Chris Brogan recently shared a story of a local bookstore in his hometown. He asked them to order a specific book for him that wasn’t in stock. The owner wrote down his name and phone number and told him she’d order it.

The next week, when he walked in the store, she looked up and said, “Hi, Chris!”

That simple act of remembering his name, earned her a customer for life.

Books sign. Photo CC by Joshua Kirby on Flickr

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Guest post by Chris Brogan

The whole quarantine and COVID-19 situation has impacted small businesses even more than the big guys because it’s not like anyone has massive reserves of cash around so that you could deal with shutting down for months at a time. And now, as different areas go into different versions of reopening, we’re seeing signs that maybe this won’t go as well as we wanted it to, either. This post is about what to do with the whole mask-wearing situation. As such, you might think of it as a political issue, but I’m a business person. This is about revenue.

Masks Are a Feature of Revenue and Branding

At this point, if you open your business and have an anti-mask stance, you’re instructing your customers and prospects as to how you feel about their public safety. This goes a layer deeper. If you run a business with multiple employees, everyone has to be on the same page with this. Example: I went to my local gas station and the pump was not taking payment (convenient during a pandemic), so I had to go inside. Every customer in the place had a mask on, and magically – they were wearing their masks correctly.

The employees, however, were a mixed bag. Three people had their masks on just right. Two were wearing chin guards. This gives me the sense that these people, who were in charge of restocking the shelves, were at liberty to breathe all over the items I was thinking about picking up while getting my gas. Oddly, I just paid for the fuel. Would you blame me?

Your revenue walks out the door every time your employee “just can’t deal with it.”

Training is Only Part of the Picture

Look, you can order your employees to comply, but we both know that when the day gets long, people are going to do what they want to do. This can’t be a facet of your operations going forward. Cleaning and protocols around resetting places of business in between certain numbers of customers will become (more or less, this is already being written in) rules of the business road. Places like restaurants and grocery stores have already set their systems up. And sadly, you get to watch them be ignored every few visits.

This has to become part of the culture. It has to be like smoking was at the end of the 80s. Right before that time, smoking was a reasonably optional thing inside restaurants and offices and all kinds of places. And then, as laws and social norms took over together, this changed. Masks and cleaning protocols are the new no-smoking. 

Nobody Wants More Rules (But You Want Money, Don’t You?)

Again. This isn’t a political statement. It’s a revenue statement. You lose money if people don’t trust you. You lose trust if you flaunt the rules which have been put in place for your health. Health is a pretty key part of business success. Don’t you agree?

And in case you want to project your “brand” to be about ignoring the rules and living fearlessly, I can point you to several dozen articles showing you the death rates associated with those choices. Just like smoking. And again, I love money. Dead customers spend far less on your products and services.

Train Often. Check Often. Use Small Words.

Make this easy. You don’t have to teach your staff to be biohazard engineers. You have to educate people on the right way to use a spray bottle and a paper towel, the right time to wear gloves, the right way to wear masks, and that sort of thing. And then you have to reinforce it at all turns. Until we hear otherwise.

There’s money in this advice. And to flaunt it, and go without a mask is to make you the bandito in this situation. And we don’t want that.

When businesses reopen for customers after lockdown, it’s not going back to the way business used to be. Chris has 5 shifts for you to consider.

As different places begin to allow local businesses to open up, you’re not alone if you’re breathing a sigh of relief mixed with a gasp of worry. We all need the money. We all want to get back to being useful for the people we serve. And some or most of us are worried about what happens next. Let’s talk about some of it.

OPEN UP! It’s the Customers!

Remember this above all else: everyone is tense. No one will likely be their most courteous and their best behaved. No matter how grown up and strong we all our, this really counts as actual real mental trauma. It’s going to take a bit to get over it, and that means you as the business owner will have to smother their customers and prospects with kindness, but there’s a lot more.

1. Clean Up

Customers are going to want to understand how you’re handing a clean work environment after this pandemic. Even if you personally think it’s silly in some cases, don’t discount your customer’s vote on this one. Make it clear and obvious and explain how you are handling everything, even things you can’t imagine someone wondering about like whether you disinfect your cardboard before boxing up their product. (Turns out this is a big and common question now when people consider purchasing something online.)

