Episode 12 – Marketing & Sales: Converting Non-Programmers

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats, and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

We’re back again with another episode of the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast, interviews and insights by TRSA. Once again, I’m your host, Jason Risley. While we were away, I hope you had time to go back and listen to all 11 episodes we have recorded so far. You could check out any of our previous episodes online at www.trsa.org/podcast or search for our show on Itunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. As we return to our regular recording schedule, I have some great news.

 

We have a sponsor for the show in 6 disciplines consulting services, and we’re looking forward to sharing information on their many offerings, including hygienically clean consulting, lean 6 sigma, as well as developing leaders in your organization. So look out for that moving forward. On this week’s episode, we have some great intel to share for you marketing and sales professionals. TRSAs Marketing and Sales Summit held in December 2018 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas closed with a panel presentation titled identifying and expanding markets, converting nonprogrammers. The panel featured marketing and sales leaders from many of the linen uniform and facility services industry’s largest companies, including Jim Divers, director of sales and marketing at Alsco, Ryan Flaherty, the vice president of sales, marketing, and business development at Aramark Uniform Services, Dave Katz, the senior vice president of sales and marketing at UniFirst, and Bob Mitchell, the senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Cintas.

 

T RSA president and CEO Joseph Ricci moderated the discussion. The panel talked about converting nonprogrammers to uniform renters, expanding the market for linen uniform and facility services, innovations in sales and marketing, and more. Let’s listen in on their discussion recorded live from Las Vegas in December 2018. We’re gonna start with each, person. Could we talk a little bit about their career and background, what their role and responsibility is within their organization.

 

You heard a lot about sales and marketing is divided, is it together, things like that. And then really, you know, a couple of, couple of minutes on the importance to them of new business and non programmers. And there’ll probably be some overlap, but I think just hearing from them separately on that issue. And then like I said, I’ll open it up to the room. We’ll take some questions.

 

If you don’t have any, I’ve got some, but I’d rather get your questions. So take advantage of this opportunity to to learn, and, we’ll go from there. So, Jim, we’ll start with you. Well, you know, after the keynote this morning, I like, oh, shit. I gotta give me a story.

 

You know? So my story is when I first started coming to TRSA meetings about 38 years ago, I was one of the youngest people in the room, and now I’m the one of the oldest. So that’s my story. I’m gonna stick to it. So 38 years ago, I started in the industry over on the East Coast with the Bardush Corporation.

 

Ran their US operations until we merged that company with Omni Services and then ultimately sold it to CentOS. And then I spent the last 15 years with, my buddies at, ALSCO. And it was has been a unique experience because each company had foreign operations. We have about a 180 processing, plants in 14 different countries. Bardush didn’t was not quite that large, but they had operating plants in that that same amount of country.

 

So it so it’s given me an opportunity to look at how cultures change, how demands change from country to country, how specifications change from country to country down to the type buttons we use on on garments and so forth. So it’s given me a a pretty nice overview of how to look at the market in in in different sections of the market, different, different parts of the world. I’ll move on to, non programmers. And I think with my definition of a non programmer is anybody that doesn’t do business with ALSCO. So so, so anyway, but but the way we look at that is no different than the rest of the market.

 

We we simply look at a cross section of SIC codes. We take a deep dive into those SIC codes and try to understand where the growth sectors are within those SIC codes. And then we start preparing through our marketing department to get our sales group ready to attack that market. And whether it’s a no program or not, really doesn’t make a lot of difference to us. We do we do grade our sales assets on how many of those that they get.

 

We talk about that. And we like for them to have a certain amount of no programmers in their sales funnel. But we really don’t distinguish between the 2 other than some general conversations. And we don’t go about finding them any differently than we do our regular targets. It’s all really about identifying who that target is, making sure that your people understand that target, so when they get there, they they understand what their hot buttons are.

 

Some of it’s cash flow, some of it’s safety, some of it’s image. You just have to determine that by interviews and so forth. So once the marketing group is finished with that, then we push that down the pipe to the, sales department for execution. And we monitor how that goes in different sections, and we move those sectors around. Somebody said this morning, you shouldn’t go after, but so many.

 

We kinda limit those those particular initiatives down to 2 or 3 at at any given time, but we go after them pretty hard when we identify them. And we make sure our people know what to say, how to say it once they get there. Thank you, Jim. Bob? Okay.

 

My name is Bob Mitchell, and I’ve been in the industry for 30 2 years with Cintas. Started right out of college in the management trainee program, which, still exists today as far as, onboarding, hopefully future talent. Spent, a lot of years sort of flip flopping between sales and operation and marketing roles, in pretty equal chunks. I was a sales rep, in Nashville, Tennessee in the uniform rental division, which was the only division we had back then, And that’s where I got, you know, my real taste for, okay, what is the difference between a programmer and an old programmer, and how do they think, and and how do I how should my sales approach be different, one to the one to the next. A lot of my years at Centas, it turns out, probably more than half are in non rental businesses.

