TAS Marketing provides "Pay it Forward" stimulus checks to Answering Service Operators
In an effort to help stimulate this economy as well offering a twist with the traditional Christmas giving, TAS Marketing offered a 5% stimulus bonus package in the form of "Pay it Forward" checks to TAS operators across the country. From it's commission sales through the end of the year, TAS Marketing gave $3,685.00 to operators from 4 separate businesses to do with as they wish, as long as they give it to some worthy charity, cause or person(s).Commission checks went out in time for Christmas to the operators & staff of: Answer One, Inc. in Lexington, Kentucky, United Answering Service in Beverly Hills, California, Personalized Communications in Duncanville, Texas and World Class Communications in Seattle, Washington.
"It is our way of exploring what it means to give from the heart," says Steve Michaels, president of TAS Marketing. Mr. Michaels firmly believes that what "goes around, comes around" and is especially pleased to give these hard working members of our industry the chance to help others by donating to a cause of their choice.
"Pay it forward" is an idea that has spread across the country and is based on the novel about 11-year old Trevor McKinney who wanted to change the world by doing good deeds for three people. The pay it forward concept, said Michaels, is at the heart of the Christian faith, and serves as a reminder for people to give to others, "just as God gives to us... without preconditions."
Individual owners had a good time handing out these special, "Pay it Forward" checks to their employees and noted that the program has generated excitement among their staff and operators, as acts of kindness blossom. "Even with all the talk about the economy," says Kelly Hola, owner of World Class Communications, "our employees were still excited about giving to others." "Generosity begets generosity," says Michaels.
Employees were very grateful to be able to give to people they knew who were out of work or to find a local, needy family and help them pay their bills or put a little something extra under the tree for Christmas.
Mr. Michaels stated that he feels fortunate for all of the business that he received last year and is grateful to the many individuals who made it possible. "This is just my way of giving back to an industry that has given so much to me."
Personalized Communications & TAS Marketing "Warms Hearts"
For Christmas this year, the staff of Personalized Communications in Duncanville, Texas decided that they wanted to help those less fortunate. They formed "committees" and decided to give to a nonprofit organization called "Brighter Tomorrows". This organization provides housing and other services to families experiencing domestic and sexual violence. Brighter Tomorrows suggested we "adopt" a family to help out and said that each family in the shelter has a "wish list".Payroll deduction forms were made with "suggested" amounts of $1, $2, or $5 per participating employee, with the option to donate one time only, or have a payroll deduction from the remaining three payroll checks before our project would be complete and ready for delivery. Wow! To see the response from OUR staff, during such economic difficulties was just AMAZING. Then, to make it even better, our President, Stan Gardner, generously agreed to MATCH our donations! In addition, our staff chose to use the Stimulus Bonus check from TAS Marketing to increase our impact on these families.
Next, our shopping committee got the "wish lists" and headed to the stores! Because of our added donations, we were able to adopt TWO families. Our first family had one mother with two children and the other had a mother with three children. We purchased cookware, comforter sets, bedding, a Barbie house, Hannah Montana items, towels, gift cards for clothes and of course lots of toys. We were able to purchase EVERTHING on their lists which made both our employees and the "Brighter Tomorrow" families very happy and grateful!
When the shopping was complete, the wrapping committee gathered in the conference room with their hot chocolate, wrapping paper and twirled ribbon to wrap presents for two lucky families for that special Christmas. What a perfect way to end an 8 hour shift.
"We wanted to give something back to those in need even though many of our employee's families are struggling financially," says Sheila R. McBride, Operations Manager at Personalized, to show how, "so little can mean so much" when we all work together as a TEAM!
What a Christmas! What an INCREDIBLE staff!
Sheila R. McBride
Operations Manager
Personalized Communications, Inc.
September 2009
TAS Marketing helps stimulate Answering Service Economy
TAS Marketing, an answering service brokerage firm has taken the notion to stimulate our economy by supporting answering service employees during this economic downturn.Many answering service businesses are suffering through loss of customers and call volume and at least one company out there hopes to improve the life of it’s agents – if even by a little.
