New and established business owners (soleproprietors, corporations, small and medium sized businesses ) can often benefit from professional business consultation.
It is often helpful to have a third party opinion of a professional that is not closely tied to your business.
Their opinion is unbiased and is purely from the facts that you provide to them and their own assessment of the situation.
In addition, outside professional advice can bring ideas and insights that perhaps you have not considered.
It is much more cost-effective to use consulting services in a pay-as-you-go method as you don’t pay retainers for time and services that you may not need or use
Or, perhaps you need a referral for other types of help – tax preparation, outsourcing bookkeeping, etc.
You will find Small Business Accounting Consultation helpful if you have questions that vary from general to very specific and relate to, for example:
· help deciding on the type of bookkeeping system you should use
· need help in the preparation aspects of your bookkeeping work (working with source documents, file preparation, organization, etc)
· the set-up of your accounting system (Quickbooks, manual or otherwise)that needs fine-tuning and additional help
· the recordkeeping aspects of a bookkeeping system (where to post, what and where)need clarification
· help with the creation of the Chart of Accounts (manual or Quickbooks)
· help with year-end file preparation for your accountant
· direction if you are having difficulty with specific areas of Quickbooks (creating invoices, paying bills, reconciling the bank accounts, etc.)
· help with the advanced features of Quickbooks
· direction with workload, prioritizing and source document entry
· guidance with special circumstances and transactions
· you have ideas but need someone competent and professional to help you with tailor-made solutions
· other general accounting/bookkeeping consultation matters
A professional consultant will take a personalized and encouraging approach to dealing with your small business needs and to help you to deal with the sometimes challenging atmosphere of being in business.
Of course there are many additional projects that an accountant may provide consultation for your business. These areas tend to be substantially more complex and require the insights of a professional that is not only trained but experienced with the more intricate aspects of a particular financial and/or business situation. Don’t underestimate their effectiveness! There are a vast range of interlinking laws, protocols and considerations that only a professional with a particular background can assess to properly help you to make the best decision for your business.
In short, you don’t know – what you don’t know – so even with your most ambitious intentions to understand the decisions in front of you, there are ramifications and consequences to every decision. Be aware that more involved decisions are best served with the insights and suggestions of a professional that have been there and are fully aware of your options and can advise you about the best approach to take.
IT consulting is one of the best things that you can ever do for your business. As you run your day to day operations, there are times where you need to spend money. In terms of marketing, they say you have to spend money in order to make money. This is because you have to be able to attract more people to your business. In terms of IT, you have to spend money to learn how you can save money – all because of new technology.
Technology is blossoming and if you’re not heavily involved in the industry, you may be missing out on a lot that is available to you. Some areas where technology is enhancing businesses are.
Website design
Phone solutions
Cloud services
Email offerings
Efficiency at the desk
Whatever industry you are in, there are benefits to IT consulting. You may learn about new features to introduce into your business where you can reduce labor. By reducing labor, you save money on a weekly basis – and this improves your bottom line. You may learn about software that can improve the efficiency of your sales staff, allowing you to improve sales. This is going to help you earn money and again, improve your bottom line.
By inviting an IT consultant into your operation for a day, they can see how things are running. They may go into the different departments and ask questions of your department heads and of the different employees. This will give them the opportunity to see where things work and where things don’t work. Where things don’t work, they can offer solutions in terms of services, hardware, or software.
You may have no clue as to the amount of technology that can provide you with assistance. A small investment in IT consulting can help to open your eyes to the world of technology in a way that you never knew existed. You can learn about ways to enhance productivity, save labor, and reduce downtime of your website and your internet.
You may find out that IT support is a phone call away. You don’t have to be responsible for all things IT because this is why there are third party companies. They are the ones who can worry about setting up a cloud and adjusting your network infrastructure so that it makes more sense. Forget about what you think you know about technology and tap into it once and for all with a consultant.
IT consulting is the way to make your business run smoother. You don’t want to pass it up because it will allow you to save money, become more profitable, and allow technology to save you time on a day to day basis.
Formed in 1997 and located in Houston, Dallas and Austin Texas and in Dubai, ERGOS is an IT solutions provider that stays ahead of the curve, providing innovative IT services. We provide our clients the kind of service that we would want. ERGOS provides managed IT services, IT infrastructure, Cloud IT and business solutions that Power Your Business and empower your work force. Our three technology divisions, Managed IT Services, Cloud IT Solutions and Business Solutions (Web Hosting and Development, Search Engine Optimization, Business Process Analysis) will address all your IT needs.
