TRADING TIPS

Your business is finally up and running and you’ve had your first few customers. It won’t matter if you’re launching a multinational or selling a few handmade pottery mugs you’ll share the same sense of elation at having finally done it.

The first few weeks and months of trading will tell you whether:

• you’ve picked the right business and have plenty of customers
• you’ve picked the right business for you and are happy in your work
• your family is happy with your work commitment
• the business is going in the direction you hoped
• the business is likely to meet the aims you set for it at the beginning (hobby job, life support system or world domination).

You shouldn’t be in a position when you start a business of having absolutely no customers and none in sight. Your business plan, market research and other preparation should have stopped you in your tracks and shown there was no demand for your product or skill long before you got to this stage. Equally, if you have plenty of customers but are working 100 hours a week and making very little money, then the same applies. What went wrong with your business plan?

But let’s assume that after six months or so things are ticking over nicely, work is beginning to take on a pattern and the anxiety-linked dreams have eased back to a manageable one or two a month. Now is the time to sit back and take stock.

WORK/LIFE BALANCE

This is really what it’s all about. There’s little point in living in a beautiful rural area if you’re working 18 hours a day and never get to see it. When you first become self-employed, it’s incredibly difficult to turn down work. There’s the fear that you’ll never be asked by anybody ever again. This worry is particularly common among people who went through lean times in the early days of their business or came from an employed background.

So you need to come up with a system or set of rules to cap your hours in order to spend time with your family and to enjoy the countryside around you – which, after all, is the whole point behind this.

If you:

• run a shop (deli, florist, wine merchant)
• offer any sort of office-based skill (IT, desk-top publishing)
• or do anything which means being on the end of a phone to other businesses (environmental consultant, green campaigner/lobbyist)

then it’s easier to set your hours because you have to stick largely to the conventional working day, with perhaps an extra hour or two morning and evening to first prepare and then wrap up afterwards.

Other trades and skills will be more in demand in the evenings when potential customers and clients have returned home. This could apply to anyone offering private music tuition, portrait photography or home natural therapy treatments such as aromatherapy or reflexology. Other jobs may be decided by how many daylight hours there are. Landscape gardeners, thatchers or even dog walkers may not be as busy during the short winter days as they will be in the summer.

But for plenty of other jobs there’s no outside factor and it’s down to you to organise your time efficiently. There’s not really an easy answer and everyone works differently anyway. But some of the options to consider are:

• Work a maximum of 10 or 12 hours a day.
• Always stop work in time to put the children to bed.
• Never work on a Sunday.
• Never work at weekends.
• Always take time to have lunch with your partner.
• Never take business calls before 8am on weekdays.
• Never take business calls after 8pm on weekdays.
• Never take business calls at weekends.
• Never respond to emails after 9pm at night, Monday to Saturday.
• Never respond to emails on a Sunday.

And so on. Each family works differently, so it’s up to you to come up with a package that everyone’s happy with. Then you have to stick to it.

HEALTH INSURANCE AND CRITICAL ILLNESS COVER

If you run your business alone and you’re the main breadwinner in your family then some sort of medical insurance is vital. There’s no company sick pay to fall back on when you are self-employed. Something as minor as a sprained ankle stops you driving for a couple of weeks. Even a bout of flu can keep you in bed for a few days. Then there are the more serious illnesses and accidents. Premiums will depend on your age, cover and lifestyle. Decent cover isn’t cheap: you get what you pay for. But you have to ask yourself what would happen if you were unable to work, even for a short period.

CUSTOMER CARE

Your customers are your life blood. Nurture them, treasure them, care for them as carefully as you would your own child. So why is it that a ridiculous number of organisations still treat their customers as if they’re getting in the way, an irritation to be swatted aside as quickly as possible? Large companies can get away with this sort of thing because there are plenty more customers where you came from, but small businesses can’t. So follow the basic rules:

• Be nice to people, even if you’ve done a 16-hour day, it’s raining, you have a headache and the previous ten customers have all been foul.
• Don’t leave people waiting.
• Answer phones promptly.
• Return calls promptly.
• Answer correspondence promptly.
• If asked, give advice generously.
• Treat all customers in exactly the same way, regardless of their appearance or accent.

