If Package is the most misunderstood component of the three essential marketing elements of Brand, Package, and People, then this exercise will help you focus your understanding of how your business looks in the eyes of your customer.

Worry about fixes later; just now its time to do some basic Package research.

Grab your camera and take some photos! Heres what to do:

1. Go out to the exterior of your store. If you have parking right next door, back up 100 feet from the front of your store, and shoot 2-4 pictures of the parking spaces your customers use most often. Maybe you are lucky and have some reserved just for your customers. Maybe you are part of a big lot and theres no reserved parking at all. Just take a few shots as a representative sample.

2. Now, go grab a lawn chair. Or a folding chair. Something thats easy to tote out to that same parking lot. Take the chair, and set it down 30 feet away from your stores main entrancethe entrance most of your customers use. If you have a couple of entrances, take shots of both. Sit down in the lawn chair, and shoot a couple photos. Now, move the lawn chair to another location, at a different angle, but still somewhere between 30 and 45 feet from the main entry to your store.

If the entrance to your store is super-busy, you may want to snap these photos early in the morning or nearer to dusk, when theres less traffic.

Now, this isnt a job you can delegate to your staffsee, were just as interested in how you feel sitting in that chair as we are in the pictures. Youve been in the same spot a hundred times as you pulled up to your shop, but youre always in a hurry because there is some task (or fire!) you have to jump on the moment you arrive inside.

Feel kind of naked in that chair? A bit exposed? Think of how your first-time customers feel as they wheel up to your store. This is where you can really start to out-market your competitors, because once that customer gets out of her car and enters the doors to your business, she is on your turf, whether she consciously acknowledges it or not.

And by the way, are you doing everything you can to put the Welcome mat out? Do you even have a welcome mat?

OK, take some shots from several different angles, then move a bit closer- about ten feet from the doorway--and snap a few more. This should be the view of your storefront that would take up the customers entire peripheral vision.

And if your store is on the tenth floor of a high-rise, simply start at the lobby, move to the elevator, and then to the entrance to your store outside the hallway leading from the elevator. Re-trace the route the customer takes, camera in-hand.

When you're done, fold up that chair and stash it away somewhere out of sight of both customers and employees--for goodness sake dont leave it leaning up against the side of your shop. Please go inside and take a half dozen interior photos. Find shots of your signage, your staff, your merchandise racks, your customer service counter or your checkout area. Basically, sample everything your customer might see during a usual trip.

Now, go back to the area youd take a customer who has to use the phone. Yes, there are still a few poor souls out there sans-cell phone. Take a couple of sample (honest) shots there. And, lastly, take at least three shots of your restroom during the middle of an average day. Remember, no retouching of the photos is required. Just let the camera see whats really there.

3. Next, develop two or three sets of prints and pass along to two or three close friends. Its better if these are friends that havent been to the store before, or at least only come in rarely. If possible, these friends should be generally similar in age and interest to your customer base.

Along with the photos, hand a pad of sticky notes to each of your friends. Ask them to write down one or two words describing their reaction to each of the photos and then just paste the sticky note on that photo. Tell them they are not to worry about messing up the photosthese arent going in the family album. Instead, what you learn from these photos is going inside your business album--your brain.

Explain to your friends that youre simply trying to get a better idea of how people perceive your business. Ask your friends to write from their gut, from their first perception of the photo. Phrases like: seems dirty, nice color, hard to read or too high would be commonly expected comments.

Give your friends a week to go through the photos before you gather them up. You may receive some verbal comments, maybe not. What were really looking for here is the gut-level reaction people have to the photos.

4. Your job is to gather from this exercise some extraordinarily powerful business intelligence: how customers view the wrapping job of your business. Not one in ten of your competitors will take the time to run through this simple yet illuminating exercise. Through both the lens and the comments, you can acquire a fresh perspective on your shop. The next step is to get to work improving your Package.

If you dont operate from a retail business or sell on your own turf you can still use this exercise and learn from it. Simply modify the above example to fit your particular situation. Use delivery vans or company cars? Have a sales force that calls on people? Set up exhibit booths at trade shows? Get creative and get with it. Put the camera in front of the Package you present to the customer, and get some feedback. Happy learning!

2006 Marketing Hawks