Hi, this is Dan again from Clean Guru. And today I promised that I would share with you
the story about the fish market. And the fish market story has in it a lesson, a lesson
for janitorial, commercial cleaning salespeople. Of which I was one, so it was a lesson for
me too. So I will share with you this story. In this one neighborhood there was this fish
market and it was getting to be late afternoon, kind of getting to be closing time. But a
lady wandered into the fish market into the store and she walked up to the clerk. And
the clerk said, "Can I help you" and she said, "Yes, do you carry this one kind of fish?"
and he knew he one so he said, "Yes." So he reached down and he pulled up this certain
kind of fish. And she said, "Um, that's that's alright, yeah, that's the kind I'm looking
for. But I don't know if I like that one exactly. Do you have any more of them? Do you have
another one?" Well he didn't. He only had this one and in fact he knew he didn't have
any in the back. But it was getting to be late and it was getting to be closing time
and he didn't think she would know any better, so he reached down with that fish, because
she couldn't see behind the counter. And he pulled the same exact fish right back up again,
and said, "Well what do you think of this one?" And she looked at it and said, "Ok,
yeah that one is not that either. " She said, "You know what, I'll take both of them." Well
there he was. You know when we, when we do a white lie, when we tell a white lie, when
we're not forthcoming to our customers you can get caught in that kind of a white lie.
It didn't see very important at the time, but it was important because this was a trust
issue. Now he's going to really be embarrassed. Now he's really going to have egg on his face
because he can't deliver what he said he had there. He's lied to her. Well what does this
have to do with selling janitorial contract cleaning? Well this never comes up right?
Well, variations can. I can remember over the years when customers, you're getting real
close to landing a job, so you don't want anything to go wrong. And they might say at
the last minutes, now by the way, you do carry $2 million of general composite liability
insurance, right? And he might say, "Yeah, yes, yeah, uh hu." And they might say, "Well
do you have certification of this certain kind of green cleaning that we're looking
for or this certain kind safety training that we require? You have that, right? "Oh, yeah,
yeah we have that." You might say quickly, a person might say quickly. And maybe they'll
say or references, they said, "Now I'm sure you have 5 or 10 references of this kind of
business that we're in, references that we can take a look at, right? "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
There you are, then what if they say, "Oh, ok, great. Well tomorrow morning first thing
please bring those, excuse me, please bring to me the certifications, the references,
the certificate of the insurance that you have. If you don't have all that right and
you were just answering quickly or automatically yes, then there you are and now you've really
ruined your trust relationship with them. It may not have seemed like the biggest thing
at the time, but it was a small indication of how much they can count on you. How much
they can trust you. So I thought I'd never forget that fish market story. I thought maybe
you'd enjoy it. It was a great lesson for me along the years and hopefully a good lesson
for you if you and if you have salespeople, your salespeople too. Now, that's it for today.
Now next time I want to share with you something that we talk about called Too Few or Too Many.
And this idea applies to a lot of things starting up new accounts, hiring new employees. There's
lots of things that this concept of too few or too many and which way you should go. And
I'll tell you how we came down on the question next time when we talk about it. And until
then always remember, you can do this, you really can.
