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Virtual Office
Lynette Green

How to find the right virtual office for your business.

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So you’ve made the decision to use a virtual office.  How do you then go about finding the right virtual office for your business?  It’s important to make the right decision as you could be partnering with your virtual office service provider for a number of years to come so spend some time in advance carrying out your research to make the right decision from the start.

There are a number of factors to consider and you should weigh up all of them.

 

Location

Location should be a major consideration for you in deciding on your virtual office.  The business address plays a crucial role in the impression of your business to the outside world.  You need to weigh up both the prestige factor that your business address will give as well as the likelihood of picking up business in that area.

Think carefully about who your ideal clients are.  Would they be likely to do business with a company in a more upmarket part of town or is something more modest appropriate?  Do your clients want to see you as a local business or is that not important.

 

The Premises

Although you will not be based from the virtual office it’s still important that the premises themselves, not purely the business address play a very important role.

Ideally visit the premises yourself, or if not at least take a look on Google Places to see the building and what sort of impression that conveys.

Again, just as you considered for location whether the location and address give the right impression for your business, think too of the premises.  Is the building smart, presentable, on a nice street?

Is it obviously a virtual office building or could it be conceivable that your business is actually based in there?

 

The services

Think carefully about the services you require from your virtual office.  Is it purely telephone answering and a virtual business address or do you require other services too, such as a virtual assistant service?

Make sure you clearly understand the services that the virtual office does offer.

Telephone Answering

What are the hours of business?  Do you need 24/7 telephone answering?  Most businesses don’t need this, but be clear when the opening hours are.  What happens if there is a call out of hours?  Is there a dedicated voicemail for your business?

How will messages be sent to you?

Mail Forwarding

Does the business offer same day mail forwarding?  If not find out how quickly any mail will be forwarded on.

Can you collect the post if you want?  If you do collect will you be informed if you have any mail to be collected?  How will they make contact with you? Will the mail be stored securely?

 

The size of the company

Think again about the impression that you are trying to convey of your company and choose an appropriate virtual office service provider to partner with.  A larger company with a bigger telephone answering team are likely to convey the impression of your business being considerably larger and busier with more of a call centre feel.  A small business answering service may be able to offer a more bespoke personal service.  Staff are more likely to get to know the businesses that they are working with and will often just know the information about the clients who they are answering the telephone for without having to look up information and may even get to know some regular callers, therefore becoming a convincing part of the team.

 

Make a phone call

Ring the business yourself and see how they answer.  A phone call to your company may well be the first contact a caller has with your business and it’s absolutely crucial that you make a great first impression.  Is the receptionist’s tone clear and well spoken?  Are they friendly, welcoming and professional?  Above all, ask yourself “Would you be happy if this person was answering the phone for my business?” – if the answer is no then go no further, but if the answer is yes give this company a big plus point as you continue weighing up your options.

 

Costs

Weighing up the costs is an important part of any business decision and this is no exception.  Are there pay as you go telephone answering options or are there virtual office packages available?  Think about how you are likely to use the service.  Are you likely to want them to answer every single call that comes in to your business, or just the overflow calls?  It can be difficult to estimate the volume of calls that come in to your business if you’ve never used a service like this before.  Try keeping a tally over the course of a week of the number of calls that come in to give you a rough idea.  Are you likely to experience periods of higher volume at certain times than others?

Pay as you go telephone answering will provide you with an accurate bill based on the number of call units you have paid – you are only ever going to get charged for what you use.

Virtual office packages offer bundles of minutes, and if you can reasonably accurately forecast the volume of calls you are likely to get this can work out cheaper, but not if you get it wrong.

Find out if the service can change and grow with your business.  If you are just starting up, the chances are you may not receive huge volumes of calls in the early days, but this may well increase as your business becomes more established.  Can you change your plan if needs be depending on your business requirements?

Find out if there are set up costs and what realistic monthly charges may be.

Cost is important but maybe not the most important factor.  If you estimate that one company may cost you £5 per month more, but the address is more appropriate and the telephone answering service is better it is probably worth paying the extra for.

 

Can you use the business as a both a trading address and a registered office address?

If your business is a Limited Company by law you are required to state your registered office address.  This is an address to receive formal correspondence from HMRC and Companies House.  Check if the price for the virtual office includes both trading address and registered office address if this is what you require.

 

Can you publicise the address?

Usually you can publish the address of your virtual office, but it is worth checking.  If you want to use this for marketing campaigns, listing on Google, your website, your business cards, any other marketing material do check that this is allowed.

 

Check the terms of the contract

Are you tied in for a particular length of time or does the contract work on a rolling basis.  If you are confident that you are going to be staying with your virtual office provider for some time there are often cost savings to be made by signing up for longer periods of time and paying up front, but paying monthly offers the opportunity for you to move on should you wish to.

