Over the past few months, Grasshopper headquarters have been “going green”. A new solar power system is in the final stages of installation and pretty soon, about 20% of the building’s power (including HVAC) will be generated by sunlight.

This is an exciting step for Grasshopper and it got us thinking, what else can we be doing to green up this place?

As it turns out, our own product actually helps with that! A virtual phone system is a great way to help your company go green.

Work from home

With the Grasshopper call forwarding feature, you can work from home and never miss a call. More importantly, you don’t have to commute to an office.

According to a Huffington Post article by Jason Seeger, if more companies encouraged telecommuting, the U.S could use 625 million fewer barrels of oil each year, cut greenhouse emissions by 107 million tons of carbon dioxide and save $43 billion on gas. Wow!

Save a few trees

Did you know that every year each person in the United States uses roughly 749 pounds of paper? That’s a lot of paper and a lot of trees!

In most offices, faxes use more paper than any other piece of equipment. Think about it. You send a fax cover sheet, the actual fax and of course it prints a confirmation (or a page telling you it failed). A single page fax could result in four pieces of paper being used.

With virtual faxing, you can save paper and reduce your annual usage. Simply have your customers send faxes to your Grasshopper number and they will arrive in your inbox. You can even store them in your account.

No handouts

You walk into a conference room and there on the table is a presentation printed out for you. Why? With today’s technology it seems unnecessary to print out copies for everyone involved in a meeting.

Virtual meetings are easy and especially with remote team members or out-of-state vendors, sharing a screen is much easier than trying to go over a printed document. Free services like Join.me are great for screen sharing and combined with your virtual phone conference calling feature, you can have a virtual meeting in minutes…without all the extra paper.

Companies across the US are taking steps to go green. Whether it’s using a virtual phone system, offering employees work from home days or greening your building, there are a lot of great things happening.

What is your company doing to go green?

One of the great things about our phone system is that it can be used in different (and creative) ways. While yes, it’s intended to be used as a full-featured, make your company sound big phone system, our customers have made it their own. Some people use it strictly as a voicemail service, some use it as a call forwarding service and one customer uses it to provide clients with personalized extensions.

A new use we came across recently was a customer using their Grasshopper number as a dedicated support line. What a great idea! We certainly have customers who use extensions for support/sales/departments/etc, but I’d never really thought about using an account just for Support.

As it turns out, there are actually quite a few benefits to this:

Professionalism

One of our main priorities here is to “Help entrepreneurs stay connected and sound professional”. Why? Because to customers, perception is reality.

A dedicated support line certainly shows customers that you are professional, successful enough to have a support team & you are there to help them when they need it. Whether this line forwards to a 100-person support team or your home office doesn’t really matter.

Simplicity

Have you ever called a company for support and been forced to listen to 10 different menus? Of course you have, we all have! It can be extremely frustrating, and when you are already frustrated it certainly doesn’t endear you to the company you are trying to reach.

With a dedicated line, there’s no sifting through the phone tree. Your customer reaches the right department and can then be directed based on need. Remember the old adage, Keep it Simple Stupid.

Minute Usage

If you’re using a virtual phone system, your plan is most likely based on minute usage. One of the common traits we’ve seen in companies who go over their minutes, is they typically have a sales or support line, which can take up a ton of minutes as your business grows. Having a separate line/account may be just the answer.

To break it down, for a company on the Ramp plan ($24/500 minutes), it may make more sense to upgrade to the Grow plan ($49/2,000 minutes), but for those on the Grow plan, it probably doesn’t make sense to upgrade to the Max plan ($199/10,000 minutes). A better solution may be adding another Ramp plan to use for the support line. You don’t have to worry about minute overage and it won’t cost too much more.

Using a Grasshopper number as a dedicated support line (a Sales line would apply here too) appears to be a pretty good idea and one I’m glad was brought to our attention.

In today’s society, people are working less in the office and therefore the need for a virtual phone system is growing. One industry where this is especially true is Real Estate. Based on feedback from customers in the real estate business, here are a few ways Grasshopper can help:

1) Informational Extensions

You can give your clients information they need without even talking to them! When a client calls an 800 number listed outside a property they’re interested in, they can hear specific information about the property, including housing details, address, and contact information.

