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Feature Article - Home Office Planning
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Did you survive tax season? I'm just glad it's done and over with. We owed a little, so we delayed filing until Sunday night. Gotta love Turbo Tax; so much easier than trying to do the paperwork on our own.
Last night was just one of those nights. We were getting the kids ready for bed when Gage slipped and hit the side of his face on the tub, causing a huge, swollen bruise near his eye and a bit of blood. Quick run the the miraculously quiet emergency room, and, of course, he's fine. Just a bruise, but seeing that blood so near his eye was unnerving. The doctor said Gage will have a bruise there for about a month though. The bleeding came from the bone around the eye. The skin is so thin there that it's easy for the bone to cause a little cut in the skin when hit.
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Having the ability to work productively is extremely important when you work at home. How your home office is laid out is a major part of this. You need to consider the working conditions you need and your work style as you lay out your home office.
The working conditions you need should be your first consideration. This will help to determine where you set up your home office. If you have to be on the phone a lot, for example, you won’t want your home office to just be a corner of the living room. A spare bedroom, on the other hand, could be perfect.
On the other hand, if you need the ability to see what your children are up to more than you need uninterrupted work time, having your home office in the main part of the house is probably exactly what you need.
The amount of space you will need is also a consideration. Do you have a lot of reference books or paperwork? Or are you almost entirely electronic, with everything stored on the computer? Maybe you have a lot of supplies you need at hand. This will determine the number of bookshelves and filing cabinets you might need, as well as the size of your computer desk
You want to have enough space that you don’t feel too cramped as you work. Feeling cramped into a space is not the best thing for productivity.
The amount of space you need is defined not only by the items you need, but how you use them. Are you well organized? You might be able to get away with less space than someone who has a half dozen books spread out on the desk at a time.
I strongly recommend that you do try to remain at least a little bit organized in your home office. A good filing cabinet can save you quite a bit of time when hunting for that important piece of paperwork. Maybe you’ll organize your papers daily, or maybe monthly, but regular organization will greatly help your productivity.
While it probably won’t stop you from using a given space, you will want to look at how easily you can get telephone and internet service in your home office. It’s easy enough to get these installed in most rooms of the house, but it will add to the expense of creating a home office.
I like my home office to have a good view of the backyard, so I can let the kids outside to play without having to wonder where they are. This can be a big help, as I can work without keeping the kids cooped up in the house.
Another item you might consider placing in your home office is some toys for the kids that they only get when you need a little extra quiet work time. These should not be toys they play with all the time. Make them special ones so that when you really need that bit of quiet to get something done, you can get it with relatively little trouble.
The ability to plan out your home office to your preferences, so long as it stays within your budget, is one of the great benefits of working at home. Don’t limit yourself by what you had when you worked in someone else’s office. Think about what you need. You aren’t in a corporate environment anymore.
Stephanie Foster is the owner of Home with the Kids, a resource that knows that there's more to staying home with your family than just business. For more stay at home tips, visit the site at http://www.homewiththekids.com/ and subscribe to the free newsletter.
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Yup, it's Girl Scout Cookie time in our part of the world. [And, yes, my English teacher DID tell me never to start a sentence with the word "Yup."] For those of you who are unfamiliar with the sights, tastes, and overall experience of helping your daughters sell Thin Mints, Samoas, and Do-Si-Do's, you're missing a fundamental and wide-ranging education about the dynamics of sales, selling, and salespeople.
Here are some points I've garnered while helping my daughter, Rebecca, age 11, and Troop 3129, make their sales numbers. These pointers are hard-earned, field-tested, and as applicable to you and your business as they are to Rebecca and hers.
1. It's who you know. It's true: the cookie business is a relationship business. Our next-door neighbor bought 9 boxes - Bam! Neighbors on the other side, 2 boxes, then 3, then more. Why? Because Rebecca had something to sell. What's your personal brand doing these days? If you switched products, services, or companies, would people buy from you JUST BECAUSE IT'S YOU?
2. It's not about the product. It's time to get the lawyers upset. Ready? Girl Scout Cookies, for the most part, taste terrible [Thin Mints are the one exception, in my humble opinion]. And they have enough fat, calories, and cholesterol in them to power a small Japanese alternative fuel vehicle. You want good cookies? Buy Oreos, Mallomars, Ginger Snaps, Nutter Butters, Grasshoppers, Deluxe Grahams, Fudge Sticks, etc. etc. Yet Girl Scout Cookies sell like crazy, year after year, donating millions to the bottom line of Girl Scouts of the USA.
3. It's not about price. Girl Scout Cookies cost $3 a box. The smallest box, by weight, is 7 oz. and the largest is 10 oz. Most retail cookies come packaged in a "small" size of around 12 oz. and cost about $2.49. Girl Scout Cookies even give premium brands, such as Pepperidge Farm, a run for their money when it comes to high cost. Did I mention one of our neighbors bought 9 boxes at a clip?
4. It's not about need. Face it, nobody NEEDS Girl Scout Cookies. In fact, when the girls were out doing a "Cookie Shop" at a local hardware store (local merchants, malls, and grocery stores allow Girl Scouts to set up a table for sales on their premises to support the cause), the number one objection we heard was "I already have some Girl Scout Cookies at home - more than I need!" So, why did they buy? Because they had a relationship with their salesperson that was more important than their need, desire, or use for the actual product. Hey, did you know that Girl Scout Cookies make great gifts, freeze really well, and are only sold for a short time each year? Can you learn from this and apply the lesson to YOUR sales message?
5. It's not about competition; it's all about contacts and referrals. So who is selling to all those customers who "have Girl Scout Cookies at home - more than they need?" Naturally, it's their Girl Scout. What are the chances of Rebecca selling a box of cookies to someone whose daughter is also selling the same cookies for the same price? You got it: less than zero. Is Rebecca going to bang her head against the wall bemoaning those lost sales? Of course not. She's going to tap into her network of networks - neighbors, cousins, kids and parents at the Y where she plays basketball, my former colleagues at my old job who have become good family friends (and Rebecca's customers in previous years). Do you know how to fill your pipeline when things seem dry? Do you know how to move your prospects along to becoming customers, satisfied customers, and then customers-for-life - not of the product or service you're selling today, but of YOU and whatever value proposition you might be offering now and in the future?
6. When times are tough and things look quiet, that's the time to push harder than ever. Cookie sales end at a certain time each year. Right now, we're about two weeks away from the ending date, and there are Girl Scout Cookies being sold everywhere you look. We'll probably have 10-12 boxes left over by the time the deadline comes. Are we depressed that we didn't meet our goal? Are we failures as salespeople? Only if we quit when it's over. Don't you see that as soon as everyone else stops selling, stops marketing, and stops with the "Cookie Shop" setups -- these cookies move up from a commodity to a valuable asset? It's the same thing in your business: when the market is down, your competition has pulled their ads, it's "hunker-down" time, get back to basics, and cut, cut, cut! However, that's the worst time to cut - you have everyone's attention! There's actually much less noise out there for your message to compete against. Push now, and you'll be heard!!!
What does this all mean to you and your business? It's simple -- now is the time to get back in the saddle and ride your sales and marketing activities harder than ever. You've got the floor. You've got more relationships and more people rooting for you than you realize, and if you cut through the old excuses about your product, price, competition, the economy, and all the rest of it, you'll see the sales breakthroughs that lie ahead. Why waste another minute?
Marketing and innovation expert David Newman has written 8 books and has been quoted in dozens of national media outlets. David is also a sought-after speaker and seminar leader. Visit http://www.unconsulting.com for more free articles and resources.
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