Strategies For The Hunkered Down Economy

The calendar has turned, but the economy has not. We’re still looking at double digit unemployment, public companies making their numbers by cutting expenses rather than increasing sales, and a lot of angst over what it will take to get things moving again. In the meantime, consumers are hunkering down to spend less and save more. That means businesses large and small are left with little to do except hunker down themselves. It’s hard to get excited about taking the big leaps when you don’t know how wide the abyss is.

Does this mean that your company is permanently stuck in the mud or that your ship is sinking with nothing more to throw overboard? For most, that’s way too dire a scenario. But you are faced with an opportunity that requires a choice, at least in your telecommunications expenses. Do you want to maintain the same level of service and pay less for it, or do you want to maintain your budget at current levels and get more service?

Many managers consider this an enviable position. There’s really no way you can lose. The only one who isn’t going to make out in this arrangement is the overpriced service provider who either isn’t sensitive to your needs or has failed to optimize their own business to offer you a better deal.

Perhaps the first thing to do is to honestly assess your needs for the coming year. Do you need everything you have now, more, less, or just different? For instance, if the phones aren’t ringing off the hook, then perhaps you can get by with fewer outside lines and no one will be the wiser. If your staffing levels have dwindled, you may have more broadband capacity than you are really taking advantage of at the moment. You can almost certainly save by matching the level of telecom services to your current reality. In some cases, you may be able to dramatically save by combining your telephone and broadband in an integrated T1 line or SIP trunk.

You may be concerned that downsizing your bandwidth puts you at risk if business suddenly bounces back. That can be mitigated by ordering scalable bandwidth services. Metro Ethernet is a good example. The connection that’s installed may be capable of 50 Mbps, but you only pay for 10 Mbps. If business doubles, you call your provider and tell them to take it up to 20 Mbps. They can do that quickly and easily, since no hardware changes need to be made.

For some businesses, opportunities are available to increase activity. What’s holding them back is the unavailability of bank loans or a reluctance to make long term commitments to expenses that might not be covered if the ramp up in business activity doesn’t happen as planned. What you don’t realize is that you may be able to get more and better service without spending more money. This is commonly the case with companies that leased line services years ago and have been paying month to month since their contract ran out. Telecom service rates have been dropping, sometimes dramatically, over the last few years. But you’re still paying the old rate to the old provider who makes no effort to offer you a better deal. How can you be sure you are getting the most for your precious expense dollars? Get competitive telecom service quotes quickly and easily online.

The services we promote are offered through a telecom broker who’s job it is to research the best rates available for your business location. When you request a competitive quote, a Telarus consultant will be working on your behalf to understand your current and future needs and then find the best deal available from dozens of service providers. That consultant will check back with you from time to time to make sure that what you are leasing is still the best cost solution as your situation changes. Best of all, this is a free service. It’s truly one of the best deals you can get in any economy.

A Time for Entrepreneurs

Job security has become something of an oxymoron lately. Guaranteed employment situations are very rare. Even the usual assurances that if you do a good job there will be a place for you are rarer than they have been in years. This isn't the first recession that we've experienced. But this one is so remarkable it may get a name. I've been hearing the title "The Great Recession" being bandied about.

Like the similarly named depression of our parent's and grandparent's generation, there's nothing great about going through a severe business downturn. Losing a job without the prospect of replacing it is a reality for a growing number of people. You see the stories in the papers and on TV. Companies are laying off workers. It's a few thousand here and twenty or thirty thousand there. But it's every day. How soon before the grim reaper comes to visit your desk?

Unemployment is a disaster for 1 of 10 working Americans in some areas. But fear of unemployment, so wrenching and persistent that you can hardly focus on the work at hand, is an everyday reality for millions more. I've been through slowdowns, downsizings, and corporate mergers for decades and seen first hand the morale destruction that happens even to the top tier of employees. When no one can be told definitely when the next round of layoffs will come, what areas will be affected, or how deep the cuts will go, it's just human nature to fear the worst.

Probably the worst source of anxiety is the feeling of helplessness, the loss of control of your own destiny. That, I'm afraid, is the working bargain for so many people today. In exchange for providing you with a place to work, a defined hourly wage or salary, the structure of a job so you know what is expected, and a benefit package with vacation pay and at least some health care benefits, you give up autonomy and expectation that you have any equity in your position. You can go home at night and not have to worry about what "they" have to do to run the business. But your job may or may not be there in a couple of weeks.

Contrast that with the life of the independent business person. These people do have to worry about what it takes to run the business including where the money is coming from, whether or not a profit is being generated, how the bills are getting paid, and what needs to be done to keep the business viable. The entrepreneur has no more guarantee of success than an employee has a guarantee of employment. Much less in fact. But the entrepreneur does have one thing an employee doesn't. That's at least some influence over one's destiny.

The entrepreneur decides what avenues to pursue, what things to drop or do less of, what expenses to take on or avoid, whether or not to hire or let go of employees and how much effort to expend. In good times, employees heading home after 8 hours may shake their heads in disbelief at entrepreneurs who burn the midnight oil and never take a holiday. But when employees are told to go home early because there is less work to do and less pay to do it, those crazy hours of the entrepreneur start to look a bit more attractive.

