Flyp My Phone

“The secret to multitasking is that it isn’t actually multitasking. It’s just extreme focus and organization.” ~ Joss Whedon

Have you ever watched a really good store manager while she works? It’s incredible! She can handle two or three customers at once, answer the phone three times while she’s at it, and approve a couple check transactions at the same time. And when you compliment her on her talent, she just shrugs and says, “I’m a multitasker.”

A few years ago, businesses were all about multitasking. Employers wanted people who could multitask. With life moving faster all the time, all of us have learned to do it to some extent. But experts now believe that multitasking isn’t really all that productive or efficient. For a lot of us, multitasking just means we do a bunch of things at once, but we don’t do any of them very well. I don’t know about you, but I’ll never be able to do what that store manager does.

So it turns out that it’s better to focus on one thing at a time. But this doesn’t fit too well with modern life. Between home, work, school, church, and hockey, it’s a wonder we ever get anything done at all.

Luckily, I don’t have to multitask anymore, because my cellphone does it for me. I can hardly remember anymore what life was like before I had an iPhone. I used to say that having a cellphone was a good idea, but not an absolute necessity. Well, it’s sure a necessity now.

But all that sophisticated technology has brought higher customer expectations. These days, you need to come across as professional, even if you’re a one-person operation. Will one phone number do the trick? You’ve got a lot of different people contacting you. Do you want the same voicemail greeting going to both prospective buyers and prospective sellers? To your family? Your business partners? Aren’t there certain calls that you’d rather send to voicemail rather than answering them personally?

If you want your business to run itself as much as possible – and trust me, you do – you’re going to need more than one phone number. The trick is to manage all those phone numbers without breaking the bank, because your money is better spent on marketing.

A new app called Flyp makes it easy to operate like a pro. Flyp allows you to get up to six new phone numbers that are tied to your cellphone. When a call comes in, you can tell which number it’s coming from, so you have an idea of what the call is about. You can even choose the area codes.

Flyp is dirt cheap. The first number is free, and the other lines are just three bucks a month. It’s available for Androids and iPhones, and I’m finding it a very handy tool.

Flyp has some great features. You can set up different voicemail greetings for each phone number. Each number has independent text and voicemail capabilities, and you can set one or more on “do not disturb.”

So, just how should you use all those phone numbers? That’s completely up to you, but here’s one possible set-up with five numbers: The first phone number goes on your “We Buy Houses” ads. When someone calls, they get a minute-long message about your services. A second number goes on your house-for-sale ads and takes the caller to a message describing your properties. Those sales messages include a third phone number for callers who want more information, and that’s the number you actually answer when it rings. Then, you have a fourth number for general business matters, and the fifth – and most important – is just for family and close friends.

In effect, you’re screening your calls without living on your phone. It’s almost like having a whole staff dedicated to answering your phones. Pretty slick, don’t you think? You can answer five phones at once!

Now that’s what I call multitasking!