Making A Little Company Look Big

The New York Times:

Small may be beautiful, but looking too tiny is another matter. That is what Angela Ford thought six years ago, when she started TAG Worldwide, her Chicago-based real estate and property management firm.

At the time, Ms. Ford was working on the staff of a property management company, and the last thing she wanted her customers to think was that she was operating the business during her lunch hour.

So to create the impression that the company was bigger, she searched for an answering service that used live operators. Customers would call Ms. Ford’s home phone number and immediately be forwarded to the service. “The operator would say, ‘Let me see if she’s available’ and try my cell,” Ms. Ford recalled. “If I could take the call, I would.”

These days, it may be easier than ever to pull off this feat, thanks to technological advances. Companies can produce their own polished marketing materials, use far-flung virtual assistants to answer phone calls, design sleek Web sites and the like. Even the use of e-mail helps. “Yesterday’s meeting is today’s e-mail,” Mr. Siegel said. “You can have a little hole in the wall office and no one would know.”

Photo by Peter Wynn Thompson.

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