Backup Phone System for Any Business

  Your business depends on your phones, possibly more than any other system you have. Whether by network malfunction or act of God, there is no way to predict when the phones may go temporarily out of service—but you can prepare for it. Why leave it to chance?   Talkroute forwards your calls to any phone and any provider; that means you can use your cell phone, landline, or any other phone to take business calls while your primary system is down.   You can have a fully functional phone system that requires next to no maintenance, on deck and ready for those times when your primary phones unexpectedly go out.   HERE’S HOW IT WORKS   Pick a local or toll free number from our library of phone numbers, or transfer an existing number to Talkroute, which will serve as your main backup business line.   Add forwarding phones …

4 Reasons to Convert to a Seasonal Business

    There’s a vital question you should ask yourself, when business is [persistently] slow and you can’t seem to pull it out of the slump.   Before you completely rewrite your business plan or dump thousands into a new marketing campaign, ask yourself this: Would your business do better if it were seasonal?   It’s a fundamental question that you may not have considered when you opened your business, but it might just be your golden ticket.   1. You’ll lose money paying overhead, when there are no customers. When you’re hemorrhaging cash for 6 months out of the year, it can be pretty disconcerting. If you’ve been trying everything and can’t seem to stimulate revenue, then it might not be a bad idea to shut down for part of the year.   Shutting down for a season is a big leap for a small business that is already …

How to Keep Your Business Open for Decades

It’s true that small businesses are forced to close their doors every day, but you don’t have to become a part of that statistic. If you think bigger and plan for growth, then you may be able to prevent your small business from fizzling out in the first couple years.   The keys to remaining profitable are scalability, assurance of operating capital, and constant innovation. It may not be the holy trinity of success, but these tips will make sure you’re ahead of the game. Is it scalable? No matter what you’re selling, you’re far more likely to have long-term success if your business has the continual ability to scale-up because if you reach a point where you are not reaching any new customers, there’s a good chance it will fail. You might have to get creative to position yourself for growth down the line, since not all businesses are …

5 Ways to Properly Use Emoticons at Work

You could say that it’s unprofessional, but in this day and age, using emoticons to express intention, feeling, and even inflection is fairly ubiquitous in personal, as well as professional life. If you refuse to employ these miniature expressive cartoons for work conversations, based on pure principle, then you certainly don’t have to use them, but with closer consideration, you might actually change your mind because they can be useful. Emoticons are an advancement in communication, not a necessity, and here’s how they should be used. 1. To clarify a statement. The bottom line is that emoticons are a tool. You can use them to clarify an otherwise murky statement that could be easily misunderstood. Writing to a colleague, “Looks like you finally finished that project” is different than saying, “Looks like you finally finished that project 🙂 “. One may be taken as sarcastic and borderline accusatory, while the …

How to Port a Phone Number from Verizon to Talkroute

Porting your phone number out of Verizon is fairly painless. When you’re ready to port your Verizon or Verizon Wireless number to Talkroute, they will oblige and release the number as long as you provide all the correct information. In this article, we will outline the steps you will need to take to transfer your Verizon number to Talkroute, including all the documentation you will have to produce. 1. Gather pertinent information for the number you’re porting. Before you even get started, it’s a good idea to put together all the information that you can, that is associated with your phone number. Start with your most recent phone bill, which you will need to submit to your Talkroute porting agent when you put in the port request. Then, call Verizon and ask them for your CSR, or Customer Service Report (this is not required, but it’s very good to have …

4 Expert Tips for Moms with a Home Business

Moms can be some of the most tenacious and determined people of all, so it’s no surprise that many of them decide to take on the ambitious task of starting a home business. The Mom/CEO position is not for the faint of heart. You have to know beforehand what you’re getting into, you have to plan well for it, and you will have to get creative to find ways to maintain organization throughout. Women are doing it every day, though, and it’s an entirely achievable and worthy venture. The following are a few pieces of advice with insight from women who understand the plight of moms working from home. 1. “The best revenge is the take-home pay.” —Cheryl Demas Those who work from home understand that it is just as demanding as a conventional business, but your friends and family tend to think that you’re kind of just fooling around …

How to Port a Number from Google Voice to Talkroute

  So you’ve found Talkroute and you’re ready to take the leap from Google Voice because you finally realized that Talkroute is way more awesome. Good for you. That’s how we know that we have the smartest customers.   This article will walk you through the steps you need to follow when porting your Google Voice number to Talkroute. Don’t worry—as these things go, porting a number from GV is simpler and quicker than most. Here’s what to do:   1. Unlock your GV number. This step is unique to GV, and if you don’t do it, the port will be rejected for sure. You can unlock your GV number by following these simple instructions from Google’s support page:   https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1316844?hl=en   Google will charge you a $3 fee, after which you’re free to port away your number.   2. Take a screenshot of your GV account page. Documentation is …

Telephone Terminology: Virtual Phone System Terms

Many of the terms associated with telephony are self-explanatory and familiar, but occasionally you’ll hear one that you’re not quite sure of, which is why we’ve compiled a short list of commonly used phone system terms. If you’re already a Talkroute user, this will also help you understand your system. Please feel free to leave a comment below if you’re wondering about a term that isn’t listed here. Forwarding Phone Number As part of a virtual phone system such as Talkroute, your forwarding numbers are all the phones to which calls are routed. When calls come into the main line, they are routed to the forwarding numbers—these are the phones that will actually ring. Virtual Phone Number or Talkroute Phone Number Your main business line with a Talkroute account is your virtual number, otherwise referred to as your Talkroute number. You may have multiple Talkroute numbers on a single account, …

How to Create Enticing Email Marketing Campaigns

    We all have a pretty good idea of what email marketing is because pretty much everybody has received this kind of email. A successful campaign makes the recipient feel valued, provides useful information to them, and compels them to act.   Personalize it as much as possible. When you’re sending a large volume of emails to many contacts at once, the tendency is to create a generic-sounding sales pitch that most people will ignore as soon as they realize what it is.   This is what you want to avoid. Wherever possible, it helps to include a piece of information that is specific to the individual recipient, such as their company name, some detail of a recent transaction, or you could comment on how long they have been a customer.   Avoid interruption-based advertising. As with any other interruption-based advertisement, such as a TV commercial, it becomes a …

An Old-School Idea that Could Transform Small Businesses

    It seems there used to be a certain ideal people had about doing business—maybe there were many ideals—but the one entrepreneurial imperative that always captures my imagination is the one that drove entrepreneurs serve their customers without cutting corners.   New small business owners are also on to something good, but the old-fashioned guys and gals from decades ago believed in building something to last. Now we’re all about building it fast, and as much of it as possible.   Of course there is a lot of money to be made and I won’t knock the hustle, but in the interest of old-school values, to the new wave of would-be tycoons I have to say: We can do better.   Consumer Durables There was this term, “consumer durables” that was used in the field of economics to describe something that consumers only had to buy once and be …