Best Dream or Worst Nightmare?
- Comments: 6
- Written on: January 24th, 2008
I haven’t posted in the past couple days because my computer repair business, Schrock Innovations has needed me in the shop fixing broken PCs for the past couple days.
On my radio show last Saturday I launched a PC Maintenance Checkup sale for $9.99. My Service centers took in around 160 computers for maintenance in four days. We have 20 bench spots for computer repair, and a checkup takes about 8 hours to do, so you do the math on how hard we are working right now 😉
Needless to say, this is the busiest we have ever been. I took a break to snap a few photos when we hit the 100 PC mark on Monday. Here is what it looks like when you pack all of those computers into a 750 square foot service center.
The computers were coming in so fast we could not shuttle them into the backroom fast enough. We were checking in PCs from when we opened Saturday at noon until 1:30 nonstop.
Our tech room quickly reached its storage capacity, so we created a “computer island” in the middle of the room to help store the volume of machines that were coming in.
When we quickly ran out of room in the tech area, we started an overflow underneath our laptop repair bench.
Our wireless network s getting POUNDED by all of the notebooks downloading Windows Updates and antivirus updates.
It wasn’t long before the underside of the laptop bench filled up as well, so we started storing them in any and every scrap of space we could. As I write this we now have more than 180 PCs in our shop for repair – an all-time Schrock record.
So that is my excuse for not posting more frequently 🙂 Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my super-secret project will not be super secret much longer. I am meeting with the Lincoln, NE Mayor’s office, the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development, and the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce tomorrow to further the project.
I will keep you all posted 😉
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- Comments: 6
Very nice. Hopefully you can turn some of them into long term customers.
Two words… holy crap!
Huh, I guess people do listen to the radio. LoL
Can you explain what you include in a PC tuneup that requires 8 hours to complete and how a $9.99 charge is profitable?
I assume that the 8 hours does not include fixes.
Thanks
Thanks for the comment smeegle. Combine the time to do a malware scan, virus scan, check disk (on ever-increasingly large hard drives), RAM test, windows updates, and a defrag ad you can see how it is really easy to get to 8 hours.
Some go faster, but 7-8 hours is the norm.
As for profitability, the Maintenance Checkup Sale is not about making a profit. Some fixes are included in the sale. For example, we will remove viruses and spyware, we will repair registry problems, and we will clean unnecessary temp files from the hard drive.
The checkup does not cover needed RAM upgrades, antivirus, or the replacement of hardware that is going bad.
This sale is all about a customer point of contact. You should have contact with all of your customers 4x per year. You can send a letter, an email, make a phone call, or get them into the service center.
The MC sale is a great value that gets them into the service center and establishes a pattern of service on computers we might not have ever seen otherwise.
Thanks for a straight answer!