Coaching, Consulting, and Business Mentoring

Recently, I was in a small business on Main Street of my home town.  A darling little specialty shop and ordered something special for a friend's birthday.  As I always do, I asked the owner, "so how's business?"  The reply broke my heart when the owner said sadly, "I don't think I will make it to fall."  She lamented about the recession and how business is so down that there was debt piling up with no obvious solution.

The coach in me kicked in and I began to ask questions like, who is your most loyal customers, where do they come from, what has worked in the past?  I then asked, do you have a record of any kind of your customers and how to contact them?  No was the answer.

I volunteered to be the first by putting my business card in a bowl, to encourage her to start a data base of all those people who frequent her shop.  Can you see where this is leading? 

BOOK OF BUSINESS, the data base of customers to communicate with, send promotions to, invite to an open house and the list goes on.  My email is full daily of solicitations from all over the globe but I never hear from that very cute store on main street.

Well anyway, she got excited and called a few friends to help her get her database started that would be the future platform of repeat and new business.  Is there any business, large or small that should not have an organized book of business and working it like crazy?  Never.  I am going to make sure that little specialty shop has much more than three months to live.