When the customer asks; the answer is YES.

Pressed4Time is not the least expensive service in the marketplace; to be successful we must offer something else. That something else is time, convenience and expertise.  We remove hassles.  We make life easier.

Any time a customer asks us if it’s possible to do something the answer must be yes: deliver off the normal route day or provide a rush service.  If it relates to our business (SAVING THEM TIME), find a way to say yes.  Mobile oil change?  Home cleaning services?  Window cleaning?  You can’t provide these services, but you can easily find someone who does.  Make a call to locate these services for your customer and establish a referral relationship.  If they ask you to remodel their kitchen the answer is no.  A customer’s request must be reasonable and related to our business.

Also, save your customers money whenever you can.  If you can repair for $5 rather than replace for $15, do it.  If the repair fails and it must be replaced, give them a credit for the failed $5 repair.  They’ll never forget you and you’ll make a lot more money than the $5 credit.

CHECKLIST

• The moment the customer says, “Can you…” you should be prepared to answer yes, even if you can’t immediately figure out how to do what the customer wants.
• Stretch.  You don’t clean carpets or upholstery but your customer needs it done.  Find a service that does.
• Don’t charge for “extra” service if you can help it.  If it’s something a friend would do for another friend, don’t charge.  You delivered a rush order on a Saturday, no up charge.  Don’t worry, you’ll more than make up for it in future business.

Saying yes and saving customers time & money are some of the major points that will distinguish our quality service, build our reputation and create VERY SATISFIED LOYAL CUSTOMERS WHO BECOME ADVOCATES FOR YOUR BUSINESS.

A successful business should be operated with external eyes, ears and points of view.  Also, if we accept the old comic strip character Pogo’s words as truth: “we have met the enemy and he is us”, then we clearly need a bit of assistance to battle the enemy.  Let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that we don’t act in our own best interest at all times. We set goals, let them slip away, or worse, we don’t set goals and operate on autopilot. Maybe we do things part way or to the point of being “good enough” rather than how we know they can be done.  The point is that most of us know we can perform better than we currently are.  If you want to increase your current level of business activity there is help available!

The inevitable setbacks can be difficult when you don’t have someone to help you up, dust you off and encourage you to try again.  Sometimes the pain of a setback is so intense that you swear you’ll never go through it again.  But the ability to come back from rejection goes hand-in-hand with breaking down your goals into small, doable tasks.

Help is available.  However, just any willing ear is not necessarily your best choice.  Above all you need honesty, sincere interest and some useful wisdom from the person you choose.  Someone is out there for you and usually all you have to do is ask.

Achieving your goals should feel exhilarating.  It should make you eager to get up in the morning.  If it doesn’t, you need to break your goals down into even tinier parts.  You’re still trying to do things by yards instead of inches.  But every achievement, no matter how small, gives you confidence to tackle the next goal.  And when you look back on how far you’ve come, you’ll realize that achieving your goals is not only possible – it can be inevitable!

AN ACTION PLAN

Break your goals into small chunks – Most goals are abandoned because they are too big and vague. Break your goal down to small tasks; choose a concrete and measurable action.

Write your goals down – If you write a goal down, it is more likely to come to pass. Putting goals on paper makes you more committed to the outcome and, you’ll find, it’s therapeutic to cross items off when they are completed.

TAPE YOUR WRITTEN GOALS ON YOUR COMPUTER MONITOR.

Commit time daily - You don’t have to commit hours at a time to accomplish a goal, you just have to focus. The greatest advances are the sum total of a series of small efforts. Do something that moves you closer to accomplishing your goal every day.

Talk to yourself - Repetition is the mother of success. Remind yourself of your goals every day.

Paint yourself into a corner – Make yourself accountable by telling others your plans. They become interested in your progress and check in with you. This inspires you to keep going and overcome your obstacles. It is hard not to achieve when others are watching and encouraging us.