2. Sell Online

Even after the big bad bug is finally vanquished enough for us not to care about it, people are used to ordering and buying online for many products and services you can’t even imagine people getting remotely. I have a friend who sells hay and the moment he got the web store live on his website, he had orders.

3. Communicate More

Partly because of online sales and definitely because of this “If I can’t see it, how do I know what’s going on?” mindset, people are looking for more “touches” between themselves and companies, even in B2B situations. If the order typically takes a week to build and ship, then give people updates every day or two. When I ordered DoorDash to get a burger sent to me during lockdown, I received five or six texts from the app, telling me the food was being made, the food was ready for pickup, the driver picked up the food, the driver is two minutes away, and the driver is here. Do something like that.

4. Consider New Payment Options in Two Ways

On the one hand, if you’re not using things like PayPal, Stripe, Venmo, and Cashapp, you might want to get some accounts setup. People are sending money through multiple channels. Second, you might realize that with nearly 30 million people unemployed in the US on the day I wrote this to you, cash is tight. You might have to sell “smaller bites” versions of what you offer, so that people can afford you. There are many creative ways to work on this.

5. Reach Out

It’s no surprise that this is my advice. I’ve spent twenty years begging companies to use tools like video and audio and good email marketing to reach potential customers. There’s a lot to this, it seems, but at the root of it all is the same goal: communicate and connect with the people you hope to help and earn the right to sell and serve.

Here’s help

To that end, Becky and Deb have a whole new program about learning to restart your local shopping. If that’s your kind of small town business, then it’s pretty important you check that out.

If not, realize that all businesses are going through some form of what you’re experiencing and that it’s important to accept that it won’t be perfect. But know this, also: people are really getting behind “shop local” in a way they’ve never expressed it before. This might be an ideal time to change up some of your work and really earn their money and customer longevity.

You ready?

Many towns have hidden parking areas that could be connected to their downtown with hallways like this one. Kendrick, Idaho, photo by Becky McCray.

There’s not enough parking downtown!

Doesn’t every city have that problem? You’re about to learn a new way to get more parking for your Main Street without having to pave, stripe or get a permit. It doesn’t work in every town, but it very well might work in yours.

Finding hidden parking

There is only so much parking on the main street in front of businesses. If you look behind businesses, along alleys and on the neighboring blocks, you’ll find hidden lots and spaces. Sometimes business owners and staff use them, sometimes they’re not used very much at all.

If you don’t know of any, try walking up the alleys. You might be surprised by the lots and spaces you discover.

The problem is they’re not easily accessible.

There’s no easy footpath from those hidden spaces to the main street. And some alleys and back lots (well, most) look a bit dodgy or even unsafe. Even if businesses have back doors, they may not welcome people just cutting through to get to a different business. And most people probably feel reluctant to just charge through a business’s backdoor anyway.

Cafe Alley in Ardmore, Oklahoma, can only be entered from the large parking lot in the alley. Photo by Becky McCray.

Creating hallways people will use

Here’s how to create safe and interesting ways for people to walk from the hidden parking to the front of the businesses.

1. Find a physical space where people can walk
2. Make it obvious they’re supposed to walk there
3. Make it attractive and fun to walk there

You can use plantings, grasses, gravel, stones or sidewalks to make the surface more appealing and practical. Think of how you can add some art while you’re there, whether it’s paint, chalk or maybe fabric arts.

Define a path with painted rocks

Sheila Scarborough spotted this hallway in Lockhart, Texas. The plants and painted rocks make the path of travel obvious and help move people from the alley to the front street.

Even a narrow walkway can work

This narrow space in Beaver, Oklahoma, isn’t ideal, but it is clean and easy to walk.

Photo by Becky McCray.

Wide open potential

This wide lot in Ardmore, Oklahoma, offers a direct path from a downhill parking lot up to the main shopping area. The lot is wide enough for multiple uses. The planting areas could be restored. A few chairs around the little built-in table could serve as a resting point for people with mobility challenges. This pathway is so large, it could even host vendors at tables or booths along one side. That would give people added incentive to use the lower parking.

