museums&MORE Summer 2013

Editor’s Letter: Cleaning Up

If you own a business and have never read anything by Seth Godin, best-selling marketing author, blogger and founder of Squidoo.com, I highly suggest that you do. All 14 of his books have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work.

Plus, his site raises money for charity and pays royalties to its million-plus members.

It was something he shared on his blog the other day that caught my attention though, and not just because I have OCD and a thing about cleanliness. I’ve included the passage below:

The facilities at Disney World are clean. It’s not a profit center, of course. They don’t make them clean because they’re going to charge you to use them. They make them clean because if they didn’t, you’d have a reason not to come.

It turns out that just about everything we do involves cleaning the bathrooms. Creating an environment where care and trust are expressed. If you take a lot of time to ask, ‘How will this pay off,’ you’re probably asking the wrong question. When you are trusted because you care, it’s quite likely the revenue will take care of itself.”

Think about how true that is.

With so many options out there for shoppers today, every little detail counts when it comes to securing their loyalty and their sales. The last thing you want to do is give them a reason not to come to your store, whether it’s a dirty bathroom, messy shelves or a lack of personal attention.

It can be easy to focus on the big things and forget that sometimes it’s the small things that can slip through the cracks and make or break your success. So while cleaning the bathroom might not be at the top of your list of favorite tasks, at the end of the day, you do all those things because you care — about your business and your customers.

The revenue will take care of itself.

By Abby Heugel

Managing Editor

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