Imagine for a moment that you’re a sales manager at a growing company and you’ve just been tasked with building a remote team of 40 sales reps. Your company’s headquarters is in Boston, but these reps will primarily work out of their home offices and much of their time will be spent on the phone — either initiating conversations with prospective clients or engaging existing customers. While most of your sales reps have personal smartphones they can use on the go, you know that business calls are better conducted on a private line that provides more reliable call quality. Your sales reps will appear more professional, while the features of a business phone system also allows them to be more productive. But here’s the issue: How exactly are you [...]

When the London Business School hosted its annual Global Leadership Summit in June 2014, the school surveyed attendees about a variety of modern business issues and challenges. While the results of that survey covered a variety of topics, one of the really interesting findings was that respondents believed that half of their employees would be working remotely by 2020. Think about that for a second. In just six years, 50% of your organization may be working from somewhere other than your business’ corporate or regional office. That figure may sound like a stretch, but a recent New York Times article revealed that telecommuting grew by 79% between 2005 and 2012 — and that number is expected to rise even more over the next decade. So, what does this mean for the future of [...]

It’s a Monday afternoon. Calls are rolling in, there are countless voicemails to respond to, and business is humming along. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Courtney the sales manager knocks on your door with a perplexed look on her face. "Do you know what’s wrong with the phone system?” Courtney asks. “There’s no dial tone, no access to voicemail, and no calls coming in." Ah, yes — the feared phone system failure. Whether caused by a clumsy utility worker, a big storm, or some other unpredictable problem, phone system issues can create enormous headaches. In fact, if your company hasn’t implemented any kind of disaster or redundancy plan, those failures significantly disrupt business continuity and productivity. You can’t afford that kind of stagnation. So, you close your laptop, pull [...]

Using email to conduct important business always starts with the best intentions – saving everyone time. Just think back to the last time you used email to solve a significant business issue or answer detailed questions from an important customer. But sometimes email creates a disaster of miscommunication. Tone, intonation, and emotion get lost in translation. Messages and ideas are misunderstood. Nothing really gets accomplished. So, what’s your obvious next step when email isn’t working? A meeting in person, or a quick conference call. Unfortunately, those communication methods can create a whole new problem. In an increasingly mobile business world where teams, employees, and customers are spread out over multiple remote offices, work-from-home setups, or field operations, it can be nearly impossible to get everyone into the same place [...]