Everyone wants a piece of you. They send you e-mail. It makes you feel important. Love it? Really? Then, please take some of mine! More than 100 real e-mails come in each day.

At two minutes apiece, it will take three plus hours just to read and respond. Let’s not even think about the messages that take more than three minutes of work to deal with. Shudder. For whatever reason, everyone feels compelled to keep you “in the loop.”

Being buried alive under electronic missives forces you to develop coping strategies. Here are some of the non-obvious ones.

Readers Now Bear the Burden

Before e-mail, senders shouldered the burden of mail. Writing, stamping and mailing a letter was a lot of work. Plus, each new addressee meant more postage, so we thought hard about whom to send things to.

E-mail bludgeoned that system in no time. With free sending to an infinite number of people now a reality, every little thought and impulse becomes instant communication. Our most pathetic meanderings become deep thoughts that we happily blast to six dozen colleagues who surely can’t wait. On the receiving end, we collect these gems of wisdom from the dozens around us. The result: Inbox overload.

“But my incoming e-mail is important.” Don’t fool yourself. Time how long you spend at your inbox. Multiply by your per-minute wage (divide your yearly salary by 120,000 to get your per-minute wage) to find out just how much money you spend on e-mail. If you can justify that expense, far out–you’re one of the lucky ones. But for many, incoming e-mail is a money suck. Bonus challenge: Do this calculation companywide.)

Taming e-mail means training the senders to put the burden of quality back on themselves.

How You Can Send Better E-Mail

What’s the best way to train everyone around you to better e-mail habits? You guessed it: You go first. First, you say, “In order for me to make you more productive, I’m going to adopt this new policy to lighten your load�” Demonstrate a policy for a month, and if people like it, ask them to start doing it too.

• Use a subject line to summarize, not describe. People scan their inbox by subject. Make your subject rich enough that your readers can decide whether it’s relevant. The best way to do this is to summarize your message in your subject.
  • Bad Subject Line
    Subject: Deadline discussion
  • Good Subject Line
    Subject: Recommend we ship product April 25th
• Give your reader full context at the start of your message. Too many messages forwarded to you start with an answer–”Yes! I agree. Apples are definitely the answer”–without offering context. We must read seven included messages, notice that we were copied, and try to figure out what apples are the answer to. Even worse, we don’t really know if we should care.
  • Bad E-Mail
    To: Billy Franklin
    From: Robert Payne
    Subject: Re: Re: Re: Please bring contributions to the charity drive
    Yes, apples are definitely the answer.
  • Good E-Mail
    To: Billy Franklin
    From: Robert Payne
    Subject: Re: Re: Re: Please bring contributions to the charity drive.
    You asked if we want apple pie. Yes, apples are definitely the answer.
• When you copy lots of people (a heinous practice that should be used sparingly), mark out why each person should care. Just because you send a message to six poor co-workers doesn’t mean all six know what to do when they get it. Ask yourself why you’re sending to each recipient, and let them know at the start of the message what they should do with it. Big surprise, but this also forces you to consider why you’re including each person.
  • Bad CC
    To: Abby Gail, Bill Fold, Cindy Rella
    Subject: Website design draft is done
    The website draft is done. Check it out in the attached file. The design firm will need our responses by the end of the week.
  • Good CC
    To: Abby Gail, Bill Fold, Cindy Rella
    Subject: Website design draft is done
    AG: DECISION NEEDED. Get marketing to approve the draft
    BF: PLEASE VERIFY. Does the slogan capture our branding?
    CR: FYI, if we need a redesign, your project will slip.
    The website draft is done. Check it out in the attached file. The design firm will need our responses by the end of the week.
• Use separate messages rather than bcc (blind carbon copy). If you bcc someone “just to be safe,” think again. Ask yourself what you want the “copied” person to know, and send a separate message if needed. Yes, it’s more work for you, but if we all do it, it’s less overload.
  • Bad BCC
    To: Fred
    Bcc: Chris
    Please attend the conference today at 2:00 p.m.
  • Good BCC
    To: Fred
    Please attend the conference today at 2:00 p.m.
    To: Chris
    Please reserve the conference room for me and Fred today at 2:00 p.m.
• Make action requests clear.. If you want things to get done, say so. Clearly. There’s nothing more frustrating as a reader than getting copied on an e-mail and finding out three weeks later that someone expected you to pick up the project and run with it. Summarize action items at the end of a message so everyone can read them at one glance.
• Separate topics into separate e-mails…up to a point. If someone sends a message addressing a dozen topics, some of which you can respond to now and some of which you can’t, send a dozen responses–one for each topic. That way, each thread can proceed unencumbered by the others.Do this when mixing controversy with mundania. That way, the mundane topics can be taken care of quietly, while the flame wars can happen separately.
  • Bad Mixing of Items
    We need to gather all the articles by February 1st.
    Speaking of which, I was thinking–do you think we should fire Sandy?
  • Good Mixing of Items
    Message #1: We need to gather all the articles by February 1st.
    Message #2: Sandy’s missed a lot of deadlines recently. Do you think termination is in order?
• Combine separate points into one message. Sometimes the problem is the opposite–sending 500 tiny messages a day will overload someone, even if the intent is to reduce this by creating separate threads. If you’re holding a dozen open conversations with one person, the slowness of typing is probably substantial overhead. Jot down all your main points on a piece of (gasp) paper, pick up the phone and call the person to discuss those points. I guarantee you’ll save a ton of time.
• Edit forwarded messages. For goodness sake, if someone sends you a message, don’t forward it along without editing it. Make it appropriate for the ultimate recipient, and make sure it doesn’t get the original sender in trouble.
  • Bad Forwarding
    To: Bill
    Sue’s idea, described below, is great.
    —-
    From: Sue
    Hey, Abner:
    Let’s take the new design and add sparkles around the border. Bill probably won’t mind; his design sense is so garish he’ll approve anything.
  • Good Forwarding
    To: Bill
    Sue’s idea, described below, is great.
    —-
    From: Sue
    Hey, Abner:
    Let’s take the new design and add sparkles around the border.
• When scheduling a call or conference, include the topic in the invitation. It helps people prioritize and manage their calendar more effectively.
  • Bad E-Mail
    Subject: Conference call Wednesday at 3:00 p.m.
  • Good E-Mail
    Subject: Conference call Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. to review demo presentation.
• Make your e-mail one page or less. Make sure the meat of your e-mail is visible in the preview pane of your recipient’s mailer. That means the first two paragraphs should have the meat. Many people never read past the first screen, and very few read past the third.
• Understand how people prefer to be reached and how quickly they respond. Some people are so buried under e-mail that they can’t reply quickly. If something’s important, use the phone or make a follow-up phone call. Do it politely; a delay may not be personal. It might be that someone’s overloaded. If you have time-sensitive information, don’t assume people have read the e-mail you sent three hours ago rescheduling the meeting that takes place in five minutes. Pick up the phone and call.

