Photo by Becky McCray

The day is nearly here for you to open the doors of your new business. What a great feeling!

Have you thought about who might be your first customer? Might I suggest that the first person should be your worst critic, or might I even say nightmare?

That comment probably dampened your enthusiasm. Why start with such a person?

The answer is simple. You want someone who will hold your business up to the highest standards, and will critique your business from your front door through all of the processes, right down to how clean the bathrooms are and the condition of the sidewalks in front of your store.

Some might suggest that the first customer be you. My feeling is that you are too invested in the business and might not see or you might overlook some of the issues. Your first customer needs to be someone who:

• Can tell you exactly what he or she saw and what he or she experienced
• You can yell at when he or she is honest with you and who then will tell you even more
• Will take the time to methodically test your staff and procedures, from the initial greeting through sales, any delivery or service you offer, customer complaints and returns.

Sometimes a business does what is considered a soft opening. That’s an opening with no publicity, just word of mouth. The idea means that you and your staff are not overwhelmed with customers. And that is a good idea, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it until you already have given everything a rigorous testing.

Another approach often used is to invite family and friends to a pre-opening. This is another good idea, especially because they represent your cheering section (you will need one) and often are investors. Yet they often want to say good things and find that “laying it on the line” is hard to do. A pre-opening is a good public relations move, but it doesn’t help you work out the bugs.

Your goal at this point is to be as ready as you can be for the first day of business. That first day might be the soft opening or the friends-and-family event or something else. No matter what day one is, you want everything to be operating as best it can.

One person sometimes suggested as your reviewer is someone in the same business as you. However, you may not want someone from your own community, although that person would bring a richness of community knowledge that would be useful. You may want to bring in someone who runs a business in a community like yours but in a town some distance away.

When I asked the question about who your first customer might be, you probably thought about the first real customer.

That first customer will come. You want to make sure that he or she will come back.

Photo (CC) Chris Potter, on Flickr via stockmonkeys.com

People starting a business plan on being successful.

Achieving success, though, is much easier said than done. When starting, one of the first tasks facing the business owner is letting people know you exist. Your story can be one good element to use in this phase.

Stories are engaging. People can relate to stories. Stories help develop the “who” part of your reputation and your brand. When networking, stories can open doors and are easy ways to begin a conversation.

So developing your story is an important step on the road to success.

Yet storytelling is only one part of developing a successful business. It gets the customers in your door for the first time or two, but successful businesses require more.

Typically, the “more” is developing a base of customers who return over and over. Rarely has a business succeeded when selling to a customer just one time. Research finds that returning customers are the ones who generate the greatest return for the business.

What makes customers return? They return when you provide good products and services. Remember that in the customers’ perception, “good” includes price and your customer service, as well as the product doing what it should.

This does not mean you can drop your marketing program. Consumers have short memories in terms of where they will go to spend their money. You need to remind them constantly that you are in business. Even customers who have been with you for decades will move on if you fail to continue marketing to them. The marketing method may change, but it does need to continue.

Achieving success is hard for small businesses. It requires a solid customer base. Telling your story gets people in the door, and offering a good product keeps them coming back.