC enabled phone system can report the “presence” (or availability) of an out-of-the-office employee to take a customer call and then connect that available employee to the customer via smart-phone or home-office phone, presence is enabling that business owner to sell more without having to hire more!

“Single call resolution” via phone call, instant message or conference call ensures that your customer issues and sales opportunities are handled both efficiently and profitably. It is a voice and data convergence technology that works by integrating your phone system with your computer network. (more…)

What are the Benefits of Connecting Your Business to “the Cloud”? How do you choose a business cloud consultant?

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by admin

Should-your-business-be-connected-to-the-cloud

Steve-handelman-atel-7

In all the years I’ve been helping business customers choose telecom and technology solutions I’ve never had a customer call and say, “I need some cloud” or “Connect me to the cloud” or simply, “Cloud me, baby!”

When I have suggested to clients that their next technology solution can be provided to them from “the cloud” though some have asked, “What the heck are you talking about!”

Following is the simplest answer that I’ve ever come up with for the question “what’s the cloud?”

“The cloud is actually a windowless building someplace that’s built for the comfort of computers instead of people. One of the comfortable computers in the cloud is the computer that makes the ‘call waiting’ feature on your phone work. The cloud can accommodate almost any business computer that can help your business do almost anything.”

 

What Parts of Your Business Benefit from a “Cloud Connection”?

Maybe some, maybe none, maybe all.  The decision really boils down to your your thoughts as a business owner around “convenience, cost and security”.

Convenience – Can you conveniently access your business email account from any computer or smartphone? How about your accounting software or customer records? Would your salespeople be able to sell more prospects or would your customers service people be able to serve more clients if accessing your critical business information was more convenient? (more…)

 

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