Last night I was surfing the interwebs and came across a previous employer's website... I don't know why but it kinda bothered me a little. They aren't low ballers (well could be) and some of their field practices I wasn't comfortable with, and looking back are down right scary, they are really nice people... But reading on the interwebs you would think they build swiss watches or 100 story buildings with skywalks 30 stories up. Needless to say in my book they have streched the truth a little to far.
Then I look up a couple of great surveyors that I know, who I have worked with on different projects, and they hardly have their name and number on the internet. I just hope potential clients use their heads and ask around town or state before hiring someone because of what they state on their website. I know i might get flamed for this, it bothered me... By the way, we are not in competition with this company.
I have been blessed. Referrals have kept me busy for 25 years. Never have been in the yellow pages. No desire to create an internet presence.
A primary difference, however, is that I survey because I enjoy doing it, not because I must.
I also have been blessed. All of my work comes from referrals, and those are the very best clients and the only ones I want. I've never been in the phone book.
I think it is fair to say that most work for established businesses is from referrals.
At my former employment we had professionally prepared business cards, letterhead, and nice trucks all graphic'd up - all of which prominently included a web site address - but no website. We had the address reserved and all, but anyone who might call up the website got a screen of stuff that made it look like we were out of business.
So I insisted that we get a website going. My idea was just a page with contact information, a nice picture or two, maybe a paragraph of "elevator speel", in a color and pattern that matched our other professionally prepared marketing material . Well, that is hard to get done. Everybody, from the web designer to the programmer to everybody up and down the company food chain has their own ideas about what they want in. It was quite a fight to keep it as simple as it ended up.
