Business Sense and Sensibility

I have been noticing a trend lately. It is a trend of business owners disparaging their own shops in public venues. Some are even asking their customers to provide negative information about their shops. Sound crazy? I agree. I would never go into a public venue and announce to people I don't know, including my potential customers, that my business wasn't doing well even if that was the fact. It just isn't a good business practice.

Let's say you're shopping in your town. You go into a shop you've never been in before and the owner says the following:

"My shop is not doing well. What's wrong with it? Are my products awful? Does the shop need to be cleaned up?"

If that happened, you would likely turn around and leave. You don't know this person. You went into the shop to take a look and were bombarded by questions from the owner asking why his shop is so horrible.

Perhaps we all need to think of online stores in a different way. The internet is faceless for the most part. We often forget that an online store, and what is said about it, reaches far more people than local stores and information possibly could. After all, isn't that one of the reasons we love to sell online?

We all have our moments of frustration. We all need a chance to vent. All I am suggesting is that a public venue is not the proper place for this to occur. There are many private forums and groups available if you don't have anyone to talk to locally. If you spend your time promoting your store in a negative manner, you will get negativity in return and will most likely lose sales and potential customers. You must try to allow your business sense to overrule your emotional sensibilities. Otherwise, you have failed before you even get started.

A wise person I know told me that many people have created a business, quite by accident, while doing something they love. If you love your craft, then do it! If you don't, then perhaps you could take a moment to think of what you do love and see how that could possibly work for you.

There are many ways to promote the businesses we love. There is also a right and a wrong approach to promotion. Please make sure that you choose the right approach in order to succeed.