Should I Open An Office ?

[den1223]

I own a small heating and cooling bussiness in a small town and also preform work in larger town next to us. My question is should i spend the money to rent an office to try to get more work. I have found a great location for a good price and can open office very easy. The walk by traffic will be very high for this small town. Not realy selling any walk in products would the walk by advertisement get enough work to offset the cost or hurt. I currently have one billboard, two yellow pages in two cities, And a few menu adds. Not getting the returns i need from these. All the other A/C companys have offices and do more work than me. But they have been around longer too. I currenly have a good customer base but am trying to get extra to expand.

As in most rural areas the internet is slow not used like larger areas.
Please give your opinion. Thanks

[east2west]

I doubt you would have anyone just walk by and decide to check out your office, but the Billboards, sign.....ect would help you with name recognition.

It's also nice to have an office to invite clients (or potential) clients to. Especially if you want to pick up some commercial work.

In my opinion if you have the capitol and have budgeted this, and it is ok, go for it.

[JoshAk]

Just wondering how you would use your office, would it be in a showroom format where customers could see first hand the differences between the options? Or would it be a desk with a few brochures? The reason I wonder is because in many towns there are places you can rent a conference room for the day to have a professional place to meet with clients without the cost of renting or leasing office space? This would mean that you can't leave items setup like a showroom.

Also thinking about how I shop for these types of things I look in the yellow pages (as you mentioned) look online. You can get a local business listing on Google, Yahoo, and Bing (msn) for free so even if only 1 person in your town uses the internet to find you this way you have made a profit on those ads, or I ask a neighbor who they use. Perhaps you could run a referral program with your current customer base IE refer a new customer and you both get X% off. Contacting groups with a special group discount is also a good idea. My wife is part of a moms club, recently a heating rep contacted the head of the club and offered to give $X off per purchase if X people placed and order through him.

My personal preference is to keep overhead low so you have the cash to invest in other marketing opportunities.

Hope this helps.

[den1223]

Thanks for the replys. My thought behimd this is in a small town people and small bussiness owners use who they see. If there are just signs or yellow page ads they will never have that connection. The owner of the building is willing to allow a short term lease for me to try this to see if it works. I have commercial accounts i am trying for resedential work and somewhere to meet sales reps ect. Not wanting walk in work just the advertisment that comes with the location and people felling like they know you. Also it would be nice to get my house back to a house. I guess my question is would people remember me when they need service more if they see me everyday. Thanks.

[radiogirl]

Most of the HVAC reps in my town (about 10,000 ppl) have shops up in the industrial area...basically a place for trucks, supplies and a small office.

Since you are considering the office location for it's marketing merits, I think it would be a good idea to ask yourself if the $ spent on rent, heat and upkeep of the office could be better spent on other marketing strategies with higher return on investment.

You may want to double check the internet usage of your potential market. Usage is lower in rural communities but it is not non-existent and ppl will do things like call ppl they know to run searches for them if they know they have a better connection or knowledge base (for example, my mother in law lives out of town and has no computer, but she has called us to look up things for her on our computer)

[east2west]

Originally Posted by den1223

Thanks for the replys. My thought behimd this is in a small town people and small bussiness owners use who they see. If there are just signs or yellow page ads they will never have that connection. The owner of the building is willing to allow a short term lease for me to try this to see if it works. I have commercial accounts i am trying for resedential work and somewhere to meet sales reps ect. Not wanting walk in work just the advertisment that comes with the location and people felling like they know you. Also it would be nice to get my house back to a house. I guess my question is would people remember me when they need service more if they see me everyday. Thanks.

I agree with everything you're saying, and it sounds like your mind is made up. I also like the short term lease option. Go for it.

[AdamG]

Just an additional thought based on my own experience, admittedly in a different field.

When I started out with my own business I worked from home to keep the overheads down. The downside was the distractions and not being the appropriate place to bring clients.

I eventually got the chance to sublet an office with meeting room for clients etc and I never looked back. I think in the end it was an attitude thing for me. I found it so much easier to be professional when I dressed and went to an office, and was able to bring clients back for meetings.

I hope it goes well for you.

[BB Copywriting]

I'd try and dominate the search term for your large towns name related to HVAC somehow. When I'm looking for tradespeople I'll often just Google them.

I might try something like this if I was in Denver "Denver heating and cooling" or "Denver HVAC". "Denver HVAC" for example gets over 4000 searches a month. The top spot in Google for that term will get at least 40% of that traffic. That's potentially 1600 pairs of eyeballs that could be seeing your blog/website/article.

You could quite easily get top spot for a term like that and you'd likely get some good traffic off of it for way cheaper than office space.

My thoughts,

Jason

[Whitecastle]

Well - You can work in home, but you if you will have serious business meeting, then you can make it at your home (you may, but it is not good style), so will have to pay for restaurants or other meeting place! Second - you will take work atmosphere to your home, and it isn't very good!

[victorvera]

If the lease cost is affordable then you may want to give it a try. I agree that eventually you'll need a place for meetings, doing it at home is not really a good idea and lunch/dinner meetings can be quite costly.

Good luck and hope to hear from you soon.