You know what it’s like being a small business owner – especially if you’re a solo entrepreneur.

Dealing with the daily operations of your business and trying to push projects towards completion.

Trying to plan your marketing and make sales, so you’ve got a consistent pipeline of new business.

Burying your head in financial statements and wondering why you didn’t pay attention at school during maths.

And all the while listening to the phone ring. But why worry about dealing with the phone?

It’s not like it could be a potential sale or a customer looking for help (how often does that happen in small businesses, right?)

Even if it is a lead or a customer, they’ll just leave a message, won’t they?

The point is. There’s a lot to do when you’re in charge of a solo or small business.

And with so much happening, dealing with phone calls can become a distraction and fall down your list of priorities.

Which is a bad situation to get into. Especially with BT Business research suggesting a single missed phone call costs businesses £1,200 per call on average.

It’s even worse when you consider that most people still prefer to use the phone when contacting a small business.

So, if you’re asking yourself if a virtual receptionist for a small businesses worth it – here’s why it is.

Get consistent, professional phone answering

Let’s be honest, when you’re setting up your small business, you’re not thinking about how you’ll answer the phone.

You’ve got other things to think about, like finding clients and generating revenue.

But how you answer the phone creates an image of your business in a customer’s mind, and if you go with “hello”, “hiya”, or “yeah?” it doesn’t create the best impression.

Answering the phone professionally is an easy way to get customer relations off on the right foot. A virtual receptionist can provide this because they’re harried trying to do 100 other things when the phone rings.

Don’t lose money from missed calls

We’ve already mentioned that BT Business’ research found a missed call costs a business around £1,200 on average.

Let’s look at that in a bigger picture. This means missing a call a week (not out of the question) could cost you £62,400.

That’s A LOT of money for any business, especially a small one.

Two missed calls a week will cost you £124,800 on average.

Three will cost £187,200.

This is the average, obviously, but you get the idea.

When a prospect calls and you don’t pick up, you’re staring down at a lot of lost revenue, and that’s potentially lethal for a small business.

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Have more focus on important tasks

There are plenty of revenue-generating jobs you can be doing as a small business owner.

Whether it’s attending pitches for new work or completing tasks, there will be times when you can’t take the time to answer the phone.

But then you’re worried about losing a lead or disappointing a customer, and you lose focus anyway.

Because virtual receptionists can deal with all your calls for you, you’ll have the time to step away from calls and concentrate on revenue-driving tasks to grow your business.

Having this uninterrupted time is a massive bonus for a small business.

And even though you haven’t answered the phone personally, you know any caller has been talking to a real person and not ‘greeted’ by a robotic answering machine or an automated process asking them to navigate through 13 different options.

Get more call answering for less

In trying to answer your call answering conundrum, maybe you’ve considered employing the services of a receptionist. The kind who sits behind a desk and gets a salary.

Perhaps it’s the right answer for you. But as a small business, can you afford to pay someone £25,000 a year to answer one phone call at a time?

That’s something business owners overlook when thinking about a full or part-time receptionist.

As soon as your receptionist is on the phone, they can’t answer another line, and you’ve lost your call answering capacity (while still paying a full-time wage).

With a virtual receptionist, you don’t have this problem because your phone is manned by a team of call answering receptionists, who can cover each other when one is dealing with a call or goes on a break.

And because you only pay for the number of calls you have answered, it’s much cheaper.

Base your resources on need

Here’s the other thing about hiring an employee to answer the phone. It’s much harder to scale.

When you get busy, you have to go through a hiring process, find the right person, bring them in, train them – and by the time you’ve done that, you’re not as busy, and you’ve still got their wages on your balance sheet.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier to instantly get more call answering resources when needed and then reduce the amount when you get quieter.

This kind of thing is perfect for businesses that have regular seasonal peaks.

Still not convinced about using a virtual receptionist for a small business?

If the thought of saving time and making more money hasn’t convinced you about the benefits of hiring a virtual receptionist for a small service – we can’t think why it wouldn’t – then get in touch, and we’ll answer any other questions or concerns, you have.

We’ve helped hundreds of other small businesses get set up with a virtual receptionist, saving around 600 hours a day in productivity for our clients, ensuring their teams are making the most of their time.

If you want to see the benefits up close, you could always take advantage of our free trial. Sound reasonable?