Introductory Letter to Generate Business

I am going to put together a letter introducing my small startup shop. I want to find out what others have done to effectively bring in business for themselves. I have business cards made and need some advice on how to proceed with drumming up some revenue.

Good luck, I mostly only can tell you what doesn't work. If you haven't already get a simple website, it doesn't really generate business, but plenty a time prospective customers will use it to verify that you are really a shop. There are a lot of people who masquerade as shops when they are nothing but middle men outsourcing to 3rd word countries. I have had jobs I was not the lowest bidder on come back to me up to a year after I bid them. The first low bidder was having the parts made in Mexico and shipped 100% scrap, then the guy went to the second lowest bidder who had them make in China and shipped 80% scrap. So if you bid a 6" round part, when the RFQ poster is sorting quotes he may check to see if you at least have a lathe that can make a 6" part.

Tell us about your ablities...

...and equipment. Sometimes showing a equipment list or even pictures is not a good idea if your mill says Enco on the side. i.e show yourself close up on a job if your going to show that type of picture.

We all know a good machinest can work wonders on that machine but buyers may think otherwise.

Anyway, tell us about you and your shop so that we can make suggestions for a web site first then an introduction letter and or flyer.

Steve

Thanks for the replies, and I will attempt to illustrate my shop and skills verbally.

I am a manual only shop. This fact makes me only competeitive in short-run, fairly simple parts and assemblies. I think that my niche will be in urgent repair work, quick turn-around, and fixtures/tools. I also think I may be useful in the product development phase of many engineering projects that can utilize my skills. I have Taiwanese machines: 10 x 42 Kent step-pulley mill, and Takang 14 x 40 engine lathe. Also support equipment including Black Diamond 2B drill grinder, and pedestal grinders. A web site is not in the budget right now, but if I get this venture rolling along and upgrade my equipment, I may get one. I aslo feel that a pictorial of my current equipment may make me look like an amateur or worse: HOBBY MACHINIST!

I have 23 years experience in making precision parts and assemblies for the Aerospace, Electronic, Automotive, and Commercial industries. I have only one example of some of my most involved work, done back in 1998 :


This casting, like many others I ran at this employer's place of business, had many fifth-axis holes with .010" True Position callouts, and many of the bores were .001" total tolerance after hard anodization. Granted the equipment was first rate there, but the machines don't make the parts, the monkey, er, um, I mean the Machinist does.

Is there hope to gather income to supplement and hopefully surpass my current 40 hr./week pay?

aerodark said:

Is there hope to gather income to supplement and hopefully surpass my current 40 hr./week pay?

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Yes of course, its called working 80hrs a week.

I haven't tried to advertise for your type of work though, I'm more the type that doesn't want any of the public to know I exist. Just a few larger customers ideally, no walk in's for me, almost got started on a website once, almost, maybe I'll get to it someday.

aerodark said:

Thanks for the replies, and I will attempt to illustrate my shop and skills verbally.

No need to re-post the entire post. rj

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Is there hope to gather income to supplement and hopefully surpass my current 40 hr./week pay?

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I didn't look at all the particulars and read all the fine print, but this implies 72 bucks a year for web site hosting, and you can build the site yourself.
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SND said:

Yes of course, its called working 80hrs a week.

I haven't tried to advertise for your type of work though, I'm more the type that doesn't want any of the public to know I exist. Just a few larger customers ideally, no walk in's for me, almost got started on a website once, almost, maybe I'll get to it someday.

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Yes, I can see where too much visibility could become problematic.

Your situation might be one of the few where giving away a clever "premium" might work.

If you're after repair work and onesy-twosy production, there may be only a week or two a year when your prospect is ready to buy. Problem is, they'll only get that letter once a year -- and likely forget about you in a week or two.

If you can make up something cool enough to sit on a desk 52 weeks a year -- that brings you and your expertise to mind -- that could be effective. Just to make up something: suppose you make up a stainless steel Band-Aid, with your name, phone, and web site discreetly marked on the bottom along with a tag line to the effect that you offer a quick and convenient fix. You can probably come up with a dozen better ideas. Maybe something that suggests quick turnaround (a machined U-turn arrow) or ??

Repair work ?????
Ummmmmm..... as in the factory you will be fixing stuff for calls at all hours of the day and night and says.... "GET ON OVER HERE... we busted something and GET HERE... ASAP" then the sound of the phone hangup.....

How's that gona work with your regular job..... remember that phone call? The NEXT call is the guy calling back to ask WHEN WILL YOU BRING THE NEW ONE so we can install it????

And your gona tell him how it's bed time cause you have to go to your regular job tomarow??? HA HA HA.... THAT's the last job you'l get from them.

Good luck... but I gota ask... DOES the WORLD REALLY need another machine shop??

(non-machining business) I've done both letters and postcards in direct mail advertising. I'm currently doing postcards, I feel the impact of a graphic and phone number are better than hoping someone opens a letter and reads it.

I'd suggest doing a nice batch of postcards ($100-$150 investment) featuring a graphic of that part you made as the focal point, with phone number and perhaps website address. Include some brief verbiage regarding repair/fabrication/assembly/whatever.

I wouldn't mention any machine inventory or anything of that nature, let the potential customer imagine Haas mills and Okuma lathes and let it be at that.

Gary

Gary E said:

Good luck... but I gota ask... DOES the WORLD REALLY need another machine shop??

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I think there is room for another. I don't need to compete with the big boys.

I just want a more comfortable living. The flattening of wages and disappearance of benefits in the last 20 years has me rather fed up.

