Why Go Virtual, and How?

Hi Everyone!

As promised, I just posted a new video from the CM Yates Corporate Headquarters explaining why we are “going virtual” in order to spend less of our own time working on time consuming tasks in our real estate business, while reducing expenses and increasing profits. In addition, we are also beginning to experiment with allowing our staff to operate from anywhere in the world. Take a peek at our new video today and we’ll share some of the tools that we’re using to make this virtual switch successful.

How would you like to reduce your employee overhead by as much as 50% by using technology and virtual assistants to maximize time and resources, or maybe you’d like to condense your entire office into a laptop computer, and reduce the cost of your phone and internet systems by 95%? If so, we’ve listed several resources below that you can utilize in your business and personal life immediately to take back your time, money, and freedom. Here are some tools to help you right away.

Phones: I highly recommend Skype for all your calling needs. You can get a new phone number and have it point to any location in the world. Imagine being on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific and receiving a call from New York on your laptop computer. The caller dialed your local number in New York, and that number forwarded to your local New York Skype number, which rang to your laptop in Tahiti. Pretty neat. How much did this cost? About $60 per YEAR for your first number, and 50% off for each number after that. The call itself was free because your caller dialed a local number.

Worried about having to change your phone number and losing business? Option 1: Reduce the calling plan with your current carrier to the lowest possible cost, then forward the number to your new Skype number. Option 2: Reduce your calling plan, record a voice message with your new number, turn off the phone, and leave the service on for several months until you’re sure that all your ccontacts have your new number.

In my case, I don’t want everyone to have my number. So, there are some handy free tools that you can get your hands on right away to reduce the number of incoming calls you have to deal with. If you have a Skype number, it comes with free voicemail. The standard message is an admittedly sexy female voice with an English accent that reminds me of “Money Penny”, but this is appropriate as Skype is based in the UK. If you’d like to leave that air of sophistication in place, then leave the standard greeting on there. Otherwise, you can record any message you’d like. Skype will alert you of any new messages via Instant Message, Text Message to your cell, or e-mail, however you prefer. Skype also just struck a deal with SpinVox, another UK company, which will digitally transcribe your messages and send them to you in your preferred format as well. No more wondering who called or why, and you choose how and when to get back to them. Also, for those of you that like to blog, tweet, post status updates on Facebook, etc., SpinVox can do that for you as well. Imagine calling your own number, the system recognizes that it’s you calling from your number, and you speak your message which posts it on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever else you want it to end up in the world. Pretty Great!

If you want to start with something a bit more basic, try out YouMail. They have a free version of the service which has some fun tricks. It will e-mail you the voice messages from your cell phone, and the standard greeting reads the incoming callers name off the caller ID. Hello Tom, Chris is unavailable now, please leave a message. If you want to have some fun, you can upload a unique message and attach it to a specific incoming phone number: “Hi Mom, sorry I can’t get to the phone right now, but I’ll call you back as soon as I leave the office.” Imagine if every one of your important clients received a personalized message like that. Now are you so worried about not answering the phone?? Yep, all free. YouMail also lets you “ditch” callers, so anyone you don’t want calling will get a message that makes it sounds like your number has been disconnected, but it still works for everyone else. Lots of possibilities here, and that’s even before you have to spend a time. Even more features are available with the inexpensive premium service, including transcription.

Data Storage/Servers/Virtual Drives: Rather than keeping all your data in disk drives in your office, or much worse, filing cabinets, why not scan everything into a tidy digital format and upload to a “cloud server” that automatically creates several backups of your data all over the world so it can never be lost or destroyed by failing equipment, fire, flood, etc.? Cloud servers work just like plugging a drive into your computer, and are just as fast (yes, really), and work on a wireless connection. The system we use is very user friendly and simple to understand. You can have virtually unlimited storage capacity and access it from anywhere in the world, as can your staff with permissions that you control. What’s more is that you can access your files from most mobile devices including iPhone, etc. regardless of your devices storage capacity. Fun: You mean I could store 500 GB of music on ZumoDrive and play it on an iPhone with 80GB of available space AND share my music library with anyone I want? Yep.

ZumoDrive offers a 1GB free account to use however you wish. Check it out: http://zumodrive.com/ive.com/

Organizational Tools: Go Paperless and eliminate the clutter from your desk, and your mind! Basecamp: Simplified, web-based, project collaboration tool. This is how I manage every department of my company. Each staff member has their own “project” that includes tasks be to be completed, e-mail reminders, and a conversation record to track everything that has happened. My virtual assistants have logins as well so I can oversee the progress of all their tasks. It does so much more…

30-Day Free Trial:

Marketing Automation (E-mail, Snail Mail, Phone, Fax): Infusionsoft: The Daddy of them all. This the CRM (Client Relationship Management) system that the pros use (myself included). This is the epitome of online automation. I can’t say enough here. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, this is what you need. They are currently offering a “Double Your Sales Guarantee”and a 30-Day Free Trial. Check it out!

Social Media Tools:

Tweetdeck: Free tool that allows you to organize all your incoming and outgoing messages from Twitter and Facebook into one platform.

Tweepular: This is a great free tool to help sort and manage your Twitter following. The bulk follow/unfollow features are particularly handy.

TweetLater: Fantastic Twitter automation tool. Schedule tweets for the future, automate responses to followers, track keywords, organize your Twitter experience and even manage multiple Twitter accounts, all in one place.

Hummingbird: Yes, there are a lot of Twitter automation tools out there. This one, however, is the most powerful way I’ve seen to automatically build you a following of hundreds, even thousands of followers around the clock. I’ve never seen another tool that performs like this.

Inspiration/Strategy: The best book I’ve ready in 3 years:

Virtual Assistants: GetFriday: This is one VA company that I currently use to complete a lot of the time consuming tasks in my life, both business and personal. They do research for me, prepare reports, send reminders to my staff, organize meetings, and even call my friends to sing them songs during the holidays and make them laugh (seriously, they’re pretty good singers and it’s funny).

We will be posting more resources for you soon as we continue to evaluate and test new products, services, and strategies to help you regain more of your most valuable resource: TIME

To Your Success,

Chris Yates

Learn more about private lending and real estate investing at CMYates.net

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