Do you even notice your phone buzzing in your pocket or ringing on your desk anymore? Many business owners find themselves tuning out their ringing phones for the sake of their own time, energy, and sanity. After all, an endless stream of phone calls comes with the territory of owning a small business—and a good chunk of the time, they’re useless calls from solicitors. Usually, though, there are a lot of customer calls mixed in there. So if you’re just letting your phone ring and not picking up, you could be losing a bunch of business. It’s perfectly understandable that you don’t want to tie yourself up talking to telemarketers all day. You’re busy, and you simply don’t have time to waste on unwelcome calls. However, by ignoring all incoming calls, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage. Rock, meet hard place. In this post, we’ll look at how missed calls impact your business and what you can do to reduce them. Let’s jump in!

Missed Calls = Lost Money

Did you know that roughly 30% of our clients’ incoming calls go to voicemail? That’s not good, especially when you consider a recent report from Forbes telling us the overwhelming majority of callers hang up as soon as they reach voicemail. It’s truly unfortunate, particularly because you do have a good chance of turning a caller into a customer: Our proprietary data shows that approximately 60% of answered calls turn into successful sales. Using these statistics, we’ve broken down roughly how much revenue you’re missing out on by not answering the phone. You can see the numbers in the table below:

Is it safe to assume you don’t want to lose thousands upon thousands of dollars in revenue each year? Then you have to find a way to answer customer calls without wasting all your time on pesky solicitors. If only we had some tips for you…

How to Answer Only the Calls You Want

It actually is possible to answer your customers’ calls without dealing with the annoyance of telemarketers. You have a couple of options:

• Use a spam-blocking app on your phone that blocks known solicitors. It may not block spam calls 100% of the time, but it will significantly reduce the number you receive.
• Hire a call answering service to answer your phone for you. They’ll answer all your calls, represent your business with professionalism, and take messages from customers. They may even be able to perform other secretarial duties like scheduling appointments and answering basic customer service questions. This frees you up big time.
• Stop using your personal cell phone number as your business number. Get a separate line or a forwarding number to use for all of your business needs. This won’t actually cut down on solicitation calls, but at least you won’t be bothered by them when you’re spending time with your family at home.
• Take advantage of Prospect Genius’s CallTrax line or a similar call-tracking service. You’ll benefit from our extensive list of blocked numbers, which is constantly updated to keep unwanted callers from wasting our clients’ time.

Get an Exclusive Discount on Business Answering Services!

To help business owners solve their problem with missed calls, Prospect Genius has partnered with a company called Professional Answering Service, Inc. Their experienced management and well-trained staff are available to:

• Answer your phone remotely
• Dispatch urgent customer calls when needed
• Take detailed messages
• Schedule customer service calls and appointments
• And more!

The best part? Prospect Genius clients have access to Professional Answering Service, Inc. at an exclusive rate! If you think your business could benefit from an affordable answering service, get in touch with us and we’ll help you set everything up.