Creating A Professional Business From Your Bedroom

A work from home business is easy to start. However, it’s slightly harder when you want to ensure that you remain just as professional as your competitors. In this article we explore how you can save on office overheads without holding back your business.

Dedicated Telephone Number

When you work from home, you don’t want your friends, family and customers all phoning through on the same telephone line. That’s why you should set-up a dedicated telephone number for your customers. There are a few ways that this can be done. Firstly, you could contact your line rental provider who will be able to assign you another telephone number which has a different call tone associated with it. Or, you could just use a dedicated mobile phone.

One of the more popular methods is to buy a landline telephone number and have it forward to your computer or mobile telephone. Skype are one of the more popular providers that offer this service.

Virtual Telephone Answering Service

For under £100 a month you can have someone answer all your calls for you, and forward through the calls that you’d like to take. This can be a great way to save some of your own valuable time, and also appear more professional to your clients. They’ll never expect that you work from home when you have a virtual secretary answering your calls! 

Website & Email

When you’re working from home, there’s often no better way to be productive than to get started with email. Although it can be tempting to set up an email address like business-name@hotmail.com or business-name@isp.com, you should avoid all temptation. This is a sign that the business is anything but professional.  Your email address should be formatted like: name@businessname.com. Your marketing agency, web designer or hosting company should be able to give you a hand in setting this up.

It’s easy to have a website designed for under £200. It’s harder to get a great website designed for that price. When choosing a web designer, the most important thing to look at is portfolio. Once you have an idea of an agency’s capabilities it’s much easier for you to work out if they meet the standards you require.

Establish a Limited Company & Business Bank A/C

It’s easy to establish a limited company – even if you work from home. This can be done for under £500. However, you may wish to use the services of a lawyer when things are likely to be more confusing. If you require two types of stock, to have subsidiary companies, and things like that, it’s probably best to use the services of a suitably qualified professional. However, if all you require is a basic limited company, then you could bypass the lawyers.

Once you have a limited company set-up you will be able to go and get started with a business bank account. As a work at home business person, you may find that it’s much easier to use the services of a telephone and internet banking account. Remember, you don’t always have to use the same bank for loans and your current account.