Are you still providing your cell, office, fax and home numbers to clients?  Do you ever miss calls that you wish you could take?  If so, you really need to read this post!

This is one of the most useful, most professional things you can do for your real estate business and it is so inexpensive, it's a no-brainer. 

So what is it already? 

I use a service called FreedomVoice and it is absolutely phenomenal.  I have used this in my office for over two years and I love it.  It has too many features-- such that I can only write about a few of them here.

First of all, FreedomVoice has several different pricing tiers.  I have loan officers that work for me, so I have a slightly more expensive pricing tier -- which basically means more mailboxes.  For a single Realtor-- or up to five Realtors-- it is only $9.95 per month for the minimum "five mailboxes" service. 

This is what FreedomVoice can do for you at $9.95 per month (plus per minute usage):

1.  When people call your telephone number, they will hear a greeting.  For example:  "Hello, this is Bill Paxton, your Chicago Realtor, press zero to connect to me now."  You know, whatever you want. 

If it's for an office or a team, you would say, "Thank you for calling Century 21, Team Baldwin!  Hit one for Billy, two for Alec..."

The voicemail system will then put your caller "on hold" and play some nice hold music.  FreedomVoice will then attempt to contact you at whatever number you choose.  For example, you could set up your system to try your cell phone first.  If you don't pick up in a certain number of rings (you set) it will then try you on your home number (if you choose). 

Basically, you can set this thing up to call as many phone numbers as you want, until that potential client gets hold of you.  As we all know, sometimes people hang up when they get voicemail, but this system will do everything it can to find you before it sends your client to voicemail.  You can even have it call certain numbers at certain times of the day.

2.  Call screening!  If you choose to activate this feature (no extra charge), it will ask the callers for their name before it tries dialing your number(s).  If you don't want to speak to that person while relaxing in your swimming pool, it will send them to voicemail.

3.  Remember, you get five "mailboxes."  So if you don't need to share with other people, you can use the other mailboxes for information.  For example:  "Hello, this is Bill Paxton.  Press zero to speak with me.  Or, press one to hear about my current listings; press two to hear about my listing policy..."  Let your imagination go wild.

You get the point.  You can use your mailboxes as you see fit and your "greeting" for each mailbox can be as long as you want it to be.

4.  All of your voicemails get forwarded to your email.  In the two or three years I've been using this, I've never picked up a telephone to check my voicemail.  As soon as I get a voicemail, I also get an email and I can play the message right from my inbox!  This is awesome.  It provides me a permanent record (the sound file) of any voicemails I ever receive.  Each loan officer also gets their voicemails sent to them via email and nobody gets each others.

5.  Faxes.  I bet some of you are paying for an online fax service right now.  Well, with this system, you can use the same number for your voice and your fax.  If your voice greeting detects a fax machine, it will accept the fax and email it to you.  You'll never answer the phone to hear an annoying fax squeal again.

6.  For an extra $5 per month:  You can have personalized "on hold" music or information.  So, instead of just hearing the provided elevator music, they can load informational recordings about your company as your hold music.  What a great way to inform customers about your services.

There are so many features to this service, that I can't possibly write about all of it here.  For example, I paid a one-time fee of $80-- (it was close to $80 anyway)-- to have my entire system voiced by a professional voice over person.

So when you call my office, that super-perky, professional-sounding voice isn't me.  It's a voice over person that was paid to make our office greeting.  I think $80 is expensive by the way.  You can shop around for voice over quotes.

My loan officers are usually on the road- like Realtors- so when you "connect to their extension", you are really connecting to their cell phones most of the time.

Of course, if they are in the office, it will try their office phone first, and then automatically try their cell.  I can have a bunch of calls coming in at once and loan officer's cell phones ringing all over Phoenix and I don't even know it's occuring.  My phone remains quiet, unless the call is absolutely for me...and I can still screen it for telemarketers.  More time working; less time talking unnecessarily.

Receptionist?  Absolutely no need.  Whomever is hanging around can answer our mostly-silent-in-a-good-way telephone lines.  And, it actually works better than a receptionist-- no human error.  How many times has a receptionist hung up on you?

And did I mention call blocking?

Okay, okay.  This post has gone on too far...

I don't care if you are one Realtor working out of a home office:  If you spend $9.95 per month (plus toll charges) on a system like this, it can dramatically improve your appearance of professionalism.

Click here to learn about the many, many more things that FreedomVoice can do for you.

[Edited]

Per minute charges: 

You'll pay about $.05 per minute, so 500 minutes will cost you $25.  The whole thing totals about $35 for the average Realtor.  That is, if the average Realtor spends 500 minutes on the phone taking incoming calls.  You might use a lot less minutes.  If you are taking 500 minutes of incoming calls, you are either super busy and $35 is a joke to you-- or you need to say, "let me call you right back" more often!