With Google playing around with algorithms, the job of an SEO consultant has become tougher. Though there are loads of resources and information available for webmasters on topics related to SEO, with regular updates, Google has made life tough for them.
Vendor/Client Relationship
All this hoopla over Google updates has made it imperative that the relationship between clients and SEO vendors is win-win. For some organizations, it is important that they get proper support and service along with the expected search results too. Further, some others intend to get themselves educated on SEO so that they can bring this work in-house. While some others just outsource this job without any personal involvement and expect the SEO consultant to justify his or her work. This is what is meant by positive relationships. Both sides have to be positively present in the work of SEO for it to become successful.
Finding the Right Local SEO
When relationships are mentioned, it becomes mandatory that you find some local SEO agency, rather than one that is far away and meeting the team in personal is difficult. With many SEO agencies springing up every now and then, this sounds easy. Further, you may have worked in some industry and have built relationships already in the market which can lead you to a good agency. You can find referrals for this too. However, caution is the “key” word here. As mentioned earlier, this is a two way process and hence, finding a company that is good in SEO techniques along with rendering proper support is necessary.
As is the case when finding a new job, finding a good SEO agency too requires proper networking. Further, when you are networked properly, this is also going to act as a booster when you begin your SEO campaign.
A Golden Rule
The consultants you hire for your SEO project need to be honorable and respectful of client needs. Further, this process is true for the clients too. They need to have the same attributes with regards to the consultant. There are times when corporates carry a “baggage” due to bad past experience and act rudely with consultants. However, you need to keep in mind that this will actually spoil your campaign. Though it is true that you may hire someone else, this will kill time and also affect your goals related to brand visibility. This again increases the need of good relationships between clients and vendors. So the golden rule here is “A mutually respectful professional relationship works wonders.”
There are many SEO agencies that are capable of having discussions with clients to exactly determine goals that are realistic. However, as a company, you need to understand that reacting to competition, or falling for an oiled pitch rendered by the consultants are not good for your SEO effort. A good agency and a good client will always work mutually to find goals and plan accordingly. This will finally provide the outcome that is intended when approaching any SEO experts.
The fundamentals of consultative selling are simple, though not easy to implement. You identify your customer’s needs and craft a solution that satisfies them. Consultative sales people educate themselves about their customer’s industry and business. They identify the pressing issues. When calling on the customer, asking questions and probing answers help uncover specific needs and the customer’s underlying pain.
Crafting a solution means customizing or presenting your products and services so that they solve the problem. Consultative sales people present the benefits of their products and services or solution, not just the features. They gain agreements from their customer that their solution solves the problem and then they ask for the order.
However, the best consultative sales people do more. They build a collaborative relationship with their customer.
This is more than building rapport or even building trust. It means restoring hope in the customer’s mind that a solution can be found. And it means instilling confidence that working with the sales person will produce a solution that eases the pain. Without hope the customer may end the conversation, throw up objections or go through the motions of reviewing your proposal, and defer a decision.
Instilling hope and building confidence that collaborating with you will solve the problem, starts with empathy with the customer’s pain. As the psychologist Carl Rodgers put it “Empathy is looking with fresh and un-frightened eyes at the customer’s problem”. The customer draws hope from your confidence in yourself and your company.
Making well-timed and authentic empathic statements and predictions of success instill the hope on an emotional level. Showing testimonials, case studies and research solidifies it on a rational level.
Customers sometimes accept your proposal or presentation, agree that it is a good one and do nothing. To get them to take action they must feel confident that the solution will work, that the return on investment (ROI) is worthwhile and that the risks of failure are mitigated. When writing and presenting your solution you must address ROI and risk, even if your customer has not expressed them as needs. The more specific and transparent your ROI calculations are the better. Concreteness breeds credibility. Address risk by defining the risks and offering a mitigation plan for each. A PowerPoint slide with a simple table does this effectively. Be sure to get your customer’s agreement that you have identified all the risks and addressed them adequately.
Add these skills and strategies of collaboration, instilling hope, predicting ROI and mitigating risk to your consultative approach and watch your win ratio soar.