Business News
Put Your Best Face Forward With a Professional Image Checklist
By Sharon Airhart
Aug 11, 2007, 17:56

(NC)-Home-based businesses are most likely to thrive when they present a professional image to potential clients. After all, how will they know you do great work if they see you as unprofessional and disorganized?

Clients and potential clients most often meet home-based businesses virtually - by telephone, through email and via the World Wide Web. These are the most important tools you have to create and maintain a professional image for your home-based business.

Check your image here:

1. Do you have a dedicated telephone line for business?

2. Do you answer the telephone professionally? Is there silence in the background or soft music? Don't just say hello; answer with your full name or the name of your business. Background no-nos - noisy kids, loud televisions, barking dogs.

3. Do you have an answering machine or answering service to handle calls if you're not home? Is the message professional? Does it promise response time and invite the caller to leave their name and telephone number?

4. Is your email address businesslike? Your email address should reflect your business. You shouldn't just be Mary@serviceprovider.com. You should be MarySmith@SmithImage Consulting.com. This is easier to setup than you might think.

Register that domain name (also called a "web address" or a URL) through a domain name registrar - like www.easyDNS.com. Generally, you'll want to use your company name or your personal name with a word that describes what your do. This process takes less than 10 minutes and costs about $30.

As part of the same process, you create a custom email address using your newly registered domain name. You simply instruct easyDNS.com to send any email addressed to "yourdomainname.com" to the email address that was supplied by your internet service provider (Sympatico, Rogers, etc.) or to an email account at one of free email providers like Gmail or Hotmail.

5. Are your email messages professional? If you have the skills to include your logo or graphics in your email, great, but at the very least, your messages should be as polite, grammatical and well thought out as any business letter. Because email between you and your client is, in fact, business correspondence.

6. Do you have a web site that reflects your business? Now that you have registered your domain name, you can enlist the help of techie friends or hire a professional to build your web site.

Finally, since yours is a home-based business, make it clear to clients that meeting is by appointment only. No one would drop by their lawyer's or accountant's unannounced and you should gently get the same message to your clients on first meeting.

After all, you've worked hard to create a professional image through the telephone, email and the web - you don't need a client dropping by to discover sniffling kids, piles of laundry and your unemployed brother-in-law asleep on the couch.

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