Six Sigma Blogs

With the Holiday Season being full of shopping, house cleaning, attending parties, hosting parties, family needs and more, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. While everyone seems to love the festivities, I’m sure most of us are glad they are over and we can finally breath.

Actually, I think most people feel overwhelmed a good majority of the time, regardless of the time of year. There is so much commanding our attention that it can be extremely difficult to stay focused and get things done.

It’s been said that over 3,000 advertising messages are brought to our attention a day. With all of these messages comes the skill of tuning things out around us, which we have perfected.

We communicate faster than ever. Our inboxes are constantly at full capacity. Our cell phones constantly chirping breaking our focus. You may have said “The check is in the mail,” but not in today’s world! It barely means a thing now. In fact, newer generations might not even know what that means.

Because this this lightening fast lifestyle, you indefinitely have customers, patients or clients who want things done instantly. Not tomorrow or the next day, but this minute. This type of service is expected in this life and it’s also expected that we can provide it.

It’s no wonder we feel like we can’t keep up! We can’t!

Luckily, our clients seem to be in the same boat and can’t get their work load completed on time either. When our clients initially call us, it’s because they are looking for a quick fix to their problems. They want a solution to their marketing woes so they can focus on what’s really important to them, which is whatever is what they do best and that’s not necessarily marketing. They want to be able to pass on the work and have someone else take charge and get it done. Our customers want their marketing strategy to be stress-free, cost effective and easy. They don’t want any worry, hassles or excuses.

This is something all clients want, even yours. Provide an EASY solution to your clients hurdles. Show your clients how you can save them money, worry, time, stress, blood, sweat and tears with whatever it is you specialize in. We make our clients’ lives EASIER with our Ready2Go Client Contact. We can also provide EXTREME EASE to their marketing with our one-on-one consulting.

Provide your clients, patients and customers with an EASY solution and show them how EASY you are to work with. You will be their business angel in disguise. This will make your life and their life EASIER and HAPPIER.

Kathy Jiamboi has 14+ years expertise in Relationship and Direct Response Marketing and is CEO of Creativedge Marketing and Ready2Go Client Contact, in Cleveland, Ohio. Ready2Go Client Contact, a done for you program allows her customers to smoothly and swiftly build client affinity. She provides FREE expert marketing tips to anyone looking to get more customers.

Besides a satisfied current customer, the next easiest person to sell your products and services to is a referral. Referrals can be an inexpensive source of new revenue. They come to you pre-qualified and pre-sold, will typically spend more money, and will refer others to you since they were referred.

So how do you get them? The best and easiest way to get a referral is to ask for them when the client is most receptive. Most often this time is when they are “basking in the glory” of their purchase. That sounds simple. Yet many businesses don’t take advantage of this untapped “word of mouth” resource.

The best way to gain referrals is to put a multi-step referral process into place within your business.

First, make a list of all of the ways you can communicate to everyone you are in contact with, ie: friends, family, clients, vendors, competitors, groups you are a member of, etc. Then, devise how you will connect with these groups and ask for referrals. If you can establish a few processes of getting referrals, you will receive far more than you are now. Think about how that might effect your business. Also, think about how much time and money you will save from not having to prospect and market to new clients.

Here are a few ideas to get referrals-

Give something for the referral. If you can’t give something away, offer a free service or offer to make a donation to a their favorite charity in their name.

Give your new referral services or products at discount on behalf of the person who referred them.

After your client has provided you with a specific number of referrals, offer them a special deal or discount.

Have your clients agree that if they are 100% satisfied at the end of their transaction that they will provide you with two referrals. But don’t forget to follow up on their promise!

Create a list of business and/or individuals you may want to do business with and see who among your circle can introduce you to them or better yet refer your services to them.

Ask your clients to pass out cards with their name on it to their friends and family highlighting your services. Each time a card is redeemed, your referrer receives a reward or discount towards their future business with you.

Send your client some type of thank you gift to their office. When others see what they have received, they will inquire, leading to referrals.

Offer a stepping-stone referral plan. The more referrals the client provides, the more rewards they receive. This works well because usually if a client refers once, they will refer again.

There’s a chance a lot of your business is already coming from “word of mouth.” With a referral plan implemented, this gives you the opportunity with a inexpensive, easy way to get new business and increase business and profits.

