Have you made any New Year's resolutions for your business?  For instance, are you going to get your bookkeeping in order early for your accountant?  Are you going to get your customer database in order so you can do some targeted marketing this year?  Or maybe you've been meaning to set up your social networking accounts so you can do some online marketing. What other projects have you been putting off because you just don't have time?

Wouldn't it be great to start off the new year with a few of your "to do" items checked off?  If you need help with any of these tasks, or perhaps with deciding what tasks you could delegate, we hope you'll give Cybertary a call.  As your one-stop administrative support solution we can discuss your specific business needs and help you figure out a good place to start.

The Cybertary Roseville team would like to take this time to thank our clients, partners, coaches, colleagues, franchisor, blog readers, and friends for supporting us as we wrap up our third year of business.


It seems like only yesterday we were signing our franchise purchase agreement and dreaming of our new life of business ownership. We had so much passion and excitement for our new venture and we are pleased to report that we are still as passionate about our business as we were that first day. We’ve learned and grown a lot in these 3 years, in large part thanks to all of you. And the basic ideals that led us to this business are still in place today.

We couldn’t be more excited to enter 2010 knowing that the economy is improving, that we are surviving in probably our generation’s most challenging economic time, and that we have plans in place to ride the recovery wave that we know is coming. We look forward to sharing the New Year with all of you.

Enjoy your holidays, take stock of the good things in your life, and prepare for a fantastic New Year!

Sure, tax season may seem like it's months away. However, why not get your QuickBooks® in order now to avoid a new year burden and the mad tax season rush?

Cybertary is ready and waiting to help you organize your 2009 tax records and update your QuickBooks today. That way, you'll be organized and ready to kick off the new year without that stress weighing on your mind. Plus, with all your 2009 tax paperwork organized and entered, you'll be in the perfect position to do some productive 2010 tax planning.

And if you schedule your bookkeeping service before February 15, 2010, you will receive the first 3 hours of bookkeeping for only $125.

Call Cybertary today. We are ready to help you prepare for a stress-free 2009 tax season and a joyous 2010.

• He can have most of his gifts ordered, wrapped, and shipped to the right recipients without leaving his home at the North Pole.
• He can eliminate his need for year-round help by hiring Cybertary for on-demand assistance only (and by reducing some of the elf workspace, he and Mrs. Claus can finally downsize to that smaller, quainter place).
• When Mrs. Claus asks if he's had time to write out his side of the family's Christmas cards, Santa can, for the first time in years, say, "Yes! They're done!" because Cybertary handled them for him.
• Finally, Santa can have an up-to- date "naughty and nice" database to access with ease!
• When it comes down to the critical last hours, he can count on a professional team to schedule and manage his Christmas Eve travel and appointments.
• Yum! He can have his cookies and eat them too because hiring Cybertary will allow him that much- needed personal time at the gym.
• Ahhh, he can relax at home in his long johns over an eggnog latte while he occasionally communicates with Cybertary via email about their efficient handling of his busy holiday affairs.
• After Christmas and year's end, Santa can relax by the fire with Mrs. Claus because his QuickBooks^® is in order and up to date-all ready for an easy and orderly 2009 tax season!
• And isn't it about time we heard more from the one and only Santa year-round? A daily Santa blog? A weekly ezine? A monthly newsletter? A website? Cybertary can help and give Santa the time to reconnect with the people who are most important in 2009. Like you!

Most of you know that Cybertary Roseville is also the Regional Developer in the Greater Sacramento area for the Cybertary franchise. This means that in addition to running our Roseville/Granite Bay office of Cybertary – providing services to our business clients – we are also looking for entrepreneurs who want to own a Cybertary business and enjoy the benefits that come with working for yourself.

Last month we had the opportunity to exhibit at the Momslikeme.com, Women In Work conference – that’s Tina in the picture. We met many people that were out of work (in some instances due to the economy) or were looking to reenter the workforce after having taken a little “break” to raise a family. It was a perfect venue for us to meet potential entrepreneurs. It was interesting discussing with attendees the new outlook they shared; going through the process to figure out what they really wanted for their next career—and for many they were considering running their own business. If you are thinking about what to do next, make sure to do your research, attend events, and talk to others about their experiences. Of course, we would love to have new Cybertary franchisees in the greater Sacramento area, but even if Cybertary isn’t the business for you, there are so many opportunities out there.

For us, the leap into entrepreneurship been everything we had hoped, but we definitely did our homework when making our decision.

• What to delegate and why
  
• When to delegate
  
• Who to delegate to
  
• Common obstacles
  
• Identify the value of your own time
  
• Discuss tools that can help

In our very first blog post a month ago, we offered a special gift pack for the first person who gave us a question related to small business. The winner is Dani Weinstein, a past HP colleague and fellow UC Davis MBA alum of Tina’s. Thanks for being a reader and for participating in our contest – look for your Starbucks gift card in the mail soon!

Here is the winning question: How are small businesses managing with the financial meltdown in securing sufficient financing & loans to get their businesses off the ground?

Excellent question Dani, and of course of interest to most small businesses. In an interesting coincidence, our bank manager called us last week to set up an appointment with us to find out more about our business and to see if there were any loan products they could interest us in. Here are the options we were presented:

1. An overdraft line – this is straightforward and it has come in handy when Accounts Receivables time increases. It has a moderate interest rate and only kicks in when needed.

2. For larger amounts, they also have a line of credit called the Cash Flow Manager. Generally you will qualify for 20-25% of your annual gross receipts. It only takes a couple of weeks to approve and has a low interest rate.

