Saturday, May 5, 2012

ALLOWING OTHERS TO CONTROL YOUR DESTINY

Today we complete our series on Focusing on Leadership. The last quality we want to discuss is,

DON'T ALLOW OTHERS TO CONTROL YOUR DESTINY--This is a big one. As a leader it is your responsibility to set the course of your company and your personal life. The culture of your company is your responsibility. Some of the ways you can control your own destiny or have others control it for you are...

Overall Customer Quality--While relationships are critical in the service business, poor quality of work will eventually destroy most any relationship. This means it is up to YOU to decide the standard of work that is acceptable. Even though you may have supervisors and managers checking the work and training (hopefully) the cleaning staff, it is still ultimately your responsibility. As a friend and mentor of mine once told me, "At some point you have to lift up the bull's tail and look him right in the eye". A bit crude, I admit, but it makes the point rather succinctly.

Let's take the issue of quality a step further. You can lose business even though you think you are doing a great job. Well, quality entails more than just the cleaning. It entails your entire organization and every encounter you have with the customer.

You see, it is my belief that quality is what the customer says it is. I know of many companies who do regular inspections and use a rating system of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 or some even use a score card like in school. This building got an 88 this month or this building got a B this month or this building was 90% of the norm or 110% or the norm.

That is all fine and good but if the customer is not satisfied with the overall performance of your organization, it doesn't matter what your score is. I just was never a strong proponent of the kind of scoring that I mentioned above. I know that I had customers that required it and we certainly complied with their request because it fell under the umbrella of total customer satisfaction, but as far as I was always concerned, we either passed or failed. Now I know many will take issue with that rationale but isn't that really what it is all about? The customer is either happy or not. If they are luke warm or so so, they are unhappy about something and we better find out what it is. Luke warm or so so is just not good enough.

Managing Time--As you build your business, managing your time and the time of your staff becomes more and more critical. Many people are pulling you many different directions and your day can become one of frustration. Your time management is one thing you will struggle with constantly.

One area that requires your tight control is the actual cleaning budgets in each building. Let me emphasize you need to be monitoring these at all times and doing every 6 month account retuning audits. You will find as your crews become more familiar with cleaning a facility they learn where to reduce time and in most cases are not going to be forthcoming in telling you to reduce the time in the building.

One of my pet peeves has always been one of wasted time when we clean facilities. We live in a competitive environment and try to budget the time as accurately as possible and when we are wasting time in the building, chances are, something is not being cleaned to the level we committed to the customer.

Do you know that if you have 10 employees that waste 5 minutes a day and you pay them $10 per hour that equates to lost dollars of $2,520 per year. I am guessing you have some employees that waste more than that. Do you? If you go to my web site at www.consultantsincleaning.com and click on the DVD section and then click on the DVD support material icon you will find a complete chart on what 5 minutes of wasted time equates to at different pay scales and with different numbers of employees.

I remember showing this chart to a contractor at a BSCAI convention and it made him physically ill. You see, he had 3,000+ employees at an average wage of $15 per hour. That equates to $1,134,000 per year.

So there you have it. I know there are many traits and qualities to focus on in leadership. What I have shared with you are just a few that I consider paramount to success in our industry. Do you have some others? If so, add them to this group.

Well, I am off to the BSCAI Executive Seminar in Scottsdale, Arizona. Hope you are planning to attend. If you are, introduce yourself to me and let me know what you think of these sessions. If you like them, I am responsible, if you don't it must be someone else's fault.

Don't forget to tune into our free Monday morning pod cast at www.tripodcast.com.

In addition, in about 2 weeks we will be releasing our new training DVD entitled--Customer Relations Training For Supervisors and Cleaning Techs. This is an interactive DVD with the participants doing pen and pencil exercises to help them understand their important role in customer relations.

Till next time.

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