Photo by Becky McCray.

Turn a pocket park into a hallway

Beaver, Oklahoma, also has this pocket park downtown. The brick path effectively connects the alley parking to the front of the block. The benches, plantings and sculpture make it an appealing place to linger.

Photo by Becky McCray.

New video: Empty Lot Economic Development

We’ve partnered with SaveYour.Town to bring you a video with more practical ways to use empty lots to spur economic development and support commerce in your downtown. Learn more about it at: SaveYour.Town Empty Lot Economic Development.

New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.

Get ready for a dozen ideas for making a better third place. Pictured is Gathering Grounds coffee shop in Avon, Minnesota. Photo by Deb Brown.

At the Main Street Now conference, I sat in on a session about coffee shops. I wrote down bunches of ideas that the audience shared. I thought you might know a coffee shop person, or you might think of ways to use these with other types of small town businesses.

• Hold trivia nights or allow groups to meet in your space to drive more business
• Start a book club in your place
• Tell your story online. How were you founded? What is your history?
• Leverage your relationships with other businesses to put together a tour of businesses, or an experience that includes more than just your business
• Host readings, where customers can come in and share their writings
• Host adult coloring groups or game nights to bring in more evening customers
• Find out more about the people who work from your space, the people who bring in their laptops and work. What is their business? Is there potential to connect with them?
• Display coffee mugs from all the different businesses in town
• Provide vegetarian and vegan choices on the menu
• Support local causes and share about them
• Promote the chance to make friends, especially for new residents
• Reach out to new residents to make them aware of your place (You can find them through real estate agents.)
• Promote how people can connect with people not necessarily like them, how you play a role in strengthening community ties across groups in town.

Do you have any small town coffee shop ideas to add? When I asked in my newsletter, here are some ideas that readers shared.

“Whenever you get a new coffee, take an air pot around to all the business near you and give samples out.”
George M. Wurtzel

“Invite a well known Barista to run a Barista course at your coffee shop. Funding could be obtained from employment groups etc. Following on from that conduct a series of classes teaching people how to make simple things like vanilla slice and lamingtons. [an Australian cake specialty] This will follow on to your clients asking you to run classes on what they want to learn.”
Graham Reid

“Our trail organization co-hosts a #coffeeoutside gathering in a park each Thursday morning with a local bike shop. It is an opportunity to walk, bike or drive to share a relaxed social hour together. It is a great way to meet neighbors and solve the world’s problems. It could just as easily be set up outside a coffee shop. The point is: get outside, drink coffee, meet neighbors. We always have one type of coffee already made up, but invite roasters, shops and individuals to roast a pot on a camping set-up.”
Beth Nobles

Here’s the Coffee Outside website.

“We are test driving a coffee shop here in downtown Paulding, Ohio as a result of Deb Brown’s visit here a couple of weeks ago. The test is Tuesday and Thursday mornings through the month of May. First two days this week have been phenomenally successful. Using volunteer ‘baristas,’ the community support has been exceptional.
“Thank you Becky & Deb for all the idea sharing and leadership that you provide to our many small communities!
David Burtch

“All these ideas about coffee shops can be modified and apply to wineries. I say ‘modified’ because of the alcohol restrictions. We have been doing many of these practices at our winery in Knoxville, IA. Tonight I am hosting a fashion show with 5 women business owners in my community. It’s the first time doing this and I hope it works well. I reached out to our business owners that had fashions or a tangent business. I know a jewelry designer that will match her product with the clothes from the boutiques. A local photographer will take photos of the models and the event. A fabric designer that makes her own jackets will model her creations. I charged $5 advance tickets (available online or at the shops) and $10 at the door. The first beverage is free, so there is very little ‘risk’ to the guests, but allows me to gauge interest and attendance. You can see our story on our website NearWoodWinery.com. I think I have a pretty good origin story on the About Us page.”

