Maximize Profits by Changing the Way You Personally View Your Self-Service Laundry Operation
As the story goes, two young salmon were swimming along one day when they were passed by a much older and far wiser fish coming from the opposite direction. The older fish greets the two as he passes, “Morning, boys! How’s the water today?”
The two salmon continue to swim along in silence for a while, until one turns to the other and asks, “What the heck is water?”
The point of this metaphor is that, because you spend so much time there (physically and psychologically), often the most obvious negative realities of your business environment are likely the most difficult to see – and, therefore, go unnoticed by you. That’s just the way the human brain works.
This is true because you simply can’t look in a new direction by continuing to gaze only in one specific direction. It’s also true that the human brain is wired to make extremely sophisticated perceptual judgements in a fraction of a second and, once done, it strongly resists changing them.
The purpose of this article is to bring this subject to your attention and consciousness so that you can hopefully change the manner in which you “see” your laundry and your behavior, as well as that of your customers and attendants. If you do, it will make you a better, more savvy and successful laundry owner in the long run.
It’s a fact that all laundry owners commonly ask people to do things for them on a regular basis without giving it much thought. You do so with your attendants, your landlords, your customers, your potential customers and your distributors – and your requests also are strongly embedded within our advertising messages.
A basic principle of human behavior states that, if we ask someone to do something, we will be more successful enlisting their cooperation (and getting an enthusiastic yes) if we provide logical and intellectually acceptable reasons for doing so. However, I’ll bet that not many of you actually do that.
For example, when you ask attendants to do something, it’s psychologically important to provide them with a valid reason or two to comply with your request, other than the fact that you’re the boss. Aside from employees, this approach should be used with any request within the arena of business communication. Doing so will produce excellent results the majority of the time.
Another example can be found in your internal store signage. The way to do this is to avoid commands within the wording. For instance, rather than saying, “Don’t let your children run in the laundry or sit on the folding tables,” your sign should provide the beneficial reasons for complying with your request.
Here’s a specific example: Rather than saying “No smoking,” it would be far more effective to display, “In the interest of your health, this is a smoke-free environment.”
With regard to controlling unruly kids, perhaps your sign should read, “In order to keep your children protected from injury, please don’t allow them to sit on the folding tables or run within the laundry. Thank you.”
In each of the examples above, notice that you’re providing logical, as well as intellectually and emotionally acceptable, reasons for your requests.
Another example of a psychologically applicable principal is called the “Rule of Liking.” And it simply theorizes that the more we like and know someone the more apt we are to agree to his or her requests. That seems straight-forward enough, right?
Obviously, you can’t know all of your customers, so the best way to get them to know and like you is through communication of a friendly and interesting nature, perhaps sending them a regularly scheduled newsletter or email blasts.
In this way, you can achieve a degree of familiarity that will induce them to know and (hopefully) like you. Then, when you advertise specials or introduce loyalty programs, they will be far more likely to respond positively. Clearly, this rule also applies to advertising for new customers by using a friendly, highly likable style.
When you compose your advertising copy, it’s also a good idea to provide reasons for those consuming it to respond positively. These reasons should take the form of pure and simple benefits – such as the convenience of your fast drop-off service, why using your large-capacity washers is to their advantage, how your new dryers get the job done much more quickly or the fact that you have so many machines that waiting to use one of them is never an option. In other words, let potential customers know “what’s in it for them” if they become loyal to your laundry business.
Another common event many laundry owners likely handle in a repetitive, non-creative (automatic) manner are customer complaints. There is a vast difference between taking things seriously, as opposed to taking them personally?
Therefore, the next time you are face to face with a complaining customer, think about not taking their verbal outpouring personally. Instead, just indicate that you are taking it seriously and respond accordingly.
Doing so will delete the emotion from the dialogue, and you likely will end up with a happy customer and certainly far less personal mental stress by not being confined to only your personal needs.
Remember, you don’t have to win every dispute – life is not a zero-sum game. Although winning displays a good portion of your character, compromising shows even more of your character.
Hopefully, you now can view yourself, your laundry business and your customers from a reinvented and clearer perspective.
As you go “swimmingly” along each day, operating your laundry business, I think you’ll find that there’s certainly something to be said for being very aware of the “water.”
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