 

There are quite a lot of factors to be taken in to consideration, but this is an important decision.  The address of your business and the way the telephone is answered is so influential in determining how the outside world views your business and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

 

Unsure if a virtual office is right for you?  You might like to read this article on whether to work from home or an office to weigh up the pros and cons.

 

Do you use a virtual office?  How did you find yours?  Any knowledge you would like to pass on to our readers if you have been through this process yourself?  Please do let us know.

 

Small business telephone answering service
Lynette Green

This week in Virtual Head Office – A telephone answering service and mail handing – how one small business relocates but appears to stay at the same business address

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A small business who we’ve worked with for the past 5 years has relocated this week to London.  He has used our mailing address and telephone answering service ever since he started up his cleaning business, to give him a presence in the Bury St Edmunds area.  He lived in a nearby village and didn’t want to give out his home address.

His cleaning business was aiming at the commercial market and not really looking for domestic clients at all.  He wanted a dedicated office address to give his small business the appearance of being a bit larger and more entrenched than was actually the case to give his potential client base confidence in his business in order to help him win some corporate business.

Over the last 5 years this small business has grown substantially, both in terms of its number of employees and in terms of the volume of business they have won, some of which I’m pleased to say can be attributed to telemarketing campaigns which we have run for them, the rest through their own business development activities.

Our telephone answering team are always busy speaking to this clients callers, who may be new business enquiries, existing customers calling with queries or the cleaners employed by this small business.  The calls are always varied and frequently urgent.  This business owner is a very proactive busy person who is always on the move, whether he is visiting clients, out on meetings securing new business, managing his team or hiring new staff.

For a small business like this a telephone answering service means that there is a central point to coordinate his day to day activities.  His team and his customers all have his mobile number, of course, but the fact is they are unlikely to be able to actually catch him on it, and as he’s so busy if questions can be dealt with by someone else he would rather not have to call back.

He will often phone in or email our team to make us aware of his movements for the day, so that we can tell callers that realistically he won’t be able to return their call for 3 hours if they want to speak to him personally.  This really helps to manage the expectations of the caller and helps give his business a reputation for providing good customer service.  The answering service is bespoke so if he wants to let us know for example that there is a specific message for a particular person should they call we are able to relay that for him, so that quite often they don’t actually need to speak to him in person.  We just send him an email making him aware of the conversation so he is up to speed with what has been said, if he needs to contact this person further then he can do.

He currently comes in to the office when he is passing through to collect his post which has come in to his business address.  We always enjoy having a catch up with him when he comes in as he’s always got so much going on it’s really interesting to hear about.

Over the last few months he has been talking more and more about the business that he has won in London, as well as in Suffolk and he has been spending more and more time there.  Recently he made the decision to relocate to London, but to continue with the work that he is doing in Suffolk, which is now quite well established and able to continue with less day to day management from him.

Although he is not local enough to pop in any more to collect his post it doesn’t actually affect the virtual office service he uses.  Instead of coming in to collect, we will be forwarding the mail for him from now on.  The telephone answering service will remain entirely unchanged.  He will still maintain the telephone number that he already has and we will still continue to answer calls for his business in his company name and as far as they are concerned they are speaking to someone sitting in his office so he is very much maintaining a local business presence.

Going forward he may decide to also purchase a London telephone number, which can also be diverted in to our team so that he is able to give the appearance of having two offices.

For this small business owner using having a virtual office means that he is able to carry on with business as usual in a geographic area that he is now well established in, whilst being able to spend more time where he is needed more looking after those accounts which are still in their infancy and still need a lot of day to day involvement.

We’re really excited for him as he continues to expand his business and feel really pleased to be part of the team.  The only thing we’re a little bit sad about is that we won’t be seeing him in person now that he won’t be calling in to collect his post any more, but I’m sure he will be calling in to say hello when he’s in the area.

Credit Control
Lynette Green

Credit Control: How To Get Another £20k In Your Business Bank Account

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According to research by Tungsten, the average SME is owed £40,857 in unpaid invoices, with £20,937 of that total amount being overdue.  An amount which, according to the 1000 companies surveyed, places 1 in 5 of those businesses at risk of insolvency.

Even if it doesn’t put your business at risk of insolvency it certainly has an impact on your cash flow.  A recent article in the Telegraph summed this up well, saying that ‘Late Payment doesn’t just affect cash flow, it affects a small firm’s appetite for investment and growth’

Not only does this have a detrimental effect on finances, but it also wastes time, as the average small business spends 130 hours per year chasing invoices.

So what can you do to minimise the risk in your small business?  The answer is you need to get an effective credit control procedure in place.

Here are our tips for keeping on top of credit control and cash flow in your business.

