Ceri Ruenheck is the president of It’s Your Call, a b2b virtual telemarketing firm established in 1994. It’s Your Call helps small businesses make the necessary outbound calls that they might not have the resources to perform themselves. In 2009, she opened a second business with her husband, Two Cool Cats, a website development company. In addition to running those businesses, Ceri consults to small companies who need help with putting together a marketing process. She is also a noted speaker and author of the e-book Cold Calling for the Clueless. She is the mother of two boys and two cats all living in Harvard, MA.
1) How did you get started working from home?
When I was on maternity leave with my first son, an ex-boss of mine was consulting to a company that wanted to create an inside sales force. The ex-boss called me and said, “Who better than you?” Knowing that I was about to start maternity leave she passed her client along to me.
2) How did you choose the work-at-home career you do?
After about 7 months or so of consulting to the client, the work was finishing up. I wasn’t sure how I was going to market myself to companies that were thinking about starting inside sales groups, but I knew there had to be a lot of small businesses that didn’t have the resources to make outbound phone calls. I decided to go to a trade show and any company that had a gold fish bowl to collect business cards I went up asked, “Who’s going to follow up on all those cards,” and I got my second customer.
3) How do you market your business?
Marketing is an ongoing process. I go to networking events, blog, Adwords, telemarketing, direct mail, email, speaking, PR, trade shows and conferences. Each of these has a process attached that helps push the prospects/leads through the sales funnel.
4) What does your usual day look like?
I divide my day up between Customer Service, Sales/Marketing and Operations (administrative and hr components). Coming from a corporate work space we didn’t do networking. After about a year someone introduced me to going to networking event. I found these events helped deal relieve the isolation that came while working at home.
5) What advice would you give someone who wants to work from home?
My advice to a new WAH person would be to make sure you’re organized and do something towards growing your business daily.
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