Mind the Gap: What's Between Your Business and Your Next Customer?

If you've ever travelled on the Underground in London, you'll be familiar with three words:

"Mind the gap."

They're painted in large letters along station platforms, and recorded announcements regularly remind passengers to "mind the gap" when getting on and off the train.

The warning refers to the space between the edge of the platform and the train.

If you've never travelled on the Tube, all those warnings might give you the impression that the gap is enormous.

Usually, it's only a few inches.

Of course, the gap is considerably bigger when the train isn't in the station.

You can often spot the tourists. They're the ones looking down and carefully negotiating those few inches while commuters, who stopped hearing the announcement years ago, are trying to get around them and onto the train.

But businesses have gaps too.

And rather than MIND THE GAP, the warning should probably be:

What's the Gap?

It's whatever is preventing a potential customer from becoming an actual customer.

Something, somewhere, is breaking the connection between what your business offers and the person who might buy it.

If there were no gap, that person wouldn't still be a potential customer.

They'd be a customer.

So where is it?

Sometimes the First Clue Is Very Simple

• The phone isn't ringing.
• Or the contact forms aren't arriving.
• Or people are visiting the website but nobody is buying.
• Or you're paying for advertising but can't see much happening as a result.

Recognizing that a gap exists is usually the easy part.

Finding it can be considerably harder.

You have to look.

And sometimes you have to look in places that don't immediately appear to have anything to do with marketing.

Look Under Every Rock

Suppose you're spending money generating new sales leads.

The advertising works. Someone is interested. They contact the company.

Success?

Not necessarily.

What happens next?

• Perhaps the sales staff are busy looking after existing customers and aren't following up quickly enough.
• Perhaps nobody is monitoring how long it takes for an inquiry to receive a response.
• Perhaps some leads aren't receiving a response at all.

I've encountered exactly that situation.

In one case, the person running the company was convinced it wasn't happening.

It was.

That's a pretty substantial gap.

The business was effectively paying to generate prospects and then allowing some of those prospects to disappear.

The Gap May Be Somewhere Completely Unexpected

Talk to employees throughout the organization.

• The person answering the telephone may have noticed something management hasn't.
• Your salespeople may be hearing the same objection repeatedly.
• Customers may be asking for something you don't currently offer.
• Your website may be attracting visitors but making it difficult for them to contact you.
• Your advertising may simply be reaching the wrong people.

And sometimes the problem occurs after someone has already become a customer.

Years ago, I saw businesses lose customers because accounting personnel were unnecessarily abrasive when following up on overdue invoices.

That's still a gap.

Look at the Entire Journey

Spend some time with your salespeople.

• Listen to how inquiries are handled.
• Look at your website through the eyes of someone who has never seen it before.
• Ask where leads are coming from.
• Find out what happens to those leads.
• Talk to customers.
• Talk to employees.

And perhaps most importantly, don't assume something is working simply because that's how you've always done it.

Commuters on the London Underground eventually stop hearing "Mind the gap."

Businesses can do exactly the same thing.

When you see something every day, sometimes you stop seeing it at all.

That's when a fresh pair of eyes can be surprisingly valuable.

Find It. Mend It. Keep Looking.

Once you've found the gap, don't assume the job is finished.

There may be another one.

Or the gap you found may be bigger than you originally thought.

Businesses change. Customers change. Employees change. Competitors change.

New gaps appear.

So perhaps businesses need their own version of that familiar London Underground announcement:

…And that's my Two Pence Worth.