Increase Cash Flow with QuickBooks Merchant Services
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)

Key Performance Indicators - Tools for Successful Business Management
Thursday, January 11, 2006
1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)

PACE 2007 Attendees!

How is your customer service on the telephone? Is the first impression of your company a positive one?

Don't miss our Education Session at PACE on Wednesday February 14 at 8:00 AM!

Every business with a website should be using it as a source of leads – high quality, qualified leads from people who want to know more about what you sell. Visitors to your site are already interested in your company - now it’s up to you to get the information you need from them and turn it into a sale.

Your website can be easily structured to provide you with hundreds of leads each week. Here are five ways you can turn it into a lead generating powerhouse.

Offer something that will encourage visitors to provide contact details

Prepare something interesting that relates to each product or service that visitors can download. It might be a guide about how to use a product to solve a particular problem, or perhaps some useful DIY instructions. All they have to give you is their email address and they get something for nothing. Place your offer in a prominent position on your home page and make it easy to access. You’ll know by what they download just which product or products have attracted their interest.

Offer free advice about specific problems

Invite people to contact you through the site with help requests relating to the jobs they will be doing using your products. Make this a separate but equally prominent offer to any guide or other download, for example by offering an email link. Suggest a few common queries to make it easy for them to complete, but allow plenty of space for them to write out their own inquiry if it’s not on your list. Tell them your ‘expert’ advisor will respond within 24 hours and be sure you actually do this because there’s nothing worse than a broken promise of assistance.

Use an autoresponder for inquiries

Regardless of what visitors download you can set up an autoresponder to send them back an initial message thanking them for their interest and requesting more information about them. The autoresponder can send either a general message or something related to the material they’ve just downloaded. You’ll have to give them something else as a ‘reward’ for providing this information; it could be a free product sample, a newsletter, or something else that will show your appreciation. The most important thing is that your response gets to them while they’re still thinking about your company’s products or services.

Ask for feedback about the website

As a general rule people will go from the home page directly to the part of your site they’re most interested in. Ease of navigation is important so be sure to make their options clear when they first get to your site. Then, after they’ve selected a particular product page and before they can leave the site, have a window pop up asking them for feedback. A typical feedback request runs ‘Were we able to solve your problem with this information? Please tell us what you think about our site’. This will then take them to a feedback form from which you can collect more information about them. You’ll increase the number of completed forms if you offer a free gift or some other small token of appreciation. Be sure to thank them for completing the form after they’ve sent it in.

Invite visitors to participate in a survey

Most people like to give you their opinion. A survey invitation can go in several places such as on your home page, in your autoresponder email, and in a follow-up newsletter or other communication. The survey should be brief and easy to complete, but the answers will indicate their interests in much greater detail. Ask them if they’ve tried any of your products or used any of the ideas in your materials; ask for any suggestions they’d like to make that might enable your company to be even more helpful to site visitors. A good offer to encourage people to complete the survey is a contest - ‘Give us your opinions and win a prize’ - with the prize being something that is related to your product or service range.

Each of these ways of gathering information provides you with a qualified lead. At a minimum you’ll get a prospect’s email address and an idea of what they’re interested in. By incorporating all of these techniques into your website you’ll have turned it into a valuable lead-generating tool that captures information you’d never have acquired from other sources.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc.

By Teri Milligan, QuickBooks Consulting and Implementation

Last month, my QB Tip was how to accept client retainers. For this tip, I want to show you how to create a report for each individual retainer client. Click on the “Banking” Menu, “Use Register”. Then use the pull-down menu to choose the liability account that holds your retainers. In the last tip we called it, “Client Deposits”. Once you have the register open, click on any transaction with the client name for which you are interested in creating a report, then click on the “QuickReport” button at the top of the register. The QuickReport will show, for the client/job you chose, any retainer amounts from the client, how much of the retainer has been applied to invoices, and how much is still available.

To learn more about how you can use QuickBooks in your business, contact me at (619) 463-6851 x2 or teri@terimilligan.com. Please feel free to forward this e-mail to anyone you think might be interested in receiving monthly tips on how to use QuickBooks more efficiently.

