Business meetings can happen anywhere

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Dear Professor Bruce: I'm tired of having meetings in coffee shops and my clients are starting to wonder if I'm operating a fly-by-night operation. I can't afford to rent an office, so what can I do?Answer: Here are four places you may want to reconsider with respect to holding meetings with potential clients.1. Coffee housesDo you want to meet your clients at tiny, coffee-stained tables, surrounded by students and a bunch of aspiring novelists? No, you want to be able to have an adult conversation and make strong points without worrying about bothering the folks at the table six inches from you.2. Public librariesNo matter how practical, the message that you send is that you have no resources. You are basically telling your clients that the best you can do is muster up an ill-equipped room in a public library.3. Hotel lobbiesHotel lobbies can be beautiful and on the outside might seem like a great space to meet. But they are also extremely busy. There is a lot of foot traffic, including large groups of tourists. Hotel guests on vacation do not care if you make a good impression with your client. You cannot control your environment here.4. Fast-food restaurantsYou are trying to sell yourself as high-end, something special, a cut above the com-petition.So now that you know where not to meet, where should you go when you need to meet with a client?According to Jeff Landers author of "The Home Office From Hell Cure" (Entrepreneur Press), "small business professionals should get virtual office space. This way they can work from home while giving the appearance that their businesses are much larger and more impressive. This is absolutely essential if you want to at-tract and catch bigger clients".Here's how it works: For a reasonable monthly fee, you can rent the services of an office suite without actually renting the office itself. Imagine working from your suburban house outside New York City, but coming into Manhattan and having your client meetings in a fully equipped, state-of-the-art conference room in a luxury office building.That means you can finish up the client presentation at home and go to your very own conference room in a high-end office suite. Your clients can sip a cup of freshly brewed coffee while you impress them with your professionalism. It only costs you a few dollars each month and is available to you on an "as needed" basis.Stay at home, but get all the advantages of being in a "real" office.For further information, please visit www.homeofficesuccess.com.Bruce Freeman is president of ProLine Communications, a marketing and public relations firm in Livingston, NJ and co-author of "Birthing the Elephant" (Ten Speed Press). E-mail questions to Bruce(at)SmallBusinessProf.com.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)