Rich Gee talks about the advice from his older brother and how to succeed in college by leaving his dorm room door open. Now, I never had a dorm life, but I can relate with this method by personality. I believe I am an 'open door' type of person; I am an easy listener and I am easy to conversate with, I make friends easily and I can relate to many different types of people.
This method sparked my interest because of my workplace. These are simple, easy to do ideas and they are just a couple of ways to build your business' success.
- Be open to your current clients/customers. You should always be available with someone who is working with you, or someone you are working for. Have different modes of communication, phone, email, or other social media sources such as Facebook or Twitter. If your client cannot get in touch with you, then how are they going to feel comfortable enough to send more people your way, or return themselves? If there is no communication how are you going to accomplish anything?
- Ask for feedback often. Not only is this helpful for understanding the faults of yourself or your business to help build change, but it is also a very helpful tool to understand what your customers or clients enjoy about you and your business, so that you can keep doing what your people want you to do!
- If you can, meet with your clients face-to-face. In my line of work as a Clerk majority of my business is face-to-face. However, I also answer the phones and deal with customers via email and most of my customers always say, "it is so nice to be able to see the face that has been helping me!" and I believe that is so true in any type of work. Sure meetings and conferences can be more convenient over Skype or the phone, but I believe a team can collaborate better when working face-to-face, and this also builds confidence with your customers or clients. Technology is very advanced and it is easy to take care of business without dealing with a human reaction at all, but I believe we all still crave that human interaction.
- Be flexible with your business model. Leave your 'door' open to new ideas, different input, another point of view, and other things that could help build onto your original idea or concept.
- When out in the world, hide the sunglasses, iPod, and newspaper. Keep yourself open to different types of people, you never know what type of business will present an idea that you could use in your line of work. Don't hide from the world, embrace it, and make it fit your business or work place.
- Ensure that any client/customer touchpoint encourages connection and conversation. Just because you have a website with information doesn’t mean your customer or client can’t hear that information from you or a real person. Ensure that you follow your customers or clients through the process of their business with you. Be open and let your customers know that you are open to whatever mode of communication they find best suits them.
- Use social media (like Twitter, Linked In, Facebook, etc.) A lot of people in the business world shunned these types of outlets for a very long time, but they are now realizing that these outlets open up your span of people you have the ability to communicate with. Be open, be willing, and be ready for the possibilities!
- Play your music loud to attract others. The way I took this idea is, find out what attracts your customers, what attracts other people that would otherwise pass by your business, find out what attracts people and make it loud, make it bright, make it bold and throw it into the next level to keep them people coming!
- Teach your colleagues and team to leave their doors open too. If you are the only one leaving your 'door' open your customers and clients will realize that, and they will favor you and your business, but keep in mind they can find other open door businesses very easily. Get your team involved and if you open some 'closed door' people in your group, then your business will have an even greater effect!
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