Is your business utilizing a referral program right now? If it’s bringing you success, we’d love to hear about it.

Kathy Jiamboi has 14+ years expertise in Relationship and Direct Response Marketing and is President of Creativedge Marketing and Ready2Go Client Contact, in Cleveland, Ohio. Ready2Go Client Contact, a done for you program, allows her clients to simply and swiftly boost client affinity. She provides FREE expert marketing tips to anyone looking to gain more clients.

Each group needs a good mix of personnel with diverse experience and with different skill sets to be able to meet the ever changing company demands. In this kind of a situation, conflicts or arguments can be a frequent occurrence due to the varied approaches and distinct thinking of various team members. You could be a business coach, a family lawyer or a printer repairs specialist, you will still experience these kinds of issues inside your organisation.

However, good business coaches can ensure that this isn’t a worrisome circumstance and if acknowledged and treated in the correct way by the boss, may be minimized.

Conflict resolution at the earliest possible point in time will be necessary since frequently a little work related conflict may develop into inter-personal issues and grow to be bigger and bigger, and in the interim efficiency can be significantly damaged.

A good way to resolve conflicts is to infuse the principle of objectivity, that gives one the perspective to analyze the situation in a way that keeps the concern of both sides in mind, while arriving at a conclusion or determination. The exercise of practicing detachment gives you sufficient time so as not toreact impulsively and thereby opens doors to fair and enduring relationships, both on the personal as well as corporate levels.

You usually have the choice of depending on outside help to deal with situations and to deal with conflicts, nonetheless, it’s important to develop your own capacity to be able of sensing and attending to conflicts before they damage the institution as a whole. This not only is a less expensive solution but also aids in fast resolution. Business mentors who may guide you towards ways to resolve such circumstances on your own ought to be consulted.

To grow and be effective in a business isn’t a very simple process and offers its own problems that will need to be continually addressed. In this situation, it is important to possess a cohesive unit of employees prepared to take on new challenges. Concerns such as conflicts among workers etc will not find their way in and cause other problems if a healthy atmosphere is fostered among team members.

Visit our site business coach site. Let us know what you think.

Do you have a sales report due or an important memo that needs to be sent off but you are strapped for time? Did you plan on writing up a report but for one reason or another find yourself without access to word processing software? This is where a dictation service will come in quite handy and help your business by getting these documents out on time.

Many contemporary dictation services offer help electronically via the internet. Simply take a device with recording capabilities like a PDA, cell phone, microphone-equipped computer, or a voice recorder and speak your report into it. Create an audio file from this and provide the dictation service with it so that it can be transcribed into a functional email by the dictation service. The service can send it back to you and to all of the pertinent parties in need of the document. It is easy to see the benefits of this because everything from illness to malfunctioning vehicles can keep us from making it to work and making a memo. A dictation service can be reached from anyplace receiving internet or telephone connections.

Another benefit of utilizing a dictation service is that you are receiving revisions and proofreading as part of the deal. The transcribers of any dictation service worth its salt will correct any grammatical errors in the comments you leave. You of course want your business to appear professional as well as come across as well spoken to colleagues, and a dictation service will help you with this. Best of all, you don’t have to find someone on staff to use up valuable time going over your reports when they could be productive elsewhere.

One of the biggest advantages to using a dictation service is the fact that you have remote access. Documents can be dictated from anywhere a phone or internet is available to the user, but account administrators can keep track of usage. By monitoring who uses the service and how often it is being used, its application can be customized accordingly. It would be unwise to pay for a dictation service package that accommodates more users than it has to. Your business needs to pay only for how much and how often the dictation service is utilized.

The bottom line is that a dictation service will save your business time and money. Many users will appreciate the convenience and accessibility. A dictation service will produce professional documents for you as well.

Read On : Dictation Company

Do you know what it takes to be a successful business owner? A lot of time and effort goes into running a small business. Many people considering entrepreneurship have no idea of the amount it takes.

Although these tasks overwhelm an individual easily, they can be done. But how exactly can you make juggling these tasks easier?

As the owner, you may like certain tasks better than others, so those won’t be as dreadful for you and you may breeze through them. Other tasks which you may dislike won’t be as easy for you to get through unfortunately.

