Take ten… And count them Ask Any savvy soaper to name his top ten customers and he’ll rattle them off from memory. And chances are that he can also get close to doing it in nearly perfect order from the largest to smallest. But if you ask him what percentage of his sales and profits are […]
Is it time… Already? The leaves are just beginning to fall, Thanksgiving isn’t here yet, and even the department stores are only now starting to break out the Christmas displays. But is it time to start thinking about 2027? Notice we’re not saying budgeting for it but thinking about it. Yep, it’s probably the right time […]
Lost and … Found time We’ve all been there. We’re in the middle of a routine service call and find a problem that’ll be pretty simple to fix. And while it’s an easy correction, if it’s not handled soon, it’ll almost certainly result in an emergency it’ll back. No problem, right? But when we look in […]
Time wasters and… Making time There’re lots of things that waste our time and make life difficult. Of course there are the ones we can’t control like traffic jams and bad weather. But then there are the ones we can effect – or at last have some influence over. That list clearly includes the time we […]
Clumsy stuff and … Rambling prospects So you’re frustrated by a chatterbox who just won’t stop talking. You’ve tried a couple of times to insert a word or two and to your consternation he keeps prattling on! At this stage the point you’re trying to make will be lost if you can’t find a way soon […]
Something old and… using it again! Remember the pie chart someone explained to us on or near day one in the business? It depicted how warewashing costs broke down. It illustrated graphically that chemical expenses were a small fraction of either the cost of labor, or energy, utilities, or equipment maintenance. Yep, we do remember. But […]
The cheapest versus … The least expensive There’s an old (and accurate) saying that perfectly encapsulates the idea of balancing quality and value that goes, “It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you might lose a little — that’s all. Often when you pay too […]
Three’s a charm or… maybe a challenge There’s a story about a guy who was considered the dean of selling back in the day. As a young sales rep working for a producer of canned vegetables, he called on all the grocery stores in his territory. In one stop to see an existing customer he was […]
Breaking glass… Making more sales Back in the day auto windshields weren’t made of safety glass. If you had a wreck the odds were good that your noggin was going through it and your chances of getting badly lacerated were even better! But then a Toledo based company named Libbey Owens Ford invented a new product […]
Air and water… Not a good combo Early on we learned that mechanical action was a huge factor in the WATCH principles of cleaning. In warewashing that element comes in the form of impingement. But if enough air becomes entrapped in the wash tank water the impingement force of the pattern is greatly diminished. Its unwanted […]