Small business secrets...

Working as a sole trader can be heavy-handed at best and isolating at worst, you're responsible for every aspect of your business from customer service to sales to business admin. It's important to be able to switch off every now and then to preserve your mental health.

Here are some tips on how to create a work-life balance as a sole trader.

No matter the size of your business, it's important to present a professional appearance to anyone who interacts with your business. This can apply to the email address you present on your website and more importantly a phone number. It's important to have a reliable and stable landline presenting number with added benefits such as call management features.

When the phone rings at your small business what happens? There are a number of scenarios that can happen such as the call is answered immediately, there is an auto attendant that directs the caller or hold music. All this is vital to the caller experience that your customers or stakeholders experience. It's important to know which one your small business is projecting day to day.

For small business owners starting out, it's common to want to use your personal mobile phone for work. It may seem convenient but the setbacks will become obvious in the future such as not being able to switch off, wondering whether every call is a personal or business and can damage your professional reputation.

Here are more reasons why using a personal mobile phone number isn't something you should be doing.

It may seem like a good starting point but using a mobile number for your small business but can be detrimental to your brand and relations with prospective callers. A study revealed that 85% of small business owners use mobile phones for business-related tasks on a regular basis. As your business grows over the years you'll soon start to feel the pain and limitations.

Here’s why it’s time to keep your personal and business number separate and move away from mobile phone use all together.

As a small business owner, you may not consider missed business calls as an issue. Given today’s emphasis on digital communication such as social media and email, it’s easy to forget that phone calls also play an important role.

Unanswered calls are more important than we may think. Here’s the real impact of missed calls on your small business.

This year’s theme is ‘choose to challenge’. This encourages us to stay alert in order to tackle unconscious gender bias and inequality.

By challenging the status quo we can choose to call out this bias and choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements.

In December 2020, Salisbury became the first city in the UK to gain complete access to Openreach's full fibre (FTTP) network. Over 90% of the city now has access to fast and full fibre broadband.

bOnline phone now allows your business to upload a custom professional voicemail greeting to callers.

Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of businesses either resorted to remote working or have unfortunately shut down during lockdown. Many businesses, especially small businesses, have greatly felt the impacts of this economic crisis.

As the world is preparing to bounce back from this devastation with help of the vaccine, many small businesses will need to reface and begin a new build-up for their company and look to see how they can rebuild what was lost and continue growing with in the future.