  1. Do what you can do to avoid giving credit wherever possible. If it’s possible for you to charge up front, or at least get a deposit then do so. If you never give someone credit they are not going to pay you late.
  2. Invoice promptly. Send invoices straight away as any delay there is likely to cause a delay in payment.
  3. Clearly state your terms and conditions on the invoice.
  4. Also on the invoice clearly state your bank details and how you want the client to pay.
  5. Make it as easy as possible for your client to pay. Automating the process by setting up a direct debit can be very simple for both the client and you as a business owner. We use GoCardless to collect direct debit payments and we have found the service to be invaluable in terms of saving time spent chasing invoices for a nominal fee.  You will also be alerted if any of your clients cancel their direct debit arrangement which can alert you to any potential problems early on in the process.
  6. Ensure that someone, either a person within your organisation, or an outsourced service partner has responsibility for credit control. This incumbent should not only have dedicated time set aside each week to devote to your credit control, but they should also understand the importance of this role to your business.
  7. Don’t automatically assume that you are the best person to take on the task of credit control for your business. Often there are advantages to delegating or outsourcing credit control to either a credit control agency or a Virtual Assistant, which can include:
  • freeing up your time to concentrate on more profit making activities
  • separating you from the process of chasing the client can be good as business owners can often feel embarrassed or awkward about chasing money (although you shouldn’t).
  • It makes sure that it does get done every week, as as the business owner you may find yourself pulled in other directions.
  1. Be systematic. It’s important that you have a clear credit control procedure in place that you follow to the letter. Following a system, and keeping a record of this has a number of benefits:
  • You know exactly where you are in the process at any one time.
  • The process usually works, preventing invoices becoming overdue is always the best way.
  • In the worst case scenario, should you need to take this to a debt recovery company or take legal action you have shown that you have followed a legitimate process.

A procedure for a business with 30 day payment terms would be something like this:

  • Day 1 send your invoice
  • Day 14 make a courtesy call to check that invoice has been received and to confirm when payment is due.
  • Day 28 make another call to remind your client when the invoice is due.
  • Day 37 send a first gentle reminder that the invoice is overdue.
  • Day 44 send a stronger reminder asking for the invoice to be paid within a particular time frame to avoid further costs being incurred.
  • Day 51 send a final reminder letter giving 7 days to pay before legal action is taken.

We use Kashflow for our accounting software and this has sample letters within it which can be sent at the click of a button and also recording everything that has been sent.

  1. Throughout the process it’s important to maintain good relationships with your client. Not only will they be more inclined to pay promptly or even early in some cases if there is a good relationship, but it’s also important for future sales with this client, or anyone else they may recommend you to.
  2. Regularly review payment ledger. Make sure if someone has paid that you are not continuing to chase them in the interests of maintaining a strong relationship.
  3. Make sure your business maintains a good reputation for paying suppliers promptly, not only does this give you the higher moral standing, but word gets around in the small business community and you don’t want to be known as someone who is a late payer as this weakens your position when chasing late payments from others.

If you’re not already following the above steps if you do introduce them will have a dramatic improvement on the cash flow and financial health of your business, but should you have done all of the above and you are still owed money don’t hesitate to take legal action.

If you’ve found this article interesting please feel free to share with anyone else you think would benefit.

 

Business Address
Lynette Green

This week in Virtual Head Office…a business address for an online retailer

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Not all of our clients take up multiple services, some will use just one or two.  This week I’ve decided to talk about one of these clients, an online retailer that we provide a business address service for.

We’ve worked with this busy home based business owner for about two and a half years and have got to know him pretty well over this time.  As is often the case it’s getting to know our clients personally that often makes our work all the more rewarding as we get to find out what a difference our service means to them.

The first time we met the business owner, he arrived at our office seeming rather troubled, the night before his garage had been burgled and some of his stock had been stolen.  He explained that he had been looking at taking up a business address for some time as he was aware that having his home address on his website, as all websites are legally obliged to do, was a bit of a security risk.  Although his home address was not where he stored the majority of his stock he was worried that the outside world would perceive his stock to be held there and he felt that this put him at risk.  The burglary, unfortunately had been the catalyst for him making the move to actually finding a virtual office to work with.

So what do we do for him?  Quite simply, we provide a mail handling service, which means we let him use the address of our building as his business address.  He can use this address on his website, on his business cards, his headed paper, his marketing material, wherever he wants to use it.  The address is a realistic one as we are in a multi-occupancy building with lots of small businesses based within it.  It’s also a lovely Georgian building on a very nice street.

We receive his post for him and as he lives locally to us, he chooses to come in and collect the post rather than have us forward it on to him.  His post can be anything from usual correspondence to items that have been purchased via his website being returned.  We receive it all here, store it securely and then let him know he has items to collect and then wait for him to call in.  In the meantime, he carries on working from home, enjoying the benefits of being near to his young family, having no commute and in general having a good work life balance

We always enjoy seeing our clients face to face when they come in to collect post from their business address and especially nice to see the smile that is always on his face these days.