Each task is crucial to the success of the small business and should not be avoided. Now we will discuss how you can get these task accomplished.

First you need to set up processes for your business. Figure out how to best organize yourself, your office and your business.

Make a list of the jobs and tasks that is needed to keep your business going and determine when each must be done. If you have employees working under you, you should decide who is going to do what. However, if you are the only part of your company, then obviously all tasks will land on your shoulders but it’s a good idea to decide if it would be worth it to hire someone.

On your calendar you should write down all of your least favorite tasks to ensure that actually get done. Schedule those tasks for the time of the day that you know you are best at working. Just make sure to stick to the calendar.

Cross these tasks off your to do list and also get yourself an organization chart to keep yourself organized as best you can. Having these additional items will help get your business running smoothly and a little less hectic.

Besides management, this writer also frequently pens articles on metallic wall paint and metallic spray paint.

Ever asked yourself just how some small company owners and managers continually appear cool and in control, frequently getting away in plenty of time for weekends? But many other company managers tend to be continuously in crisis mode, fighting fires, attending to the tyranny of the urgent and even working 70 hour weeks. Every excellent business coaching system lays a major emphasis on personal time management skills as one of the points which will assist a business owner to attain mastery of their company as well as their own life.

The following are a handful of the time management skills that will assist you to become a successful company owner or manager:

Be Organized - Being organized and structured will be the very first step to dealing with ones own time in a better way. Have your month-to-month work schedule drawn up well ahead of the time and have a proper scheduler. Constantly keep an organizer on hand and program your tasks appropriately. Prioritize the assignments at hand. Develop a list of things to do every day and record all things to do irrespective of their particular size. Create a new log book to log your actions and review this log book each and every week to find the exercises that are squandering your time. Make an effort to get rid of the unproductive time wasting pursuits from your schedule.

Action Plan - Document the action plan of the day around the start of each and every day. You can do this either following your morning work out or you can chart it the previous night prior to going to bed.

Delegation - Conserve as much time as achievable through delegating your chores to other people. Issues which do not need your instant attention can be passed over to your subordinates and other assistants. However at the same time, keep these people motivated to ensure that they take responsibility of the task allocated to them. Recognize them for their contribution properly.

Procrastination - This is really a very bad factor in time management. Complete the job at the time you have timetabled it to be carried out and do not postpone it. Always try to beat the work deadlines, instead of just achieving them.

Tackling the work - Undertake the most challenging work initially and then do the straightforward work. When you finish off the hard jobs first, you will be left with a good deal of time for you to complete the small simple jobs. Additionally you will be able to do the difficult tasks more quickly if you understand their particular importance and prioritize effectively.

Negative thoughts - Keep clear of any negative thoughts and stay apart from negative individuals. Negative thinking saps your energy and results in you being too exhausted to do anything. Maintain a constructive perspective on your work and routine.

Want to find out more about the value of business coaching? Visit our site business coach site. Let us know what you think.

Ever asked yourself just how some small company owners and managers continually appear cool and in control, frequently getting away in plenty of time for weekends and travel? But many other company managers tend to be continuously in crisis mode, fighting fires, attending to the tyranny of the urgent and even working 70 hour weeks. Every excellent business coaching system lays a major emphasis on personal time management skills as one of the points which will assist a business owner to attain mastery of their company as well as their own life.

The following are a handful of the time management skills that will assist you to become a successful company owner or manager:

Be Organized - Being organized and structured may be the very first move to dealing with your time in a better way. Have your month-to-month calendar chalked out well ahead of the time and use a proper scheduler. Constantly maintain an organizer on hand and program your duties accordingly. Prioritize the jobs at hand. Create a checklist of items to do each and every day and jot down all activities regardless of their size. Make a log book to keep track of your actions and evaluate this log book each and every seven days to discover the exercises which are wasting your time. Make an effort to remove the useless time wasting pursuits out of your schedule.

Action Plan - Document the action plan of the day around the start of each and every day. You can do this either following your morning work out or you can chart it the previous night prior to going to bed.

Delegation - Conserve as much time as achievable by delegating your own tasks to others. Things that do not require your immediate consideration could be passed over to your subordinates and other co-workers. But at the same time, keep them motivated making sure that they take responsibility in the task allotted to them. Recognize them for their contribution appropriately.

