Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Dear Rkbrackman,

For what I hope are obvious reasons, I'd steer clear of any name with the letters VD in the middle of it if I were you!

How about Integrated Audio Visual (IAV), with a tag line along the lines of "We Bring Your Vision To Life", or "Bringing Your Vision to Life".

Your focus on design, service contracts, quotes, training and the like are all great. But also consider the bigger picture (no pun intended).

What is it that your customers want?

What do they need?

What are their dreams, plans, and aspirations?

I'm asking you to think about these things because, although the features you'll be offering are important, it's what those features and all the technical wizardry allow your customers to achieve that's of greater importance, at least, to your customers.

For the most part, your customers don't want to know about the connections and wires and all the technical stuff, (well, a few might, but we'll gloss over these people).

What MOST people want to know is which button to press to make things go and which buttons to press to make themselves look great. You'll shine (and win major brownie points) by showing your customers how not to look stupid when they don't know which buttons to press.

Believe me, I've BEEN in one of those situations where all the newly installed A/V of a $5 million dollar building refurbishment turned up its toes and just stopped working.

At the height of a major event.

In front of donors with deep pockets!

Oh God, it's all coming back to me like a bad dream: "No! I DON'T know which button to press to make it stop doing that! Any other wise ass comments?"

Were I buying the kinds of services you're offering I'd want:

1. Grade "A" advice from technical wizards with great people skills.
2. Training and manuals delivered on site and in plain English.
3. Service contracts that deliver on my terms and that are suited to my price range (The trick is to get the client thinking: "So, for this per month you can give me this. But for just X dollars more pre month I get this, that, and three of those? All for one price? Wow!" With me?).
4. In store and in office demonstrations of new gear and great examples of how you can make me look even better than you already make me look.
5. Incentives to shop with you again and again, and a great reason (or list of reasons) to refer other people.

Your customers might need other things but this list of five things covers a pretty wide spectrum of needs. Your role is to supply the solutions.

Here, I've given you parts of a business model that ought to do a lot of the heavy lifting of marketing for you.

All you have to do is hire the right people, make sure they know what they're doing, give them incentives (rewards) to work with you on offering customers benefit-rich service packages, and give customers technical free explanations when it's obvious that they don't need anything more.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Why not simply, "Church A/V"? That tells your potential clients that you specialize in church a/v (or Atlantic Church A/V)? If you want to play with words, "A-Ve Equipment" (as in Ave Maria).