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Your Mobile Business
Being in business means one of two things. Either your customers must come to you, or you have to take your goods or services to the customer. For example, customers have no choice but to attend a concert hall in person if they wish to see a live act, but a mobile hairdresser must take their services through the front doors of their clients.
Today, we shall be considering the implications of the latter, which is to say that we shall be considering some of the obstacles you can expect to encounter as a mobile business.
Get paid (the easy way)
You need a payment app. Why? Because the alternatives include handling physical cash (which virtually nobody carries in large amounts anymore) or to ask your clients to make some other kind of drawn out online payment that involves typing in the numbers from a bank or credit card (which customers may find a little strange in today’s age of data security considerations and the constant threat of online fraud).
Now, you know your customers. They want a fast and effective service. Give them what they want. A payment app allows you to make fast sales that your customers will appreciate. Get involved now or forever deal with single visit clients who can’t be bothered to go through the process of paying you a second time.
Be ready for new customers
The owners of mobile businesses aren’t sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. They are out and about, earning money. When your next customer shows an interest in your products or services, you need a way to incorporate the onboarding process with your busy routine. That’s why you need to keep email templates to hand.
Whenever you need to contact a customer, it is far faster to pull up an email template than it is to write a new email every time. Think about saying something like, “Hi X, thanks for taking the time to check us out. We’re delighted to have you on board. Please check your notifications for your order confirmation in the coming hours, and if you have any questions …” etc. This means you can fire back emails even when you are super busy.
Factor in your travel time
Mobile businesses are on the move. They start early in the morning and they finish late at night (if business is going well!). Part of the problem with taking on new clients is that you may want to agree to meet your clients’ needs without factoring in the travel time.
This can be a major issue where your commitments and travel time don’t match up. You will inevitably end up with a reputation for arriving late. Where your reputation for lateness precedes you, you can be sure that word of mouth about your tardiness will also go before you. If there’s one thing that’s hard to shake off, it’s a bad first impression.
Factor in your travel time (see tips on time management) and be honest with yourself about how many clients you can see in one day.
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