Nearly everyone has cell phones these days. The traditional land line has become almost as nostalgic an idea as a rotary dial phone or pay phone booth. The innovation of the cell phone industry has made land lines nearly obsolete. So why do so many businesses still rely on them? Don’t get me wrong, they do have some advantages for business, but considering the benefits available with cell phones, there is definitely an advantage to using them.
Sometimes it seems like we just can’t put our phones down. So why not make them work for us and use our phones as a selling tool? I worked in a store that had purchased it’s first store cell phone. It quickly became an indispensable item that we used for a number of things and the more we used it the more things thought of to do with it.
The cell phone was the new portable intake camera! Immediately, right there in front of the customer we laid out everything we were taking in and took pictures of it. This small simple step had the unforeseen benefit of giving the customer an opportunity to lay everything out and “remind them” of those little, “Oh yeah, by the way” details that the sales staff would typically have to call them later to get clarification on. It also gave the sales staff the opportunity to thoroughly look over the items and ask any questions they may have regarding the work. We would still do detailed photos later if needed, but this initial step saved a lot of time and confusion.
Whenever jobs were finished we texted the customer from the cell phone. Tell your customers when they drop off the work that this is the number they will be texted from. Texting is so much faster for you than calling and most customers prefer it. The side benefit was that we slowly added most of our customer list to the phone contacts. When we had a special announcement to make to our customers we could just text everyone.
Another thing is we made sure we had an extensive gallery of our custom work easily accessible on the phone. Anyone wanting to see an example of our work could be shown them wherever they were in the store.
And lastly, when we deliver a finished piece and the customer is raving about it. Ask about taking a picture or video of them wearing it!
Sometimes in its those little things, like getting a store cell phone, that can make a big difference, and you probably won’t even have to train your staff on how to use it!
