This week, we talk about what things that we predict will change as small businesses come of out COVID-19. From cannibalization and customer service, to chickens and we dig into how American businesses will flex to meet the new needs and expectations of their customers. Give us a shout if you have a prediction of your own for small business!
Today we are going to talk about our predictions post COVID-19 for small businesses. Now, this is something that we have been talking about as things have been moving forward. Seeing the changes that have happened and also because our intern Darby is the bomb and she told us that we need to do more timely content with what’s been happening in the world. This is an episode for that. We also have another one coming up after this that will be about an entrepreneur that’s working in the COVID response as well. The first thing that we have, Ruthie is going to give a prediction for us.
How Consumers Buy Is Going to Change Dramatically
Ruthie: Our very first prediction it’s in regards to how classic commerce looks. When we say classic commerce we’re thinking the old-timey door-to-door salesman, Kirby vacuums that kind of style that more on commission-based sales. In a more modern sense this style is used in construction and roofing that are based more on a relationship with the customer. Where you would a demonstration or in terms of clothing you have fitting room assistants. What we are predicting is that that is going to pause for a significant amount of time and it’s going to hurt revenue in some ways for people who operate under that but then it’s going to surge again. We are going to have this uptick in that specific style of sales and marketing because that’s what we are going towards right now.
Everybody wants that personalized experience and they want to be able to have things prepared for them before they even get into the store. What we are thinking is that it will look like AI (Artificial Intelligence). You learn about the customers and create a customer profile, in terms of their likes and dislikes. When they come into the store after the conversations that you had with them you already have a portfolio for them. You make a customer profile and then you have all the materials there for them so it’s a quick and easy process for them; in and out. That’s what we predict for more than classic style of sales and marketing
Brick & Mortar Stores Are Going to Get Way More Personalized
Bekkah: We thinking it’s going to get really personalized. The retail businesses that are going to stay as a brick-and-mortar are going to be way more specific to the customer and make you want to come in because they have excellent customer service.
Ruthie: I think that people are really seeing that right now in COVID, just how valuable it is to have solid customer service departments.
Bekkah: The next thing we predict is that grocery pickup will actually start to cannibalize its profits. If you have never heard of cannibalization within business it’s basically where you create something that because it’s so simplistic or it solves a customer problem it actually decreases your overall revenue. An example of this in the past was Tide Pods. Tide Pods came out. They were super cool. I believe Procter & Gamble put them out. They advertised them to everybody there were commercials.
People started buying them like crazy and then all of a sudden they realized, “Oh, no! We’re actually losing profit margin because people are no longer overfilling their soap! They have the exact amount they need for every load. We’re actually losing sales over time.” When they realized, “Man, this is great technology, but it’s actually killing us because we are telling everyone this is exactly how much soap you need!” They were buying less of it because of this. They cannibalized their sales.
Ruthie: I just keep thinking about how I fill up the laundry detergent. I’ll pour some in and say, “Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little more!” And I just dump it in there and think, “Well, that was kind of dirty!” here’s definitely a mentality shift to, “All I need to do is throw in this one pod or two pods as opposed to just guessing and saucing in a bunch of detergent.”
Bekkah: In terms of grocery pickup we think that’s going to happen because people are going to get so used to doing grocery pick up that they are not going to want to come in the store anymore. That’s actually going to hurt the clearance section. It’s going to hurt those impulse buys. They’re going to really have to invest in impulse buys via eCommerce. When you’re standing in line at any store those impulse buys happen. H&M is notorious for having so many cute little things all the way up to the checkout counter that you have to keep wandering through to get there. You buy stuff from that.
That’s consumer data that they’ve seen, they know it’s true. Grocery stores are going to hurt from that if people aren’t going into the store to get their groceries. I really am wondering if Walmart is specifically recognizing this and making it so that you have to order your groceries three days in advance. They have this for you but you have to be an ultra planner so that way people don’t get too used to it where they don’t come in the store.
