The frontal approach…When failure is…

The frontal approach…Versus a work around

The “survey sell” is a effective tool that most of us have certainly used over time. And yet maybe it’s another example (like demo selling) that we need to dust off and use more.

Heck, we may have learned the dripping fill valve pitch eons ago. You probably remember how it worked. It quantified how that once per second drip from that leaky fill valve falling into the wash tank resulted in gallons of excess wash tank dilution every day and how, over a month it resulted in several pounds of detergent being wasted.

The survey sale – in either the dishroom or the laundry wash isle is just a more thorough and sophisticated version of that old approach. And the beauty of it is that asking to do one versus a more frontal approach to gain the business generally results in less resistance. And remember a “survey” can be as simple as a walk-through to look at results to a full-blown math project that projects the total cost of operations.

But regardless of the complexity of it, the goal (and hopefully the result) of a survey is to unearth opportunities for improvement and or costs savings, both of which are likely unknown to that operator. And assuming it accomplishes one or both of those goals, it gives you great place to begin that frontal assault.

 

When failure is …a good option

To the uninformed the idea of a “good” rejection rate in an on-premise laundry might seem like an complete oxymoron. How can any failure be good? Well, as those in the know actually understand, if 100% of the linen coming out of that drier is bright, white and great smelling, there’s a lot of money to be saved.

Given the near certainty that even with good presorting techniques that categorizes seriously stained fabric from those with normal soil loads, some small percentage of every wash formula run will not exit the washer sufficiently clean to come out of the drier ready for the shelf. And if that’s not the case, then there’s too much time, chemical (or both) being used.

A reject rate of about two and a half percent is a good target. Much over that and there’s money going down the drain because of the resulting excess in the number of rewash formulas being run. And while the monetary loss is less obvious when the reject rate is too low, if it’s well under that 2.5% target, it’s there – and also very real.

Next up: Selling that low reject prospect.