2) Call Routing Extensions

In any industry involving sales, it’s important that customers never hear a busy signal or wait on hold too long. It’s also important in Real Estate that your employees get an equal number of incoming sales calls. Call Routing Extensions make this happen. Call routing extensions can help ensure that all of the agents in the office get an equal number of calls and your customers don’t become frustrated by your phone service.

3) Voice mail Features

Being out of the office a lot it’s important you don’t miss an important message. The great thing about using Grasshopper is that you can have your messages delivered to you no matter where you are. Your voice mails will be emailed to you (along with an MP3) and with the new read your voice mail feature, you can read your message without every having to listen to it. With Grasshopper, you can always check your voice mail when you need it.

Get more information on how Grasshopper can help with your real estate company or check out our full list of features.

There are so many great places for entrepreneurs to get information; blogs, forums, Twitter, conferences, meet-ups, co-working spaces, etc, etc. Sometimes it’s hard to sort through them all!

To at least make one part simpler for you, and give you something to read this holiday weekend, I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite blog posts about entrepreneurship and business from the past month. I’m sure there are a hundred more out there but here are my favorites. Enjoy!

1. Which Excuses are Keeping You from Starting or Growing Your Business?

Overview: Matthew from Blogtrepreneur.com offers tips for those “wanna-be” entrepreneurs that are hesitant about starting a business. If you are on the fence about starting a business, this should inspire you to take a leap of faith and just do it! (or at least stop making excuses about why)

Link to Post

2. Entrepreneurs Test Before Starting Your Business

Overview: Kevin from dorm-room-biz.com gears this post towards internet entrepreneurs. It provides step-by-step instructions on how to set up an online marketing campaign for your business. The important thing is that one can invest little money to gather data about the market they are trying to enter if they use this strategy.

Link to Post

3. Do Entrepreneurs Have ADD?

Overview: This entrepreneur.com post examines the possible correlation between Entrepreneurs and ADD (attention deficit disorder.) Carol Tice makes the case that ADD allows entrepreneurs to tend to the many different aspects of owning and running a business. Do you have ADD?

Link to Post

4. 9 Hats of an Entrepreneur

Overview: As an entrepreneur one is be expected to play many different roles in a business. In this series, 9 different roles of an entrepreneur are examined, ranging from manager and chairman to parent and spouse. These posts really offer some insight into things one has to consider as an entrepreneur.

Link to Post

5. Selling your Business: The Second Most Important Number

Overview: This Informationweek.com article warns business owners about selling their businesses. Sometimes in offer sheets, prospective buyers will entice a business owner with a high purchase price but leave high working capital stipulations in the term sheet that could leave business owners will little money on the day of the sale. Entrepreneurs and business owners beware!

Link to Post

6. Web Site Development: Template or Hired Web Designer?

Overview: Does your business have a website? Are you worried that spending a significant amount of money on a professional website may not be worth it? You may be right, this smallbiztechnology.com post outlines the differences when deciding to use a template based website or hiring a professional web designer. See which one is right for you!

Link to Post

7. Small Business News: The Times They are a Changin’

Overview: This post is an aggregate intended to keep entrepreneurs up to date about changes in the small business world. The topics here range from marketing and social media, to taxes and diversity.

Link to Post

8. Links Your SMB Can Easily Snatch Up

Overview: This Smallbiztrends.com post offers 14 different ways small business owners can build links for websites. Link building is the key to get one’s website to show up in Google’s organic search results.

Link to Post

9. Self Employment Sucks

There is a common misconception out there that being an entrepreneur and being self employed are the same thing. This post points out the differences between being self employed and an entrepreneur and how you can get trapped being self employed!

Link to Post

10. Business Ideas You Can Drive Home Today

Overview:This article features 100 business ideas that can be started with little or no funding/experience. If you are looking to start a business but aren’t quite sure what you should do, definitely check this out!

