It is a fact that local business telephone numbers are great for generating more sales enquiries. If you plan on attracting local customers and don’t have one, then your sales team could easily be underperforming with plenty of potential sales going to your competitors instead. Importantly, local business numbers are useful for firms regardless of the sort of work they do. Therefore, they are worth looking into regardless of whether you run a business-to-business company or are the sales director of a business-to-consumer enterprise. Either way, obtaining one for the locality you are trading in will help to boost sales performance. How does this work?
What Is a Local Business Number?
Unlike a mobile phone number, a local business number has a local area code at the start of it. For example, London-based businesses begin with 0207, 0208 or 0203. Bristol numbers start with 0117 while those in Manchester have 0161 at the start. This geographical coding works over the entire UK, from Aberdeen to Abergavenny and – crucially – people in any particular location in the country will know their area code. As such, simply by having a local business number, firms can give their would-be clients and current customers a sense that they are part of the local community.
How Do Local Business Numbers Work?
In the past, you had to have a fixed line telephone that connected to the local telephone exchange to obtain a local business number. Thankfully, this is no longer the case. Today, you can obtain local business telephone numbers that will transfer calls automatically to any number you like. This includes mobile phones, ideal for SMEs where sales staff might be out and about a great deal, for example. Indeed, you can program your local business number to hunt around on several of your company mobile phones, if you like.
Equally, you could buy an 0207 London number and have it redirect to your offices in Norwich via your current 01603 number or your mobile phone, making it seem as if you have a presence in the Capital. The same goes for Coventry-based firms with 024 numbers that want to do more business in Birmingham, for instance. Simply by obtaining a virtual 0121 number, people in Birmingham will think you are based there, too.
How Will a Local Business Number Boost Sales?
According to Cleartone Communications, a telecommunications company that offers free trials of local business numbers, most firms that use local business numbers will expect a sizeable upturn in the number of inbound calls they generate. So long as your increased call volume is planned for, these sales enquiries should lead to a greater number of sales with even a modest conversion rate. In short, businesses with local numbers are more likely to be called by people in the locality to which they relate. Most local calls are generally included in many people’s “monthly minutes” of their call package. Furthermore, you don’t have to stick to one local business number because you can obtain one for every large town and city you operate in throughout the entire UK.
