Elizabeth Lockwood

If you’ve got a small business in the car repair industry, you don’t have to be “always on” to ensure that you capture every lead and take care of every single client call. With the assistance of a professional answering service, you can deliver 24/7/365 support for leads, current customers, and anyone else that reaches out to your business.

When you’re two hours into a complex repair and rebuild and the phone just won’t stop ringing, what do you do? If you take the time to stop and answer every call, you lose valuable productivity and aren’t able to give your existing jobs the focus that they deserve. On the other hand, if you don’t answer the calls, you’re losing valuable leads (and potentially some existing business) because people can’t reach you when they need to.

An answering service could be just what your interior design firm needs. You can outsource to a third-party service that will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so your existing and potential clients can get in touch when they have questions or concerns. Plus, they can handle a host of other tasks in the admin and communications area, freeing up your time and resources.

As a busy photographer, you have a lot of things on your plate, and you spend most of your days out on photo shoots, at events, or traveling to and from those sessions. That can make it challenging to field all the phone calls coming into your business. And if you’re missing calls, you’re missing opportunities. That’s not going to be good for business, but you’re only one person—what can you do?

The holiday season is the perfect time to show clients your appreciation and nothing says “we value your business” more than a gift. The right gift can set the tone for the rest of a relationship and keep your business top of mind all year long, so to help you put your best foot forward, we’ve compiled a list of the best business gifts you can give your clients this holiday season.

Entrepreneurship has become increasingly popular. Hundreds of thousands of people across the globe have recently been inspired to start their own businesses. In fact, Intuit QuickBooks estimated that nearly 17 million new small businesses will have been formed in 2022 alone. And with the holiday season quickly approaching, you now have the perfect excuse to celebrate those hard-working entrepreneurs in your life (or give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back.) To help you get a headstart on your holiday shopping, we’ve compiled a list of the best gifts to give business owners.

If you own a cleaning business, you probably spend a lot of time hiring, scheduling, and at clients’ houses. Which means you’re not always ready and available to answer the phone. Whether you’re elbow-deep in kitchen grease or just running the vacuum and don’t hear the ringer, there are plenty of times that you’re just going to miss the call. Fortunately, you no longer have to settle for letting people leave voicemails and then carving out time to call them all back.

Financial planning businesses are all about efficiency and streamlining—at least when it comes to money. If you take that same approach with your day-to-day operations, you can find a lot of different ways to make improvements that you may not have known before. For one thing, are you still trying to field all the phone calls that come into your business on your own? Perhaps you’ve brought in a single receptionist to assist, only to find out that you’re still not quite hitting the mark.

Right now, the rental market is crazy. People are renting homes just as fast as they’re buying and selling them, leaving property managers and landlords to answer endless phone calls and emails. Sometimes, even the best can’t keep up. People are reaching out about listings that are no longer available because you haven’t had time to update your website. Calls are going unanswered and often unreturned because people don’t leave messages or numbers and because you’re too busy with the day-to-day operations of your business to keep up with the phone.

If you’re in the real estate business, you’re probably busier than you’ve ever been. Right now, the market is in high demand across the country, and people are buying and selling homes in record numbers (and at record prices). You’ve got a lot on your plate, and it’s likely that you miss at least a handful of the calls that you get each day—you’re at showings, doing paperwork, in a meeting with a client—you can’t always be by the phone.