We Looked Like the Beverly Hillbillies

I've had a little quirk over the years when visiting facilities we're selling into or selling out of.

I take pictures. Back then with a small camera, and these days with my iPhone.

Not necessarily of the equipment or the people. I'm talking about the facility itself. The building, the parking lot, the entrance, the landscaping and whatever else happens to be sitting around.

And here's the important part. I don't look at those pictures until the next day.

Then I sit down and study them.

Funny what you'll notice when you're looking at a picture instead of something you've walked past a hundred times.

The landscaping that needs trimming. The fence that could use a coat of paint. And that big oil spot right in front of the entrance door.

You know the one. The oil spot everybody's been stepping around for the last year.

Your customer sees it. You don't.

You've been walking past it every morning for so long that it's become part of the scenery.

Let me tell you about a time when those pictures got me into a pretty uncomfortable situation.

Years ago, I started a new job with a company that had 18 locations. As I began visiting them, something caught my attention.

They looked terrible.

Overgrown landscaping, buildings needing attention, parking lots and entrances that hadn't seen much love in a while.

We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies.

C'mon. Is anybody paying attention to what our customers see when they pull in here?

So I started asking the location managers why their facilities looked that way. Interestingly enough, I kept getting pretty much the same answer.

They'd submitted appearance improvements in their annual budgets, but when those budgets were approved, the owner had taken those expenses out and moved the money to the bottom line.

Well, that explained a few things.

The location managers knew their facilities needed attention. But the money to do something about it wasn't there.

I figured there was a better way to make the point than walking into a management meeting and complaining about trimming bushes and painting fences.

I'd let the pictures do the talking.

I started taking pictures of our competitors in each city and comparing them to our locations. Same markets. Same customers we were trying to earn business from.

Very different first impressions.

Now, you've got to remember, this was back when a slide presentation actually meant slides.

First, I had to take the pictures with my little camera, drop the film off at the 1-Hour Photo, pick up the prints and spread them out to decide which ones told the story I wanted to tell.

Then I had to take the selected photographs back and have them made into slides for the projector.

No PowerPoint. No moving things around five minutes before the meeting. No last-minute edits.

What I'd prepared was what everybody was going to see.

And I'd gone all in.

Our facility. Their facility. Side by side.

Then came the senior management meeting.

About three facilities into the presentation, the owner stood up.

"I've seen enough."

And walked out of the room.

Well, son of a gun.

There I sat, in front of the entire senior management team, with a projector full of slides and absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.

Was he mad? Had I embarrassed him? Had I just turned a presentation about landscaping into a career-ending event?

I didn't know.

Fifteen minutes of managers, including the owner's son, looking at each other in silence.

Nobody said a word.

Then the owner walked back into the room, looked at all of us and said,

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

He told every location manager to get their facilities looking better than our competitors.

And here's the important part.

He followed through.

The facilities started getting the attention they needed. The landscaping was maintained, the buildings looked better and the entrances started looking like places where somebody actually cared about doing business.

But something else happened.

The employees started taking pride in where they worked again.

Think about that.

For years, those location managers had been watching their appearance budgets get cut. The people working at those facilities walked past the same neglected surroundings every morning.

Now somebody was investing in their workplace.

It wasn't just the buildings getting a little paint. It was the people getting a little pride back.

And that pride has a way of showing up in how people work, how they treat their customers and how they represent the company.

Over the next five years, we grew from 18 locations to 56, with stronger earnings per location than the company had ever experienced.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that trimming bushes and painting fences made all that happen.

C'mon.

There were plenty of other things going on in the business.

But don't underestimate what happens when employees are proud of where they work.

That pride walks out the front door and meets your customers every day.

And I've got to give the owner credit.

He could have come back into that meeting and defended his budget decisions. He could have explained why appearance improvements weren't a priority.

He didn't.

He saw something he hadn't seen before, changed his mind and did something about it.

There's a difference between managing the bottom line and leading a business.

Sometimes you have to look beyond what something costs and recognize what neglect might be costing you.

Last week in The Yard, we talked about a salesman cleaning out the back seat of his pickup while his customer stood waiting to go to lunch.

This week, we're looking at an entire company that needed to clean up its own backyard.

Different circumstances. Same problem.

We'd gotten so used to what we were looking at that we'd stopped seeing what our customers saw.

So here's what I suggest you do.

The next time you pull into your facility, park next to that big oil spot everybody's been walking around for the last year.

Pull out your phone and take a few pictures.

The building. The entrance. The landscaping. The parking lot. All those little things you've probably stopped noticing.

Then put your phone away.

Don't look at those pictures until tomorrow.

When you do, take a good look at what you've captured. Not as somebody who's been walking through that door every morning, but as somebody seeing the place for the very first time.

You might be surprised.

You might even be a little embarrassed, because the devil is in the details.

But remember, your customer has been looking at those same things all along.

See you next week…

The journey continues.

— HAMP