Your professional back office, cheap effective tips

Just as you have a professional approach and persona as part of your on-line presence the same applies to any back office functions you may have to support your on-line activities.

It’s no good spending a lot of time, effort and money in your on-line world if you let yourself down subsequently with poor physical product delivery, handling of materials and so on.

So a few simple tips;

Snail Mail
When writing snail mail letters it’s always better to individually address envelopes, look at all those personalised mail shots you have. But did you notice the takeaway, the timesaving professional element you can utilise.
Nope. Well it’s simple, its window envelopes. You prepare your letter using a template, keeping the address details in the window area, you then fold in half to fit the envelope, then you can hit the post.

No more typing on the envelope or printing address labels, and then trying to match label / recipient.

Invoices / Delivery notes
Printing invoices and delivery labels to match your product shipments can become a bit of a chore. Mixing and matching what documentation goes with what can get confusing.

So what do you do, well when you had a delivery from Amazon did you notice the delivery note was a single piece of paper that included an area where a self adhesive label had been removed from. That self adhesive label was then attached to the outside of the box with your address details on it.

These address details were duplicated from the details further up the page when the invoice was printed. So the answer is use a template to print and print on these integrated paper and label pages for your invoicing and shipping. Look for local stockists of these forms; I have my supplies locally from Integrated Labels.

A fax machine
Although they may be a bit out of fashion get a fax number. Most people still like to have somewhere to send something physical, it confirms your existence.

So subscribe to one of the on-line fax services. You get your own fax number, when any faxes are sent to you they arrive in your assigned email address as jpeg image you can just print out. The service is supported by the money made out of the incoming call.

Low cost marketing materials.
Now where do you get these? Well it’s easy enough to sign up to one of the many promotional material companies who run on the ‘special offer’ premise.

I use Vistaprint and have obtained business cards, flyers, window stickers all for almost nothing. Sure they may be expensive if I was to buy them direct in one lot, but if you can afford to wait for the special offers and you can save a bundle.

Virtual secretary services
There is a definite advantage to having someone on the end of a phone or available to answer emails live. You probably won’t be able to do it since you will be developing your business, in a meeting, or may be on holiday. So an extra pair of hands can be invaluable in ensuring you don’t miss any potential business opportunities.

Many companies offer what’s called a virtual secretarial service, where you get a unique phone number that is answered in your ‘corporate style’ by the service provider. This message is then relayed to you through whatever communication channel you prefer, email, SMS text etc. they can also receive company mail, host meetings at their offices, a whole range of services just as if they were part of your company.

Charges vary depending on the services you want and so on but they normally start with a relatively low fixed monthly subscription charge, with subsequent charges for each service you make use of. It can be as low as £20 a month for a professional secretarial service. I even know of some that are a total ‘pay as you go’ service, so if you don’t use it you don’t pay. Who can say fairer that that.

So a few quick tips to help you look professional, remember it’s a perception of you and your business you are presenting taking every opportunity in building up trust wherever you can.