Procrastination - This is really a very bad factor in time management. Complete the job at the time you have timetabled it to be carried out and do not postpone it. Always try to beat the work deadlines, instead of just achieving them.

Tackling the work - Take up the most difficult job initially and after that do the easy work. If you finish off the difficult jobs first, you will be left with loads of time for you to finish the little simple jobs. Additionally you will be able to accomplish the hard jobs more quickly if you know their particular importance and prioritize effectively.

Negative thoughts - Stay clear of any kind of negative thoughts and also remain away from negative individuals. Negative thinking saps your energy and leaves you too worn out to accomplish anything. Maintain a constructive outlook on your work and routine.

Want to find out more about the value of business coaching? Visit our site business coach site. Let us know what you think.

Most people do not enjoy cleaning their own windows, and for good reason. However, hiring someone else to complete this task for you can be quite expensive and unnecessary. In order to prevent hiring someone else you should simply consider the following window cleaning secrets of the trade and complete the simple task yourself.

Believe it or not there are good days and bad days for washing windows. The best day for washing your windows is when it is slightly overcast outside. The worst day for washing your windows would be on a sunny day because it will rapidly dry your window cleaner. This is something that you really do not want to have happen because it will cause streaks to remain left on your windows.

Choosing the right cleaner also plays a significant role. This is because there are several multipurpose cleaners that say that may be used on glass. However, this is not the case. Multipurpose cleaners leave a blurry look on the mirrors and glass that you will wish were not there.

You will not want to use a wash cloth to complete this process. Wash clothes will keep all of the germs that you are trying to eliminate within it and actually spread them around more. In order to prevent this idea from happening, you will want to use a squeegee rather than a wash cloth.

Another tip of the trade is completing your work from top to bottom. This is helpful because it helps to prevent from disturbing your freshly washed area. Surprisingly, many people do not realize that this needs to take place.

The insides of your windows will need to be washed as well. Many people do not remember this idea when they are cleaning their windows. When you do get around to cleaning the insides of the windows you will want to be sure to control the amount of sanitizer you are using so that it does not spread to the rest of your house.

You will never want to wash your windows, however you can make the process more efficient. The simple steps listed above are easy to follow and will cut down your work time a great deal. Typically you would have to learn these ideas by trial and error, but you will not longer have to go through that process. Overall, you will be happier with your finished product in less time. This will be helpful to both you and your family because you will be more willing to clean the windows more often. Essentially this is the most important part of window cleaning.

Want the inside skinny on the best kept window cleaning services secrets of the trade ? Get it instantly in our exclusive guide to window cleaning service in London .

If your business or practice still utilizes old-fashioned paper-based appointment calendars or books, it’s time to move into the digital age. You can find the best appointment scheduling software for your office’s needs, and once you or your employees learn how to use it you’ll wonder why you ever tried anything else.

Obviously, appointment-scheduling software can keep track of client appointments and deadlines, but you can also use it in many other ways. As one example, you can use appointment-scheduling software to set up client or associate contact profiles by category. You may also want to set up profiles for contacts of organizational affiliates, vendors, and anybody else you need to contact during the course of business. It’s also useful if you want to create reports or manage projects.

If you have your business in more than one location, you can set it up so that you can utilize both wide area and local networks. Then, you can manage schedules for your multiple offices, no matter where you are physically. You can also take a look at everyone’s schedules all at once, no matter where they are, and then send out notifications when you want to schedule meeting times, for example. If you need to update employees or associates about important information, or you need to set out a document for everyone to review prior to a meeting, you can use your appointment scheduling software to manage those tasks for you.

That’s just part of what it can do for you, though. Because of its calendar versatility, you’ve got endless choices. You can set up so that it shows monthly, weekly, or even daily views. You can also use it so that it shows a standard appointment time increment that suits your needs best.

For example, if you run a doctor’s office, maybe you’ll need 15-minute increments per patient during normal office hours. However, if you need longer appointment blocks during hospital rounds, you can customize settings so that these blocks of time are marked out. Or, maybe you are a physical therapist and you spend an hour with each of your clients. The software can use time increments like 15 minutes or half an hour. If a patient reschedules, office personnel can drag and drop the rescheduled appointment to another timeslot, with visual verification when the drag and drop feature is used.