Neither the situation of the employee nor the entrepreneur is the proverbial bed of roses in this environment. Both have their anxieties and their rewards. But during periods when traditional jobs are harder to find and less secure, there are an increasing number of people who start thinking about going into business for themselves. For many would-be entrepreneurs, the best way to see how the "other half lives" is to give it a try on a part-time or moonlighting basis while they still have a job. That way if you find that the demands of having to define your own work and make yourself do it is way more stressful than having a boss lay everything out for you, you'll know that you should spend your time looking for jobs rather than looking to start a business.

Basically, if you can approach business people with the idea that you can save them money on their voice and data services, or promote things like VoIP telephone, cell phones, satellite TV and broadband Internet to residential users, you are a good candidate to start generating commission checks. Of course, the more you enjoy this type of work and the harder you work at it, the more successful you are likely to be. Creative business and technical writers and developers of successful web sites are also good candidates for success in this field. So are people who already have sales or consulting experience.

Times Are Tough, Cell Phones Are Free

Just about all of us are feeling the pinch these days. The business forecasts you see on TV indicate that we're heading into a recession, not out of one. That suggests that it's time to batten the hatches and start conserving cash for tough times to come. Here's one idea on how to keep hundreds of dollars in your wallet and still get the cellphone service you want and need.

Chances are that you do your cell phone shopping at an official carrier store or one of the big box office supply stores or electronics retailers. Regardless of where you drop in to check out the phones, these stores all have one thing in common. They're likely going to charge you for your cell phone.

So? Isn't that the price of getting a new model phone? You buy the phone and sign a contract for monthly service, right?

Nope. Not if you want to get the best phone deals, you don't. A little understood standard in the wireless business is that the cellular service plans cost the same regardless of where you buy them. But the price of the phone is up to the dealer. You can pay $500. You can pay $50. Or you can pay nothing for the phone. Your monthly service plan will cost the same, depending on how many minutes you need and what add-on services you sign up for.

So why would you not want a free phone? It's the same phone regardless of where you get it. You'll pay the carrier the same price for service every month. But if you shop smart, you can pay a lot less for that cell phone. You can get many models for free. Some even have cash back rebates. How's that sound?

OK, let me give show you some examples of popular phones that you can get for free or with a rebate right now. By the time you read this, the offers may have changed. That's life in the cell phone biz. But there are always some models on special offer with prices at $0 to -$50. That's $50 cash back. So here we go as of today...

What you need to do is check the current specials at Cell Phone Plans Finder and then search for the phone model you want if you don't see featured it on the front page. Or just browse around and see what catches your fancy. Your big problem is going to be picking just one.

Well, actually, you don't even have to do that. You can get a family plan and have all sorts of different phones on it. Potential savings? Hundreds? Thousands? It all depends on how sophisticated your tastes are and how many phones you order. Now stuff that money you save under the mattress or put it in the bank before you go blow it on something else.

Cut Telecom Line Expenses, Not Lines

In this recessionary business climate, keeping the enterprise afloat may mean throwing every non-critical expense overboard. Soon the obvious fat disappears from the budget and managers start questioning line items once thought sacrosanct. Do you really need 10 phone lines or could everybody get by with 5? Take turns calling if you have to. What about that Internet connection? Do we really need that T1 line when those 56K modems are still boxed up in the back room?

Good grief. Cost cutting can easily go from savvy business practice to organizational nightmare when desperation sets in. It's best to start coming up with reasonable reductions before upper management gets a whiff of blood in the water and goes nuts. Think through the justification for each budgetary line item yourself and make changes you can take credit for, or at least have proposals in your back pocket.

Now here's the good news. If you can keep a cool head at least for a little while, you may be able to get the savings your business needs while maintaining the services you need to be at your most productive. The trick isn't just to slash and burn every telecom expense you come across. It's getting the same functionality for less money. You don't necessarily want to cut your lines, and with them your livelihood. You want to cut the expenses associated with those lines.

Most companies have two types of telecom line services: voice and data. Video, such as video conferencing, can fall into either the voice or data category depending on how it's implemented.

Lets start with voice services. Most businesses of any size have a PBX telephone system that manages their telco connections. There may be some room for cost savings here because of the way the system has grown. It usually starts with a few lines, adding another and another as the company need grows. Pretty soon you've got a dozen or two individual lines. Usage reports say you need them all or customers will start getting poor service and some of your employees will be cooling their heels while waiting to place a call. But you aren't necessarily married to the configuration you have today. By consolidating all those individual phone lines into one or two T1 PRI digital trunks, you'll have the same level of service but at a discount.

If you already made the move to T1 lines years ago, you might still be able to save. Competitive prices for T1 voice lines, including long distance rates, have plummeted in the last few years. By running a competitive service check you can find out if a simple change of provider could result in significant cost savings for the very same usage.

The same logic applies to your business Internet service. A T1 dedicated Internet line might now be priced at half what you paid when you signed a multi-year lease years ago.T1 prices are very favorable right now and you can make a good deal getting into a better contract. Once again, you keep the same functionality you have now but simply pay less.

You might also want to consider some newer technologies, such as MPLS networks or Metro Ethernet to interconnect multiple business locations. SIP trunking offers a way to get high quality voice and data service delivered on a single line service. All of these services have become readily available only in the last few years. If they work for your situation, you could find very substantial cost savings available for the asking.