Franchise meeting

During a recent job up in the Great White North, I was asked by my client to attend a meeting of his franchisees and to do a brief presentation explaining what I do and how the job that I has just completed for this client benefited them.  He had recently purchased this company and therefore called this meeting to introduce himself and explain to these fine folks exactly what he intended to do in exchange for the franchise fee that they pay.  It was a very nice gathering at a terrific French restaurant.

  As things often go under new ownership, my client had, just the week before, submitted to these franchisees, a new price list.  I had been only somewhat prepared to give my presentation, but when the franchisees began lamenting about the price increase, I knew that I was going to have lots to talk about.  Good chance, I thought, I’d have a hard time keeping within my 30 minute allotment of time.  As the attendees arrived, I was introduced and before the meeting officially commenced, I began talking “shop” with each of them.  They spoke of all of the usual subjects – a virtual grab bag of the issues that go hand-in-hand with running a drycleaning shop.  Employees are to find, hard to keep interested and difficult to motivate; when they come in to work, of course.  Customers that were hard to please.  Equipment issues were brought up by at least half of the attendees.  Sounded awfully familiar to me.  Just the same as the issues that American drycleaners face, to be sure.

One of the shop owners, certainly not one of the shy ones, attacked my client regarding the price increase.  He said that with his competition, his customers would be sure to gripe when faced with a 25 cent-50 cent increase on various items.  This too, sounded familiar.  I never buy into this, but I do hear it often enough.  My contention has always been that if you do, indeed, lose a customer over 25 or 50 cents, something is very wrong with your business.  Don’t think so?  Look at it from this angle:  If a customer stops going to you because your shirts cost 20 cents more than a competitor’s (a dollar a week for the average customer with 5 shirts), something else had to be wrong.  If saving a dollar a week was the last reason that a customer was coming to you, (take that away and I’m outta here!) then you are missing something.  You need to completely re-evaluate your store and ask yourself why any of your customers come to you.  You should come up with reasons like:  “I do very good quality work and I am always trying to get better at what I do.”  “I have a very knowledgeable customer service staff.”  “I almost always have my customers’ shirts (and drycleaning) ready when I said that I would.”  “I keep my store clean and neat.”  “My call office makes my customers feel good about being here and doing business with me.”

I don’t think that anybody ever actually says, “Customers come to me because, since I am 19 cents cheaper on shirts, they can save almost a dollar a week here.”  But I think that we have all sub-consciously feared that this may be true.  I know that I have.  I have feared raising prices because I didn’t want to lose any customers.  I think that this has happened because we are survivors.  Over the years, no matter what was been thrown at us, be it hazardous waste disposal, sewer user tax or sky-rocketing solvent costs, he has, for some reason absorbed much of the costs without passing them on to the consumer.  Why?  I don’t know.  But what I do know is that breaking this cycle, and making up for lost time, so to speak, is a Herculean task.  The last thing that you want to do is to continue that trend. 

What is most important to understand is that our customers are not the same way.  They are not visiting you to try to save money, they are coming to you to spend money on a service that they want.  This is entirely different than trying to save money on a service (or product) that you need.

When it was my turn to speak, I asked the plant operators, one by one, what their customers wanted.  My “trap” worked like a charm.  I got answers like this:

“My customers want good work”, “Good quality”.  A couple of the people said (perhaps because they saw where this was going); “The best possible work at the lowest possible price.”  Good answer.  In fact, this is probably the right answer for anything… nobody wants to spend too much money for anything, even if frugality is not your strong suit.

The answer that I liked best is this one:  “A customer wants to deal with someone that they can trust.”  What a great answer that is!  The fact is, that is something that they can not go without when dealing with a drycleaner.

Not one of these franchisees said that they believe that their customer’s were looking for a low price.  It is true that we, as drycleaners, do look for a low price on, say, shirt hangers.  We want to feel that we aren’t being taken to the, uh…. (how does that cliché go?).  We want to feel that we aren’t paying too much for anything.  So, in an attempt to put you in the shoes of your customer, let me ask you this:  Are you paying the absolutely lowest price possible for the supplies that you buy?  The honest answer is probably “I’m not sure.”   You will likely only start shopping around for a lower price when something else is wrong!  The fact is, you probably don’t care about a lower price if you are dealing with a supplier that you trust.

Keep this very important guideline in mind the next time you feel the need to adjust your prices.