Don’t Scare Away Your Customers
By: Lynella Grant
Common small potato tip-offs-
- Saying "Make the check out to me," alerts customers that maybe you're not a "real business," and are either fly-by-night or evading taxes. Since serious businesses don't operate that way, you just let them know you aren't one
- Lacks a fax number or uses the same number for telephone and fax
- The business is called "and Associates" or "Enterprises," or other names which are interpreted as thinly-veiled attempts to look bigger
- Doesn't take credit cards
- Deals with money in a too-little-too-late fashion
- Pays bills through their personal checking account
- Its Web site has a very long address (after several ///s), instead of it having its own domain name
- Answers the phone without identifying the business name first, or lets family members answer customer calls in a casual way
- The business card doesn't state what the business does, and it looks just about like the competitions'
- Uses a clip-art logo that everyone has seen lots of times elsewhere
- Places a full-colored, Yellow Page ad near the back of their telephone directory category
And you'll discover hundreds more in Stop Looking Like Small Potatoes
Small Potatoes lapses aren't a big deal if looked at one by one. But as they accumulate they tell people in unmistakable terms that you don't have your act together-and that is a big deal!
(c) 2003, Off the Page Press