For the rest of the year, TAS Marketing will donate 5 percent of its commissions to the employees of any answering service that buys the accounts or business of another answering service by using TAS Marketing as it’s brokerage firm.
Steve Michaels, president of TAS Marketing states, “lots of people are complaining about this recession but nobody is doing anything about it. I have therefore decided to give back to an industry that has supported me for over 30 years with a 5% kickback to the people who make this industry work – the operators and agents.”
Each month, TAS Marketing will write a check to any company that acquires another answering service through it’s brokerage firm. “This money will be used exclusively to enhance the lives of the employees who will take on the extra workload that any acquisition can bring,” states Michaels.
“This concept if taken even further, can help stimulate our industry from within,” says Michaels. “We are really excited about the potential of this going viral – that other TAS businesses along with the vendors will pick up this idea and run with it. If they do, it will create a truly powerful economic stimulus, where friends help friends, neighbors help neighbors and businesses help businesses all by working together. It can start with just one company,” says Michaels.
Steve Michaels is a business broker with TAS Marketing and can be contacted at 800-369-6126 or tas@tasmarketing.com for questions. His web site is www.tasmarketing.com.
September 2009
TAS Marketing celebrates over 30 years of brokering expertise for the telephone answering service industry
Trout Creek, MontanaFrom its humble corporate headquarters in northwest Montana, TAS Marketing has supplied answering services with products and services for over 30 years. President and Broker, Steve Michaels says that he has gone through the gauntlet of selling answering service products from the first DID (direct inward dialing) system by Candela Electronics in 1979 to the more sophisticated Asterisk* based systems of today called TASterix.
But TAS Marketing’s primary business is selling telephone answering service businesses, which to-date adds up to over 370 businesses totaling a whopping $100,000,000.000 worth of sales.
Mr. Michael’s background supports his expertise from owning his TAS bureau in Palo Alto, CA to consulting for several TAS Manufacturers. He has been instrumental in hosting national TAS Expos and he also founded the Connections Magazine, the only trade journal in the industry today. Mr. Michael’s background generates many calls asking him to do evaluations for businesses and to help owners find new acquisitions for their existing answering services.
Titled the “TAS Guru”, Mr. Michael’s varieties of tasks have included writing answering service articles to selling used equipment. From selling multi-million dollar Call Centers to giving advice about a legal contract involving the sale of a business.
The All-Around Go-to-Guy serving the answering service industry is Steve Michaels and TAS Marketing. Mr. Michaels can be reached at (800) 369-6126.
June 2009
TAS Marketing Sells Two Winners
TAS Marketing announces the successful sale of two telecommunication businesses that were listed last month. The first business was Hudson Valley Answering Service located in Poughkeepsie, NY, owned by Dominic and Sharon Gallo. The Gallo’s were very satisfied with the sale as negotiations were made and equipment was purchased to enable the buyer to accept a few large accounts that were using radios. The buyer, Dick Gore and his daughter Julie Mooney with Berkshire Communications located in Pittsfield, MA. have taken over the operation and found it to be an excellent acquisition for their future growth.The second transaction was Answerphone, Inc. located in Jacksonville, Florida owned by Vicki Leonard. This sale was to Sunshine Communication Services, Inc. owned by Peter and Andy Gross out of Coral Gables, Florida. Peter found it helpful that the management would stay with the business and that they were on the same equipment platform.
Both transactions were complete within 60 days.
May 2009
Connections Communication Services purchases A Better Answer
Connections Communications Services located in San Francisco and owned by Gary Whalen has purchased A Better Answer located in Hesperia, CA, owned by Dee Cunningham. The transaction was handled by TAS Marketing.March 2009
Finger Lakes acquires Answer Bay Area in Florida
Tampa, Florida: Gard McLean from Finger Lakes Business Services located in Auburn, New York, has acquired Answer Bay Area, Inc. owned and operated since 1992 by Pete Ritchie in Tampa, Florida. The transisition was almost seamless according to Gard."We're happy to add Answer Bay Area to our list of acquisitions”, says Gard, who is also happy to now own an answering service in sunny Florida. The transaction was handled by Steve & Chris Michaels with the brokerage firm of TAS Marketing located in Trout Creek, Montana.