Setting a good example only goes so far. You also have to train others explicitly. Explain to them that you’re putting some systems in place to help you manage your e-mail overload. Ask for their help, and know that they’re secretly envying your strength of character.

• Check e-mail at defined times each day. We hate telemarketers during dinner, so why do we tolerate e-mail when we’re trying to get something useful done? Turn off your e-mail “autocheck,” and only check e-mail two or three times a day, by hand. Let people know that if they need to reach you instantly, e-mail isn’t the way. When it’s e-mail processing time, however, shut the office door, turn off the phone, and blast through the messages.
• Use a paper “response list” to triage messages before you do any follow-up. The solution to e-mail overload is pencil and paper? Who knew? Grab a legal pad and label it “Response list.” Run through your incoming e-mails. For each, note on the paper what you have to do or whom you have to call. Resist the temptation to respond immediately. If there’s important reference information in the e-mail, drag it to your Reference folder. Otherwise, delete it. Zip down your entire list of e-mails to generate your response list. Then, zip down your response list and actually do the follow-ups.
• Charge people for sending you messages. One CEO I’ve worked with charges staff members five dollars from their budget for each e-mail she receives. Amazingly, her overload has gone down, the relevance of e-mails has gone up, and the senders are happy, too, because the added thought often results in them solving more problems on their own.
• Train people to be relevant. If you’re constantly copied on things, begin replying to e-mails that aren’t relevant with the single word: “Relevant?” Of course, you explain that this is a favor to them. Now, they can learn what is and isn’t relevant to you. Beforehand, tell them the goal is to calibrate relevance, not to criticize or put them down and encourage them to send you relevancy challenges as well. Pretty soon, you’ll be so well trained you’ll be positively productive!
• Answer briefly. When someone sends you a 10-page missive, reply with three words. “Yup, great idea.” You’ll quickly train people not to expect huge answers from you, and you can then proceed to answer at your leisure in whatever format works best for you. If your e-mail volume starts getting very high, you’ll have no choice.
• Send out delayed responses. Type your response directly, but schedule it to be sent out in a few days. This works great for conversations that are nice but not terribly urgent. By inserting a delay in each go-around, you both get to breath easier. >(In Outlook, choose “Options” when composing a message and select “do not deliver before.” In Eudora, hold down the Shift key as you click “Send.”)
• Ignore it. Yes, ignore e-mail. If something’s important, you’ll hear about it again. Trust me. And people will gradually be trained to pick up the phone or drop by if they have something to say. After all, if it’s not important enough for them to tear their gaze away from the hypnotic world of Microsoft Windows, it’s certainly not important enough for you to take the time to read.

