For a local host.

What if a customer asks to visit the office? (When your business is ran from home and server in a datacenter somewhere).

What if they want to meet somewhere to discuss the plans?

What if you use your home address for the business. Would you want/let people visit?

Would you charge them for Question #2 hourly?
Any suggestions would be helpfull..

Also any tips on becoming a local host only would be appreciated.

Why dont you ask to see them, and not the other way around, Whats wrong with them coming to your house? But yea better to go see them is the best, they may be put off from a home address. If your plans work you could start to work from a small office. You could search the forums for this as there have been alot of threads like this.
Good luck with your new venture.
Regards

I think in my Views,

DataCenters should lauch thier Video Tours of thier places.. Like recorded material..

And one can send the video to clients, At least by answereing that our main business is handled from bla bla country...

For further, We can meet you to give you further details.

What are your opinions.

Regards
Deeps

You should be honest with your clients from the beginning. If you run the business from your home, tell them that you don't have an office for meeting clients but you'd be happy to meet with them at their place.

Whether or not you charge for an on-site consultation, depends on your business model/structure/pricing. If your pricing figures that meeting with the client is part of the service, then you shouldn't charge for it. You have to decide what your target market is and if that is part of what your pricing covers or not. We can't decide that for you. ;)

--Tina

Well most hosting companies have their equipment hosted elsewhere and DCs only allow authorised personnel to enter.

I will find it more strange if a customer ask you for viewage of your server... .... If they are well verse enough in the industry they would ask you for the DC you host with or something along those lines and not wanting to physically see your servers and equipment.

As for a home business, whats wrong with that? You can always rent a P.O. Box if you don't want to show your home addresses. We are now moving into an era that there is no longer a need for a physcial office to carry out operations. A home office also saves cost and overheads :)

What if they want to meet somewhere to discuss the plans?

I would not meet up with them in the first place.... I presume you are talking about hosting plans. A waste of time if its virtual or reseller hosting, unless they want to co-lo with you are rent a dedicated server or maybe discuss about web design then it could be worth the effort.

Petrol to and from : $10
Coffe for two : $10
Lunch out : $20
Amount saved by staying home and getting new clients : Priceless!!
For everything else there is pizza in the fridge ;)

i dont see how thats a waste of time.

Even if the customer needs a 15-20$ account its still very worth while to visit them.

Plus they will feel like they have a very personal service and will most likely refer people to your service.

I would gladly spend 40$ on a customer that would bring me 3x or 4x that in coming months.

Originally posted by sirgamesalot
i dont see how thats a waste of time.

Even if the customer needs a 15-20$ account its still very worth while to visit them.

Plus they will feel like they have a very personal service and will most likely refer people to your service.

I would gladly spend 40$ on a customer that would bring me 3x or 4x that in coming months.

Maybe we should ask the question on why would he like to meet up in the first place.

Personally I would not like to be branded as a "My host will meet up with me to talk" because if that wrong message gets across to the user and the future clients, I will be having more headaches than returns.

Most details can be solved over the phone or on an on-line support chat service.

The only time I almost meet up with an account manager of an ISP company was when i wanted a full rack, but then fell through because I was already on a contract with another.

I have customers that want to meet up with me all the time, I say go for it! It shows integrity and also shows that you really want their business. I say "how about Thursday, we will meet up for lunch.” They always say, "That would be great!" It’s really not that hard.

And if they ask about your office, be honest. Say that you work from home, and state that your equipment is located at a remote location. Once telling them that they won't even care, you took the time to meet them and answer all their questions. That alone will make them comfortable and will create a great relationship.

I wish you luck. I'm sure others have their reasons, and I hope you find the right path :) I mean if all else fails you get a great lunch! :)

it really depends on this one. A really pleased customer can bring in great revenue from referrals and much more. However, getting in the habbit of meeting customers is probably not wise if you are only making a few bucks a month of the sale. Unless you forsee a lot of potential from the meeting I would steer away. If not, you will see your company losing money. You have to take into account your time it took to make that sale, what you could have been doing otherwise, costs of travel, etc, etc. It really just depends on the situation and your pricing structure and we can't help you there.

I agree on this. I do meet up with some clients outside of my home office, either at their office or a local restaurant. However I've never had a client who was interested in a shared package (or something simple like that) want to meet with me unless I was also designing their site. Personally I can't see why anyone would want to for most hosting packages from almost anyone, considering most questions about the hosting tend to be easily answered over the phone as galacnet said.

Most of my customers are local, and like achost_ca the very few times that I've met with clients/prospects it was for something other than hosting.

Having said that, I once met a client for lunch to define the database functionality for his site. He soon found a more affordable developer but has continued to host with me for 4 years at $25/month and support request are almost none existent.

I think it was well worth my time and effort.

I think it depends on what you are selling them. I'm in the process of opening, and would happily meet with any local client. I have a home office, and if they were ok with coming to a home office i'd have no problem in letting them come.

I'd suggest meeting with them, or meeting for coffee at panera. If there aren't any of those in your area, it's a coffee/bakery shop that offers free wifi to customers. This way I could have my laptop with me and be online to show them anything they might have questions about.

I wouldn't likely do this for my lowest end plan. I plan though to be offering more than just hosting though. While I won't have design services on my hosting site, I have a designer that I'm partnering with to outsource it. We'll both be making some money from that, and it will be well worth a couple coffees and a drive downtown.