Happy New Year!

Margrette Field, an Independent Sales Director from Vista, CA. Margrette will post a blog each Wednesday full of tips, tricks, info and advice for other consultants and directors. Be sure to check back each week!

Isn't it nice to feel that sense of "ahhhh"?  A new year is here and we can start over and celebrate the successes of the year past and look ahead at how we would like things to unfold in the new year.  Last week I shared how you have to take a physical inventory count and you've made updates to your ideal product counts as well.

Another thing you will want to do is take a picture with your cell phone or digital camera of your ending odometer reading on your car.  This will give you either a way to know exactly how many miles you put on your car in 2010 and you're trip logs will help you know how much of that were business deductible miles or you'll have snapshot ready for 2011.

When you visit the Accounts page on your Dashboard be sure to update any accounts and balances and be sure all of your expenses are entered here.  If you weren't doing this all along last year, it may take more time. However, going forward set up a system that works so you're not overwhelmed at the end of year.  Eg. Once per month or once per quarter enter your business receipts so you're always up to date.   

Here's some helpful reports to print out at the end of the year. These can all be found under the Home tab.  First, in the Accounts category print the Profit & Loss report.  Under the Products category, print out the Annual Product Purchases report. And lastly in the Sales category print out the Annual Summary of Expenses, Annual Summary of Income. Don't worry, when you actually filing your taxes these reports will still be there, however, at this time you want to be sure they are accurate before you start inputting any new data for 2011.

Remember, the best resource available to you regarding tax specific questions is the Tax Essentials document located on marykayintouch.com.

Pink Hugs,
Margrette

Super Support

Good customer and technical support is more important than some might realize. It's an odd thing, because you really only notice bad support. When a program or business has excellent support, you often come away from a problem forgetting you even had one. That's the idea behind UnitWise's support.

They just integrated a new support system that is so helpful, and so easy, it's kind of scary. The support system makes it easy for users to quickly find answers to their questions. As they type in their question, possible answers to the question pop-in below. That's right, users could get an answer before they even finish typing their question! If the answer isn't there, the UnitWise team will get it answered as soon as possible, then add that question and answer to the database.

On top of all the helpful text answers, users can also check out informative videos like the one below.

This is all in addition to the live chat and phone support! The best
customer support is the kind you don't have to think about. The kind
that doesn't put you on hold or ignore your requests. That's what the
folks at UnitWise have built, and we thought it was worth pointing out.

Why Social Media?

It has the potential to eat up tons of time, scheduling it into your day means adding an extra activity into a crowded schedule, and the learning curve can be high depending on how technically savvy you are. So why get into social media? Customers!

Don't think of social media as an online time waster, instead, think of it as digital networking. There are tons of people for you to connect with. By skipping out on social media, you could be skipping out on an enormous number of new customers. Here are some specifics:

-Facebook has more than 400 million users. A bit of perspective: there are 300 million people in the United States. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.

-There are nearly 12 million Twitter users. About 65 percent of them are under 25. Women make up 53 percent of the user base.

That's a huge market! Before you get too excited, remember that this is digital networking, not digital door-to-door sales. Don't spam users with links and useless content. It's like real networking--connect with people and engage them. Send useful links and take part in conversations. The benefit over face-to-face networking is that you can break up the conversation over time, you can connect to multiple networks at once, and you can do it from anywhere.