3. The last option was actually the one I had gone in to ask about, and that is SBA loans. With all the press these loans have been getting lately I thought for sure this would a product the bank would be pushing. Actually it was quite the opposite. They said SBA loans are usually the last resort for funding– they take upwards of 6-9 months to approve and require a large amount of paperwork. Additionally, they said, the criteria to actually get an SBA loan approved has tightened up just as on most loans.

There are other SBA products that are available that you can get much quicker, but they are for small amounts and can only be used to pay off existing debts (i.e. credit cards or other loans). You can check with your lender or the SBA directly about loan options such as ; ARC, 7a, 8a and others.

By the way, if you need a good banker, I recommend Lois Coady at the Roseville branch of US Bank – she made me feel like a valued customer.

Two weeks ago Valerie received a call from one of our clients who was in a minor panic. She was scheduled to be at a tradeshow in Los Angeles in just one week and her assistant had to cancel on her at the last minute. She called us with the slim hope that Cybertary could send someone to assist her during the event. With some minor schedule juggling, Valerie was able to make it work in her schedule (this is Valerie on the left with our client, Debi Silber). Sure it was a bit of a challenge to make last minute arrangements, but in the end, we asked ourselves a simple question – what if it was us in that same position? If we had invested a lot of money in something and then lost our support team, we too would hope someone would come through for us in our time of need.

So why are we telling this story? Aside from the obvious plug for the excellent service that we strive to provide our clients, it is important that we as business owners think about how we can provide that extra special touch that differentiates us from our competitors. This client was so thrilled she even mentioned Valerie in her newsletter that she sends to her clients.

The moral of the story is not that you can call Cybertary at the last minute and we’ll jump on an airplane (although we just might). The moral is – treat your customers as human beings, not an invoice. If you do, you will be remembered and your customer will be forever loyal.

Maybe this is obvious, but I'll say it anyway - our existing or past customers should be treated with the same care and respect we give our new potential leads. However, even though it sounds obvious, do you have a plan of how you market to your existing client base?

I know I am pretty cost-conscious these days both in my business and personal life. If I'm not feeling loved by a store or a vendor, I will not go back there. Even if the business hasn't done anything overtly wrong, if I don't feel something special from the experience and I can go somewhere else that's cheaper or where I will feel like a valued customer I won't go there any more. On the other hand if I go to a store where they know my name, remember my preferences and so forth, I will return again and again, and I will even pay more for that kind of treatment.

While retaining clients is an important reason to follow up with your customer base, possibly more importantly, you have the ability to make more revenue from those customers. Do your clients use every single one of your services? Do they even know all the services that you provide? In the case of Cybertary, I can almost guarantee even our best clients don't know about every single service we offer. That means we have an opportunity to market to them about additional services we can offer them that will help their business. And the best part is, because they are already a loyal client, they are more likely to hear the marketing message because of our trusted relationship with them.

The key takeaway here - if you don't have a follow up plan for your existing customers, you need to create one immediately. It can be similar to the one you use for new leads, but make sure you tailor the campaign to the audience. Remember, they already know who you are, so you can really target your message for what you want them to hear. If you don't do something, they will find someone else who will pay attention to them.

Following up with our leads and our customers is such a business basic and yet so many businesses, especially smaller ones with less employees, struggle with effective ways to keep up to date with their client leads.

According to the National Sales Executive Association:
2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact

Pretty amazing - are you following up 5-12 times after you meet someone? How many business people go to a networking function, make connections with some people and then exchange business cards? If you're like me, once you've collected a few leads at an event you feel a sense of accomplishment. But if those sales statistics above are true, than if I go back to my office and just wait for them to call me I'm probably not going to hear from them again and all that time I spent networking was basically wasted.

I describe it like a TV commercial. The first time you see a commercial you might physically be viewing it, but as far as engraining the product or message in your head, it probably won't happen after that first viewing. But after you've seen the commercial three or four times, it starts to stick in your head. And finally, after the commercial has been on TV for a few days, weeks, and months I now may actually go to the store to seek out that product. But it takes awhile for that new commercial to bubble up in my consciousness over all the other "noise" and messages I'm bombarded with during my favorite show.

Same thing for networking your business. We are our own TV commercials without the sitcom or reality show to hold our target audience's attention. We need to come up with a cohesive follow up strategy that will "touch" our leads regularly so we can stay in their consciousness. To do this we need to think about what vehicles will grab our potential customers' attention (phone call, email, newsletter, direct mail, radio ad, and so on) and what promotions and messages are meaningful to them. Regardless of what follow up system you decide to use, you must implement a consistent system so your customers don't fall through the cracks.

Hello everyone,

We are excited to have our new Cybertary Roseville Blog up and running. We have posted other people's blogs for them for quite some time and found time in between all the other postings to get ours fully functional.

We hope to provide you with interesting information that will help you run your business more efficiently and effectively. We also want to share some our secrets of success that have worked for either us and/or our clients.

If you have ideas or questions you would like answered in this blog, please email them to us at roseville@cybertary.com. Chances are your questions will be the same that many other business owners are facing, so don't be shy - and don't worry, we'll keep it anonymous. In fact, to kick off our blog, we are offering the first person who submits a question to us, related to small business, the coveted prize of a Cybertary coffee mug filled with goodies and a $10 Starbuck’s gift card.

If you would like help getting started on a blog of your own (or social networking, or bookkeeping, or anything else), please don't hesitate to contact us. We love to help you succeed.

Virtually yours,

Tina & Valerie
Co-owners, Cybertary Roseville