How Your Office Can Help Attract New Business

When your goal is to attract new business, what type of strategy pops into your mind? For most businesses, attracting new clients or customers means launching a marketing campaign or generating new leads for your sales team.

However, one of the most important assets you have for attracting new business is right around you: your office. The right office environment can help you close new deals, increase your current revenue and create a more productive business.

In this blog post, we’ll look at how your office environment can have a significant effect on the performance of your business. We’ll also share simple tips and tricks that you can use to make your office a valuable marketing asset for your business.

Is your office location marketable?

Even if your business is purely digital and you rarely meet customers in your office, your location matters. The right address can signal prestige and reliability to many of your prospects, improving your chance of gaining their business.

The address of your business matters, especially in the B2B space where trust and reliability is everything. If your business is located in a prestigious building or in a desirable area, make it a point of pride and list it prominently on your website.

Do your customers visit your office?

Image adapted from Reception by austinevan per Creative Commons license

Even if your business is primarily B2B, you may occasionally have prospects that drop in at your reception to enquire about your products or services. Because of this, it’s important to keep your reception clean, orderly and organised.

Think of your office’s reception and entrance as an opportunity to broadcast the values of your brand to your target audience. It should sum up visually what your business is about to tell prospects what it’s like to work with you.

A good office, from reception to workspaces, should be clean, organised and free of clutter. Turn your office into a trust-building tool for attracting new business using these simple but effective tactics:

• Clean away clutter from your reception desk and workstations to make your office look as organised as possible. Prospects will assume your business is unorganised if your office is messy and cluttered.

• Put some personality into decorating your office. Use your brand’s colours and make sure your logo, business name and contact information is clearly visible on signage.

• Have engaging, unputdownable company literature like brochures ready for prospects to take with them. Sometimes a great brochure or sales letter can be the difference between an uninterested prospect and an enthusiastic one.

• Use colours that reflect your company’s values. Are you focused on growth and optimism? Use yellow, orange or red. Are you focused on building trust with your prospects? Use blue, brown or dark green in your office design.

• Make sure your office matches prospects’ expectations. If your business uses its design savviness as a key selling point online, make sure your office lives up to expectations with a stylish, modern design.

If you frequently close deals and talk to prospective clients and customers from your office, it needs to match your brand’s image. First impressions matter, and sending a bad first impression with your office’s design can put off many prospects.

Here’s a thought exercise: imagine you’re visiting a company that’s known for style and design – a technology company like Apple or a sports apparel company such as Nike.

You step into the lift and travel to their floor. As you enter their office, you notice it’s a mess – full of clutter, stacks of documents, artificial lighting and furniture that was only fashionable 20 years ago.

Would this experience improve or worsen your impression of the company? Even if your business is small, your office space needs to match your brand’s values in order to truly convince your target customers that you’re trustworthy.

How Your Office Can Enhance Your Business

There’s more value to a modern, design-focused office than great first impressions with prospects. Offices that use modern design, layout and lighting principles tend to be more productive and profitable than those that don’t.

This is particularly true when it comes to natural light. People that work in offices that are lit using natural sunlight are more productive, energetic and focused than their counterparts in sunless, artificially lit environments.

Swiss neuroscientist Mirjam Münch has studied the link between natural light and productivity in detail for years. Her research shows that people have more energy when they spend their time in naturally lit environments, even into the evening.

Additional research shows that people who work in naturally lit offices typically have fewer sick days and feel happier. Office Snapshots editor Stephen Searer is convinced that flexible, open plan design is the future of modern offices:

“It definitely feels like things are moving in the direction of open plan offices – to some degree companies are already there. But office designers seems to be moving past the simple “lots of desks in a room” approach and offering a variety of spaces for different work needs.”

How to generate more traffic to your office today:

Would you like to have more prospects walking into your office each day? Try these five simple tactics to increase your office’s visibility and encourage potential clients to walk in and meet your team:

• Check location regulations on exterior office signs. Sometimes a small sign is all it takes to transform your office from invisible to interesting among your target audience.

• Brandify your reception and work area. The more closely your office matches your brand’s values and key selling points, the more prospects will trust your business after entering your office.

• List your office address on your company website. A lot of business is done in person, especially in the B2B space, and opening your office to prospects is a great way to create opportunities for your sales team.

• Choose a high-traffic location that’s easy to access. Is your office easy to reach from the nearest train station or bus stop? How could you make it easier for prospects to find?

• Use company literature and banner stands to market to prospects right from your office’s reception. People who walk in and visit your office are already interested in your brand – the right literature can help close the deal.

Is your office designed with sales and branding in mind?

It’s easy to think of your office as something that needn’t be overly open or design-focused. However, offices that use modern design and architecture principles don’t only increase trust with prospects; they’re also much more pleasant to work in.

From improved employee retention to increased productivity, the benefits of giving your office a modern makeover are numerous. Is your office designed with sales and branding in mind? If not, what could you do to make it a better work environment?