It is often said that the three most important factors in making sure a business is successful are ‘location, location, location.’ Even if your business is not retail and does not rely on walk-in traffic, your location is important to your customers and prospective clients. Yes, you prospective clients will often research your small business to find out if you are local and if you at a real business address. You may not need to maintain a physical presence near your customers, but your business address should be where your customers are – or where they expect you to be.

You could have a head office location at a prestigious business address and have a majority of your production or staff working from another location that better suits the work that is being done – or where you are paying less rent. You want your customers to see your primary business address and know that you are serious about your business. The last thing you want prospective clients to see is that you are working from a location that is not an attractive or a professional business address.

Not only do you need a good business location, but you also want to be conveniently located for the staff you want to attract. If you are looking to hire millennials that want to work in an urban downtown location, you need to have that convenient location to attract the best possible talent. With the condo boom in most cities, many people are choosing to live and work downtown. The last thing you want to do is have an office space in the suburbs, when your ideal talent pool is living downtown. Bottom line: They will not want to commute to and from the suburbs. This is especially true when most people who are living in downtown condos are opting not to own a car. They use public transit options to get around.

Many businesses today are choosing to work from a serviced office space in a professional office business centre, one where they have a prestigious business address and do not have to worry about managing an office space. Managing an office space requires capital expenditures like office furniture, office equipment (photocopiers, fax machines, network printers, etc.) or a telephone system and a receptionist to direct callers to the right person.

The bonus of working from a serviced office in a business centre is that you have access to state-of-the-art business machines (on an a-la-carte basis) and free access to modern meeting rooms and boardrooms that are equipped for the needs of your meeting. Most meeting rooms are equipped with large LCD video screens, white boards, flip charts, Internet access (WiFi and wired connections) and other amenities like teleconferencing and video conferencing.

If most of your employees are working remotely or on the road, you may not need to have physical downtown office space to house them. But, you still want that downtown address that has appeal to both customers and employees. You can opt to have a ‘virtual’ office with a prestigious address, receptionist and physical presence close to your customers, but keep your main base of operations at home or somewhere more cost-effective while servicing customers remotely. A virtual office mail service can be as low at $30 per month and a full virtual office with a live professional receptionist answering and handling your calls as low as $75 per month.

There are more options and advantages that a virtual office at an office business centre can offer. One other option to the mail service combined with the telephone answering service is the VoIP extension. With a VoIP extension, you can make and receive calls from anywhere in the world (with an Internet connection) and you customers will see your local number on their call display and believe that you are in your physical office. You still get all the benefits of having your business at a prestigious business address and have your mail forwarded to wherever you are working.

Wait, there are even more advantages to having a virtual office in a professional office business centre! When your customer wants to have a meeting at your office, you can easily arrange to rent a meeting room at the same location as your business address. As a virtual office client, you get a preferred rate over non-virtual office customers. You can also rent a day office when you need a physical place to get your work done (you know, like those times when relatives are visiting and you cannot get any work done at home).

Back to where to locate your business. Whether you choose to physically locate your business at an office business centre or just have a virtual office at the same location, you have the advantage of growing or scaling back your office space or services without losing your business address. If you start with a virtual office mail service or telephone mail service, and find that you need to have a physical office at that location, you can rent an office and not have to change your business address or phone number. Alternatively, if you are renting a physical office at a business centre and need to scale back, you can change your services to a virtual office plan and still have the same professional business address.