NFIB

Getting by With One Phone Line Requires a Smooth Operator
04/ 15/ 2002


When the budget won't allow a second telephone line for the home office, managing faxing, e-mailing, Internet and voice calling requires constant attention and planning. As Workshop Contributor Bob Graham explains, knowing when to be doing what with the one telephone line can make it seem like you have two or three lines.

One of my growing skills as a small businessman is being able to constantly juggle one telephone line for all my voice calls, faxes, e-mail and Internet use, and the answering machine.

Over the last couple of months, I have developed a successful system of telephone management that maximizes my use of the one line, while minimizing people getting busy signals when trying to reach me. From my experiences, I offer the following suggestions:

Get the phone company function that allows callers contacting you while you are on your telephone line to leave messages. Answer call usually costs $4 to $10 a month, and can beset up to only work when your line is busy or whenever someone calls and the line is not picked up in two to four rings. This single purchase assures me that even when I'm on the line, a caller can at least be acknowledged for returning my call or trying to reach me. Return these calls right away.

Check your email, use the Internet, or send faxes when people aren't likely to call you. This ensures a fair amount of business hours will be available for incoming calls or for important outgoing calls.

Leave people messages before or after normal business hours. I can leave a dozen messages on people's office lines late in the evening or early in the morning in a few minutes' time. Then, as people reach their offices, they can respond quickly. (I also find that people tend to be in their offices early or late more often than I had expected.) You can also use your time zone to your advantage, calling early or late in the day, depending on which side of the country you are on.

If you can, use e-mail and faxes as much as possible to communicate. This practice serves two purposes. First, it keeps you off the telephone for long periods of time, especially if the call is long distance, where charges during the business day can mount quickly. Second, the written form of communication requires clarity, meaning stray thoughts are usually discarded before reaching the final draft. A good deal of business can be conducted through faxes and e-mails, if you reach your point quickly and give the recipient of your message clear instructions or thoughts to which they can respond.

If you are going to use e-mail to communicate, draft notes in a word processing program and copy them into the message of an e-mail or make them an attachment. That way you don't need to be using the phone for the e-mail while creating your message.

Finally, help people trying to reach you. In messages and faxes where you need a response, tell people when it is good to call or fax you, and then try to keep the line open during those times. I try to set 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. as return call time, figuring people will be returning from lunch and getting back to work. If I haven't heard from someone by 3:30, I usually call them back by 4 or 4:30.

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