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Working from home is awesome! The flexibility of setting your own schedule, saving time and money with no commute is incredible. My home office promotes efficiency in my non-traditional work environment. So what does that actually mean? Consider the following tips to help define a perfect home office for your new business.
## Desk size and where it will be located.
In today’s world it’s almost a necessity to have dual monitors. On top of that you’ll need work space on the desk as well. So a small “cute” desk typically won’t work. As the desk size grows so does the room it needs to reside in. Also, you won’t want the desk placed where everyone that comes in your work space is behind you.
**Note:** Since you’re working remotely you will most likely participate in webcam conferences at some time. Important that the wall behind your desk looks professional and tidy. If this is an impossibility then maybe a non-wrinkled white sheet behind for a clean look.
The home office should be in a quiet area with some level of privacy. Especially if you share the house with family or even a roommate.
Space for other items like a printer, file cabinet(s), supplies storage and business phone (don’t forget about the coffee mug) should be thought through as well.
## Home office proper lighting.
I really like a bright cheerful office environment. I would recommend this to keep the noggin positive, eye strain to a minimum and useful for a decent video conference look. The new LED lighting is great and with some added natural lighting (if possible) your home office will feel and look positive and professional.
## Always have a dedicated business phone.
The options are great and costs low. There really isn’t a good reason to not have a dedicated phone/phone line for your home office business. I’ve used Magicjack before but they are limited and don’t really present as a professional business phone system to the end user. Using a business class hosted phone solution is typically a better direction and can be added inexpensively per month. Both run over the internet so dedicated land lines are not needed. I like the cloud phone solution from Net2Phone because I get unlimited long distance (international as well), business features like I am used to with my previous positions, business class phone (included free), voicemail and announcements for one low price. A smartphone app is included as well so I can retrieve my calls anywhere and anytime. The caller would never guess I am working from a home office.
## The right equipment is crucial.
The phone is important but so is a comfortable chair that can provide back support, computers with appropriate memory and performance, keyboard and mouse that feel right and are easy on the wrists, dual monitors at eye level, a fast Internet connection, and any other specialized equipment necessary to do your job. Also spend a little money on a decent webcam.
**Side Note:** Establish office hours. This is actually more important than you probably realize. I used to tell my family that as I climbed the stairs to my home office I was “commuting to work”. They knew it was not time to interrupt until lunch and after lunch till 3 or so. Of course there needs to be some flexibility, thus the reason you probably have a home office, but it was good that we were all on the same page typically.
## Hang a clock on the wall. Amazon Alexa helps as well.
I’m a workaholic by nature. It’s nothing for me to put in 12-14 hour days if I let it. Obviously there are times this is necessary, but not everyday. Time does slip away so having a clock on the wall helped me tremendously. Also using Amazon Alexa helped with notifications of appointments and tasks.
With just a little planning your perfect home office can not only be as productive as if you were at the workplace but tremendously more. It has for me!
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Chris has over 15 year’s Sales Management experience including Business Ownership, Product Management and Web Design/Marketing. He’s a national sales team strategist and trainer. He’s a nationally syndicated author with his articles on SalesBlog! rated as a “top must-read” on consultative selling.
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Consultative selling has been around for quite a while. At least as long as I have been in sales and that’s a long time. I find it a little humorous that current authors, sales gurus, and presidents of sales teams feel they are the originator of this selling style. I also find it a little odd that 70 to 80% of the sales professionals I have come in contact with don’t do it. Why is that? To understand this we need to have a basic understanding of what it is.
### Consultative selling can be broken down into a couple of components easily:
**1.)** Take the time and fully understand the potential client’s internal processes and company direction. The discovery process should include an analysis of:  – political, economic, social, and technological directions and  – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats of the company.
**2.)** Look for their “pains” (issues) and “repetitions” (costs).
**3.)** Propose a customized solution using your product and, most importantly, presenting it in  the potential client can understand (solution not parts) and see value (ROI, payback) in.
The idea here is that you’re not selling features blindly. You are tailoring your proposal to real needs and savings (soft or hard dollars). You’re a consultant. Makes sense right? Not for some unfortunately.
### Two possible reasons a sales professional might have issues with solution selling.
***1.) ***
Sales people are under a lot of pressure to perform and to do so quickly. When presented with a “process” many times they see this as sales prevention.
