The New Global Service Provider

We’ve both seen a highly dramatic increase in our businesses on a global basis. Many projects have been concluded with relationships begun and sustained on Skype, blogs, websites, newsletters, forums, and product purchases.

We’ve been able to do this by leveraging technology. Here’s what we recommend from the distillation of our successful experiences, a list of “best practices” for the new professional global services provider:

1. Use email to deliver information with brevity and speed. Try to respond within four hours during your work day.
2. Use your website to offer free resources, creating word-of-mouth and repeat visitors.
3. Utilize video conferencing tools such as www.Skype.com or www.oovoo.com, among others, to conduct business meetings and/or implementations of projects. Both of us use Skype extensively to work with global prospects and clients. Skype can support ten concurrent users as we write this, and we’d guess 100 by the time some of you are reading this!
4. Instant messaging is highly effective with subcontractors, employees, and clients. Tools such as iChat can delegate and monitor projects on a real-time, frequent basis.
5. Webinars can provide interactive presentations with audio and video support. You can use tools such as www.gotomeeting.com, www.mikogo.com, or www.fuzemeeting.com, to name a few current, popular alternatives.
6. You can quickly coordinate group meetings and schedules among multiple participant calendars by using something such as www.doodle.com.
7. A site such as www.liveperson.com provides flexible tools for interaction between your customer service team and visitors.
8. Teleseminars can provide both marketing reach and income, and are now usually free to mount, using www.totallyfreeconferencecalls.com or www.instantteleseminar.com.
9. Live streaming of events you host locally to a global audience is now an easy reality with resources such as www.livestream.com.

To effectively obtain global business, begin by strengthening your brand locally, regionally, and domestically. Start with as strong a base as you can. Leverage your existing clients’ referrals to introduce you, proactively, to international contacts.

Publishing a book is enormously helpful in international work. Alan has had his books translated into ten languages so far, and had one published, with co-author Omar Khan, a Pakistani, in Singapore. It’s a good idea to approach editors in other countries via the web, and always let them know if you’ll “be in town.” Act like you’re a global provider, don’t just talk about it.

This is an excerpt from my new book Million Dollar Web Presence – Leverage the web to build your brand and transform your business, which I coauthored with Dr. Alan Weiss and published by Entrepreneur Press.

© Chad Barr 2012. All rights reserved