I asked on LinkedIn recently what impression having a landline telephone number makes over just advertising a mobile number. I asked the question in a poll if having only a mobile number made no difference, looked modern, or gave the impression of being just a “one-man-band”. Now a lot of businesses these days who have proper premises, and a team of people, only use a mobile number. So perhaps that gives a modern feel. Particularly post-Covid. So how many said it looked modern? None. Zero percent. The rest were almost exactly split between the suggestion that it made no difference and looking like a micro- business. If only a relatively small number had said that it looked poor I would have concluded that the desk phone was here to stay a while longer. But when half the business community says it makes for a poor impression, then the verdict is clear.
That leads on to the bigger question. What impression does our marketing give to our clients and potential clients? And by marketing I mean our website, business cards, LinkedIn profile, email signatures, everything that is outward-facing. As a B2B business these things are frequently more of a shop-window than our premises. So often a fantastic, exciting, innovative business is housed in the most unprepossessing industrial unit or rented office space. In fact a lot of great companies, even quite large ones, have given up having a physical base at all. For example I recently suggested I sit with the team at one of my new clients only to be told that most of them work from home and they don’t even live in Europe. That means our real shop is right here on the internet. Our website suddenly becomes so much more important, and what we send out as LinkedIn messages, even how our signatures look and connect to testimonials are all vital. And that comes back to the phone number. Even the dialing code is important. Do you want to be super-honest about how you are based in Slough, Staines or Southampton? That 01753, 01784, 02380 makes a deliberate statement of being real in a physical location. Or do you want to highlight your ever-availability with a non regional dialing code?
If you want to review the impression your business is giving and you are based in Berkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Kent or Hampshire, contact me on 01784 671992 or pglynn@sandler.com
Paul Glynn
Sandler trainer
