Its come up twice on coaching calls I’ve had with lawn care businesses this week.
How should a lawn business properly configure their phones, so they have the greatest flexibility as they grow in the the future?
First – Approach everything you do in your business with the goal to create a solid foundation for the multi-million dollar lawn care company you are working to build.
That means doing several things right from the beginning, Lets just talk about one for now.
That is setting up your phone correctly.
1. Don’t use your cell phone number as your business line. In fact, I would not give this number out to clients for the simple fact that they will call it if you give it to them.
2. Purchase an easy to remember number such as 555-mow-lawn or something consumer can see on your truck or marketing piece for a split second and remember. A google search will turn up many companies that can do this.
3. Use a virtual phone service to handle call routing and overflow. I recommend Google Voice if your deadbroke (its free) or Ring Central if you want a more robust solution with more control such as forwarding to a receptionist or your cellphone in the field.
a. Paid solutions such as Ring Central have more features such as automatically forwarding calls to a different number after a specific number of rings.
b. Where as Google voice is limited to manually switching call forwarding.
Doing this right from the beginning will eliminate wasted time and money from having to redo marketing pieces and avoid changing phone numbers in the future.
About the phones lines. You said to use google voice, or virtual phone. I have a Magic Jack for my Lawn care. Is that just about the same thing as what you were talking about.
Hi John,
It is “somewhat” similar to Google Voice in that it obscures your mobile number but not as robust as Ring Central.