When you begin the journey as an entrepreneur starting your own business, it is natural for you to put your personal cell phone number on your business card. After all, you are in charge of sales, marketing, accounting, operations, and responsible for doing whatever it is that gives your company a competitive edge.
So over time, your cell phone number also ends up on the website, invoices, brochures, signage, and advertisements. The result is that your cell phone starts receiving all the incoming calls for sales, marketing, accounting and operations, all those different hats you wear as an entrepreneur.
But then, something starts to happen… A glimmer of success? You win your first large contract and your business is starting to feel like reality. Now you can afford to hire an employee or vendor to handle your accounting. However, there is one small dilemma; all the account payable and account receivable calls are still coming to your cell phone. That should be an easy fix as you can just switch the phone number on the invoices to your new employee’s cell phone or your accountants main phone number. On top of that, you recently hired a sales and marketing professional to lead your growth efforts. This results in the same issue; sales and marketing calls are coming to your cell phone due to all the paper brochures and the corners of the internet that have your cell phone on them. No problem, you can just make the next batch of brochures and the next revision of the website use your new sales person’s cell phone.
More time passes as your company starts to have trouble keeping up with the demand for your products and services. With the importance of your working hours increasing, efficiency becomes ever so important to manage your time. However, you are finding that your productivity isn’t increasing as you are still being interrupted and pulled in five different directions from the calls you are still receiving from all of the old advertisements, brochures, invoices, and business cards. To make things worse, your accountant is moving out-of-state to be closer to family and your sales person landed a new job and is leaving your company. So now, you have the added distraction of angry emails and calls from vendors who can’t get a hold of your accountant to get paid, because they are calling the phone number they have on file… which is your old accountants number. And for some reason your sales call volume has dropped. You don’t know that potential customers are calling the number on old brochures and outdated corners of the internet that have your old sales person’s cell phone.
The result? Your sales are down, your stress is up, and there isn’t enough time or coffee to deal with all the messes you have to clean up.
Design your business to scale and grow from day one.
You might be a solopreneur today, but tomorrow your company could be significantly bigger. A phone service is valuable to set up from day one of your business even if all you do is forward the “business phone number” to your cell phone. This gives you a phone number you can publish on any marketing, sales, accounting or operational material. It might seem like a waste in the beginning but when you hire your new accountant, all you have to do is add an auto attendant to say “Thanks for calling my business… for Accounting press 1, sales press 2, for marketing press 3, for all other inquiries press 4”. It doesn’t matter if number 2, 3 and 4 forward to your cell phone. At least accounting can be forwarded to the accounting firm you have today and it can be changed to forward to the accounting firm you’ll have tomorrow. Then, when you hire your new sales person, pressing #2 will forward to their cell phone or desk phone. If you make the decision to set up a phone system and phone number separate from your cell phone from day one, then the moment you redirect those calls to that new person/vendor you will be immediately removing distractions. You will also be eliminating the chance that people are calling wrong numbers… even when that “wrong number” is your personal cell phone.
Office Ours has rolled out a new phone system that is designed to assist small businesses in their growth and development, while also giving you the flexibility to take it with you as you grow, even if that means graduating from our office products into a standard commercial lease. To all small businesses that sign up, we are giving one of the most affordable and flexible phone systems offered on the market. No more headaches of transferring systems when you move office locations and most importantly, no hidden fees. For new members and leases, we are offering the first line and business phone number for free. Ask about how our phone system can help your business achieve growth and efficiency.
