Recently, I came into the office in the morning and found a voice mail.

It was from a freelance copywriter asking me to call her.

Now, this is no surprise: I regularly get calls from novice copywriters asking for advice about the freelance copywriting business.

When I called her back, around 8am EST (I normally get to work at 7am), she answered the phone in a hoarse, dazed voice…and I knew I had woken her up.

I immediately felt guilty…but I should not have.

After all, why is it MY responsibility to know or think about whether she works at home?

And what difference should that make to clients, prospects, or anyone else who calls her?

Sure enough, she told me, a bit grumpily, “It is 5am where I am.”

And I felt vaguely scolded…as if I was supposed to figure out her location and time zone from the area code in the phone number she had left on my voice mail!

A major component of your small business marketing is the professional impression and image you convey…and that requires home-based businesses to have two separate phone lines: one for home, and one for business.

The rules are simple…

* Always answer the business phone promptly, clearly, and professionally. Pick it up on the second ring. The first seems too needy, and by the fourth, the prospect is getting annoyed by the long wait.

* Identity yourself and your company in your greeting, e.g. “Flowers by Fiona, this is Fiona speaking.”

* The business phone should ONLY be answered by people from the business—never children, parents, or the cleaning lady.

* When the business phone rings after hours and you do not feel like talking to business callers, don’t answer it. Let the voice mail pick it up.

* Keep the business phone in a private office or other area shielded from the sounds of home life. Business callers should not hear kids fighting or babies crying in the background.

* Do not require the caller to think about your situation, e.g. that they are calling late or reaching you at home.

That’s not their concern or responsibility…and having to worry about that is a turn-off for your clients and prospects.

For instance, I once called AC, a freelance PR consultant at 5pm; I suspected he worked at home, but did not know that for certain.

When he answered, he sounded annoyed and didn’t hide it well; clearly, I had done something wrong.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“I am eating dinner,” he replied testily.

Apparently, he required me to be a mind reader or have surveillance cameras in his house.

Or maybe he was living in the 1950s, when most people actually left work at 5pm on the dot!

Another faux pas that can damage the professional image you want to convey…

If someone calls and the person they want to reach is not available, take a message and promise to have that person call back promptly.

Do NOT, as some businesses do, amazingly to me, say, “He’s not here right now. Can you call back later?”

This adds another task to the prospect’s to-do list for the day. And your job is to make the prospect’s life easier, not add more work to it.

Finally, here’s the “technology” set up I recommend for home-based business phone systems:

* Separate phone lines for home and business.

* Another separate, dedicated phone line for the fax machine. It’s annoying and amateurish to tell prospects, “Let me hang up on you. I will unplug the phone, plug in the fax, and then you can call back and fax your document.” It is disrespectful because it wastes the prospect’s time.

* And yes, yet another dedicated phone line for the modem if you have a dial-up connection to the Internet. However, I’d recommend high-speed broadband access, which is faster and does not require its own phone line.

The point: even if you work at home, you are in business and you are a business professional.

Therefore, you have to convey a professional image that says you are serious about business, not a dilettante playing around between jobs.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.