Joann Schissel

Of course, I asked how the fashion show went, and Joann shared more:

“I think the fashion show went well. We had 15 models (includes kids) and friends/relatives were in the audience. I am focused on ‘gathering my tribe’ strategy and catering to established groups of people that have their own tribe. I loved working with the women business owners and promoting their products.
“Thank you for your great advice to help small towns. I think you and Deb fill a real need for our rural communities as mentors, strategists and cheer leaders!”

What other ideas do you have for coffee shops and other community gathering businesses?

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You probably know better than to follow up with someone like this:

• “Just following up!”

You realize that doesn’t really help either of you. But you still might be making this mistake:

• “Did you do that thing you said you were going to do?”

That feels like it’s helping, but from the customer perspective, it’s just adding to our guilt. What if you took a different approach, a helpful approach.

Here’s how I can help you be successful with this next step.”

Now that sounds helpful! And I’m betting you’ll have a lot more success following up to be helpful than to just add more guilt.

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How can we believe your claimed benefits when we don’t see how they tie to some feature of your product? Photo (CC) Becky McCray

“This product is great! It will save your marriage, improve your bank account and make you slimmer!” OK, enough with the benefits overload! I can’t believe your benefits claims because you didn’t show me why they’re believable.

Sales pages online are drowning in benefits, but without any hint that they connect to an actual feature of your product. Benefits without features are a waste of space.

Smart guy Jurek Leon explained why you have to talk about the product features in his terrific email newsletter:

Why bother to state the features if people buy on benefits, not features?
Because linking the features to their respective benefits gives the features believability. A list of benefits isn’t believable. They are empty promises. A well-linked feature gives the benefit substance.

Jurek has some specific tips to help you talk about benefits and features together:

When it comes to summarising the benefits that matter for your customer, preface them with one of the phrases listed in Selling the Benefits Part Two such as, “As you will realise this will give you the capability…”

One more important point: tailor this to your customers.

Just because it is a benefit don’t assume the customer will be impressed. In sales language, what we call a ‘benefit’ won’t necessarily be beneficial to every customer.
Different benefits appeal to different customer types.
For example, the feature “It is made locally” may appeal to one customer because of the benefit, “… which means that when you buy from us you help provide jobs for people in the local community.”
Another customer may be far more impressed with the benefit, “… which means if it ever breaks down we have experts close by who can fix any problems and have it working for you quickly with little downtime.”
That’s why it is important to ask questions to identify what matters to the customer. Then you can focus on the benefits that strike a chord with them.
So, work on identifying at least two benefits for each feature but only spell out the benefits that matter to your customer.

If you work an any rural hospitality or retail business, go sign up for Jurek’s Terrific Newsletter. Not only is it called “Terrific Tips”, that’s exactly what Jurek delivers each month.

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Are you ready to pickup some extra sales in the evenings? Photo via Pexels

Being open later hours in the evenings is hard for a lot of small businesses, but we have an easy promotion for you to make more sales later in the day.

Reach out to your existing customers, and let them know you have a new service:

Call ahead, and we’ll have it ready for you!

Think about your customers’ lives. They’re busy when they get off work at 5. They have a lot of errands to run, and yours may or may not be a priority. Let’s make it easier for them.

Tell your customers they can call, text, Messenger or email you with an order by 2pm, and you’ll have it ready for them to pick up after 5pm.

Then during the slower parts of the day, you can assemble the orders, ring them up and get them ready for a quick pick up.

You can pick the channels, so if email doesn’t work well with your workday, then don’t offer it. You can pick the times, so if 2pm is the wrong time, you can change that. If you want to set an end time, you can do that, too.

Credit for suggesting this promotion goes to our friend Rob Hatch.

More ideas for selling more in evening hours

Deb Brown and I share more ideas like this in our latest webinar at SaveYour.Town, Downtown After 5. We know this matters to you because in our Survey of Rural Challenges, you ranked staying open later hours as one of the top small business challenges.

The Downtown After 5 lesson is available on-demand starting Tuesday August 28, 2018, and it is only available for two weeks. If you sign up now, you can also participate in the live Q&A session September 4. We welcome your questions, stories and examples from your own town.

Still waiting to hear from that small business. Where are they?? 