New Shop

Aerodark:
Sure there is room for one more. Doing it right the first time is always in demand. Find a small number of local companies who will grow to trust you to solve problems. Forget the yellow pages unless you want people bringing you chink made pressure washers with broken studs to remove.
Good luck and BTW wash the red dye off that sample, people might get the wrong idea.
Mike

There is room for more than one more shop of this kind. In my opinion,there is a shortage of this kind of machinist. I have done exactly what Aero is thinking about for the past 13 years since quitting my day job, and I am pretty much always busy. Your biggest asset will be your ability to use your brain to solve customer's problems quickly and easily. If you can do that, nobody will care what machines you are using.

Gary E. is right though, my best paying jobs are those that need doing right away. Those are the jobs where nobody asks: "How much?", they only ask: "When?" They know they are loosing more money/hour being down than I can ever charge them, so the price becomes irrelevant.

Make personal calls, show up with a dozen fresh donuts, introduce yourself and find out what business or trade groups they are involved with and look into joining that group also hand out business cards and possibly a one page flyer to introduce yourself again at a later time in their conversations to hand out work. The first time they will sluff you off, second a little more serious and after about the fourth trip the may give come credability to you. I am like most tried all sorts of ways but the most successful is getting acquainted with the super or purchaser. Good Luck my two bits

Sure thing, Mike! If it weren't for the red dye on this casting, she would surely be on a commercial aircraft now.

Barry Weeks said:

There is room for more than one more shop of this kind. In my opinion,there is a shortage of this kind of machinist. I have done exactly what Aero is thinking about for the past 13 years since quitting my day job, and I am pretty much always busy. Your biggest asset will be your ability to use your brain to solve customer's problems quickly and easily. If you can do that, nobody will care what machines you are using.

Gary E. is right though, my best paying jobs are those that need doing right away. Those are the jobs where nobody asks: "How much?", they only ask: "When?" They know they are loosing more money/hour being down than I can ever charge them, so the price becomes irrelevant.

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Barry,

Do you also weld? My stepdad (who passed away two weeks ago at 91) was always after me to pick up welding as a skill that would fortify my machining skills. Is this essential for a repair machining facility? Is there a sizable learning curve?

Gary E said:

Repair work ?????
Ummmmmm..... as in the factory you will be fixing stuff for calls at all hours of the day and night and says.... "GET ON OVER HERE... we busted something and GET HERE... ASAP" then the sound of the phone hangup.....

How's that gona work with your regular job..... remember that phone call? The NEXT call is the guy calling back to ask WHEN WILL YOU BRING THE NEW ONE so we can install it????

And your gona tell him how it's bed time cause you have to go to your regular job tomarow??? HA HA HA.... THAT's the last job you'l get from them.

Good luck... but I gota ask... DOES the WORLD REALLY need another machine shop??

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First, Gary is right on with the repair work, that isn't a job for someone with a day job. A good analogy would be if the pipe to your water heater broke, you don't know how to turn off the water and have no flood or homeowner insurance. You are going to give the job to the first guy who says he can show up and you won't even be price shopping.
I can think of very few repair type jobs where immediate response and working straight through to completion would not be important. As for does the world need another machine shop? Name another profession where guys are trying to start businesses in the middle of a recession? Bankruptcy lawyers and loan mod people don't count. For every 2 shops that go out of business the 10 guys who worked there are starting shops.

It seems that PM's Abom79 from Florida does this. Works a day job and then goes to the family shop where he mystifies the ranks here with high-quality repair work on manual machines. Am I missing something, other than he must have some supporting cast in his endeavor?

How is this?

Here is what I came up with. No cold calls, postcards, confrontations, just a simple letter with a business card attached:

http://www.mediafire.com/?40uoq5hzqs3qas9

Flameproof critique ensemble fully applied and zipped.

aerodark said:

Barry,
Do you also weld? My stepdad (who passed away two weeks ago at 91) was always after me to pick up welding as a skill that would fortify my machining skills. Is this essential for a repair machining facility? Is there a sizable learning curve?

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Yes, I've welded for over 30 years now. Pretty much anything I weld anymore is tig. I'm not certified, and can't weld as good as my brother-in-law the pipefitter, but I can hold my own. If I need micro welding done, I job that out as I have a micro welder friend who does a beautiful job and lives only 5 minutes up the road.

I would say having some welding ability is just about required, but so is the ability to know when a welding job is over your head and you are better off getting help. Same with wire EDM and CNC milling. I need both several times a year, and am able to get those services through local shops that I know and trust.

Subbing out work allows me to take on bigger or more complicated jobs than you would think a 1-man shop should be able to handle, and still get them done quickly. So you could easily job out welding, but there are many small welding jobs that are just easier to do yourself. If I were you, I would start learning to weld, but at the same time partner up with a good welder you can count on if you need to job some welding out.

I learned welding by gas welding. (oxy/acetylene) When gas welding, you need to watch the puddle form, push the puddle, and feed rod into it. Very peaceful to sit and learn. Maybe a local night school offers classes? Once you master gas welding, any other form of welding will come pretty easy to you. If you can gas weld decently, tig will come naturally. If you can only mig with a wire feeder, tig will be a big step to learn. I do lots of arc welding too. Sometimes being able to reach into a machine with a welding rod and burn a big old bead on something is helpful. Recently I helped to replace every shaft and bushing on a 300-ton injection press. The bushings didn't exactly want to fall out with a press, but Mr. Old School here knew how to crank up an old fashioned stick welder and run a couple of beads around the inside of every bushing and shrink them up to where they almost fell out. Within a few hours I had removed 32 stuck bushings with nothing more than a stick welder and a box of rods. Knowing how to weld will help you in many ways. Being able to add steel will be a good compliment to your steel removing abilities.