Link to Post

11. How to Grow a $1 Million side Biz

Overview: This Womenentrepreneur.com post is a success story about entrepreneur Sari Crevin who founded BooginHead, and created the SippiGrip. Sari reveals her road to success as well as some business mistakes she made along the way. This post is great for inspiration and is a wonderful resource that includes tips on how to help your business take off!

Link to Post

One of the great things about Grasshopper is that it can be used by just about any company, in any industry. We have customers who work in construction, law, accounting, transportation, real estate, marketing and many other industries.

One industry that’s really started to pop up on our radar here as of late is the non-profit sector. Several customers have reached out to us and let us know not only how valuable the Grasshopper virtual phone system has been to their non-profit organization but also how they actually use it.

Here are 3 ways Grasshopper can help non-profits:

• Phone # for Volunteers

  Volunteers are an integral part of many non-profit organizations. They help man the phones, run events, organize fundraisers and much more. With tight budgets, not all non-profits can afford to provide phones or even walkie talkies to every volunteer and trying to keep track of everyone’s cell phone number can be next to impossible. With Grasshopper, no additional phones are necessary. You can create extensions in minutes and calls can be forwarded to any number on any phone.

  Have an event? Using your Grasshopper toll free or local number, simply create extensions and have the calls forward to your volunteers’ cell phones. The same extensions can be used for any event. All you have to do is change the forwarding number.

• Fundraising/Event Information

  Wouldn’t it be great if you could give people all the information they needed without ever having to answer a call?

  With informational extensions, you can give people information they need on events, fundraisers, the company and more. Simply record your greetings and upload them to your account. Give callers hours, dates, directions and more.

• Taking Donations

  Donations are a big part of the non-profit industry and the easier it is for people to give them, the better. Question & answer extensions can make taking donations simple and you don’t have to worry about being out of the office and missing calls.

  With question & answer extensions, your callers will hear a series of questions to which they will respond to. A voicemail will then be compiled and emailed to you with all of the information the caller provided.

  Create a dedicated extension for donations and gather the info you need from callers. This ensures donations can be taken 24/7.

The Grasshopper virtual phone system can help non-profits with their phone needs for a low cost. Have questions? Listen to a live demo, visit our FAQ page or call our support staff at 800-820-8210.

]]>

One of the great things about Grasshopper is that it can be used by just about any company, in any industry. We have customers who work in construction, law, accounting, transportation, real estate, marketing and many other industries.

One industry that’s really started to pop up on our radar here as of late is the non-profit sector. Several customers have reached out to us and let us know not only how valuable the Grasshopper virtual phone system has been to their non-profit organization but also how they actually use it.

Here are 3 ways Grasshopper can help non-profits:

• Phone # for Volunteers

  Volunteers are an integral part of many non-profit organizations. They help man the phones, run events, organize fundraisers and much more. With tight budgets, not all non-profits can afford to provide phones or even walkie talkies to every volunteer and trying to keep track of everyone’s cell phone number can be next to impossible. With Grasshopper, no additional phones are necessary. You can create extensions in minutes and calls can be forwarded to any number on any phone.

  Have an event? Using your Grasshopper toll free or local number, simply create extensions and have the calls forward to your volunteers’ cell phones. The same extensions can be used for any event. All you have to do is change the forwarding number.

• Fundraising/Event Information

  Wouldn’t it be great if you could give people all the information they needed without ever having to answer a call?

  With informational extensions, you can give people information they need on events, fundraisers, the company and more. Simply record your greetings and upload them to your account. Give callers hours, dates, directions and more.

• Taking Donations

  Donations are a big part of the non-profit industry and the easier it is for people to give them, the better. Question & answer extensions can make taking donations simple and you don’t have to worry about being out of the office and missing calls.

  With question & answer extensions, your callers will hear a series of questions to which they will respond to. A voicemail will then be compiled and emailed to you with all of the information the caller provided.

  Create a dedicated extension for donations and gather the info you need from callers. This ensures donations can be taken 24/7.

The Grasshopper virtual phone system can help non-profits with their phone needs for a low cost. Have questions? Listen to a live demo, visit our FAQ page or call our support staff at 800-820-8210.

]]> http://grasshopper.com/blog/2010/05/a-virtual-phone-system-for-entrepreneurs/feed/ 0