Unsure if it’s right to transition to a Virtual Office?
Let’s find out what the benefits are between your two choices of “stay where you are” or “move to a virtual office”.
Virtual Offices are very popular with small to medium-sized businesses and even one-man businesses such as coaches, advisors, freelancers, etc.
When you own a business, your operations can become a lot easier, more affordable, and flexible if you use the right Virtual Office.
For example, if you’re running a business and not leasing an office, you are most probably using your home/family address as a business address. This means that all of your clients now know where you live and potentially when you “Google” your address – you notice that your home appears – your children actually collect your mail for you, and the home landline phone number rings with overseas spam calls during dinner… Overall, not a great experience for you or your family.
Not a problem because you have not listed the address and phone number you use on your website?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but did you know that in Australia anybody can buy the phone number, address, and contact details of a business or company for less than $50?
(Don’t believe me? Check it out yourself – go to Connect online, search for any business you would like and purchase the business incorporation details. Sorry.)
Once they get their hands on your business information, they now know where you live and thanks to the modern technology of ‘Google Maps’, can view you from the safety of their home.
A Virtual Office keeps your business protected
In order to avoid unnecessary exposure, there are also ways to protect yourself, and the most convenient and cost-effective is the Virtual Office.
This concept is not only modern and current but also brings a multitude of pluses:
- Provide your business with a set of information, that is completely separate to your personal life.
- Think of it as a shelter for you and your loved ones.
- Even if a vendor is following you up for payment, the only information they get is your business information.
- Telemarketers won’t be able to call you at the home phone or mobile – because they do not have it.
A Virtual Office enhances your professional image
You probably already know that big, enterprise clients like to work exclusively with top of the line and professional suppliers, contractors, etc.
And their brands’ image is essential to getting a lucrative sale. But, how can you convince the person in front of you that they are dealing with a real professional, the best in town?
By ticking a few boxes before walking into the meeting:
- Having an office in or near a major city: If your clients see an expensive-looking address on your website or business cards, they are more likely to trust you and do business with you.
- Listing a landline phone number on your marketing material: Landline phone numbers build trust. They let your customers know that you’re not based in the basement or a garage. Or that you are a one-man-band. Quite the opposite actually. They let your prospects know that you’re serious about your business and you want to give them every option to contact you.
- Having a professional-looking domain: Great domain names give you more traffic, they build trust and they make you look successful. That’s why a great, clean domain is a great investment.
- Providing a domain name related email address: Using an e-mail address that ends with @gmail.com or @yahoo.com is BAD. It gives your prospects the impression that you’re too cheap to get a company domain and email. The best thing to do is to create an address ending with @yourcompany.com
A Virtual Office provider can offer all of this without overwhelming you with unnecessary costs of getting a professional Australia landline number, business address, and even email account.
A Virtual Office can help to expand your business
You are probably wondering, – how can the Virtual Office really help expand your business? Fair question.
Renting a Virtual Office is not just about contracting a simple space. It is about providing the infrastructure that has the capacity of supporting you to grow your business and stay time and cost-efficient.
A conventional office setup involves an extensive workforce and space for accommodating everyone and everything. In a virtual office, you can cater to all the business needs via a single-click in your member’s area.
A real, traditional office is a large expense in many aspects, as you have to lease the commercial space, pay utilities, buy furniture, equipment, cleaning, wi-fi, and any maintenance costs. The advantages of virtual offices are that they cut down these expenses by covering them for you and it helps save your monthly cash flow to invest back into your business and its expansion.
Having a virtual office helps you in scaling up and down your resources without facing any consequences and helps grow your business constantly. They also enable an organization to reduce its up-front cost by avoiding the need for a full fit-out and set necessary with a traditional office.
A Virtual Office offers a permanent Business Address
If you’re considering getting a Virtual Office for your business, for sure you’re looking around for the best prices available or maybe you are thinking about choosing a Virtual Address only.
There is a wide variety of virtual addresses on the market and not all of them offer the desired advantages.
At first glance, many virtual addresses seem extremely cheap but please let me warn you that you may find that you have fallen into a trap and have not received everything you would have wanted.
- Most virtual addresses are open between 9 am and 5 pm – This will make it very hard for you to collect your mail, so you would have to collect mail during business hours.
- Some providers will charge a handling fee of $1 to put 1 piece of mail in a mailbox – Imagine how big that bill can get after a few months.
- Most virtual address providers don’t have meeting rooms – This means you’ll have to keep meeting your clients in cafés, not at the address listed on your business card.
- Most suppliers just put your mail in an unsecured location, included with all other mail – This means your mail will often be getting lost, taken by someone else, or even stolen.
- Many of them only offer a mailing address – So what happens when you need more – like meeting rooms, landline telephone, virtual receptionists, etc? You will now need to go somewhere else.
By choosing to go for a Virtual Office with a provider like B2B HQ or through business partners like Virtual Headquarters, you benefit from a permanent Virtual Address and more:
- Secure business mailbox
- Permanent business address
- Email notification when your mail/parcels have arrived
- Keyless entry 24/7
- Permanent landline number
- Call forwarding
A Virtual Office can be the largest competitive advantage for your business
There is a huge difference between having a Virtual Office, or working from home or from a traditional office.
Working from home or from a traditional office you might be:
- Exposing your personal and private details
- Risking your family’s safety
- Risking theft of mail and confidential information
- Damaging your business perception
- Appearing unprofessional without a proper office address and number
- Missing out on deliveries
- Missing out on potential leads and calls
As you can see, a traditional approach to running a business can lead to a considerable number of disadvantages.
On the other hand, choosing the Virtual Office you will:
- Ensure security with a 24/7 locked office and mailbox with CCTV
- Never need to change your business address
- Be able to keep your business and family details separate
- Improve your business perception and credibility by appearing larger than you are
- Generate leads with a premium office address and landline number
- Never miss out on a potential lead with call forwarding
These are only some of the advantages that you will have when you migrate to a Virtual Office. And once you choose to go down this path for your business you will be surprised to discover many other benefits such as flexibility, the freedom to create your own schedule the way you desire and last but not least the confidence and feeling that what you do really matters and that modern times you are living in do not stop you from evolving, on the contrary.
So, what’s stopping you? Why not check out a virtual office today? (And hopefully, you include B2B HQ as one that you include in your research)