By Christopher W. Olmsted, Attorney

"If it quacks and waddles, it is a duck." If only the test for classifying workers as independent contractors were as simple as the duck test. Yet flocks of employers lured by the prospect of avoiding workers' compensation premiums, payroll tax and the Byzantine state and federal labor codes often take flights of fancy when it comes to properly classifying workers.

In the California case JKH Enterprises, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations, a courier service thought that it properly classified its workers as independent contractors. JKH hired workers to drive to and from locations, picking up packages to be sent at designated locations. Upon hiring, the workers signed an “Independent Contractor Profile,” and agreed to use their own cars, car insurance, and cell phones to complete deliveries. All drivers set their own schedules and choose their own driving routes. The drivers’ cars did not bear any JKH marking or logo. The drivers themselves did not wear uniforms or badges that evidenced an affiliation or relationship with JKH. Some of the drivers performed delivery services for other companies as well. The drivers received no particular training, other than brief instruction on how to fill out the log sheets that verify customer deliveries and show the locations of pick-ups and deliveries Their work was not supervised. In fact, JKH for the most part had no idea of where the workers were at any given moment. Workers were paid on an hourly or “per- delivery” basis. Workers circulated on a regular driving route, picking up packages and delivering them as directed by customers. But sometimes JKH dispatched workers for special pickups and deliveries. One day a Deputy Labor Commissioner from the Department of Industrial Relations appeared at the company without notice, and conducted an inspection. The Deputy concluded that based on the direction JKH gave for special deliveries, the workers were employees, not independent contractors. Since the company did not have workers' compensation insurance for these "employees," the Deputy issued a citation and penalty of $16,000 ($1,000 per worker). The citation also effectively shut the business down until it obtained workers' compensation insurance.

JKH pursued a legal challenge to the citation, eventually appealing to the California Court of Appeal. The appellate court sided with the Department. The court applied a longstanding independent contractor test that focuses on many factors, including the degree of control exerted over the worker. (The "Borello" test.) Applying these factors, JKH had strong evidence of a very limited degree of control over the delivery workers. It also demonstrated that it had written independent contractor agreements with the workers, and that the workers all believed that they were independent. Nevertheless, the other factors in the Borello test led the court to conclude that the workers were employees. The court particular attention to the degree of required skill required for the job, and whether the worker's service is an integral part of the business.

The court stated: "The functions performed by the drivers, pick-up and delivery of papers or packages and driving in between, did not require a high degree of skill. And the functions constituted the integral heart of JKH’s courier service business. By obtaining the clients in need of the service and providing the workers to conduct it, JKH retained all necessary control over the operation as a whole. Under Borello, and similar to its facts, these circumstances are enough to find an employment relationship for purposes of the Workers’ Compensation Act, even in the absence of JKH exercising control over the details of the work and with JKH being more concerned with the results of the work rather than the means of its accomplishment. And neither JKH’s nor the drivers’ own perception of their relationship as one of independent contracting, or any other single factor, either alone or in combination, mandates a different result."

Accordingly, the court upheld the Department of Industrial Relation's determination that the delivery drivers were employees. Consequently, the company had violated Labor Code §3700 because it did not have workers' compensation insurance for the employees. Presumably after the court rendered its decision, the company was forced to pay the $1,000 per employee fine, and because of the stop order, was not entitled to employ labor until it first obtained proper insurance coverage.

This case serves as an important reminder to businesses: misclassifying workers as independent contractors can be a costly mistake. Carefully review the applicable state and federal legal standards, and if in doubt, seek professional advice.

Request a Free Independent Contractor Chart:
For more information, contact Mr. Olmsted at cwo@barkerkoumas.com to request a four page overview, including a summary chart of the independent contractor criteria.

Christopher Olmsted is a member of the law firm Barker Koumas & Olmsted, practicing in the areas of employment law and business litigation. He can be reached at (619) 682-4040 or cwo@barkerkoumas.com

The article presented herein is intended as a brief overview of the law and is not intended to substitute as legal advice. Any questions or concerns regarding any statute or case law should be addressed to a licensed attorney.

"The danger in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished."

---George Bernard Shaw