One the best ways to understand the experience that your clients or potential clients have with your firm is to become a client.
Your goal here is to attempt to see your business as the world does.
In order to do that, I suggest you try this exercise first.
Go visit a business that you have never been to before and, as you do this, make note of all the things that your brain and your senses are taking in.
Register all the sites, smells, sounds and feelings you are going through.
Why do this? Because that’s what every one of your prospects does when they first come into contact with
your business. So, that truck that’s filthy, the person that answers the phone rudely, and the pile of boxes in the hallway all produce a marketing result…even if you’ve grown to just accept them or ignore them.
Try this. Call your business and act like a prospect. Ask some basic questions about your service. Don’t look at this as spying…look at it as quality control. Call your competitors and do the same. How do they fare?
Request marketing materials…what do they look like? What impression do they make? With your newly awakened sensory perception, take a walk around your office and find all the things that need to be dealt with.
Many prospects make buying decisions based on how they feel about a company. These little things are hard to measure but they do make a huge difference.
So, the question is, would you buy from you?
At first this shopping trip may cause you some alarm but it may also unlock the secret to greater sales and profit.
John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of 
