How to Work Virtually From a Home Office
or No Office At All
You’ve made the decision to go into business. Good for you. Maybe you have had it working for someone else. Or you’ve retired and you want to make some extra money. Perhaps you you want to turn your hobby into a real business.
Whatever your motivation, you’ve got some hard realities to face. To be successful you’re going to have to compete against all of the other companies that are already selling what you want to sell. That means that you’ve got to take their customers away from them and convince new customers that they should buy from you instead. And then there are the costs, starting with the overhead costs of maintaining an office and your work environment.
Today, more and more entrepreneurs are choosing to work Virtually or from a home office. The good news is that there are now more services and tools than ever, available to make the home or virtual office as complete an office as any physical office.
Your Home Office needs a telephone number. If you do business in a local area, then get a local number. Customers will recognize you as a local business and may feel more comfortable working with a local business than with someone across the country.
If you do business in a large geographic area, or nationally, you need a toll free number. Even though the cost of making a long distance call is now very little, most people will avoid making a long distance call. An out – of – town phone number also identifies you as an out – of – town business.
Finally, if you do business internationally, you can now get a local phone number in the country where you do business, as easily as getting a US phone number. An international telephone number provider will be able to route that phone number right to you, like any other phone number, and for only pennies a minute.
Follow-Me / Call Forwarding will connect customers and prospective customers who call your Home Office telephone number to you live, wherever you are. You won’t miss any calls or business opportunities. Your customers will appreciate how easy it is to reach you, and they will reward you with more of their business. And you’ll enjoy the benefits of “Doing Business in Real TimeSM”.
You can make your business sound bigger and more impressive by adding an Auto Attendant to your Virtual Office. Callers hear a Menu, offering them the choice of different people or departments, such as for Sales press 1 and for Customer Service press 2. Even if you’re the only one in your business and all calls are transferred to you, your callers won’t know that and you’ll sound like a bigger business. Your Home Office Auto Attendant will even allow you to transfer calls to the right person or department.
Your Virtual Office will also come with voice mail. But a call shouldn’t end with a message. You should be notified that you just received a message or, better yet, have the message delivered to you by phone and sent to your email to be played over your computer and stored there until you delete it. That way, you can get back to your customer in minutes, while they’re still at the number they left.
Finally, your Virtual Office should come with the ability to receive faxes. Faxes are delivered to your email , where you can read them, save them and print them as needed. Desktop faxing is the capability for you to send faxes directly from your computer, making the purchase of a fax machine unnecessary.
So you see, for just pennies a day, it is easy for you to do business virtually or from a home office, with a telephone and fax number and a virtual phone system with state of the art features that will give your business the credibility to compete and win against some of the largest corporations in the world.
Mark Gordon is the President of American Voice Mail. American Voice Mail is an enhanced service provider that has provided telephone services to over 1 Million clients. It owns the world’s largest local Virtual Office telephone number network with local telephone Virtual Office service in 40 countries worldwide.
Copyright 2007 Mark Gordon. All rights reserved.