Formatting Documents
Lynette Green

What we’ve been doing this week – Supporting an entrepreneur, completing tenders, formatting documents and reports and much much more

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So here we are at the end of another busy week.  As usual it’s been hectic in the office!

The client I want to talk to you about this week is one that we especially enjoy working with as, not only is he a very inspirational person to work with, but also we really feel that our admin support service makes a massive difference to him.  The gentleman in question is a true entrepreneur, a multiple business owner, who happens to be registered blind.

If you run a business yourself, you’ll know that it is a constant juggling act, there is always something to do, in short, it’s hard work.  Well imagine that how much more difficult that becomes when you are blind.  Yes, there is software that can read out documents, but this doesn’t always work perfectly, particularly if information is contained within tables or graphs, so part of what we do for him is typing out information into paragraph form, formatting documents so that they can then be read out by his software.

We’ve also, this week completed some tendering forms for him.  Again as there are forms within the questionnaires we have been able to read them and take his information to compile his applications.  This further helps him, because not only is he registered blind, but also English is not his first language and so we will often also help by checking the grammar and spelling within documents that he has produced himself to make sure that what he sends out gives a professional image for his company.

The tender applications submitted this week needed to be supported by further documentation including various policies and procedures, so we’ve been through his policies and procedures and updating and formatting the documents.  Previously as they had been compiled at different times by different people so they were all in different styles, he now has a complete set all formatted identically, all with his new corporate branding on so everything is up to date and consistent.

This week we’ve also typed up some massive weighty financial reports for him.  Accuracy is crucial here is one digit wrong on a financial report can have a massive implication so we need to check that the accuracy of the content as well as the formatting of these documents is spot on as we’re trusted to be eyes of this busy entrepreneur.

Somewhere along the way we also managed to squeeze in updating his LinkedIn profile.

It’s all been good fun, if at times, a bit crazy making sure we hit the deadlines, but everything has been done in time so now we can take a breath and look forward to seeing what next week brings!

Lynette Green

What We’ve Been Doing This Week – Business Support For A Driving School

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This is the first in a new series of blog posts talking about what we actually do during the week.  Each week we will pick one client to talk about and we will tell you about the type of work we do for them.

We are starting off with a very busy, Yorkshire based driving school who we have worked with for just over two years now.  We work with the owner of the driving school to coordinate the diaries of the whole team and deal with customer enquiries.  Although we’re not geographically close to this client, working virtually means that our clients can be based anywhere in the UK or even the world.

As the driving instructors are busy and unable to answer their phones throughout the day we provide a telephone answering service for them.  The majority of calls that we take are new business enquiries, people calling to make bookings for driving lessons and to make general enquiries about the price of lessons and availability and so forth.

As we answer the calls we capture the callers’ details, establish the geographic location that they are based in and then book them in with the appropriate driving instructor to a central Google calendar which we share access to with all of the instructors.  Instructors can also add their own appointments in the calendar.  This system allows the owner of the driving school to see at a glance what is happening with all of the driving instructors.  As no calls are missed the diary fills up very quickly, so much so that we also now manage a waiting list for this business.

Callers ring through on a local number, which is then diverted to us, as far as the callers are concerned, it sounds as though they are speaking to someone in the office in Yorkshire, not Bury St Edmunds!

Answering the telephones for a driving school is always busy, often there are urgent messages to get to driving instructors, from students who could need to cancel a lesson, or maybe change the pickup location, so it’s vital that we get messages to instructors quickly so that they don’t waste time and petrol by being in the wrong location.  Having a dedicated team here in the office means that we can continue trying to get hold of instructors, by phone, text and email to ensure they get the messages.

There are also times when instructors may need to liaise between themselves, for example to maybe see if another instructor may be able to take a particular student and often the instructors find that using Virtual Head Office means that they don’t need to have to keep on trying to call as we will do that for them.

This week, the owner of the driving school has been away on holiday, so we have been providing some additional support for her.  We have been dealing with the email enquiries that come through the website and again capturing details of all enquirers.  As the school is currently so busy that they are full we have been responding to enquiries, either by email or phone to see whether they would like to join the waiting list.  Customer service is top priority so it’s important to make everyone who makes an enquiry feel valued, even if they are not able to start driving lessons just yet.

All of this means that the owner of the driving school has been able to relax and take a proper break from the business, knowing that when she returns next week that she will receive a full report of every telephone call and email we have deal with whilst she has been away, the diary is completely full and that had there been any really urgent enquiries that she absolutely had to deal with personally, that we would have contacted her, filtering everything else out.

Enabling people to take proper holidays is probably one of the most satisfying things that we do, so we’ve particularly providing extra help and support to this driving school this week.