National Clothesline

Can you believe it is February and March Madness is around the corner? How is your hometown college team doing?

I get more enjoyment watching the college teams than the professional teams. The kids play hard every minute. As my wife Barbara says, “You can wait for the last five minutes to watch a pro game.”

Speaking of games, how is your business game doing? Are you defeating your competition or are they beating you?

One person called me and said his sales are off 30 percent and he is operating his plant three days per week.

As so often happens he then asked for some free advice. I told him the advice I will provide is going to be in the February edition of National Clothesline, so he has had to wait as bit.

You might say this month’s question is “What free advice can you give me to improve my business?” If the man reads my monthly article on a consistent basis, he will be getting all the free advice he could use. What kind of a businessperson is he?

Let us look at him or you as a businessperson. How decisive are you? Can you make decisions about your company without procrastinating? A good businessperson deals with the problem directly and is decisive regarding the operation of the company.

Many people in the drycleaning industry have excellent skills in the cleaning and spotting department, or at the counter, but those skills may not translate into being a successful business owner and operator.

Being decisive is skill set number one.

Next, there are three things that you need to consider, planning, policies, and procedures. If you meet with your staff once per week and review those three things, you are being proactive in your business. This meeting would require no more than one hour per week. If you only have a few employees, call all of them together, and go over the planning, policies and procedures.

If your company has departments, hold departmental meetings. No matter the size of your company, you will be problem-solving and reviewing the goals that you have established.

What is important is that you are being proactive in the operation of your business. You are working on your business with the consistency that most owners lack. There are areas in your company that need to be continually revisited to provide that consistency. If you set up a schedule for weekly or even bi-weekly meetings to cover various areas of the business and then repeat the schedule, you will achieve consistency.

Week Number One you can discuss increasing your staff’s skills with additional training. When you do this, no matter the number of employees, you create a team atmosphere. Everybody in the company is on the same page.

Talk with the staff about improving current procedures. Then discuss policies in the same fashion.

You must involve your staff to improve your operation. If you want a business that can run without you, you need a policies and procedures manual. As an example, I created a policies and procedures manual for my route department and then modified it for my counter sales staff.

Week Number Two can be a company strategy discussion. Creating a marketing strategy is one example. Bring your staff together to discuss the strategy so they can understand how you are marketing and what you want to achieve.

You can talk about customer loyalty. Explain how the product they produce and the service they provide can increase loyalty and referrals to grow the business and the employee’s income.

Another example might be how the telephones are answered. This subject would be included in the policies and procedures manual.

Week Number Three will cover customer acquisition. A possible topic might be new and better ways to attract customers. Packaging, or how other companies drive customers to their door, are examples of discussion topics.

Your employees’ responses might surprise you when they tell you what Kohl’s or Target does to get them to shop. They can also talk about what they do not like and why they have not returned to certain vendors.

Week Number Four is company appearance and presentation. I hate to think about the plants I have walked into that are not clean and the dirty route trucks that sit out front. The fact you are in the cleaning business means your sales area, your route trucks, and any other visual element of the company represents the company image.

A large screen TV with a closed loop video that tells the company story is a good example of presenting your organization and you as the owner. Do you like the idea of creating a video with you introducing your company? You could go to the various departments and explain what your employees do to insure customer satisfaction.

In week Number Five, the big tunas can be talked about. It is necessary that those who spend the most are not lost. Following up with the big tuna customers and creating better relationships is a high priority. The same would hold true with creating strong community relationships.

I read somewhere that an ounce of planning equals a pound of results. If you start your weekly meetings tomorrow, you will be taking the first step in creating a better organization. It will only be one hour out of the day.

Time management can be the subject of week Number Six. How to eliminate wasted time is a hot topic. Your staff knows who is wasting time on the phone or in other areas of the business. Creating the team atmosphere helps with elimination of people being afraid to talk about the subject.

Week Number Seven is one of the best topics — goal setting. Improving production, reducing the number of do-over garments, increasing the number of new customers, decreasing the number of lost customers are all subjects of discussion.

Brainstorm with your staff and ask them to make suggestions. Do that every week and you will be amazed at what they discuss.

For the eighth and final week, talk with your employees about going the extra mile for your customers. What extra things can they do to cause your customers to talk about your company? What can the staff do for customers that would be unexpected?

You now have eight separate topics that can be talked about over eight consecutive weeks.

After those eight weeks, you start over again with the week one subject. You are creating a consistent program of meeting with your staff and improving every aspect of your business. You are getting feedback from the people who you might never have listened to before.

You will create a team atmosphere with everybody working towards the same goals. That sounds like basketball, doesn’t it?