If you’re running your coaching business from your home (or thinking about starting a home-based practice), you might have some security and privacy concerns. I urge you to consider your specific situation before deciding whether or not to use your home address or personal land line or cell phone number to conduct your business.
I’m not here to convince you one way or the other. I know you’ll want to portray a professional image to your clients and prospects and that your budget is probably limited. So I just want to make you aware of a service that might help you solve your dilemma. It’s a web based voice mail service and it’s totally free to use.
Signing up for an account is quick and easy.
You can choose to setup your account for playback only (announcement/greeting) or playback and record (so callers can leave a message). You can keep the default settings which tell the service to send you email notifications and daily activity statements. If you don’t want any email sent to you, just uncheck the boxes. You’ll still be able to go on-line to check your account for messages and get reports.
The next thing you need to do is record your greeting or announcement. Call your assigned number and you’ll receive clear instructions on how to do this. It might be a toll call for you to record your greeting (when I tested the service, I was assigned an Iowa area code and I’m in Indiana). If you don’t have a cell phone with unlimited long distance, there’s another “recording” option that will make the entire process totally free for you.
You can record your message at your computer using the free audio recording and editing software from Audacity and upload it to your Simple Voice Box account.
Once you’ve finished with your greeting, you’re ready to receive messages. See why they call it Simple Voice Box?
There’s no limit on the length of messages you can receive or how long they can be stored. So you shouldn’t lose any messages because a caller talked too long or the message got too old. There are at least two other benefits of using a voice mail service for your incoming calls. You’ll increase your productivity by NOT interrupting your current work to answer the phone. You’ll also prevent yourself from reacting too quickly or saying something you later regret because you’ll have time to compose your thoughts and think of a reply before you return your calls.
Note: This is NOT a voice-to-text service, so nothing will get lost in the translation. You’ll get an audio recording of the caller’s message (via email and/or on-line, depending upon how you set your options). This means you’ll need to have your computer speakers turned on or use a headset to listen.
If you want to use the service to broadcast messages to customers or clients, you can set up an RSS feed or a podcast for them to subscribe to. I bet you’ll be able to think of lots of ways to use this free service for your business. I’d love to hear the creative ideas you come up with.
If you don’t want to give out your street address or use it on your web site or with your autoresponder, you can always get a local post office box (yes, that will keep you in compliance with the CAN-SPAM laws). They’re relatively inexpensive. In my zip code the monthly rental starts at $3.50.
Some people will tell you that using a PO Box makes you look unprofessional. I think it depends on your specific niche and I don’t want to suggest that you need to give up your privacy just because you’re in business. I think the most important point is that you make it easy for clients and prospects to reach you. If you share your reasons for not disclosing a street address, I think most people will respect that.
If you’re thinking about using a private mailbox service (like Mailboxes Etc.) that allows you to use their street address, just be aware that if you later decide to discontinue that service, the US Postal Service will NOT forward your mail to your new address. You’ll have to individually notify everyone who sends you mail about your new address. A client of mine learned this the hard way a few years ago.
Sheryl, this is great info. I use to use 800 link and it looks like
Again, Sheryl thanks! Gregg Swanson
Simple Voice Box might be a bit more flexible. I would add to this
that when a person composes their voice greeting to leave separate
call to action (besides leaving a message), i.e. direct the caller
to your website to receive a special report, or leave their mailing
address to receive a hard copy. This can be very effective and then
allows the person to follow-up with e-mail, hard mail and VM. As
well all know it takes 7 -10 touches before a person buys. A VERY
powerful tool would be to set-up a separate site or page and have
specific questions for the caller to answer. In return the coach
would provide a strategy session…we all know where this is going
Gregg, Great comment. I like your strategy and agree that it can
provide powerful results. Thanks for sharing. Additionally, I want
to remind folks how important their greeting is. Remember, this is
probably where prospects are getting their first impression of you.
Make sure to let callers know when they can expect to hear back
from you. This advice applies no matter what kind of messaging
system you use.
I just had an email question asking how this compares to Grand
Central. Here’s my reply: I haven’t looked at Grand Central for a
while. It used to be a service whose primary feature was to let you
set up a system so callers would use a single number and you could
set up a forwarding/following system so that calls would reach you
on whatever phone you specified… home, office, cell, etc. And it
wasn’t free. I just Googled it and see that it’s been bought out by
Google and is in private beta, so there’s no way to tell exactly
what it will do or cost unless you sign up to be notified when they
open up.