I had an experienced sales person work for me that really never understood the solutions sale idea. He felt the only way he could sell something was that he needed to know the feature set and blindly present. “We have sixteen features… aren’t we great?” I tried to explain that while knowing the product and features is important they’re not as much as truly understanding the needs of the client. Blindly feature selling leaves you with discounting as your only weapon to win the deal. There’s no buy-off by the client. The investment for discovery and presentation was simply too time consuming for him. Frustrated we parted ways.
> “Blindly feature selling leaves you with discounting as your only weapon to win the deal.”
The interesting thing here was that I had helped close a large deal with him that we won on selling a solution. Our competition missed the application needed and I hadn’t. We saved the customer thousands a month.
***2.) Not given the opportunity***
Consumers, many times, are simply not interested in working with your discovery process.
We’ve all been in front of these customers. After a couple of minutes talking with them they ask “What do you think a ballpark price will be?” The temptation to “low ball” is fairly strong at this stage. I resist, of course, but now have a tremendously difficult time proceeding with the “process” going forward. I win very few of these deals.
Consultative selling can be hard and time consuming. That’s the point. Customers want to know that you have their best interest in mind. As you can see there are some real-time decisions that need to be made as well. If a customer won’t offer the time and energy for you to do your job then quote basic and go on to the next opportunity. Don’t forecast it. If it happens that’s a bonus. If you find yourself not wanting to take the time with a willing client… shame on you. Not only are you possibly going to lose the deal but you will leave money on the table.
Become a solution architect and you’ll not only make more money but you’ll have happier long-term customers.
LinkedIn is a lot of different things to a lot of different users. Arguably the most powerful place to make connections with business owners, executives, decision makers, recruiters, job seekers and the like. With more than , many of whom are executives and decision makers, it is a very powerful but congested venue for building relationships and credibility. This is where having a basic understanding of LinkedIn SEO is very useful.
If you haven’t been on LinkedIn for a while you will see some serious changes in the profile area. Things like apps are pretty much gone. No longer can you show off your latest WordPress blog post or Amazon book collection. What you can do, however, is present different media items such as videos, docs, and PowerPoint’s in the summary and experience areas of your profile directly. Actually pretty cool. While the LinkedIn Profile change has impacted the design and user experience, it hasn’t necessarily impacted how you’re found on LinkedIn.
### LinkedIn SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Most users randomly build their profiles without a lot of attention to how they get found. LinkedIn has some areas that they use heavily when someone does a search. Let’s take a look at a couple of these areas in an effort to make your LinkedIn time well spent.
**LinkedIn Headline:** One of the most important areas to optimize on your  is the headline. The headline field in SEO terms would be like the meta description section of your website. Here’s a couple of tweaks that should get you on the right track. Get rid of the traditional job title and put some credible keywords that define your abilities. I have multiple keywords in my title and so should you. Also, make sure you have a descent head-shot profile picture. This is not Facebook or twitter. It needs to be a professional shot.
Special Note: Google and LinkedIn Profiles tend to rank well. Make sure you have linked your profile to your websites and vice versa. Set your LinkedIn options to “Full View” so that Google can see your link(s) when crawling LinkedIn.
**LinkedIn Summary:** This is a great opportunity to add a ton of keywords, related terms, and longer, more descriptive keyword phrases. With that said… keep the content professional and meaningful.
> In a study from ROI Research, 59 per cent of respondents say LinkedIn is their most important account on social networks.
**LinkedIn Publishing:** Getting published on LinkedIn is a new powerful tool for the successful process of getting noticed. Once setup you can add articles any time you want. These articles are then “advertised” to all your connections and can be shared throughout the social media world. Take a look at my latest article  for more information on getting published.
**LinkedIn Groups:** LinkedIn has over half a million user groups. Groups that can be intellectually stimulating and tremendous resources. Groups that are most likely not focused on hiring. These memberships and the total number of first degree connections play a big part in determining your being noticed in LinkedIn search results. The closer your connection is to the searcher, the higher up you will find yourself if they use the filter option to sort by relationship. I recommend highly that you join as many pertinent groups that you can, connect with some LinkedIn Open Networkers, and start a group of your own.
Here is a great example of the social connection power and interaction of LinkedIn Groups. My profile views went up sky high and so did my credibility with this one discussion. Of course I have many more just like this.
Caution: When someone gets an invite to connect, they have the option to say that they do not know you. If you get five of those against you, LinkedIn may kill your account! Check out my article on this topic:  
There are many more aspects to LinkedIn that would help in getting noticed. Recommendations and endorsements for example. Another article maybe? Anyways, If you’re in a sales position of any type LinkedIn is a must have tool and it needs to be done correctly and with purpose.
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