Читать книгу Start & Run a Graphic Design Business - Michael Huggins - Страница 72

When I first started my company I was working for another firm while developing my own personal business part time. I chose the name “Graphic Impact.” During the first five to six years I worked on building my business part time using this name. It seemed to me to be a good business name.

It wasn’t until I went full time and seriously tried to get work from scratch that I realized there was a disconnect between my name and my prospects. Most people thought I was a printer. Many prospects would focus on questions regarding printing services even after I had sent them literature on my company explaining what I did. As a result, I found that many prospect meetings were awkward and difficult. Often clients would have to “think about it,” meaning they probably were not going to use my services. This meant that I didn’t get the job.

I knew I had a problem and I slowly realized my name was a big part of it. Prospects interpreted my name differently than I thought they should. The problem was that many printers referred to themselves as “graphic services.” Naturally many people I talked to assumed that was also my business’s focus and they had a hard time believing anything else. It didn’t matter what I thought my name should be. It only mattered what other people thought about it. My name was clearly affecting my ability to get the kind of clients I wanted.

When I discovered this, I legally changed the name to a new company name and made a marketing event over it (complete with a client party celebrating the new name change). To be honest, I had no idea about the scope of the negative impact the company’s name had on my business until I changed the name. The contrast was very noticeable. From that moment on, my prospect opportunities increased, my meetings greatly improved, and I started to convert more prospects into paying clients than I had under my original business name.