3 Ways Your Garage Office is Hurting Your Client Base
Starting a small business is exciting, and when you first get started working from home seems like the perfect set up. Turning your garage into an office gives you the space you need without having to pay to rent and maintain additional space. But those savings can end up costing you in the long run, and severely alienate your client base.
Staying in your home office not only hurts your own business, but it can negatively impact your customers.
- You’re less accessible.
No matter how organized you think your garage office is, at the end of the day it’s still a garage. There’s something distinctly unprofessional about interfacing with clients in the space where you used to park your car. Whether a customer is picking up a product or sitting down for an extended meeting, hosting them in your garage even for a minute can seriously impact your reputation. Without amenities like air conditioning, extensive parking, or even your sign on the door, your customer will have a far less pleasant experience, and you will appear disorganized.
Even if your business doesn’t require you to interact with your clients in your own office, having an established business address can make a huge difference when advertising your services.
- You can’t grow with your clients.
It makes sense that as your business needs expand so must your business space. But what about your clients’ needs? Let’s say your business is doing remarkably well, and now your established clients are asking more from you. They’re referring you to friends, bringing you new projects, and signing longer contracts. It’s great for business, but if your space doesn’t grow with you, you could miss out on all those potential future sales, partnerships, and projects. This doesn’t only hurt your business, but it can also hurt your clients who may be relying on you to deliver.
- You restrict your team’s ability to meet your clients’ needs.
Growing with your clients means growing your team as well, which is extremely difficult when you’re operating in a 10-foot-wide garage space. You might be able to survive with a small, remote team for a while, but sooner or later missed deadlines and projects will catch up with you. You want to offer your customers a great experience, and having the right people around is integral to your success. An expanded team will better be able to service your clients, and giving that team the proper space to do their job is imperative.
Once your business choices begin negatively impacting your customers, it’s almost impossible to recover. Your customer is the most important part of your business, and putting yourself in a position to service them to the best of your ability is your number one priority. A garage office might have been fine in the beginning when your company was small, but as you grow, it’s time to consider how your space is hurting your clients.