Small Town Grocery Stores Are Going to Need to Get Creative
Ruthie: We were discussing what that would look like for small-town grocery stores. We think that in order for small-town grocery stores to really keep competitive and stay open they are going to have to really up their online presence. Build that up and actually have some sort of ordering platform. As we said, they have to be careful with that because it can cannibalize their profits in the long run but maybe running special offers and pickup or something like that. This way they can stay up to speed with what the bigger grocery stores are doing.
Bekkah: Or going a step further. There’s a grocery store near Lake Vermilion and they have a cool opportunity that they have capitalized on. You can call in and say, “Hey, I’m coming up to my cabin. This is what I need.” Then they put a list together. I’m pretty sure the grocery store keeps a key for everyone’s cabin in a folder. They’ll go out and they will grocery shop all of it for a $500 order, go out to that person’s cabin, put everything in the fridge, and everything in the cupboards for them. When that person gets up there all their stuff is ready for them. Smaller grocery stores are really going to need to think outside the box in how they’re going to serve customers better than the other grocery stores. Which comes back to customer service being a huge thing. For a lot of them, they’re not going to be able to compete on price.
Ruthie: That ties in with our next point which is that digital presence and delivery services will not only continue to be important to the business market but they will be expected. That’s something that we’re seeing right now. People who are going to these different businesses or grocery stores expect to have that delivery service provided. I think that’s definitely something that will continue even after all the COVID-19 stuff. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen commercials on TV that have been promoting “our curbside pickup”. That’s the solid keyword of the season, “Curbside pickup”. I think people are going to continue to expect that even if it’s not actually helpful for the business owners but customers will expect that from the businesses.
Bekkah: Just last week I posted something not too snarky, but maybe a little, playing off of that. I took a picture of a latte that my husband made me. I posted on Instagram and said, “Bedside pickup.” He was so nice and brought me a drink as I was waking up. We are already seeing it, we’re already laughing about it. But it’s a good thing in some regards. The next thing we are seeing happen is a lot more people are going to embrace self-sufficiency. The do-it-yourself style aspects of things. I think actually there’s going to be two different waves of this. Smart people are going to want to do the do-it-yourself videos and understand that and figure out how they can do things. But they will also calculate what their time is worth and know what is worth paying someone else to do.
That’s something that I see brands are going to have to figure out how they’re you need to empower their customers to be more self-sufficient. For people who still don’t want to come into the store or the restaurant for a meal. What does that look like? Some of the restaurants are saying they have a family pack and it feeds six people. We have a big family. We never went out to eat when we were a little because it was so expensive. If there were more things for bigger families like that I think we would have probably done more of that as well. Brands are going to be shaping the do-it-yourself in a different way.
Facebook Market Place & Instagram Shopping Are Going to Explode in Small Business
Ruthie: We have a couple of different points on Facebook marketplace and what Facebook’s role will be in our new world post-COVID-19. We are seeing a shift with Amazon as well and we’ll talk a little bit more about that later, but we’re seeing people shift away from Amazon and try to look for more platforms to utilize in this time. We think that there’s going to be a surge of using Facebook marketplace and Facebook retail. I don’t know if it’ll go global, I don’t think that’s where it’s going to head. Facebook Marketplace will probably stay more local but I think that it’s going to be utilized a lot more than it was before. Bekkah had a little bit to say about that.
Bekkah: Facebook launched shops they’ve been testing it out for a while. I don’t know if you have been in Facebook marketplace at all. You see different little almost like little stores in there. I’ve been watching it. They officially made this announcement saying, “By the way, we’re going to be rolling this out.” They were already doing it but they said that it was to help more local businesses endure everything that is going on. I think, “Yeah, right.” You were already doing it anyway. But it’s a way for people to streamline payments and services with their products online they’re going to be doing some stuff with Instagram too.
