Once you want to become even more advanced, you can use the Postmaster 

software. Not only can it reply with templated responses, but it can be 

programmed to spot specific keywords and phrases in emails. When it spots 

the certain phrase, it pulls up your template, personalizes it to the individual 

and mails it out. You don t even have to see the emails! 

You can prepare it to follow up on these prospects if you want as well. Plus, 

it can be used to build contact databases and send mail merged emails to 

them whenever you want. It s like having your email on steroids. Most 

people never even use it to it s potential.  

What about when you have to hire someone?

Using templated responses is a limited automation solution.  Eventually 

you'll still get too much email that you can't handle it all.  So then you have 

to hire it out to someone else. 

You can either hire an employee and have the headaches which come with 

that, or you can hire an independent contractor.  I'd prefer the second option.  

I don't want to have to deal with employees or all the legal issues which 

come along with that.  So I find independent contractors to do some of the 

work for me.   

The best place to find these types of people is at 

http://www.elance.com

You can hire transcriptionists, web designers, and even customer service 

people there.  They'll work as an independent contractor and they'll even 

place bids on doing your work.  Make sure to check their feedback and then 

pick someone to try out for the  job.  

You could also hire writers to write backend emails for you.  Hire people to 

contact potential joint venture partners.  You could even hire someone to call 

all your customers and sell to them over the phone. 

Eventually you could set yourself up as the  CEO  of your company and 

have all these freelancers doing the majority of the work for you.  If 

someone does a good job, you'll keep using them.  If not, you'll dump them 

and get someone else (no severance pay or benefits for independent 

contractors). 

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