The reasons for establishing a virtual office are many, but the most important one is that it can improve your bottom line.
Many businesses start in the basement or spare room of the founder’s home. Some grow to become AT&T or Amazon, while others experience more modest success. How can a virtual office help you in your quest to grow your business?
If clients find you online and see your address is in a residential neighborhood, they’ll know you work out of your home. Depending on the type of business you run, this may not be a big deal — many hairdressers, music teachers, and health practitioners work out of their homes. But this is a gray area for other professions.
Would clients mind a graphic artist or lawyer who worked from a home office? Maybe not. But in a side-by-side comparison where everything else is equal, a potential client might pass on a service provider with a residential address in favor of another with a more respected metro address.
Real estate blog Commercial Café reports that having a business address helps boost consumer confidence in your brand, as potential clients will begin to associate your name with an upscale downtown office building, rather than a bungalow in the ’burbs.
Bottom line: respectable address = more clients; more clients = more money.
It can be difficult to get insurance for a home-based business. Depending on whether you have employees working out of their homes or clients coming in and out of yours, you may need liability insurance, worker’s compensation insurance, and more.
In many instances, establishing a virtual office allows you to legally purchase this insurance. Business lawyer Nina Kaufman advises small-business ownersto check their local laws and talk to an insurance agent about what types of coverage they may want and what kinds they may be legally required to have.
Regardless of whether your intent is to keep your business small or eventually go global, a virtual office can help you on your journey. Taking this step means you can keep more of the profits in your pocket or reinvest them in your business.
A virtual office is the perfect middle ground between a home office and separate quarters for your business. Leasing office space can be expensive, and if you’re just starting out, you are likely not flush with extra funding. Further, as a new business, your income predictions may be a tad off. You may sign a lease for which you will eventually have trouble paying.
A virtual office allows you to save money you otherwise would have spent on commercial space, fees, bills, furniture rental, and more.
Another great perk of establishing a virtual office is that you have the option to book a temporary office space for client meetings. You can rent meeting rooms or office space by the hour or day. You can even rent space short-term, such as accountants do during tax season or tutors during exam times.
Small Business CEO goes into more detail about the ways you can save money with a virtual office.
In today’s world of telecommuting and working with clients in different time zones across the globe, the virtual office is becoming more of a norm and less of an exception. Take advantage of everything a virtual office has to offer. It’s not just a P.O. box. A virtual office is a physical building, staffed with receptionists who can answer and forward your calls, take messages, send and receive mail, and more.
Contact Premier Workspaces and find out how we can help you on your path to business growth with a virtual office.