Use Your Business Phone Service to Masquerade for Fun and Profit

Have you ever wanted to expand into a side business—without confusing customers or diluting your brand? Or maybe you want to present an image as the low-price leader to a price-conscious clientele, while not leaving money on the table when catering to people who will gladly pay more for top-notch, personal service and “something different”? If you’ve got Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business phone service, it’s a snap.

“I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was,” says Robert Krop of RE/MAX Plus. “We needed a solution to accommodate two businesses—a real estate firm and a mortgage company—and VoIP was the answer,” he says.

New Business Models and Clever Ways to Manage New Start-ups

One of the things I love most about my job is that I get to spend each day learning about new business models and talking to the leaders who make them work. Increasingly, more of them adopt cloud technology to reduce overall operational costs. But some truly daring leaders have realized that cloud technology also offers the flexibility and tool sets they need to grow revenue by managing multiple businesses out of one office.

That’s why I’m sharing a few of the most clever—almost diabolically cunning—methods I’ve heard of for using business VoIP to test new business models, streamline operations and even dominate markets.

Turn Your Hobby into a Side Business

If you’re already involved in a business but have a hobby you’d like to make a little extra money on, and you don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up a whole new company, business VoIP can let you set up professional messaging and routing to your existing system. Nobody has to know that you’re doing a little “entrepreneurial moonlighting” while following your passion.

Different VoIP vendors offer different small business phone service packages. The basic idea is this: get a new local or toll free number, add a voice mailbox, and you’re ready to go. For most business VoIP systems, this is enough to start routing, identifying and even tracking calls.

Here are some successful entrepreneurs whose side projects cost less than $10 extra per month!

• The restaurant owner who set up a new catering business
• The hair salon owner who started an after-hours dog-walking business
• The insurance agent who established a landscaping business on the side
• Even a doctor who set up a toy-train consulting business!

So even if your idea isn’t related to your core business, you can still use business VoIP phone service to project multiple professional “personalities” while starting a new venture, testing new markets, or just getting some extra walking-around money. You don’t have to sacrifice credibility in one area because you’re starting small in some new venture.

“We own two businesses, and I’ve set up each phone so that I receive notifications of missed calls and voicemails at both locations, so I can follow up on each missed call personally if necessary,” says Brooke Lange, director of PR and communications for Sup.

“Because of 8×8 VoIP business phone service’s numerous options and features, I can handle customer service for both locations from anywhere,” says Lange.

For more info on great ways to configure your phones to run multiple businesses, check out our customer webinar, Unlock the Power of Your Auto Attendant. Reserve your spot at this webinar or others at upcoming webinars.