And be prepared to lose a sale if it means you gain extra goodwill. If your product or service isn’t right for your customer, then say so. Offer them an alternative or suggest somewhere else they can go. Your honesty will earn you brownie points. You need to win the trust of your customer or client so they’ll return and will also recommend you to others.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Feedback from customers is a continual process and not something you only think about when you’re starting up. Nothing is ever constant, and you, your business and your product or service should be constantly evolving. And how are you going to know what your customers think and want unless you ask them?

Feedback can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it. If you have any contact at all with your customers then you’re going to get some anyway, whether you like it or not. Listen carefully to what they have to say. Don’t throw away your whole range and start again on the basis of one casual comment, but if a trend does begin to emerge then you have to react.

Aspects to get feedback on:

• Price. Are people saying your goods or services are too expensive, too cheap, good or bad value for money?
• Range. Are you offering enough variety for your customers or clients? Do you provide a wide variety of cheeses in your farm shop, can you as a furniture maker turn your hand to everything from a baby’s highchair to a chaise longue or wardrobe?
• Choice. Do you offer enough choice of colours, sizes, woods, fabrics, ingredients, designs?
• Special offers. Do your customers or clients like special offers and respond to them? Should you be offering more or different special offers?
• Speed of delivery. Do your customers or clients complain about being kept waiting?
• Availability. Or are they irritated that the items you advertise, include on your website or list in a catalogue are ‘out of stock’?
• Quality of work or product. Are your customers reporting back that your product is falling apart after a week? If you’re a service provider, do you ever have to return to redo something?
• Durability. Has your product or service lasted as long as it should have?
• Living up to expectations. Does it do what it says on the tin?
• General happiness. Do most of your clients on the whole seem satisfied or disgruntled?

Feedback questionnaires

A lot of feedback will come at the point of sale. Regular and returning customers can tell you what they think next time they come in, but you have a problem if a first-time customer isn’t happy and just doesn’t return. That means they’re going to grumble to whoever’s around to listen and you’ll have no chance to put things right.

So think about whether it’s worth providing a more formal feedback system. Should you be sending out questionnaires a week or two after the sale? If so, make it easy for the customer or client to respond. Don’t just write to them inviting their comments: no one will be bothered to write a letter back (except the angry, the bored or the pedantic). Instead, prepare a multiple choice questionnaire based on the above bullet points – price, range, choice and so on –plus other categories relevant to you. Then either ask for a grading for each section, points out of five for example, or ask the customer or client to tick a box – very satisfied, satisfied, adequate, poor and very poor. And leave a blank box at the bottom if they want to add any comments. Offer them anonymity if you think you may get more worthwhile feedback, though on the whole it’s probably better if you know their names and addresses, especially if a serious problem does emerge.

You could also conduct the same sort of feedback survey over the phone, using the same questions as a basis for your interview, if you have customers’ numbers, or by email.

Offer an inducement or bribe to encourage more customers to fill in the feedback questionnaires. It could be money off their next purchase, entry in a draw to win a case of wine, a year’s free tree felling, whatever.

Any customer survey has to be proportionate to the value of your business. If you’re selling holidays or bespoke furniture it probably is worth doing: if you’re selling socks then it isn’t.

Remote selling and feedback

If you only sell through an agent, shop or other third party, you’ll never meet your customers. So think about whether you want to include brief questionnaires in the box or packaging of your product which will give the customers chance to respond directly to you. Make sure the label on the product gives your business name and a contact, either a website or email address or phone number.

You’ll get a different sort of feedback from your agent or other third party which will be valuable, especially if they have plenty of experience in your field. But their interests won’t necessarily be the same as yours, especially if they work on commission, dependent on volume of sales (you may prefer to concentrate on quality).

Suppliers and feedback

Depending on your business, it may also be worthwhile asking for feedback from suppliers. You’re a novice and just starting out whereas they’ve probably been in the business for a long time and have seen everything. So ask them how they think you’re doing: this will be easier if you’ve had a chance to build up a relationship with them first. It’s in their best interests that you succeed because it’s more business for them, so don’t be shy about asking.

Staff feedback

If you employ staff then ask for their feedback too. This is even more important because they’re often the first point of contact with the customer or client, by serving them in a shop, delivering to them, replying to their emails or answering the phone. Often a customer will be more open with an assistant than with the boss because it’s less personal. Good staff will be invaluable in gathering customer feedback and reporting back to you.