Meet George Otte

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George Otte, Miami Entrepreneur

George Otte, Miami entrepreneur has more than a decade of multi-faceted business operations experience. He is the founder and chairman of the Otte Polo Group, a diversified firm that does business internationally.

Entrepreneurship runs in Otte’s blood. He founded his first company, a South Florida computer repair and support service called TSS, in 2002 when he was just 21 years old. He successfully ran TSS while enrolled full-time in college, building a network of more than 100 clients by 2005.

Otte took the next step in his entrepreneurial journey in 2006 with the acquisition of Geeks on Site, a comprehensive technical support company. Throughout the late 2000s, Otte built up Geeks on Site to become a premier coast-to-coast provider of on-site tech support, remote computer repair, and other value-added technology services. Geeks on Site now works with local technicians in more than 150 US metro areas.

As George Otte’s business grew, he recognized the need to integrate superior customer service with flexible, on-demand product fulfillment. Staying true to his vision, he launched Responsive Call Center, a U.S.-based call center and telephone answering service that provides a range of live call center and answering solutions for clients in healthcare, legal, property management, general contracting, and other industries.

Responsive Call Center is now has a network of six independent answering businesses operating nine different facilities throughout the United States. As he pursues his vision of building Responsive Call Center into the United States’ top privately held call center and telephone answering service company, Otte continues to look for acquisition opportunities throughout the country.

Shortly after Responsive Call Center was established, George Otte turned his attention to product fulfillment and acquired Fort Myers-based Phase V, a fulfillment and shipping operations center with a diversified portfolio of customers, including work dating back to the early 1980s.

Under Otte’s expert guidance, Phase V has grown into Florida’s top fulfillment company. Its diverse capabilities include warehousing, flexible order processing and fulfillment, direct mail, and contact services. Otte is committed to expanding Phase V’s innovative fulfillment and business support model to business clients in every corner of the United States and is actively seeking acquisition targets to support his goal.

Both Responsive Call Center and Phase V work with businesses of all sizes, from sole proprietors and small startups that can’t afford in-house fulfillment and answering capabilities to enterprise firms that trust Otte’s companies to provide impeccable service under the most challenging conditions.

George Otte was born Jorge Otte in Lima, Peru. He moved to Florida with his family at age seven and enjoyed what he calls a “fairly typical American childhood”. Though he maintains distant relations in Peru, Florida is home to Otte’s immediate family, business and social networks, to Otte himself. Although he devotes the vast majority of his time to overseeing his successful business ventures, Otte does manage to find time to relax. His hobbies include boating and fishing in the waters off Miami, spending time at the gym, and traveling to out-of-the-way destinations in Europe and Latin America.

Most Successful Marketing Strategies Have These 6 Features

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By George Otte

How’s your marketing strategy looking these days?

There’s no shame in taking a hard look at what’s working and what’s not. In fact, subjecting your entire marketing plan to a thorough annual review isn’t a bad idea at all. Best practices are changing faster than ever, and it’s up to you to stay on top it of all.

Your business is unique, which means your marketing strategy will have its own unique set of contours and quirks. But most successful marketing strategies share some attributes in common — like these five hallmarks.

1. Robust, Adaptive Social & Word of Mouth Campaigns

Social media marketing is relatively affordable and highly cost effective. Per Hootsuite, social media marketing budgets can be surprisingly complex, but they’re usually smaller than traditional advertising budgets. Even on premium channels such as Facebook, you can expect your cost per thousand impressions to be as little as 20% to 30% of what you’d pay for broadcast TV advertising.

And that’s assuming you pay for your social media placement at all. Some of the most effective campaigns are totally organic — bringing the power of word of mouth into the 21st century. You shouldn’t expect all, or even most, of your social posts to go viral. But, if you hire savvy communicators who know your audience well, you can turn your social accounts into powerful amplifiers for your message.

2. Effective Call Screening

Effective marketing campaigns produce leads. However, it’s crucial not to become a victim of your marketing efforts’ success. Reliable, scalable call screening helps your team qualify leads faster and with less uncertainty. Use a telephone answering service to screen calls and manage your inquiry inflows so that you can focus on the most promising leads. After all, your time is valuable.

3. Far-Reaching Direct Mail Capabilities

In an increasingly digital world, direct mail gets less attention than it should. Mail remains an incredibly powerful and cost-effective way to meet your prospects wherever they are — and, when executed properly, to stick in their minds long after they’ve set your mailing material aside. Plus, direct mail is secure (since it’s not connected to the Internet) and never trips up email suites’ promotional or spam filters.

If you’re serious about making direct mail work for you, you need to work with a partner that understands how to personalize and “localize” direct mail for your audience.