We’ve all had times when we weren’t able to deliver what we promised to our customers.

Maybe you’re going to be able to do it, but not when you promised. Or maybe it’s not going to be quite the way you said.

Maybe a supplier didn’t deliver to you on time. Maybe you had a problem with the people working for you. Maybe you messed up.

No matter how it happened, you’re not going to be able to do what the customer is expecting by when they expect it. Now what?

We’ve all also been on the other side; we’ve been the customer who was waiting. We’ve wondered why a delivery isn’t here yet or why we aren’t seeing the people we expected. The worst part is the waiting and not knowing, isn’t it?

With that little insight, let’s look at how we treat customers. Are we leaving people waiting and wondering?

Especially in a small town, we kind of feel like everyone knows everything about our business, but that’s an illusion. Really, customers have no idea what went wrong or why you haven’t kept your word. You’re going to have to tell them.

The secret: Overcommunicate

It’s not much of a secret, but it might as well be, given how seldom it gets done well.

Think about the times you’ve been left wondering. Think about the stories you read and hear from other people in town and online. How many times is the real complaint about not knowing what is going on? Start looking for that in all the customer stories you come across.

Use all your tools

You have plenty of ways to reach customers today. Even in small towns, you can reach people by email, text/SMS, or Messenger. Heck, you could even call them.

When to let customers know

Start as soon as you know there is a problem or possible problem. Don’t wait. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to make yourself do it.

In the first contact, let the customer know just the basics. Tell them there’s a problem, you’re sorry, and what you think will happen now.

Next, reach out when you know more. As soon as you hear an update or figure out a new plan, tell the customer. There is where we as business owners fall down the most. We get an update from others or learn more about what is going on, then we keep it to ourselves. We’re busy, and we don’t really want to talk to that potentially angry customer anyway.

One way to defeat that is remind yourself how glad the customer will be. They’ll be happy you haven’t left them wondering.

In between, stay in contact, even if you don’t know anything new. Customers are people, and people hate to think they’ve been forgotten.

Should you send updates weekly? Daily? Monthly? Depends on the situation, but you can make an educated guess. If you’re not sure, ask the customer. “Do you want me to update you less often?” (I’m guessing they’ll say no.)

When I had a problem with my webhosting, even an hour seemed like an eternity to wait. While they fixed the problem in less than a day, the only way I knew what was going on was through friends who helped get me some inside info. Don’t make your customers turn into detectives trying to get information from you.

Right now, I’m waiting to hear back from my car dealer about when they’ll have parts to repair my car’s airbag. I haven’t heard back in over a month. A quick text would let me know they still remember me and my car.

You have your own stories, too, I’m sure. The question is, do your customers?

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Photo by josealbafotos on Pixabay

Once your customers have the master plan, what happens next? Photo CC by brandbook.de

If part of the services you provide includes helping people make a plan, be sure you don’t stop there. If you don’t address this pitfall, it’s going to hurt your sales and hold potential customers back.

The problem

Everyday people, like your customers, want to have a plan, but they have an important doubt. They fear they’ll never actually get it done. They already have too much to do!

They think they’ll fail to follow through, or they’ll get distracted, or things will change before they can get around to doing the things you so carefully planned for them.

That means they hesitate about buying. They hold back from signing up. 

How you help

You probably don’t just help people design a plan, then say, “You’re on your own!” Of course not. You provide some kind of support in taking action.

Maybe you offer coaching or weekly check-ins to support their progress.

Maybe you can actually start carrying out the plan for them, with a “done for you” service. For example, you might help a customer create a marketing plan that includes advertising on Facebook, then you can actually start creating the ads for them.

How do you support your customers once you’ve helped them make the plan? Think through all the ways you do that so we can let them know.

The solution

In order to remove the fear for your customers, you need to let them know early on that you’ll be there for them after the plan is done. 

Everyplace you discuss or describe your planning service, be sure to include how you can help them after the plan. If there’s an added cost, say so.

Your customers will be relieved that they won’t be alone with the plan. You’ll make more sales for the planning service and make more customers aware of the support services.

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