Page 126 - Winning The Credit Game Bundle (CK Patrick)

OBTAINING A BUSINESS PHONE AND 411 LISTING

While it is technically and legally possible to use your personal
phone as your business phone number, there are several reasons
not to do this.
One is the risk of harassment: by using your personal phone
number with your customers and clients, you are opening your-
self up to receive calls from the public 24 hours a day.
The professional image of your business may also suffer if
you answer business phone calls the same way you would
answer personal calls, or if you mistake one for the other. Using
a landline number instead of a cell phone is important to estab-
lish business credibility and national or international presence. It
also gives you the ability to use the convenience of an interactive
voice response system to direct your callers.
Lastly, if you want a business partner or employee to also
have access to your business phone line, you don’t want this to
require that you give them access to use your personal phone
unsupervised. It may become burdensome to be the only person
who can answer the phone and take down messages for your
business, and giving others access to your personal phone and
voicemail may be even riskier.
Fortunately, there are a growing number of ways to obtain a
business phone number affordably or for free. These include:

Obtain a toll-free number from a phone provider. This
will cost money just like any ordinary phone line
would, but it can give you a professional toll-free
number, or a custom vanity number that is easy for
your customers to remember.
Companies like kall8.com, Ring Central, Vonage, or
your phone provider should offer options, including
forwarding your business calls to different phones at
different times and creating an automated menu to
help direct calls to different people or departments.

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