How do I find you, how do I find out where you are, and how fast can I talk to you? These questions are ones we all wish a consumer would ask and then pursue aggressively to find our business. The problem is that the consumer is often fleeting in their pursuit if it is not easy, thorough, and cost effective.

Think about how you look for a business or vendor when you have a broad choice.

If your two choices are to look through a phone book or look something up online, which one will you choose? You choose online, if you're like me, since you can't remember where the hardcover phone books are, if you still have them, and not to mention they're out of date when they're printed. When you do eventually find those phone books, they're not particularly helpful with outdated listings. So the real question is, how fast can I get that information reliably?

Following this train of thought, it seems that the best option is to do a search online. But, once you get online, where do you go? Most people have identified one or two search engines or sites and frequent them regularly, but when those options run out or yield information that is not convenient for them to use, without 800 numbers, they will most likely find somewhere else to look.

If you do a search by business type or title, often you will come up with several businesses to choose from. Sometimes selecting the right business will depend on their advertising, who else uses them, or these days, what kind of positive feedback is received. That is if you believe the feedback posted.

Is it honest, is it part of a larger marketing plan, and how recent is it?

The business could have taken a nose dive in service years ago, but we wouldn't know it by reading the feedback. Most of the time, though, we choose the option that won't take money out of our own pockets. If there is a choice between contacting a business via a toll free number or incurring a cost, most will decide to use the 800 number every time.

The frustrating part of the search can often be the process of being forced to look through several different sites using the same key word in your search, trying to find the same information. There are occasions when we will see the same listing again and again on different sites, but since the number listed is a long-distance call, we will not dial that number. No matter how reputable a business might be, many of us are loathe to call long distance on a chance.

The safer and more cost-effective bet is to call toll free.

The more the toll free numbers appear in our searches, the more apt we are to contact those businesses, and anything that makes consumers contact a business will certainly create opportunities to sell our services or our products. Better still, if there is an 800 number directory, that surely would make life easier and allow us the opportunity to shop around easier and give businesses a better chance that we will contact them.

And as everyone knows, any increased traffic to a business is welcome. It gives more opportunities to convert that call into a paying customer. In the long run, it seems a small price to pay to have a toll free number listed on an 800 number directory to bring in more business.