Attracting the Commercial Client

[Becker]

We are a new shop (2 yrs.)looking to attract small to medium sized commercial jobs, (10-30 pieces). Can anyone offer some time tested techniques used to land such work, what has worked for you?

[Baer Charlton]

Shoe leather. Lots of shoe leather.

Oh, almost forgot: Door knuckle. Lots of door knuckle. graemlins/thumbsup.gif

[Matoaka]

Contact local hospitals and hotels and ask to be considered. Many of them replace art in small groups (a floor a year, etc.). And many of them use a bidding process.

[BILL WARD]

what 'they' said!!! IN SPADES!!!!

Even (slightly) easier-- & it aint foolproof, but join the local Chamber of Commerce chapter(SSSS)-you are not limited to numbers of memberships-- & go to the meetings!!!!!

& Join 1 or more of the local Biz Referral Networking groups(you may/may not be limited in memberships-some are anal about that) & go to the meetings!!!!!(you begin to see the pattern there???)

Network your tail off while there(THAT'S what you join for!!!). You think other(read that CORP owners/board members) dont belong/attend these kinds of things????

I just banked $7k yesterday as partial on framing for a local Bank president(1 new bank of 3 or 4 in the next 1-2 years)....where did we connect???? At a local Chamber meeting...... now, get out there & work some contacts!!!!

[Julia]

Read the Business Journal of your city to get leads on new businesses opening or expanding. If your city has The Daily Journal of Commerce, this paper has excellent leads on new businesses as well as new commercial leases. Develop a relationship with a commercial real estate agent-they are a wealth of information.
Julia

[FloridaHangUpz]

Great suggestions. I too would like to get into Commercial Accounts. I want to take this question a bit further...I already joined my Chamber and I am attending meetings. I am meeting people and I will attend my new member meeting this week. So, once you have someone interested, what do you present in order to get their business in most cases..take actual photos, submit a written proposal with samples of your work on it? I would like to know what approach has closed the deals for you all once you have interest. I actually have a restaurant interested in doing a Hard Rock Cafe type layout.

[Mike LeCompte CPF]

well, y'all have great ideas. Now for a little cold water: we do quite a bit of commercial work and it's not unusual in a month for our receivables to be in the thousands of dollars. Nowyou DO get paid over time. But if your supplier discounts for a 15-day payment and a hospital takes 45 days--and for a nonprofit that's not unusual--to pay a $5,000 bill, you'd better be ready to either NOT take your prompt payment discount from the supplier you've used or do't take the prompt pay and lose another coupla percentages.

We rarely "bid" anything. I don't wanna be the lowest on these corporate jobs. Ask William Parker in Nashville about going that route. But I will give rapid turnaround.

We have very few corporates that pay up front. Not even a percentage. But all in all, we're quite happy with the profit from corporate work and rarely do we have to pound doors or wear out shoeleather purusing them.

[DTWDSM]

What he said!!!!

[Mike LeCompte CPF]

Following up on previous post. Having a horribly slow month so decided to call a coupla corporates who owe us over $3,000 apiece. Twotold us the person who issues the checks just left for two weeks' vacation, several said they'd look into it and call us back few more said please send another invoice. And these are on jobs that are now "aged" over 30 days. And PLEASE don't tell me to use a prompt pay discount. We do that, but for most of these guys the framing invoice is just too small to matter to their bottom line. Now I know we'll be rejoicing when the money comes, but until then things get tough. This is one of the reasons we won't "bid" these jobs but instead charge nearly full price. Receivables can kill if you don't have reserves to handle large amounts owed

[Jim Miller]

I know three framers in my market area that went under due to "bad luck" with commercial framing jobs.

One fellow had a framing business with sales of about $100,000 a year (my guess) and took a job that probably sold for around $40,000 with just a little profit. His customer, a well-known national company, went bankrupt before they paid him. The poor framer closed within six months after the job was installed. I don't think he was bankrupt, but he went bitterly out of business.

Another framer's business was doing about $200,000 a year and he took a verbal order from a company that sells limitedless fowls to do all of their framing for one year. He signed distributor agreements and negotiated great deals on materials, but he had to lease new warehouse space to hold all the stuff he committed to buy. The customer simply stopped buying from him after a couple of months. I think he sued them, but didn't have enough money to weather the court battle. The suppliers wouldn't accept enough returns to save him, and he went down in flames.

One other framer had a habit of under-bidding and rarely made a profit. By the time he realized how much he was losing on each job he was too far into his creditors to recover.

Do not be attracted by large numbers unless you have ther workign capital and equity to support that kind of business.

Sales do not pay the bills, profits do.

[Mike LeCompte CPF]

All this said: there are corporates like large realtors, motels/hotels, restaurants, etc and smaller corporates like dr attny acct. offices that would only be in the lower thousands. May wanna start there? Some of these guys--like a coupla architects we work with==come in and pay with corporate card. Now THESE guys I might give a small discount because I'm getting money up front. The others where I wait 35-90 days fuggedaboudit

[Jim Miller]

The small commercial clients described by Mike are, fo practical purposes, like good retial customers. That is, their purchases are onesy-twosy and the work is more or less like framing for a typical retail customer.

These customers deserve the same sort of discounts retail customer sreceive with their coupons, so I usually just reduce my retail price by the amount of the current coupon deal.

If one's prices are in line, this kind of business may be earned by virtue of convenience as well as price. That is pick up and delivery and a reasonable price for installation might do the trick.