Review your goals and your progress weekly – Question each goal as things can and will change.  If your priorities have changed, drop the goal from your list.  Ask yourself “why” when you’re not making progress; find out what’s in your way.

Pat yourself on the back as you achieve each goal.

The human brain receives thousands of pieces of information every second, flooding in from the senses.  Setting personal goals creates awareness so an individual suddenly starts noticing things related to the goal they might have overlooked or not given any attention if they had not set that goal.  Why is that?  Because your RAS has been activated – MY WHAT?

Remember when you first started to drive your Ferrari?  All of a sudden, you started seeing more Ferraris on the streets.  Were they there before or did they suddenly appear?  What is it that provokes our attention?  Scientific research has established the fact that the Reticular Activating System (RAS), a group of cells at the base of your brain stem (about the size of a little finger) serves as a little control center sorting and evaluating incoming data.  It’s responsible for filtering out the urgent stuff from the unimportant so that you can function properly.

The RAS is the attention center in the brain.  It is the key to “turning on your brain,” and seems to be the center of motivation.  The RAS receives thousands of messages each second.  Everything you see, hear, smell, feel and touch is a message entering your brain.  The RAS filters through all the messages and decides which ones will get treatment – that is, stimulate the brain.  Even though the cerebrum is the center for high level thought, it is unresponsive unless this reticular formation sends a signal to begin the data processing.  Here’s the hard part.  What causes some messages to get through the filter and others to be blocked out?

One of the things we’ve learned from working with our Pressed4Time franchisees is that we tend to pay attention to the things that are important to us at the time.  If our currently dominant thoughts are about marketing to Human Resource Directors (HRD), we’ll start seeing opportunities for access to HRDs that we never knew existed.  We’ll hear conversations about HRDs.  We’ll pick up ideas relating to Human Resource Departments and even notice names of HRDs in the Sunday newspaper.

In other words, the RAS will pass through anything even remotely related to the important issue – Human Resource Directors.  From a practical point of view, for you this means if you want to solve a problem or achieve a goal, keep it at the top of your mind.  Think about it, talk about it, write about it and imagine it completed.  This is one of the reasons why visualization works so well for athletes and why it is important to review your goals frequently.

Writing triggers the RAS, which in turn sends a signal to the cerebral cortex: ‘Wake up! Pay attention! Don’t miss this detail!’  Once you write down a goal, your brain will be working overtime to see you get it, and will alert you to the signs and signals that were there all the time.  Therefore, it’s not crucial to understand exactly HOW you’ll achieve your goals when you first set them.  Trust that your RAS will point out what you need to know along the way.

Obviously, it takes a lot more than simply writing a goal down to make it happen, but the act of committing your goals to paper not only starts the conscious process, but also the subconscious process.  When a person repeatedly thinks about, and re-writes a goal, the brain gets focused and suddenly becomes aware of related matters and needed resources which are important in the realization of the goal.  It is interesting to know that there is a physiological reason why goals work.

Having explained the reasons why establishing goals is important and works, the next question is: Is there some goal setting formula or strategy that can be employed to increase your chances of success?  Thankfully the answer is YES!  Stay tuned to our next post.

Is the economy taking its toll on your business? Are you letting it happen, or are you seizing the opportunities of business ownership and taking control?  First and foremost you’ve got to adopt the mindset of a business builder.  You were there when you started your business; perhaps some of you never left. To reignite the process you must establish specific goals and develop a plan to get you there.

Been down the goal setting road before and ended up frustrated, not achieving those goals?  Have too many defeats and disappointments caused you to give up? Then you should know that a very simple secret can make the difference between success and failure. This proven method has worked for thousands of years. It’s so simple it sounds like a cliché, but the truth is that every human achievement uses this principle:

Mile by mile, life’s a trial.  Yard by yard, life is hard.  But inch by inch, life’s a cinch!

That little poem has been attributed to everyone from Lao Tzu to Napoleon Hill. Regardless of who came up with it, this sentiment can help you dust off your old, underachieved goals or give you the courage to start working on new ones.

