A reader asked me something after a piece about which small businesses actually buy an app: that article describes a test you run in your own head before calling. But what do you actually say on the phone? What is the one question that sorts the prospects fastest?
It is a better question than the one I had answered, so here is the answer properly.
Don't ask the obvious thing
The instinct is to ask about frequency directly. “How often do your customers come back?” It seems like exactly the right question, and it is nearly useless.
Every owner says they have lots of regulars. They are not lying; they genuinely believe it, because the regulars are the ones they remember. The person who came once and never returned left no impression at all. You are asking someone to estimate a number from a sample they cannot see, and they will answer confidently and wrongly.
Ask anything that invites self-assessment and you get the owner's self-image, not their business.
The question that works
“When you want to tell your customers something, what do you do?”
It sounds like small talk. It is phrased as a practical question about their routine, not an evaluation, so they answer without any instinct to perform. And the answer tells you almost everything you need.
Because to tell your customers something, you must first have customers you can reach a second time. The question tests for a retained audience without ever mentioning one.
How to read the answer
There are roughly four replies, and each one is a different conversation.
“I post on our Facebook page” or Instagram, or the WhatsApp group. This is the most common good answer. They have an audience, they have the habit of reaching it, and they are quietly frustrated that only a fraction sees each post. You are not introducing a new idea, you are selling a better version of something they already do. Ask what reach a post gets them; most know, and the number is usually depressing enough to make your case for you.
“I send the newsletter” or “I text the list”. The strongest answer there is. Somebody who maintains a mailing list has already decided that keeping customers is worth work. They understand open rates, they understand why reaching people matters, and the pricing conversation will be short.
“I put a sign up” or “I tell them when they come in”. This one is ambiguous and worth probing. A busy café owner who tells people at the counter may well have a strong returning audience and simply no digital habit. One follow-up sorts it: “if you had to reach them tomorrow without waiting for them to walk in, could you?” If the answer is no and that bothers them, you have a prospect. If the answer is no and they shrug, you do not.
“I'd advertise” or a pause, or confusion at the question. This is the one to listen for. It means there is no group of people they think of as “our customers” — there is just a flow of strangers. An app has nothing to do in that business. They will buy it if you push, use it for a month, and blame you in the third. Thank them and move on.
It also hands you the pitch
The useful part is that the answer tells you what to compare yourself to, in their words rather than yours.
If they said Facebook, you are competing with organic reach, and you can talk about the difference between a post a tenth of them might see and a notification almost all of them will. If they said newsletter, you are talking about open rates and the fact that nobody under thirty opens email. If they said “I tell them at the counter”, you are talking about the customers who did not come in this week, which is the ones the business is quietly losing.
You have not had to explain what an app is. You have explained how it fixes something they just told you annoys them.
The backup question
Occasionally the first one does not land — usually with businesses where the owner is not the one dealing with customers. Then:
“Roughly what share of your takings comes from people who've bought before?”
Most owners either know this number or can estimate it within ten points, because it maps onto how they think about the business. And the ones who have no idea at all have answered you anyway: if nobody has ever needed to know, it is because nobody comes back.
What not to ask
- “Have you thought about an app?” Everyone has thought about an app. You will get a polite yes and learn nothing, and you have framed the call as a pitch in the first sentence.
- “Do you have a website?” You can check this yourself in ten seconds, and you should have checked it before dialling. Asking questions you could have answered yourself signals that you did not prepare.
- Anything about budget, early. You do not yet know whether you want this client. Qualifying on money before qualifying on fit is how you end up selling to the wrong person at the right price.
Leaving the call early is a skill
If the answer puts them in the fourth group, end it kindly and quickly. Not because the call is lost — because it was never there, and the time you spend persuading somebody into a rhythm they do not have is time taken from the next five calls.
There is also a version of this that pays off later. “Honestly, an app wouldn't do much for you right now — you'd need people coming back regularly first.” Owners remember the person who talked them out of spending money. A surprising number come back a year later when something has changed, and they arrive already trusting you.
Where this fits
This is the first two minutes of a call. What happens after a yes — what to quote and the floor below which the work does not pay — is in what to charge a small business for their app. What it costs you to be in a position to say yes is in what it actually costs to start. And the shape of the business as a whole, including the part that breaks at about forty clients, is in selling apps to local businesses.