This past week I had about 5hours of driving each way to my classes. I am not a big fan of driving but I look at it as a wonderful time to listen to audio books. The nice part is that it doesn’t cost me a penny.
I buy a lot of books from Amazon. As part of their “long tail” service they analyze my purchases and continually refresh my book list with similar books. I then go online to the local library and type in those books and specify audio. They search the entire Indianapolis system of libraries and locate my books and ship them to my nearest library for my pickup.
The audio that I listened to this week was a new book titled Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman, Rom Brafman.
I will do a full review at a later date but I did want to relate one story that I think is pertinent. Joshua Bell, a world renowned violinist, was stationed in the New York subway dressed in jeans, tee shirt, and baseball cap. It didn’t matter that he was playing a violin that was valued at 3.5 million dollars or that he was playing the most difficult violin piece that had ever been written. No one stopped to listen to him. Yet if he was playing in Carnegie Hall, as he does frequently, tickets would be terribly expensive.
So what can we take away from a famous violin player that would be pertinent to a carpet cleaner? Your appearance and the appearance of your truck play a huge role in the value the customer places on your service. If we sent a highly technical carpet cleaner, maybe the Island Boy himself, in a dirty van dressed like he had just come from a rock concert in jeans and a tee shirt, the customer would devalue the service.
So, regardless if you provide cleaning, restoration or concerts remember that the customer is judging you on many things. The biggest one is how you look.
Read more of Bill Yeadon’s insight in his Books and Blogs column here on SFS.JonDon.com