FACT: Your advertising only has about 10 seconds to make your prospects:

• Stop!

• Pay Attention!

• And Take Action Now!

Let's Say That You Get Your Prospects Ten-Second Attention – Then What?

Then you need to keep it long enough to get your MWO (Most Wanted Outcome)

That might be:

• Getting a prospect to download your 'Lead Generating Report'

• Getting them to pick pp the Phone and call you

• Getting them to take out their credit card and order your products

And how do you do that?

If you really want to know - email me chris.bloor @ yahoo.com (Remove the spaces) and tell me about your business.

14 reasons to outsource © Chris Bloor

When work is subcontracted to an outside party it is called outsourcing. The word "outsourcing" became part of the business lexicon in the 1980's.

Did you realize that you can hire expert help from around the world - all from the comfort of your Sioux Falls office?

Today you can outsource nearly every kind of work.

Both small businesses and large corporations are taking advantage of outsourcing. Virtual assistants can do any work for you from anywhere in the world, including personal and household tasks, as long as the task doesn't require their physical presence.

Here are 14 reasons to consider outsourcing:

1. Cost savings. When outsourcing, you don't have to pay salary, vacation, health insurance and other benefits.

2. Cost restructuring. Operating leverage compares fixed costs to variable costs. Outsourcing helps change this ratio by making variable costs more predictable.

3. Improve quality. The subcontractor focuses on providing just that one task for you and can often provide better quality as a result because they aren't distracted with other job duties. Also, overseas skilled workers such as computer programmers tend to be very talented and have a strong work ethic. You get to tap into this when you hire them.

4. Knowledge. Access to freelancers all over the world means you get to tap a greater knowledge base than you do when hiring employees. If the freelancer doesn't prove to be competent, it's much easier to replace the freelancer.

5. Contract. You can draft a contract for services that you outsource and have legal recourse if the subcontractor does not live up to the terms or provide quality work.

6. Operational expertise. Access to operational expertise that would normally be too difficult to develop in-house.

7. Staffing issues. Access to a large pool of talent from the entire world, which only gets larger with each passing day.

8. Capacity management. An improved method of capacity management for services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier.

9. Catalyst for change. An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that cannot be achieved alone. The outsourcer becomes a Change agent in the process.

10. Reduce time to market. This can accelerate the time it takes to bring a new product to market. Outsourcing the various tasks involved in the development of the product increases efficiency.

11. Commodification. This is the trend of standardizing certain business procedures, like IT, so that businesses can intelligently buy at the right price. Commodification permits a wide range of businesses to acquire services that, previously, only large corporations were able to afford.

12. Risk management. An approach to risk management for some types of risks is to partner with an outsourcer who is better able to provide the mitigation.

13. Time zone. Another advantage to having access to a worldwide work force is that a task can be done during day shifts in different time zones. Therefore the work is seamless and available 24×7.

14. Customer Pressure. Customers may be happy with most aspects of your company but recommend outsourcing certain elements of it, such as customer service. By outsourcing you can relieve this customer pressure and satisfy your customers.

Outsourcing does have some disadvantages. Outsourcing is sometimes referred to as "offshoring" and attracts negative publicity at times, especially in India, where it is widely perceived that sweatshops are prevalent. In these sweatshops the workers are often paid very low wages and work in harsh conditions for very long hours. Typical items that are offshored are clothing items and electronics.

Call centers in foreign countries such as India have become more common but customers frequently complain because the foreign accents are sometimes difficult to understand.

This is especially irksome when trying to get technical support for a complex computer issue. These difficulties are now being mitigated by the use of live chat features (instant messaging) so that the customer does not have to understand an accent.

Even if the customer support person doesn't understand much English, they can copy and paste pre-written responses to the more common questions.

Another downside is the perception that American workers are losing jobs to overseas subcontractors and factories because the overseas workers are cheaper. Political candidates often seize on this as an issue, especially during presidential election years. In 2004 John Kerry described such businesses as "Benedict Arnold Corporations," especially if they incorporated their businesses overseas to avoid taxes.

Polls have shown that 71% of Americans believe that overseas jobs hurt the American economy and they believe the government should impose restrictions. It has been argued that lowering corporate taxes would eliminate the loss of jobs to overseas companies.

Having fewer employees can lead to decreased productivity. More employees can mean more synergy and brainstorming, providing the spark for improvement and new product ideas.

There can also be security risks involved with outsourcing. You don't have as much control as you do with an employee, even if you use a contract. Fraud can also happen, such as in the famous 2005 case when four customer service people stole $350,000 from Citibank customers.

Any publicly traded company will have to listen carefully to the shareholders if they have qualms about outsourcing for these reasons. Exploiting overseas workers is a very touchy subject with many customers as well so you will have to weigh the cost benefit of using overseas workers with the potential negative publicity.

Overall, outsourcing has been beneficial to companies of all sizes.

You don't even have to have a business in order to benefit from outsourcing.

A virtual assistant can assist you even if you are just an employee.

Are you behind on a project at work and need help with some last minute number crunching or spreadsheets?

A virtual assistant can help. And also help organize your personal life too. It can often be cost-efficient to delegate more menial tasks to a virtual assistant so that you can focus on more important work.

From Craigslist to Elance to Rentacoder to large overseas companies, the right subcontractor is never far away or difficult to find.

Make More Sales With Simple Lead Generating Reports Part © Chris Bloor

One of the best ways you will ever find to get more clients is to create a Lead Generating Report.

The basic idea is to create a 5-12 page report that addresses some of the specific problems that your product or service solves or to explain how to choose the product or service that you want to sell.

Examples:

- - A Carpet Company could offer a report called "7 Mistakes Homeowners Make When Choosing New Carpet and How to Avoid Them"

- - A Web Designer  could offer a report called "12 Deadly Mistakes Business Owners Make When Getting a Website and How to Avoid Them (Or Fix Them If You've Made Them Already…)"

- - A Kitchen Designer could offer a report called "7 Things Every Homeowner Should Know BEFORE Choosing a New Kitchen"

- - A Business Coach could offer a report called "7 Essential Things Every Business Owner Should Know To Hire a Business Coach That Make Them Money"

Five Great Things Offering a Lead Generating Report Does For Your Business

1. It 'Positions' you and your company as the experts in your industry. After all if your competition are so smart - how come they don't have a report?

2. It allows you to tell your entire sales story in an educating, non-threatening environment. It has been said that in times past the way to make money was to sell! sell! sell! These days it is educate! educate! educate!

3. It helps you build a database of targeted prospects to follow up on. After all, who is going to bother requesting a report on choosing new carpet other than someone who is interested in getting some new carpet?

4. It gives you the opportunity to make a special offer directly related to your report. NOTE: You need to make 100% certain it is a genuine, 'valid' special offer. One that is ONLY related to your report. This can be a very powerful tool in your marketing program!

5. It will save you money as it makes you money. Lets take the example of almost any advert in your local newspaper. How many of them actually give their readers a compelling reason to contact them? Take a look. I am certain you will find that very few that do much more than make bland 'branding' statements.

This is one of the very best things about offering your prospects a Lead Generating Report - virtually no one else in your industry will follow suit. So you will have a great opportunity to really stand out from the crowd!

In Part Two we will look at the specifics involved in creating your Lead Generating Report.

Oh and just in case you are wondering…

The answer is yes. We do offer an affordable 'Lead Generation Report Creation' service.

Interested? chris.bloor @ yahoo.com [Remove the spaces]