As a marketer, I once consulted with a car wash that was losing money in one location and breaking even in another. It was no small task. The car wash business is a cash cow for owners but employee pay is minimal.
I was walking into a business that had lost $10,000 a month for two years.
Employee morale was extremely low and no one was happy.
I advised the owner several years earlier that the manager was not capable of running these two locations because he didn’t have a managerial or entrepreneurial personality. This was the net result of that.
It was my job to turn things around and resuscitate the cow.
I needed these dissatisfied employees to not only become satisfied but to get along with one another. I needed to properly brand the car wash, motivate people earning low wages, and produce a profit.
I met with each employee individually.
“What motivates you?” I asked each of them.
“What do you mean?” they each asked.
“I mean tell me about yourself,” I said. “What’s intrinsically rewarding to you? Are you aspiring to earn more income? Have more time off? Get a promotion? Do a different job?”
One of the guys told me he was a single father and the only time he had with his daughter was on the weekends so he hated working Saturdays.
“Done,” I said. “You will no longer have to work Saturdays.”
Another guy told me he had been there for a few years and felt like he deserved promotion and more responsibility. It was less about the money for him and more about being recognized.
They each had a different internal motivator.
I addressed every single one of them.
I decided we needed a salesperson rather than the typical car wash greeter who accepts payment. I needed someone who could increase the per-ticket earnings. Of course, this was previously a given. The greeter is supposed to attempt to upsell. But they aren’t necessarily compensated for doing so.
I interviewed a young man for the job.
“Tell me about yourself,” I say.
I could already tell he had the personality for sales but an extrovert alone does not a great salesperson make. It’s a combination of qualities and goals are a large part of that.
“I was playing basketball in college,” he said. “But my Mother got sick and needed me so I had to come home.”
“If we pay you a commission,” I said. “Can you take our per-ticket sale up this amount of dollars?”
“Yes,” he said.
I believed him.
This was a kid motivated enough to get up early every morning to play sports. His goals had taken him to one of the best colleges in the country. His heart had taken him back home to his family.
I knew he would be committed to earning the most money he could.
For himself, for his Mother, and for the business.
In three months, I reversed a two-year $10,000-a-month loss into a break-even. It was more complicated than that. I had to revamp procedural operations and brand the business. But a key element was understanding the personalities running the day-to-day business.
I made one trip to the second location.
“You used to be profitable,” I said. “What happened?”
“Our greeter left to work somewhere else,” they told me.
“Do you know where he is?” I ask. “Can you get him on the phone?”
“Yes,” they said. “But it won’t work because we’ve already tried to get him back.”
Within the hour I was speaking with the former employee.
I wanted to determine exactly why he left and what his motivator was for leaving. I needed to understand this before I could know if I could motivate him to return.
He told me he left for two reasons.
He didn’t like the manager and he needed to earn more to support his family.
I explained the manager had left. He was still reluctant to return to his old job. It’s understandable. It’s difficult to go back to a place you were unhappy enough to leave.
“Are the manager and the pay the only two things you really disliked?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“What if we increase your pay and you have the ability to earn commission on what you upsell?” I said.
That was all it took.
This was a man most motivated to provide for his family.
He explained he would need to give his present employer two weeks’ notice. I told him I wouldn’t want him if he wasn’t the type of individual who would do so.
Six weeks later (effectively 4 weeks later because he gave those 2 weeks to his old employer) that location was no longer breaking even they were up $16,000.
My professional background is diverse.
But there is a profound commonality.
I’m a marketing/PR consultant turned freelance journalist, business columnist, and now relationship columnist. These things are not as different as they appear.
I am in the business of relationships.
Marketers understand emotion drives action.
We have to understand human behavior.
We have to have the ability to see beyond the obvious and connect the dots. We have to comprehensively see the entire picture to make things profitable.
Unfortunately, I viewed my own marriage, and my own relationship emotionally. It took me years and an epiphany while I was doing a marketing plan to realize this.
My husband was motivated by only one thing…money.
It was a blinding obsession.
Nothing else was going to inspire him.
There’s nothing wrong with being motivated by money. I’m motivated by money. I lean towards a sales personality. But like that young ball player, I am also motivated by family.
When things were great in our marriage my husband’s motivation was fine.
But our relationship was no longer profitable.
I had sat with each of those car wash employees in less-than-ideal circumstances. My marriage was less-than-ideal. Different things were now motivating me. Money, fun, work, pretty much everything had taken a back seat in my life.
My biggest motivator was saving my marriage.
I couldn’t get my husband to care about that.
Our lack of relationship profitability produced zero changes within him.
Money was his internal motivator. Work was his motivation. His success and his status are where he derived the most satisfaction. I was an accompaniment to that successful life picture.
I was not a motivator.
It was sad to realize this so many years into our marriage.
But it was our truth.
One person cared enough to save the business. The other person didn’t. You could liken it to a company run with strong values and one run without them. It was never going to work.
Our relationship was never going to be profitable again.
It takes insight, awareness, desire, determination, AND motivation.
To reverse a massive loss.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often | Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | ..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything |
—–
Photo credit: Element5 Digital on Unsplash