Often, the problems most folks have achieving their goals are not related to the size of the goals but how they try to achieve them.  Ours is an instant gratification culture, we want everything right now.  We don’t want to wait; and something that will take years, forget about it!

But the most worthwhile things in life do take time.  A college education takes at least four years–longer if you go part-time.  Starting and running a successful business takes time, patience and perseverance.

You may have thought that you broke your goal down into small enough chunks, but maybe you need to go even smaller–and master that–before you can achieve.  Almost any task can be broken down into smaller steps.

Before we get into the “how” of goal setting and management let’s review the “why” of establishing goals at all.

We’ll start with a simple statement: Without goals you don’t go anywhere!

Why?

Setting goals creates awareness.  An individual may suddenly start noticing things related to a goal which might be overlooked or not paid any attention if the goal had not been set.  Whenever you see anything worthwhile being done, it is probably because someone is behind it with a passion, a belief and a goal!

Have you set goals, personal or business, and failed to achieve them?  Here is the crucial question: WHY?

The answer is simple: Because you did not have a strong enough desire.  You may argue with that: “But I did set goals with a strong desire and still I didn’t get there!” Sorry, the desire was not strong enough.  This is about INTENSE desire; in other words, a PASSION. Is your passion on the level of someone like Steve Jobs?

Rocket fuel is powerful.  The energy it releases boggles the mind.  Intense desire can do the same for humans when they set goals.  How do you identify intense desire, passion? It’s what keeps people working all hours, up early, late to bed. The desire dominates conversation, thinking, and actions.  Question: Where do desires start?  How do they form?

A desire starts in the mind.  Most desires come into the mind and are quickly forgotten in the everyday activity of life.  But keep thinking about it, keep your mind focused on it and what happens?  The desire gets stronger, action follows.

Since we have been advised to not let these blog posts get too long, we’ll save the fascinating stuff for our next post!.

Alfred E Neuman

The answer to Mr. Neuman’s question is: “It’s hard not to”.  The truth is that ‘worry’ won’t get you through it.  Worry might turn your feet to cement, so the only intelligent thing to do is turn your ‘worry’ into action.   You can’t do anything about the larger economy: you can affect your company’s. No matter how  much deeper/shallower, longer/shorter this economic upheaval is, there is some good news/bad news.  The good news is, as a small business owner how you fair is in your hands.  The bad news is, how you fair is in your hands.  As a business owner you are the determining factor whether your company’s economic condition improves, stays the same or slides downhill.

Here are some predictions: customer yields will continue to decrease, orders will come in less frequently from each customer, and extending your reach to the next new customer will be challenging.  However, people still want and need services and the vast majority of the working population will keep their jobs.

There is only one response to a downturn in the economy and that is to sell your way through it!  Easy for us to say and lots of work for you.

Here is an excerpt from an internal Pressed4Time newsletter that may help stimulate some selling juices for your particular business:

Pressed4Tme has enormous advantages over most retail businesses: we’re a delivered service.  Fixed location businesses have fewer options to extend their reach to new customers during economic slow downs, they can lower prices (usually the beginning of the end) or get creative with marketing and hope someone will notice. We, on the other hand, can go meet and talk to people in their offices and homes. This doesn’t cost a lot of money, only hard work and shoe leather. The fact is your goal for customer acquisition each month should be at least 30 new customers.  Is this goal easily reached – hell no!  Your sales closure rate might decrease, the river might rise or the sky might fall.  Rather than picking up a new office for every 4 doors you walk through it might require 8 or 9 doors during this period; or, rather than receiving a referral from one out of three customers, it might be one out of six – it’s a numbers game.  You can lament how much harder it is to get new customers or accept the reality of the times and ‘Just Do It’.

