I have been running Trans Supply since I was in 9th grade, so I have experience with doing business on the go.  It's hard to manage your business while you are traveling, especially when your business is a sole proprietorship and you’re the only one answering the phone.  For example: try answering a customer's call asking when an order is expected to arrive when you do 500 orders per year and you're about to enter the security line at the airport.  However here are three tips to make your business as mobile ready as possible.

1. Get Myfax – or any online fax service.  This way you can receive and send faxes digitally via a website.  Faxes come to your email instantly - no having to wait until you get back in the office to see your faxes.  To make life even easier on the road, try to find a digital fax service that has an app for your cell phone.

2. Use Gmail - if you are a business owner that’s not taking advantage of Google's free email service, you are missing out.  Every time I place an order, it is done via email.  Every email is 'archived' by Google and can be searched by title, or any text in the email.  So for example if I needed to look up the details of an order, I type in the customer's name which is always included in the 'ship to' portion of my orders, and there is my order email showing what they ordered, how many units and how long ago it was ordered.  You can even customize the email address the customer sees.  For example, you send a customer an email from a johnsmith@gmail.com address, but you can tell Gmail to show sales@yourcompany.com on the receiving end of the email.  This makes it look more professional.

3. Have the right smart phone - for my business, I have hundreds of products.  When a customer calls asking about the cost of 200 traffic drums and I am not near a computer, I ask them to hold for one minute and I navigate to my website with my phone, select the options they need on their drums from the drop down menu and check what type of quantity discount they get by scrolling over the quantity discount table.  Navigating the web from a smart phone is not always easy.  With the iPhone I have had no difficulty doing this but I know phones like the Blackberry and Palm Trio don’t make surfing the net a breeze.  Check to see how easy the web is to navigate with your business phone before you dedicate yourself to that phone.

Now remember, there is nothing wrong with telling your customer you are traveling.  However, do not let this be a crutch on your interaction with them.  Make sure you have a pen and pad handy at all times and move to the quietest area possible that is also close by.  Make sure to take down their number right away in case you lose them and need to call back.  If you can’t get on the phone with your customer, shoot them an email and tell them you will be in contact as soon as you can.  From my experience, customers appreciate when you are responsive to them even if you don’t have all the tools to answer their questions right then.  In a perfect world, everything we needed to help our customers would be at our fingertips 24/7.  However, since this isn’t a perfect world it’s important we improvise with what we have.

Author Bio:
Brandon Anderson is the owner and operator of www.trans-supply.com, an e-commerce website dedicated to traffic safety products.  He has ran the business since freshman year of college and currently resides in LA where he is working on expanding his operation.