A business signs a lease in February for an opening in September. Signage goes up in May and people start asking questions immediately.
There is no page, no local listing and no way to contact the new site. Enquiries go to head office, where nobody can answer local questions, or to nobody at all.
By opening week the business has lost several months of interest, and the staff who started three days earlier are being asked about parking, hours and whether a particular service is available, none of which anybody has told them.
Step 1: create the local presence before the signage
A page for the site, a local listing and a way to contact it, published as soon as anything is visible. Interest begins at the first sign of activity.
Step 2: publish an opening date and keep it current
Even approximately. A date lets people plan and an unstated one produces the same question repeatedly and no bookings.
Step 3: capture pre opening enquiries deliberately
Name, what they want and when. This list is the single most valuable asset a new site has on its opening day and almost nobody builds one.
Step 4: take bookings before opening where you can
For appointments, services or anything scheduled. Opening with a diary already partly filled is an entirely different start from opening empty.
Step 5: publish the local detail early
Parking, entrance, access, which services are available and hours. These are the questions people actually ask, which is the ground in opening hours and parking questions every restaurant gets.
Step 6: say what this site does and does not do
New locations frequently open with a subset of services. Customers assume parity with an existing site and are disappointed on their first visit.
Step 7: get the local listings right before opening
They take time to establish and a new site is invisible locally for weeks after opening if the work starts on opening day.
Step 8: decide the pricing position before any enquiry
Whether this site matches the others, and if not why, which is the ground in local pricing differences and how to explain them.
Step 9: write the local answers down before staff start
Hours, parking, services, what is nearby and anything specific to this site. New staff will be asked all of it in week one.
Step 10: plan for the launch week being the busiest
New locations get a curiosity peak, staffed by people who started days earlier. This is the single most predictable operational risk in any launch.
Step 11: keep the group answers consistent from day one
A new site inventing its own answers begins the inconsistency that takes years to correct.
Step 12: route the enquiries correctly immediately
Existing sites will receive questions about the new one and the reverse, and a customer bounced between two sites in a launch month forms a lasting impression of both.
Step 13: follow up the pre opening list on the day
Everybody who enquired before opening should hear on the day it opens. This is the highest converting contact a new site will ever make, which is the discipline in morning follow up routine.
Step 14: answer from the day the signage goes up
An assistant on a new site page that answers the opening date, the local detail, what is available and takes a booking captures months of interest that would otherwise reach nobody, and hands the new team a diary rather than an empty week. The hours question is covered in opening hours that differ by site. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under b2b.