I was getting a drink at my favorite watering hole the other day, and no it was not a pub, it was QuikTrip. While I was standing in line, tasty beverage in hand, I noticed the guy in front of me digging deep into his pockets as his face grew increasingly red. “Let me check my car.” he said. He had a large fountain drink and a bottle of Mt. Dew.

He forgot his money. We have all been there.  What was interesting was what the attendant did. He grabbed the bottle of Mt. Dew and said “I need to keep this,” but pushed the fountain drink towards the edge of the counter, and said “but you keep that.” The customer thanked the attendant and walked away with his free large drink. A smile never left either of their faces.

QuikTrip was at a loss. They would have had to throw away the cup, throw away the beverage, but most importantly, they would have sent a customer away with disappointed feelings. Maybe these feelings were not directed at them, but they are bad never the less. They didn’t. They turned the situation around and became a hero. They made his day and took a lose lose situation and turned it into a win win at the cost of 44 ounces of diet coke - about 50 cents.

You might find yourself in a similar situation with one of your customers. If you can turn it into a win win, you might get people to blog about my their awesome experience. 

When a customer decides to use your company for the first time they get a first impression, but it’s not your voice or how you answer your phone. It’s your phone number. Your phone number is part of your brand. It defines who you are in many respects. You wouldn’t give your customer your Yahoo email address, nor would you give your new customer a hand written business card. Why would you give your customer a phone number that is hard to dial, confusing or doesn’t mean anything? Take a few minutes before you start your next business, or order a second phone line to ask the phone company for an easy to remember phone number. They usually don’t charge for this.

And for those of you with a Yahoo email address, I’m not sorry for offending you. If you can’t put the $10 into a .com with a free email address, why should a customer think you would spend any extra time or money to make their experience worth while?

Hand out your business card to everyone and everything you know. You couldn’t give me a good reason why all your friends and family don’t have one in the bottom of their purses or in their car cup holder. Don’t be stingy. Order a ton of them, and give them out like they didn’t cost you a thing.

I once heard that a good Real Estate agent could be measured by how many business cards they handed out in a year. The best go through hundreds, if not thousands a month.

Don’t forget to use the back. “We Love Referrals” goes a long way.

Local online advertising is becoming more and more important. Customers are spending more time online to find local businesses than ever before, and the trends will keep rising for foreseeable future. It might be time to take some money out of the paper yellow page ads and put them into local listings online. If your not ready to budget for local online advertising, fear not! There are plenty of places to listed online for free.

Here are a few places to get started with local advertising:

• Google Local (Google Maps) - List your business for free. You can advertise on Google Maps through your Adwords account on a pay per click basis.
• Yelp - A local review site. Yelp feeds some Yahoo Local and other local search results.
• Yahoo Local - Another local review site. Huge in many areas.
• CitySearch - Ask.com and Live.com get some of their information from here.
• Zillow - Free Real Estate listings. This would be a great place to advertise for home services such as lawn care, plumbing, contractors, etc. It costs $.01 per ad view and can be targeted by zip code.
• Craigslist.org - We all know what this one is. Use it! Post a new ad every 3-4 days about your business.
• BackPage.com - Another free, local classifieds site.
• Facebook - This one might be a suprise, but you can get some pretty cheap advertising targeted on a local level.

This is by no means a complete list, but it is a good start. If you get one potential new customer a week from each of these sources, imagine how fast you could grow!

P.S. If you want more search engines to pick up on your website as a local site, you might try adding your mailing address to the bottom of each page of your website. 

Garage and yard sale season is here. I wrote a little guide on advertising your garage sale for those out there looking to have one this year. There is something to be learned from the frenzy of customers deal hunting at a garage sale. Could your business benefit from similar traffic? Here are a couple of ideas to pull in some new customers this spring.

• Use garage sale like signs to promote your products. Hand written signs attract attention. The real estate investors swear by them. You might even use arrow directionals to drive traffic right to your front door.
• Use classified ads like craigslist.org, backpage.com or your local newspapers to advertise specials, closeouts and overstocks.
• Set your stuff outside. Have a sidewalk sale and set your products out front where shoppers can see them.