Your First Call

Setting-up your voicemail

Before we discuss how to handle your first and subsequent calls, it is important to have an answering machine or voice mail option with your phone service. You will not always be by the phone and without some form of voice-mail, you will certainly miss important calls.

Put together a brief upbeat message like:

“Thank you for calling Extremely Clean. I’ve stepped away from my desk, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get back with you as soon as possible. Again, thank you for calling”.

Whatever your voice-mail choice, make sure it stays within ten seconds. Don’t have a recording that drones on-and-on about services that are best left said by you personally.

Cell Phone

While I don’t want to discourage cell phone usage as your primary business number, cell phone numbers are so obviously that of a cell phone and don’t bespeak of a physical location that you operate out of. Some potential customers might think they are being scammed – a scheme to collect keys of businesses in order to steal from them.

It’s really at the discretion of the client though whether they believe there’s a valid location behind your cell-phone number. So, if you have no choice but to use a cell phone number in your ads, understand why you might not get as many calls as you had hoped.

Cells phone numbers however are a good option to leave with a new client should they need to get a hold of you in case of an emergency. Then it makes perfect sense. While the sales number should always be your landline, your client service number could safely be your cell phone number.

Your First Call

Because you’ll be using your home phone, you’ll have to answer your phone with your business name’s greeting. In my case, I would answer the phone in a cheerful tone, “Extremely Clean”.

The person on the phone will most likely say that they’ve received your flyer and ask if you would be interested in coming in to submit a bid. You, of course, would like that very much and then ask if such a day and time would be good for them to stop in.

Try to set the time especially if your time is restricted by other commitments. If they start asking questions about your service, I would recommend using the same line we discussed in the Phone Solicitation section.

Feel free to have a template of what to say available when prospective customers call so you don’t stumble around with your answers or freeze-up in conversation. You need to sound cheerful, confident and knowledgeable.

Chapter 10__The Tour