More and more dry cleaners will begin pickup and delivery services.  A few will succeed and most will not.  There will also be opportunities as weaker competitors close their doors.  Keep your eyes and ears open for competitors’ routes that may be worth acquiring.  In fact, don’t wait for bad news about those other routes, approach folks now and plant the seed for future conversations.  Remember, the Home Office has a lot of experience with Route acquisition.

One more, bright spot.  Believe it or not, higher gas prices are a good thing for P4T.  It is difficult to see it when you’re watching those numbers tick higher and higher as you fill the van.  But, we are hearing from many Strategic Partners that acquiring new customers is a little easier in some respects as people look to reduce their driving.  Our service is perfectly positioned for now, and the future, as delivered services play well in conjunction with increasing fuel prices and carbon reduction efforts in light of global warming: we’re a van-pool for the multi-errand services our customers require.

The first goal of any business is to survive.  These economic times are brutal for many, but don’t ever forget as a business owner you can’t get laid off, you have some control.  BUT, through your own inactivity and fear of facing economic challenges head-on, you can involuntarily retire yourself!  Do something, do it now and do it often.

They want this because: It’s all about them – it’s not about you or your company. Understanding this is the essence and the heart of providing an excellent and surprisingly great customer experience.  When you conduct your day-to-day operation with this philosophy at its core, your business will flourish.  Are you thinking about their interests above your own?  Do you genuinely care about your customers’ needs and wants at the level you should?  Are you providing the best possible service for your customers?  It’s all about them, not you. After all, the customers’ main concern is and must be: “What’s in it for me.”

We love flying with JetBlue and Southwest; we’d even pay a few extra dollars to do so ($5 to $10).  We find them reliable, mostly on-time, reasonably priced and they seem to care about their customers.  But, if for some reason they were no longer around, we wouldn’t stop traveling, we might feel bad for a moment or two, but that’s all.  Why; because it’s all about us – the customer.

A friend’s car had some work done.  Arriving late he learned they had kept the shop open.  They adjusted their work hours (and presumably their personal lives) to serve the customer.  Not only that, the car was washed for free.  That’s a providing a superior customer experience.

Astute business owners realize what customers expect, how they feel, and how to wow them.

An excellent customer experience builds relationships.

A poor customer experience destroys them.

An excellent customer experience is ongoing and practiced especially when there are problems.

Here are a few examples of the little things (they’re actually big things) from our Pressed4Time experience:  we backtrack to pick up an order from a customer that missed having their cleaning ready when we stopped earlier…we’ll put a rush on an order so we can deliver it earlier than normal…we’ll deliver an order on a non-scheduled route day…a follow up phone call to every new customer added during the past week…giving a package of collar stays to a customer who frequently is missing stays…hand written thank you notes…delivering cleaning to a customer’s car for a pregnant or injured customer… extra personal inspections for customers’ particular requests.  There are many opportunities each day to provide an excellent and surprising customer experience.

Wow your customers and watch your business grow.

A superior customer experience begins with an attitude, a choice, a commitment and a desire to do what’s best for your customers.  A first-rate customer experience strengthens relationships, increases referrals, develops loyalty and can actually be fun.

In building a business, everything matters.  Be aware and work on the things you can control – you and the attitude you convey to your employees!  What you and your employees do matters.  How you do it matters and when you do it matters.  Make matters matter!

Customers do business with your company because of what your company does for them. If another company can do it better, faster, cheaper, nicer and friendlier, with more knowledge or with more fun: guess what?  They won’t be your customer much longer because someone is doing more for them!

Reach is where most folks must and do focus their efforts – i.e., new customer acquisition; extending your reach.  Clearly this is a crucial and productive path for increasing revenues.  Do you spend eight hours a day on various reach extending activities?  No?  Few small business owners do; it’s not possible.

This post begins to address Frequency and Yield (F&Y).

