This may sound strange to the economical small business owner, but an answering service can actually save your business quite a bit of money. It can be very scary as a start up to sign on for any additional monthly fees when the money is tight. Profits are important, especially for a new business, and any penny saved is just like a penny earned, right? Saved pennies don't always turn into dollars though, especially if you lose a quarter to find the penny.
Time is money is a popular saying for a reason, and it is even true for you as a small business owner. While it may not seem like it now, time is your most precious commodity. While spinning your wheels, trying to do everything can definitely save you some money, it will cost you a lot of time. Because time is something that everyone wants more of, but everyone only gets 24 hours a day even if you use the best Los Angeles answering service.
I've been a business owner for a while now and I'll share some of my experience here. I spent hours on the phone every day usually on pointless calls that made me no money. Every time the phone rang, I'd get a pang of excitement that it was a potential client calling, ready to hire me. I knew in my head that it was not a future client, I had to answer it just in the hope. And answering the phone meant that I had to quit working on a project each time the phone rang.
It is amazing how little you get done without a long stretch of time to work on the big projects. I hated it because I always felt rushed. I was not finishing projects for clients that I already had because I didn't have enough time to work on them. So, in the end, it was mostly pointless phone calls that were keeping me from getting projects done.
I was in a bind though. I had to get more clients, but I knew that I had to be answering the phone to convert any potential customers into paying customers. I have been in business long enough to know that most potential customers don't want to wait around for you to call them back. They will not leave a message, they will go to the next result and give them a call. Another factor was that I was having a hard time getting all of my projects done for my existing customers. How in the world was I going to handle more customers without hiring staff? Even if I hired someone on part time, it would have used up much of my profits and I would have had to spend a bunch of time training the new staff.
Unfortunately, I felt like I had to work longer hours to try to keep up with everything that I had to do. I had started my business to get away from the crazy hours that I had to work in my previous job, but now I was working even longer hours. It just wasn't working the way it was going. I had to find a way to get more done in less time or I was going to go crazy.
Finally, I got smart and called an answering service. I had put it off because I didn't think that I could afford it, but I found one that offered great service at a price that I could afford. I was now able to find long stretches of time to finish client projects, and my hours decreased dramatically. I realized through this that my time was worth money, and that I could make more money with the added expense of an answering service.