Small Business Saturday Blog

Being involved in the campaign brought us many opportunities and raised our profile at a time when we were newbies and needed some much needed promotion. Since then, we have participated each year in some shape or form, and are always promoting the benefits of the campaign to other small businesses. To this end, we wanted to share our successes and how we managed to achieve reaching this major milestone for a small business.

1. Have the right idea – find something that you are good at and have knowledge of. Our Managing Director was offering a similar service in another venture and could see the real need for smaller businesses to have someone who could support them with their telephone calls, and answering them, but not as costly as a full-time employee, acting as a great intermediary.
2. Research – thoroughly research your product/service, and check what your competitors are doing – can you find a niche? Ask people what they want from your idea/product/service, and gain valuable feedback. Is there anything you can do better? For example, we found a niche and offer all our customers the ability to listen to their calls, as quality assurance – we promise we get to know their business before we answer their calls, and this is how we prove we’re following up on that promise. 
3. People – employ the right people to work with you, and look for those who are passionate and believe in your offering. Create your own set of values and don’t budge on the qualities you want in a person. We’ve built our service around the people who are actually ‘doing the job’ and believe that ‘Our PAs are the Difference’. 
4. Proof – start collecting proof that your product/service works as soon as you can – get into the habit of collecting Google reviews, and Facebook/LinkedIn endorsements. Every bit of praise helps and don’t be shy about sharing this. Endorsements from your clients are the best form of proof. 
5. Loyalty – reward your existing customers, build upon your relationships. Your customer can be your biggest advocate and referrer. As with endorsements, a referral from a customer says it all. 

Our five notable achievements:

1. We were profiled as one of the very first #SmallBiz100 and were promoted in the 100 days in the lead up to the first ever Small Business Saturday event, as a result of which we were featured on The Guardian's website as well as being promoted locally.
2. In 2016, we entered local council awards for our apprenticeship programme and successfully won 'SME Apprenticeship Employer of the Year' as well as a special commendation for 'Apprentice of the Year'. The awards helped us to showcase our business to our local community and presented us a business that nurtures its employees.
3. Also in 2016, we became ISO 9001 accredited, allowing our customers and prospects to see that we have the correct systems and procedures in place. The assessment was quite rigorous and we became one of the only telephone answering services to obtain this new certification at the time. 
4. In 2017, we launched a new brand and website. This re-launch encompassed the true meaning of Face for Business, showcasing our 'real' PAs. Our new USP, 'Our PAs are the Difference', together with a complementary logo representing growth and metamorphosis, saw a 30% increase in conversions from our website.
5. Finally, our much anticipated App went live and was rolled out to all our customers in June 2018, with the aim of making our customers’ working practices better. You can view the details here.

Managing Director, Andy MacGregor, says “I’m so humbled and grateful to have reached this major milestone in our business. It started out of necessity and has grown into a brand and service of which I am immensely proud.”