4. Virtual Receptionists to “Personally” Handle Inbound Leads

Looking to infuse your inbound marketing and sales operations with a personal touch? A virtual receptionist can help you do just that — providing a human foil for prospective customers and clients calling into your office for the first time. Keep in mind, your virtual receptionist doesn’t have to replace your office manager or onsite receptionist. Instead, your virtual receptionist can function as an extension of your sales team, freeing up valuable time for onsite staffers to work on other projects.

5. Automated Registration Capabilities

Trade shows, conventions, annual parties, and community events are all great ways to build buzz around your brand and get prospects talking about what you can do for them. However, they can be extremely challenging to manage, especially on larger scales.

Automated registration services greatly reduce one major logistical headache associated with event and convention management. With automated registration, you can quickly and seamlessly register dozens or hundreds of guests and allow them to manage their own relationships with the event. That’s a major time- and energy-saver for your human staffers, who likely need to attend to more pressing matters in the run-up to the big day.

6. Thought Leadership

This is an admittedly nebulous term, but the basic idea is simple: thought leaders are viewed as respected authorities in their fields. Thought leadership content takes many forms, including narrated videos, in-depth articles, friendly Q&A interviews, and more. It’s best posted on your personal and corporate LinkedIn page, your personal and company website, and on websites and social pages aligned with your company’s goals (for instance, trade associations), and it can be seamlessly integrated into a broader marketing strategy focused on your company’s competence and capabilities.

You Need a Partner for These 5 Critical Business Functions

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By George Otte

You’ve probably heard the expression: “If you want something done, do it yourself.”

There’s something to be said for taking this type of approach to running your company. But, in the fast-moving, rough-and-tumble business world, it’s simply impossible to stay on top of everything. You need help — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Admitting that you need help is an important first step. Next up: figuring out what do you actually need help with and who’s going to provide it.

Only you can answer those questions. However, unless your company specializes in one of the following business functions, it’s likely that you can start by outsourcing each of them to qualified professionals and service providers that delight in making life easier for their clients. In some cases, these partners can help you partially or fully automate repetitive processes without ceding control over them — achieving the optimal mix of scale and adaptability.

1. Legal Services

Most small businesses don’t need to keep lawyers on call around the clock. Many don’t even have legal experts on their payrolls. However, every small business needs a reliable legal resource that can provide basic services — incorporation, contract creation, confidentiality agreements — in a timely fashion.

One of the most cost-effective ways to outsource legal services to reputable, reliable partners is to purchase a monthly or annual retainer package with a reputable cloud-based company such as LawDepot or LegalZoom. If your legal needs are very basic or sporadic, it might be even more cost effective to simply purchase customized documents as you need them, rather than pay for a membership.

2. Accounting and Bookkeeping

Technological advances have breathed new life into the once stodgy accounting field. Thanks to online accounting platforms such as Xero and Freshbooks, you can now keep your own books with minimal guidance from human experts. When you do need professional assistance, perhaps at tax time or following a complicated transaction, you can turn to a local CPA who charges by the hour or project.

3. Appointment Scheduling and Registration

If you run a business that sees lots of clients, you can probably benefit from outsourcing your appointment scheduling activities using a virtual answering service. Rather than task an onsite staff member with taking appointments and making reminder calls, why not scale with an outside provider that’s well versed in the details of scheduling?

Likewise, if your company sponsors large events — awards dinner, trade shows, holiday parties — it’ll likely benefit from outsourcing event registration to the company that handles its appointment scheduling.

4. Direct Mail Marketing

Direct mail marketing is an effective tool for businesses of all sizes and functions. It’s superior to email and other forms of digital marketing in several ways: it can be personalized and customized as needed, it has local cachet, it’s digitally secure, and it doesn’t trip up email spam or promotional filters in the same fashion as its digital equivalent. Retaining a partner to assist with and scale your direct mail marketing efforts can boost your company’s visibility without putting a strain on its human or financial resources.

5. Inbound Call Handling

When customers, prospects, and vendors come calling, who answers? As your company grows, the answer to this question becomes ever more important. Partnering with a virtual answering service to handle and direct your inbound calls is an effective way to control costs and manage time as you expand. Like appointment scheduling, inbound call handling is vital – so why not outsource to experts that can represent your business in the best manner?

6. Customer Relationship Management

Most small businesses lack the manpower to manage customer relationships on a consistent basis, especially if they sell products or services that require lots of hands-on help. Outsourcing this vital function to a trusted partner keeps you on top of your customers’ needs without taking away from other mission-critical activities or requiring you to rent lots of additional office space to handle a larger headcount.

Which business functions and processes are you looking to outsource and automate?