I spent a few minutes with Siamak Taghaddos, CEO and founder of GotVMail for a recent episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. GotVMail is a virtual phone service provider that targets small entrepreneurial firms.

Virtual phone services, meaning online services that take the place of the old PBX phone system, are great for small to mid size companies. A lot of the chatter around these types of services is that they allow you to act bigger than you are, but that’s sort of silly because the smallness of small business is a great selling tool. What a menu type answering system that forwards calls to the appropriate mailbox does is allow the smallest of companies to put forward a more professional front door.

Most of these types of system can also:
• route calls to various numbers until a call is answered
• rotate incoming calls to different sales agents
• allow virtual teams to work together under one phone number
• provide options for fax on demand or even full blown recorded presentationsIn short, virtual phone systems can make you more accessible, provide faster access to information and keep your sales folks closer to the prospect – all good marketing things. There are lots of options to choose from and you can expect to pay anywhere from $10-30 per month depending on plans. – look also at VirtuVoice.

  In the spirit of full disclosure – I use GotVMail and I serve on their advisory board.