February 2009
A NEW Viable TAS Platform NOW available with the FREE Downloadable Software called *Asterisk.
The 30-year sales and marketing expertise of Steve Michaels from TAS Marketing combined with Vince McGlone’s 10 years of technical expertise and software development within the TAS Industries have broken through the technological & price barriers to offer an exciting new software package called TASterix®.Vince McGlone, founder of Call Response Consultants, states that TASterix® dovetails perfectly with the free, downloadable *Asterisk-based platform. “There are many high end Call Center applications available,” says Vince, “but no software has addressed answering services specifically like we have.”
TASterix® (www.TASterix.com), provides a full-featured TAS application for a percentage of the cost compared to our current vendors because of the FREE multi-featured *Asterisk. By buying off the shelf hardware along with TASterix, anyone can plug into the*Asterisk platform and a whole plethora of software applications become available such as FREE unlimited voice mail boxes and voice logging capabilities, which until now has been an expensive part of the answering service equipment package. Also included are local or remote answering capabilities, message taking, situational scripting, on-call scheduling, real time dispatch monitoring, color-coded prioritizing and time sensitive client contacting features. Business management tools, not available with current platforms, are provided to track customer complaints with follow-ups; employee logged hours, employee lateness’s and call-offs along with employee mistakes.
“This common sense approach to telephone answering has been a long time `coming.” says Michaels, who still continues to broker telephone answering services. “One of the many complaints I hear from owners is their frustration at being totally reliant on their current vendors for hardware & software which is very expensive and sometimes not up to date. With our new TASterix® platform, you may simply purchase off the shelf Dell computers, download the free software from *Asterisk and together with our software, the sky’s the limit.”
There has been a lot of discussion about disaster recovery lately but what needs to be addressed is 24 Hour Business Continuity. Mr. McGlone states, “If you think hard about disaster recovery, it is not about saving equipment…it is about SAVING OUR CLIENTS and REVENUE STREAMS.” The TASterix® platform offers this business continuity plan not only to you but also it offers the same protection to your clients – a new selling feature and a first for our industry!
This new marketing tool called the TASter-X-Factor immediately allows the creation of a Vertical Sales market within your current client base by providing additional marketable revenue streams that cannot be offered by anyone else! This brilliant application gives an answering service owner the ability to offer their clients PBX features, resell local and long distance usage, and provide the same disaster recovery/business continuity program that the service has.
“Like our economy, the TAS industry is in a state of flux. The concerns of how to add or maintain your client base, buy new equipment or upgrades are viable. But change is inevitable and TASterix® in association with *Asterisk-based telephony has the distinct ability to offer new marketable features to increase your bottom line as well as providing the glue needed to keep your valuable customers from leaving your service. It is ALL provided in one simple, affordable platform,” says Michaels. TASterix® is a tool that can be used in a myriad of ways from straight telephone answering for someone looking to upgrade their equipment to adding co-locate or in-house disaster recovery for someone with Infinity, CMC or other vendor products.
Software fees include customizable monthly licensing, tech support, unlimited licensing for single or multiple locations, and never seen before source code licensing for pro-active and development savvy services whom may already have developers on staff or on a consult basis.
To learn more about *Asterisk and our Disaster Recovery Program, log onto www.tasmarketing.com and click the respective banners… to see more about TASterix®, just log onto our web site at www.tasterix.com.
A complete demo of TASterix® will be offered every Wednesday at 1:00 pm eastern standard time starting March 11th. Just call Steve at (800) 369-6126 to be put on the schedule for a demo or a price quote.
Our technical department at (866) 292-1947 can answer any questions regarding the set-up and operation of TASterix®.
If you would like to delve more deeply into the exciting future of *Asterisk, simply call (800) 369-6126 to join our TASterix listserve to learn and understand more about the complexities of TASterix® and all that it can do for you and your company.
For more information regarding buying or selling an answering service, contact TAS Marketing at (800) 369-6126 or tas@tasmarketing.com.