Today’s topic is something that never in a million years felt like I would be doing any kind of content around, but very crucial in this current situation. The topic is all about the cleanliness of your business, the protocols that you’re taking, how to communicate that what to be doing, and how this could potentially impact you and your company for a while to come.
>Now, there’s obviously some industries that go without saying that cleanliness is a critical factor. Restaurants being the first one that comes to mind and childcare centers being another. It’s interesting because of those kinds, and they always go without saying that they would be spotless. And you haven’t had to educate the public on your methods until now.
If I look at any business that has a retail presence or a physical location that someone would have to come into for anything and I started looking through and just making lists of all these different businesses that over the last couple of months that I have stopped into.
- Gas stations
- Grocery stores
- Paint and hardware stores
- Accounting Office
- Bakery
- Local shops
- Coffee shops
The list goes on and on and on, and I never really realized how many places a week or during the week rather, that I stopped into—the list just kept getting longer and longer, and I personally am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m hoping that a lot of other people are as well. However, there’s still a ton of uncertainty and a lot of uneasiness. And what I’m finding at this very moment in time, that is helping start to ease people so that the traffic at your business starts to increase is to begin to talk about your cleaning protocols.
Now, before we get into that, in no means am I a cleaning expert. If you don’t have a really intense cleaning regiment, you’re going to need to get one. If you’re in the cleaning business right now, I think that the next 12 to 24 months and beyond are going to be insane for you in a good way. So, you would want to make sure that you speak with one of those companies, and they get you and your business up to speed. You want to make sure that you’re getting things sanitized. You want to make sure that you’ve got tons of hand sanitizer, and all of your team are wearing masks that actually fit. I’m walking around to a few businesses here that primarily pick up food, and almost all the people that I’m seeing have a mask that is not covering their nose. So not really sure what the whole point of having the mask is, then. As a business owner, you would want to make sure that you have all that stuff, obviously set up.
The second step is really you need to be talking about everything that you’re doing almost every single day. You need to have signs and putting this on social media. You, as the owner of the business, need to be doing little videos and putting those on your website and social media. You need pop-ups on your website and sending emails out to your database regularly, talking about your cleaning protocols. You need to literally be telling everyone that you are doing everything in your power to keep them and your team safe.
However, you can’t say that there’s absolutely no risk. Because I’m sure, there’s going to be a whole slew of attorneys that are chomping at the bit to find businesses with claims that somebody got the Coronavirus from their particular business. You need to be very careful about your wordings, but I need you to be talking about this now more than ever.
If you have a retail business, what are you doing to make sure that you’re complying with the law? But also, what are you doing, and what has changed? I’m sure you have customers that are putting clothing on in the changing room, and they go pile it up and put it back. What are you doing with that? Are you putting it back on the rack (which I hope no)? Are you sanitizing stuff? Maybe you’re not allowing people to try things out anymore. And your policy now is no refunds, which I don’t think would fly very well.
But what is your cleaning protocol there? Are you cleaning the floors every day now with hot steam that’s proven to kill the Coronavirus? Are you making sure that you’re checking people’s temperature and again that like this is the stuff that I never in a million years thought that I would have to be doing content about.
I like to look at trends, in particular, Google Trends, and there are a few other tools that you can look up. But I want to look at what people are searching for, and they’re starting to search for all those different kinds of phrases, cleanliness of this type of business, for example.
Step one is that you need to go in and make sure that you have all of your cleaning protocols dialed in. For all the different businesses, there’s usually some kind of Industry Association, for example. You can start to turn for them for guidance in terms of cleaning protocols and what they are suggesting and things like that. I need you to start shouting from the rooftop about what you’re doing to keep people safe. My biggest concern is that even as things start to reopen in the coming weeks, a large portion of people are still going to be very, very nervous that they’re not going to want to return right away.
Now, are there going to be some people that run back and they’re going to be first in line? Definitely. My concern, however, especially for local businesses that financially can’t continue to weather this kind of storm, is that if you know that there are certain breakevens that you need to be serving X amount of meals at your restaurant, you need X amount of customers that you need. I think there’s just going to have to be a lot of change.
What about all these clothing businesses that are buying clothes from people and then reselling them? I mean, obviously, they get cleaned beforehand. You probably would casually mention that, but someone wouldn’t normally ask you about the process. Now you’re going to be having to talk about the process. Like for example, you’re putting it on extra hot, so it’s killing anything; you’re doing a double wash cycle. All this stuff needs to be mentioned.
I would also encourage you, and I’ll end with this idea—I’d encourage you to do some video. If you have a cleaning company, film the cleaning company cleaning and you can put your logo on the video. It’s a great way to just continue to showcase what you’re doing to keep your prospects and customers safe and your team.
Get out there, make a change, and take some action.
