How familiar are you with your customers?

A small business in tough times is one thing: a small business owner who happily shares their woes with customers is entirely another.

Today, a chapter from my book, The Small Business Success Guide, literally sprang to life. I'd just stepped inside a small business to have a casual browse of their wares when the owner introduced herself and gave me a quick rundown of her shop. I walked around for a few minutes (without my author hat on), and then she came over and offered this: "Business isn't great thanks to my partner."

Okay. "We've been in business together for a couple of years and for the last six months we've been doing it his way," she continued. "And it's not working!"

Had I asked for this rundown of her fortunes? No. Could I empathise? Absolutely. But as a potential customer, should I have had to?

There's a fine line between you and your customers, and I go into this in my book. The idiom "familiarity breeds contempt" was created for a reason: the more people know about you, the more likely they are to make a judgement call.

And their judgement could impact on their purchasing. It did for me today: I hightailed it out of the shop. It was my day off!

My tip is to keep it professional at all times. If this means keeping things to yourself, no matter how bad a day you're having, then do it.

Your customers will thank you.

Margie