Increasing F & Y is a matter of “tweaking”; doing many little things consistently and constantly.  Our Pressed4Time customers have a tendency to forget all the time saving services P4T can provide, so it’s in their and our best interest to remind them.  Do they all remember or even know we offer shoe repair, clothing alterations or cleaning of household items, etc?  Of course if they don’t want or need these services the message goes right by them.  But, if they do have a need, reminders are useful.  Our customers are looking for time savings and that’s the business we’re in.

Surgically targeted promotions and specials.

We can illustrate our efforts to increase Frequency & Yield by sharing some of the techniques and tools we use at Pressed4Time.  These are very low cost and effective:

1. Customer Newsletter – Customers (and customers-to-be) look forward to our newsletter.  We distribute it monthly and draw our customers’ attention to the Monthly Specials.
2. Weekly Marketing Message – Every returning order has a Weekly Marketing Message that describes a service P4T provides or is a reminder of an item that should be cleaned, but is often neglected (pillows, etc.).  Weekly Marketing Messages are timed to the season – Raincoats before the Spring and Fall rains, Table Linens around the year-end holidays.  The message is stapled to returning orders for two weeks.  Whether a customer has one order in the two week period or four, we use the same message.  Each time we change our Weekly Marketing Message: we talk about it.  This increases both frequency and yield.
3. Mid-month Specials – We remind our customers of Monthly Specials in the middle of the month:  out of sight out of mind.
4. Additional Services Pricing List – Another tool to remind folks of the services we offer; distributed 2 to 3 times each year.
5. Semi-monthly email – Simple enough to send to hundreds of our customers with a few clicks of the mouse; we have a dozen emails written that we issue twice each year.
6. Texting – Collect your customer cell phone numbers; create a group in your smart-phone and text a weekly or semi monthly special.
7. YOU – You are the single most influential and powerful promotional tool in your arsenal!  Talk, kid, cajole, pontificate, beg, needle.  Whatever style works for you, do it, and do it consistently.  Talk about your services and the great work you do. “Toot thine own horn, lest it never be tooted.”

So we’ll ask you the same question we asked many folks.  Are you promoting your services consistently and through a variety of mediums?  Are the various F & Y activities and techniques available to you part of your daily routine?  No?  Hmm, how much of an impact growing your yield by 5% and the frequency of customer purchases by 1 or 2 a month or year have on your revenue?  $1,000/month?  $3,000/month?  $5,000/month? When you think about each activity listed above, we believe you’ll quickly realize that they take very little time and effort once incorporated into your regular operations.  Remember that old inertia needs some redirection from time to time.  Work in your own best interest and start these Frequency and Yield increasing activities today.

Remember:  this blog is about and for the very small business (franchise) owner: businesses where the owner/manager is chief, cook and bottle washer!  Those businesses where cost, time and effectiveness are paramount concerns in any and every marketing effort – each nickel and dime spent is precious.

1. The tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body in straight line motion to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.
2. Resistance or disinclination to motion, action, or change: the inertia of a stagnant business

Inertia in business helps to provide stability and provides a basis for a consistent, quality customer experience.  However, there is always change in the market place and change in you, that can cause inertia to become an enemy.  This post speaks to the change in you.

Remember when you first began your business or maybe when you returned from a conference or seminar that really heightened your enthusiasm?  You were going to, and you did, grow, grow, grow!

Where are you today?  If you’re not satisfied with the current condition of your business and you’re doing what you did yesterday and the week before last, your stuck: suffering from inertia.  Inertia is Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion and it’s one of those laws you had better break if you want to affect change in you and in your business (your business is a reflection of you).  We’re all subjected to inertia; after all, it’s the law!  Breaking this law requires action by an “outside force”.

The law of inertia also applies to our emotional and intellectual life.  Did you ever decide that you were going to change something in your life once and for all, only to find that without realizing it, you slipped back into the same pattern again?  We all get stuck in a rut sometimes. The trick is to exert enough consistent force to be able to overcome inertia and create lasting change. And the key to this is time and consistency.

21: the number of days to change a habit.  That means it takes time and consistency to overcome inertia and affect change.