Which they have already been testing and my first impression of this was that they are going to take out Shopify but actually they’re trying to utilize Shopify, Bigcommerce, and WooCommerce as different integrations. They know that they would totally eliminate them if they didn’t. That’s a lot of R&D. Using what is there from other people and making them feel important. I think that’s a good thing. What I think they’re also looking into is trying to figure out how to catalog things and help you make purchases directly from your chat window. That’s something to keep in mind and maybe even start trying out. I think that will just continue to grow. Obviously early adopters are going to get way more exposure because anytime Facebook rolls something new out and they want to encourage people to use it they help the first people that are doing it get way more exposure than they normally would later on. It’s a good thing to think about if you haven’t thought about it yet.
Ruthie: If you run ads through Facebook you usually have a representative that you can work with. Otherwise, Facebook does not really have a way that you can contact them pretty much in any way, actually. You can submit a support ticket sometimes but for the most part, they will provide access to some sort of help if you have a paid ads account, but otherwise, you won’t. It might be worth it to start a paid account So you can get help in trying to utilize the chat features and streamlining your sales process. That’s something to think about. Look towards more payments, processing, and product selling on Facebook.
Small Business Facebook Messaging & Having Multiple Ways of Contact Are Going to Become Expected
Bekkah: The next thing we have is messaging. Sticking with Facebook for two more points. Messaging on Facebook pages and on websites is going to be utilized more. Your actual email. I don’t know how many older businesses don’t have an email address. This is a big deal! It’s going to be even more of a big deal. Those things are going to be expected to be able to get in contact with you. Especially for smaller businesses. What we’re seeing right now is that you call someone and their phone line is busy and they’re losing business because they’re on the phone with somebody else.
Ruthie: Test that. Test that for your business. That was something that we did some experimenting with when we were working with other businesses. Call and see what the user experience is like for the people who call into the business. Are the phone lines always busy? Do that for your business. If you have people running you’re answering the department or you have a call center, call the call center. Call your landline at your business and see what that experience is like. Sometimes you might just need to fire the person in your front office. Maybe they’re just really bad at answering phones. Maybe they don’t at all or maybe they’re just really rude.
Bekkah: Before you jump to firing, have a good talk!
Ruthie: Yeah. That’s fair! Do that recon on your own business and feel out what that user experience is like. If you are someone coming to your website and looking to buy your product or work with your company, would it be a good experience for you or would you think, “This is really difficult to find information. I can’t contact them and when I do try to contact them I don’t get any response back. The response time is really slow or I can’t get through to anyone.” Experiment with your own company because I think that that’s going to be really important in the coming months.
Live Chickens Are Going to Be Free on The Internet
Bekkah: The next thing we have is chickens are going to be free on Facebook marketplace three months from now. This actually is a prediction from my friend Sarah, shout out Sarah. We were talking about this because so many people when there was a meat shortage scare and there weren’t any eggs and all the stuff started buying baby chickens like crazy. All of the places that have them at the beginning of the year had to double order and then some.
They sold over 500 chickens and they usually only sell like 200 or something. I have a feeling that they’re going to be all over Facebook marketplace for free. As Sarah was talking about it she said that meat birds you can’t butcher for six to nine months or something. People are going to realize that it’s a lot of work and then they’re going to think, “I don’t want to do this anymore!” Then put them for free because they don’t want them. And they feel bad killing them.
Ruthie: So be on the lookout for chickens if you’re in the market.
Bekkah: If you see free chickens you need to tag us in it. We want to see it.
E-Commerce Will Diversity Further Due to Amazon Cutting Out Non-Essential Sellers
Bekkah: Another prediction we have is that people are going to start diversifying from Amazon to sell on their own and not be fully reliant on them. In the past, this is something a lot of my friends have talked about. They’ve said, “I’m really trying to strategize diversification” Even before COVID-19. The biggest thing that we’ve seen and Ruthie has done some research on is how terrible your competitors can be to try to block your seller account. There are so many things you have to go through to get it back up and running.
