When is the last time you checked the price of fully integrated voice systems to support your team? And, what if your team (like mine) is comprised of Virtual Assistants spread out all over the country, how do you manage your phone messaging so your group appears as one organization (yours), no matter who on your team gets called? Tough questions, but now with an easy answer!

FreedomVoice is one of those services that is so good and offers so much, you wonder how they can pull it off and still make money. It is also a challenge to explain all the features and benefits of what you get. However, here's a short list (for the US $9.95/mo FreedomLite version):

• Dedicated 800# - that can be used to contact any of your team members, regardless of where they are located;
• Five Voice Mail Boxes - each with their own extension # and caller ID, "follow me" call forwarding, and message forwarding to other voice mail boxes;
• Competitive Rates - cost per minute (billed in 6 second increments) is very competitive.

The FreedomPro plan (US $19.95/mo —the one my company uses) gives you 10 voice mail boxes and unlimited outgoing menus and information boxes. This last feature can be an awesome way to provide in-bound callers with additional information about your listings and/or the advantages of working with your team.

The primary way my company uses FreedomVoice is that each of my Virtual Assistants is assigned the same 800# but with their own unique extension number. This way I control my company's advertised access number for all my VAs —an important consideration if I ever have to make changes to my team. Also, since my VAs are all using the same system, they can easily forward messages to one another when necessary. It is interesting to note that almost immediately upon implementing our FreedomVoice system, I was receiving messages from people who know me well but thought my company had suddenly grown much larger!

FreedomVoice also has several add-in options that the high-performance real estate team may find useful. The one I like the most is the e-mail delivery and notification of new messages. For an extra US $15/mo you can set up the system to notify you or any of your team members via e-mail when a message comes in and then play the message right over the Net!  This also comes with the ability to manage your entire messaging system from a Web browser. Particularly handy for those of us who are on the road a lot, don't like to be interrupted by calls or call in for messages.

As mentioned earlier, there is so much that the FreedomVoice system offers, it is hard to do it justice in an article like this. I suggest you check out their nicely done Flash demo as it does a great job of articulating the benefits. Just CLICK HERE to go to the main page and then click on the "Take The Tour" link on the middle right-side of the page. You might also want to check out their AdTrakker "Hot Line" service for managing your in-bound ad calls as well.

I know of no other way to more easily or inexpensively integrate voice messaging than this service. And for those real estate professionals who have graduated to using multiple Virtual Assistants, it is especially useful. FreedomVoice is a great way to stay in control, connected, and appear as one unified organization, no matter where your team members may be located!