To change inertia we need an outside force, “something different”.  Here are the four things to do differently.  If you’re a strongly self-disciplined person the first three items will help change your inertia.  If you’re like most of us, the fourth item is mandatory and the key to success.

1. Write “it” down with deadlines – What your “its” are, and how many you have, are up to you.  They must be specific, attainable and written down.
2. Review them daily.  Tape your goals and action items where you’ll see them.  Let them stare you in the face: guilt can be your friend.  Most of our New Year’s resolutions go by the wayside because it’s so easy to hide from them.
3. Work.   Change takes work, which is usually difficult and easily avoided.  Be consistent and know that change takes time.
4. Be committed and brave enough to share your goals with someone who will hold you accountable.

So what are you going to do?  Do you read this post and say “That’s a good idea, I should do this.”   This response usually leads to inertia having its way; no meaningful changes.  Or, are you grabbing a pad of paper and beginning to write your specific goals and the details required to attain them?  Are you also writing the name(s) of those who will help.

Haven’t you been subject to Sir Isaac’s law long enough?  Sometimes we need to engage in a little lawlessness!

Pressed4Time’s strategy for brand expansion is the franchise business model and we strongly believe this model to be a superior vehicle for expansion (more on this in later posts). Because we are a diverse franchise system we use our mission statement as a tool to get everyone involved with our brand on the same page, with the same focus as quickly and succinctly as possible. On the surface Pressed4Time provides pick-up & delivery dry cleaning and of course that is what we do. But in reality we’re really in the ‘time’ business: freeing up time for our customers while relieving them of mundane errands. The mission statement keeps us focused on that goal.

Our mission statement is not something that is just encased in a frame and hangs on the office wall or is pulled out of a drawer just for company meetings. It is our elevator speech: “Hi, what do you do?” “We simplify lives and return time to people.” “Really; how?” Then we’re off to the races wearing our marketing hat! The mission statement also keeps us focused on the customer experience; “delivering the services we promise”.

Over the years we’ve explored adding other services yet, because we weren’t convinced those services could be delivered as promised, they were discarded. Straying from the mission only leads to identity crisis and dilution of the brand.

When asked, “What does your business do?” while in an elevator, during a networking meeting or at a party, can you answer that question in a way that truly describes what you do and piques the questioner’s interest at the same time?  For Pressed4Time franchisees one answer might be “We pick-up and deliver dry cleaning”.  But is that what we REALLY do for our customers?  No.  At our core, we’re in the time business.  We provide more time for our customers by relieving them of certain errands. So our answer to the question “What does your business do?” is our mission statement: “We simplify lives and return time to people by delivering the services we promise”. Won’t that get a conversation going quicker than “We pick-up and deliver dry cleaning”?

It doesn’t matter how small your business is, a short mission statement captures your primary objective; it provides consistency and clarity of daily purpose, as well as long-term strategic focus.  The mission statement must be understood, known, internalize, believed in, by all involved in the company.  It simply says what you do and what your good at. From our point of view, long wordy statements are useless, they sound like canned corporate drivel.  If you, and especially your employees, can’t say it by heart (and believe it) then it’s a pointless exercise.  On the other hand, an accurate and honest mission statement that everyone in your business buys into (even if there are only two of you) will lead to increased customer retention, greater frequency and yield of purchase, and an improving customer experience that will result in more referrals, more sales and more income.

Mission Statement Creation:

When we decided that a mission statement was a worthwhile exercise it quickly became obvious that two or three of us sitting in a room churning out what we thought the statement should be was completely inappropriate.  So we asked several folks in our small company to join us for a day and half of back and forth debate to craft Pressed4Time’s mission statement.  We believe the result clearly captures what our company does and at the same time provides the flexibility to grow: We simplify lives and return time to people by delivering the services we promise. Our best advice is to include a variety of people in the creation of a mission statement. Check out this video. Sample mission statements.