That Smith

If you are doing business from home or use your cell phone for both business and personal calls, consider getting at least a separate number to use for business purposes.

You may be doing business from home, but you want to give callers the impression you are hard at work somewhere in an office. Nothing gives potential clients a negative impression faster than a child answering the phone or someone interrupting a call midway.

If you don’t want to pay for an additional line, then have your calls forwarded to an answering service who will tell clients you are in a meeting or on another line (but remember to return calls promptly!) or do what I do and use a forwarding service to transfer calls to an existing line.

I use this option because it costs nothing and allows me to screen or take calls from any phone I am near. If I am not available or of someone else answers I do not have to accept the call, and I never have to give out more than one number if I change phones, move, or relocate my office.

The service I use is called GrandCentral which is provided by Google. The service logs every call incase you miss one and gives you voice mail you can check any time by phone or online.

Currently you have to be invited to sign up for GrandCentral, but if you have an account at Blogger (or get one) then you can sign up right now.