Then when COVID hit, Amazon basically blocked non-essentials. What they considered non-essential products to save room in their warehouses for fulfilled by Amazon deliveries. What that did is actually put a ton of people out of work, because they have all this product that they’re no longer allowed to sell on Amazon. Now they have to figure out how to get that product on the market in a different way. I think we’re going to see a lot more eCommerce websites popping up to try to diversify.
Small Businesses Are Going to Do Barter and Service Trading
Ruthie: The other thing that I think we’re going to start seeing is bartering and service trading. This can look a lot of different ways but specifically with small businesses what this can look like is maybe you have a small business that does accounting or something like that and someone else has a space that you can use. Maybe it’s a conference center or something like that. You can say, “I will work in your books. I will do this part of your accounting process if you will allow me to host an event here.” Or something like that. It’s a trade of services and Bekkah is going to tell us a little bit more about that.
Bekkah: Shout out to Aaron Bloyer who predicted this so long ago. Probably even six to eight months ago. People are going to have a skill set and they’re going to approach another person with a different skill set and say, “I’ll do this for you if you can do this for me.” Then they work out how much they get paid an hour normally this is how much the other person gets paid, so this is equivalent to the service trade and we’re going to see a lot more people doing that. I think it’s going to happen within the construction industry a lot, too. You are going to see people say, “I can drywall like none other. You do Electrical. I’ll help you with this project. You help me with this project.” I think we’re going to see a lot more of that moving forward.
A company that does this so that you can report it on your taxes because you’re doing a lot of it, is this company called BizX. I don’t know. I’m looking into it a little bit to see how it works. It’s a company in California. Say a restaurant says, “You can have X amount of free meals at my restaurant if you can redo this for me. Or tile this area of the kitchen.” People are doing those kinds of trades already through this commerce site. They have ways you can find other people to do stuff for you. Definitely something to check out as this BizX company is digitizing bartering and tracking it.
WFH (Work From Home), Co-Working, Communal Space, & Call Center Changes Ahead
Bekkah: A higher percentage of businesses will accommodate working from home. People are going to start also going to having less rented space in corporations but maybe more co-working. Not communal as in the actual physical office. Tell us about the communal part, Ruthie.
Ruthie: Kind of like renting in an apartment but you’re renting a cubicle or something similar. Someone has space and you go there and work. You can work anywhere in the country but that’s where you set up shop if you need it to be a little bit more formal. You can work from home but then if you need to be a little more formal, you can go and rent that cubicle for the day. I think we’re going to see a move towards that as we see a lot more people working from home. The other thing that I think will happen in a more corporate setting is we’re going to see a lot less communal space in terms of big, big offices.
Have you ever seen the movie The Intern? I don’t know if you have ever seen that before. It has Anne Hathaway in it. It’s one of my favorite movies. Anyway they have this workspace that’s just massive and they have this huge call center. It is basically this open floor plan which I’ve worked in an open floor plan before and if you want to have a private meeting or a phone call, it is a nightmare.
You can hear everything going on around you and everyone else can hear everything going on around you. It’s a good idea but it doesn’t really work all the time. I think we’re going to see a move away from that. The larger group where everybody’s all in the same space. I think we’re going to see more people working in smaller cubicles. I think like what we were talking about earlier with customer service. We’re going to see businesses gaining more robust calling centers. Having their phone lines up and running and easily accessed. We’re going to see a lot more of that.
More Kids Are Going to Start Getting Involved in Entrepreneurship
Bekkah: Here’s a couple of other things that we think for the small business side we are going to see a lot more of. Small business owners are going to get their kids involved again in the business. A lot more homeschooling. We’ve already seen a ton of people looking at homeschooling. I’ve already had a ton of people ask me, “What does it look like to homeschool? You were homeschooled, what do I do? How do I do that?” I think as we see the next school year coming up. They might be doing different things in the public school, a lot of people are going to say,” You know what, my kids can learn at home because I’ve been teaching them this last year and we can do stuff together as well as work on the business.” Going back to
the old days.
