Column: Is Your Store’s Mantra Authentic?

Whether a store’s message is that it offers the “best service” or the “biggest selection,” jewelers better be able to back it up, Peter Smith writes.

Michelle Graff michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com

I checked into a hotel in Denver last week and I was asked if I wanted to go “green” and earn additional points. When I asked what that actually meant I was told that if I elected to have no maid service for my hotel stay I would be awarded a block of points on my account.

Peter SmithI do try to be cognizant of opportunities to play my part in being environmentally friendly but I confess to being an imperfect creature when it comes to recycling. We recycle as much as possible at home, including glass, plastics and papers, and we try to limit our water use. There are, however, other areas where we could be much better; my wife and I both drive SUVs, for instance, and there are a number of very good bicycles going unused in our garage.

When the lady at the hotel check-in asked me if I wanted to go green for my stay, I was, at first, anticipating a request to use the same sheets for the duration of my four nights; a commitment to recycle any paper, plastic or glass products; and a request to hang up my towels after each use instead of throwing them on the floor.

What I was not prepared for was having no housekeeping service whatsoever for the entirety of my stay.

When the extent of the request sunk in, I found myself, perhaps cynically, wondering if there was an ulterior motive. Were they asking me and their guests to be complicit in a sinister plan to reduce their housekeeping staff? How many “green guests” would it take to reduce the two maids per floor to just one? There were 10 floors in the hotel and I would imagine that cutting the housekeeping team in half would have represented a tidy little saving for the hotel.

As is often the case when I find myself giving vent to my cynical side, I quickly dismissed my early inclination when I entered my room and saw that there was a blue recycling bin in the room (a bare-bones essential that every single hotel and every single business ought to provide.)

After I showered the following morning, I hung my towel up and went about my day. When I returned that night, the towel had been removed and replaced with a fresh towel from the pile.

Banner will be right here …

I was disappointed, as hanging a towel in a hotel typically signifies a desire on the part of the guest to re-use it. I then noticed that the soap I had opened and used the previous evening was also gone. The towel and the soap were replaced each of the four days that I stayed there.

As simple as it may have seemed, replacing a once-used bar of soap and a hanging towel seemed like a decidedly un-green practice to me. It underscored my initial instinct about the hotel’s real motivation for requesting guests go green.

While there was much to like about the hotel, I became convinced that there was a big disconnect between their stated aspirations to going green and their ability to live it throughout the hotel and the guest experiences. Why were there no signs in the bathrooms inviting guests to consider re-using towels? Why was there such a disparity between what the front desk was asking of guests and what the housekeeping staff was actually doing?

Every business and retail store has one or more mantras that they champion. For this particular hotel it was “go green;” for many stores it is a stated commitment to providing great service, or the best quality, or the best prices, or the biggest selection etc., etc.

Every business must decide what its own particular billboard will be, but whatever it is should be absolutely, positively authentic. It should be used because you really believe it and because you and your team live it with every customer contact and touchpoint. There should be a commitment to your mantra that is palpable throughout your organization.

What it is, to a great extent, is less important than that you actually live that commitment.

If you tell people that you have the best prices then you cannot use fiction-tickets that suggest one price so that you sell the goods for another.

If it is great service, then every customer visiting your store ought to notice and experience great service, and every employee should know from the minute you interview them that great service is ingrained in your DNA.

Dyer, Dalzell and Olegario wrote in Rising Tide, Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Build at Proctor & Gamble, “For a company to do the right thing every day, it must not only espouse the principle but also enact it.”

It’s the doing that matters. Make it real.

Peter Smith, author of Hiring Squirrels: 12 Essential Interview Questions to Uncover Great Retail Sales Talent, has spent more than 30 years building sales teams at retail and at wholesale. He is president of Vibhor Gems and he has previously worked with companies such as Tiffany & Co., Montblanc and Hearts On Fire. Email him at peter@vibhorgems.com, dublinsmith@yahoo.com or reach him on LinkedIn.