I once looked into the viability of sending a teabag to everyone who made an enquiry. The resulting cup of tea would give people chance to sit back and think about their business.
I decided that nobody would want my grubby fingers putting teabags in envelopes, so I asked Yorkshire Tea for some of those individual ones in their own little wrappers but they wanted to sell them to me in batches of 10,000 or something equally silly.
I could probably buy fewer elsewhere if I really tried, so I may resurrect the idea one day. There was a point I was going to make, along the lines of “it’s always worth thinking about trying something new, however random” but it’s slipped my mind a little because I’m now thinking about a cup of tea.
So step back. Look at what you’re doing. Here’s a poorly Photoshopped example that I made several years ago and completely forgot about.
Business was quiet in the sign shop.
Sometimes you need to step back and take a fresh look at what you’re doing.
It might be as simple as remembering to turn the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open’ on your shop each morning, or asking yourself why you have to wade through a filing cabinet every time you want to find someone’s contact details.
Or it might be something more complex – like building a follow-up process of a dozen emails, letters and phone calls that you send to anyone who gets in touch with you.
If you don’t step back and check, you might end up paying for an advert like the one below, which I found in Private Eye this morning.
Would you want business advice from someone who forgets to put contact details on their advert?
Good luck getting in touch.
Time to put the kettle on.