It may feel like everything is closed and no one is working, but some businesses are busy – and most are open to suggestions on how they can carry on trading. Clearly this is not true for all – if you are a hairdresser or a barber for example, you can’t help people to cut their own hair, but you could give helpful tips on how potential customers could manage until they can book in with an expert.
Whilst that won’t get them work now, it will help their general profile and create lots of positivity about them and their services. Offering helpful advice and improving their profile now could be rewarded when people can actually start going out again.
Tip 1 – Be flexible and open to new ideas
Tip 2 – Think beyond ‘currency’ as just money in the till right now
Keep the doors ‘open’ – if you remain responsive and upbeat and most importantly, willing to talk, then your clients (and future clients) will want to talk to you about ideas and how they can deliver their services at the moment. This may mean getting outside their comfort zone, but everyone is having to get used to ‘remote delivery’ regardless of the sector. For example, many businesses are now using and feel comfortable with video conferencing, compared with just 6 weeks ago, many of them would never have used it before, even if they were forced to.
Tip 3 – Be prepared to talk, even if there is no clear outcome
You need to keep marketing your business and you need to keep clients updated on what you are (and are not) doing. As an example, there is a cycle shop near where I live, it is part of a small chain of bike shops. When I go past it at the moment it is all locked up and clearly ‘closed’, no signs or information. So, I assumed that they were all closed, but when I called, they said that one shop was still open, and was really busy. If I had not called them, I would have carried on thinking that all of the shops were now closed. Communication is so important at the moment, more than ever, given that we are all working differently. Remember ‘out of sight, out of mind’ – we are all out of sight at the moment.
Tip 4 – Keep Marketing, stay visible
At Kehorne, we have been trying to show potential (and existing) clients what we have done before that might be useful for them now. We have built lots of sites for restaurant chains, many of them have takeaway or delivery aspects to them, so we created an unbranded site that focused on the delivery aspect (you can see it here – https://kehorne.digital/takeaway/). Some businesses are being challenged to adapt their service offering and starting a conversation might well lead to identifying a new need.
Tip 5 – Show what you can do to help, it may start a conversation
A lot of businesses need help and ideas, but a lot of businesses do not have the money to invest right now and so you may need to be flexible about when you get paid. Offering schemes with a smaller deposit up front and an agreement to pay when things are slightly more normal could deliver dividends and be the difference between winning and losing new work.
Tip 6 – Remain flexible on billing terms, but make sure that eventually you are paid
So, we have six tips to hopefully help you and your business through this. If I had to choose just one, I would say ‘keep marketing, stay visible’ is the most important one and that is what I am doing right now!
So here are our 6 tips again;
Tip 1 – Be flexible and open to new ideas
Tip 2 – Think beyond ‘currency’ as just money in the till right now
Tip 3 – Be prepared to talk, even if there is no clear outcome
Tip 4 – Keep Marketing, stay visible
Tip 5 – Show what you can do to help, it may start a conversation
Tip 6 – Remain flexible on billing terms, but make sure that eventually you are paid
I hope this has been useful for you, feel free to call or email me if we can help or if you just want to talk through an idea or problem that you have.
We are still open…and still listening… call us to discuss or email