Yeah, yeah, you have a million reasons why these ideas can never work in your workplace. Hogwash. Choose a technique and start applying it — right now.

The ring of the cash register has long been the sound of music. But today the cash register of even the smallest business may be attached to a computer via “point-of-sale” (POS) systems. These systems have grown in popularity over conventional cash registers because they don’t just ring up sales. They amass vital, real-time information about your inventory and customers.

At the core of these systems are a standard-issue computers running specialized POS software, usually with a cash drawer and receipt printer, and often with a bar code scanner and credit card reader. Vendors often sell these systems pre-configured, or you can add these peripherals on as your requirements grow. The typical cost can be less than $1,500.

What do you get for your investment? Without a doubt, the biggest advantage is the ability to get an immediate, up-to-the-minute, accurate assessment of your inventory. Each time you check out a customer, the goods you ring up are immediately subtracted from your inventory list, which is maintained on the system’s hard drive.

That inventory may be surprisingly large. Many boutique clothing stores, for example, will stock SKUs numbering in the thousands, with actual counts exceeding 10,000 items. The same is true for shops selling everything from bicycles to cameras to cosmetics.

Keeping track of the thousands of items that make up a small business can be a real chore. However, consistently keeping hard-to-find items in stock can add up to a competitive advantage over much larger competitors. How to strike the balance?

A good POS system can help, allowing you to set an alert that lets you know when a given item is at the re-order point. When it’s time to re-order, some POS systems tell you both the most recent price you paid, as well as the average price you’ve paid in the past. Both can help you strike the best deal with your suppliers.

Off-hours, you can run a report that gives you inventory activity for the day, week or month. To get the big picture, some POS systems allow you to track your inventory year to year, allowing you to compare this year’s orders with those from last year. Doing so can help you anticipate where you want to head in the coming months.

Taking inventory is one of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks every store owner faces. It is also one of the most crucial. Having too much stock, or too little, is costly. According to the National Retail Federation, U.S. retailers lose $224 billion due to excess inventory and $45 billion from not having inventory in stock.

While having a POS system track your inventory does not substitute for a physical inventory count, many shopkeepers find they can reduce the number of times each year they must conduct this time-consuming task. And when the time comes, the use of a wireless portable scanner in conjunction with a POS system can greatly reduce your footsteps, saving hours in the process.

In addition to tracking inventory, a good POS system will help you know who your best customers are and what they like. With the customer’s purchase history visible right at the cash register, a nursery owner might alert a tea rose lover to a new shipment of those flowers.

A camera store owner could tell a wildlife photographer about a new high-speed 35mm film ideal for capturing images of raptors in flight. Conversely, an auto parts store owner could query the POS system with a quick barcode scan to answer a customer’s inquiry about the availability of a spare part.

What it comes down to is this: In a well-run business, the point of sale is more than just the place where the money comes in. With the right equipment, it becomes your strategic service center, the place that will help you grow your business and keep your customers coming back.

And the ka-ching keeps on coming. According to Intuit market research, by using an affordable, integrated POS system, an independent retailer with revenue of $300,000 can cut costs by close to 10 percent, saving an average $30,000 a year. That’s a substantial return on a $1,500 investment. The question then becomes, How can you not afford a POS system?
Shopping for the Right POS System

In looking for a POS system, the choices are many, the price can range from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, and the final decision can be difficult. Here are some guidelines to help.

• Three words of advice: inventory, inventory, inventory. All POS systems ring up sales and track inventory. But a good one will let you assess your inventory easily and thoroughly. You should be able to set alerts for items running low, readily add new items when they come in, account for back-orders, and even generate purchase orders to send to vendors.
• Weigh ease-of-use against functionality. Generally speaking, the more complex your orders are, the more features you’ll need. But consider as well the time needed to bring new employees up to speed and the time you’ll invest training them. The best systems offer a balance of both.
• Look for a system that can start small and grow with your needs. If you are on a tight budget, you can begin with a basic setup: POS software running on a PC with just a drawer and receipt printer.

  Later on, you can add on as your needs dictate, perhaps a bar code scanner and credit card reader to begin with, then add an inventory tag printer, pole display, or PIN debit pad. Also, you should pick a system, based on your needs, that doesn’t require having someone set it up for you.