You can also maximize efficiency and scheduling by giving different colors to different clients, or types of clients. If you want to take a look at appointment calendars for various associates, you can retrieve them so that they are displayed side-by-side or individually.

With most appointment scheduling software, you can import data from existing databases to streamline the process. For example, if you have a list of prospective contacts on computer that you met at a seminar or sales conference, and you want to put them into your address book, you can use ASCII text functions that will define fields for you, such as a client first and last name, physical address, phone number and so on — as long as you put a comma between each field. You can also simply import data from a common spreadsheet format. With that, you can transfer a list of clients into your address book with just a click. Then, if you want to contact them or set up appointments, the data is right there for you to use.

Keeping track of employee productivity may also be an important part of your business. With this task, appointment scheduling software shows each associate’s available time, and then will show you how that associate has scheduled his or her appointments. This will show you how much time the associate was actually being productive. That’s very vital as a manager, as you can imagine. It’s especially useful if you need to supervise staff or if salary increases are about to come up for review.

Office efficiency can also be maximized if you instruct the software to send out reminders or send out invoices to particular customers. Good appointment scheduling software applications will give you simple word processing functions so that you can create templates for messages you use regularly. That means with just a couple of clicks of your mouse, you can create messages to send to customers or clients, depending on the task. Perhaps you want to remind a client of next week’s appointment, as one example. You can pretty much do whatever you need to, based upon your needs. Let’s say, for example, that you work in a physician’s office and you need to remind a specific group of associates before the next medical in-service date comes about.

These are just some of the advantages appointment-scheduling software can give you; similarly, if you give this software to everyone in your company as a manager or employer, you’re going to gain productivity there, too. This type of software will let employees access information from any location, and even let more than one staff member use it simultaneously. If you’re serious about improving productivity, or if you are a project manager who needs to keep on top of things, appointment scheduling software can make you much more effective and efficient.

Suzzi S Schmitz specializes in helping small businesses manage their calendar, reduce scheduling headaches, increase revenue and productivity, and improve customer loyalty, thru our networkable appointment scheduling software. Our appointment scheduling software is available in a single user\network version.

It’s important to know how many physicians your medical billing company serves, because it gives you an idea of the company’s scale — and in this industry, scale is key.

For instance, If a $150,000 per year billing system administrator is required, then a medical claims billing company with 200 clients only needs each of its client to carry $750 per year of that person’s cost. If a practice of four providers employed this person, then each provider would need to carry $37,500 per year of that person’s cost; this is the value of scale. A medical practice can achieve significant advantages by leveraging the superior scale of a mid- to large-sized medical insurance billing company.

A good medical company uses resources and technology that stand-alone medical practices can’t afford to support. Here are some examples of such resources and technology:

- A state-of-the-art billing system, offering advanced reporting and claim management capabilities. Such systems are often too expensive for a small to medium sized medical practice to afford; so they select a sub-standard system that they can afford.

- A pre-submission claim scrubber that applies the payers’ adjudication rules before the claims ever leave the medical insurance billing services four walls.

- Competent billing system managers, who stay up-to-date with the regularly-changing rules used by payers. A good system manager can help you collect on claims caught up in the system because of changing rules.

- Advanced collection tools, such as predicting payment yields from patients (such as the amount the patient owes times the likelihood they’ll pay).

- Deep rosters that won’t slow down when the company loses a single employee (which most practices are likely to experience).

- A dedicated group of individuals that follow-up on claims that have not had a response from the payer within a reasonable time frame.

These and other advantages show that most medical practices can’t afford the personnel and technology to match the services that a good, properly scaled medical billing company provides.

Most of the costs of maintaining these technologies and procedures are fixed, so medical billing companies tend to distribute the costs among their clients. This is why bigger medical billing companies can afford to serve practices better than smaller ones. Smaller medical billing companies may struggle to simply keep up with developing industry technology.

In conclusion, selecting a medical claims billing company that has the scale to deploy sophisticated technology and processes can provide the average medical practice a huge advantage in terms of their ability to do battle with the payers that are working hard to keep every penny they can.

Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II