My wife and I have been extraordinarily careful during these last several months, following the CDC masking and distancing guidelines and then some. We’ve canceled all personal and business travel plans for the rest of the year.

Nevertheless, cabin fever and our fleeting New England summer propelled us to reconsider and we decided to go to Provincetown, Massachusetts for a weekend. My wife said, “I want to go to a place that I know, a place run by people who take cleaning seriously.” Unfortunately, the place that she knows, our usual and fastidiously clean perch in Provincetown, was sold out for the weekend so, on the recommendation of a friend who had stayed at his favorite Inn 10 days before, we made reservations there.

I still felt reluctant. The virus is a big deal for us and we’re first-time guests at this Inn. While we have our friend’s helpful endorsement and while the Inn’s website shared “we clean X times a day” and “all guests must wear masks in the common area”, we have no personal experience with these innkeepers.

“What would boost your comfort level?”, I asked myself.

I wanted to know, “HOW do you do that?” What does “clean” mean in the expression, “we clean X times a day”?  WHO cleans? HOW do they clean? With WHAT do they clean? How do you assure consistency?

If we were buying a hockey puck, I wouldn’t care about any of that. But, because stakes are high, and because I’m a “first time buyer” with no reserve of trust on which to rely, I want them to walk me through it, tell me how it’s done, help me feel comfortable that they can really pull this off and that I won’t in two weeks regret our decision to stay there.

Nick Miller trains bankers to sell to small businesses. He is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.