 

So our 1st aid division, our document management division, which we don’t have anymore, we sold that to Shred It, which was ultimately sold to, Stericycle. And then our fire protection group. So I’ve led sales and operating groups, outside of the rental division for much of my career. Hopefully, that’ll help our discussion a little bit today too. In 2,000 and 10, I became senior VP of sales.

 

So I ran the sales organization until 2016. 2013 to 2016, which was the final 3 years of that, they added our national account group to that. And then in 2016, I took over as, chief marketing officer. So Dave Pollock, who was the head of business strategy and marketing, retired, and I fled over and took that role, and we promoted, a couple of young sales leaders to take over the sales organization. As far as no programmers, you know, at Cintas, I don’t think this is a big secret, but in in the rental division, and this would be in dollars, new business volume, about, about 2 thirds of the volume that we write is with no programmers or companies using a program for the first time.

 

And, oh, and if you include the other non rental businesses, the the the dollars of new business written by our 1st aid division or our fire division, etcetera, it’s really more like 80 20, when you include, some of these other groups. So that’s about 3 or $4 of, business to every $1 that might be overlapped in this room. So we have a very strong note program focus. In fact, when we’re calling on a programmer, Johnny’s Record Service, and they have, you know, 6 or 7 employees in a rental program with 1 of our competitors, we sort of take a no programmer approach to that call too because the person that made the decision there maybe is a different person that that made the decision 6 or 8 or 10 years ago. And and maybe there’s more wearers there that drop the program.

 

They don’t wear the uniforms anymore. So so we we we always have sort of a no programmer hat on even even when we’re calling on a, on a current renter. And I think that helps because then you don’t have to pivot. You just have sort of one sales script. That’s ideally how we try to execute it on the sales side.

 

That’s right. Alright. Hello. I’m Ryan Flaherty. I’m, in charge of sales and marketing at Aramark Uniform Services.

 

Listen. I’m I love this industry. So before I I came to Aramark I’ve been in Aramark for 12 years. Before that, I spent about a decade at Milliken and Company. So I’ve been around this industry for a fair amount of time.

 

And I love it for three reasons, and I’ll I’ll tie this into kind of the non programmer space in a second. Right? The first thing is, boy, it’s it’s pretty exciting. The millions of customers that we all serve on a weekly basis between us all, I mean, that’s a pretty fun touch to business in America. 2, I love the diversity of the clients that we serve.

 

Really creates a fantastic business model and and kind of an exciting business to be a part of. And then that last piece is, but, boy, there’s still a ton of folks that haven’t heard our story. They’re non programmers. So you look at that. You say, wow.

 

You’re in a great spot. Right? Because you’re in a spot that has a really great resilient business model as an industry. You’re in a spot that has a tremendous amount of diversity in who you serve, but there’s still a ton of upside. And so it’s a great, great industry to be to be a part of.

 

We, like you’ve heard from some of my counterparts here. We do love, to have a non programmer focus. I would say that it’s not it’s also not where we segment non programmers necessarily separately from people that are already used to being in one of our services, but certainly segmenting the SICs in which we, go after and really, really arming our frontline sellers with very specific right to wins that resonate in that specific industry. Aside from that, I mean, clearly, when it relates to how do you get your sales team interested about nonprogrammers because, listen, nonprogrammers are are great business. They’re generally less price sensitive.

 

They are generally installing quickly, so there are a lot of benefits for a seller. So what we try to do is really have a balanced pipeline, really educate our sales organization on the what’s in it for them to make sure that they have a healthy part of their pipeline that’s built with non programmers, and then make sure that, again, the right to win that we craft as kind of a really blended marketed marketing and sales organization speaks to that end user so that their success rates are favorable. That’s what I would say. And I’m happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Ron.

 

Dave. Okay. So I’m definitely the guppy in the room here. I am not I did not grow up in the industry. I worked for a company, Airborne Express, in the logistics and small package business for 23 years in sales, and we sold that business to DHL, which maybe some of you are familiar with.

 

And I wound up interviewing with the guy maybe you know, Ron Crotty, and joined UniFirst. So I’ve been with UniFirst for 10 years as senior VP of sales and marketing, which was not the easiest transition to come into, really a family run business at a high level. So you kinda have to earn stripes. So there’s definitely some battle scars there. So oversee sales and marketing together.

 

I would say we have an absolute focus on no programmers. But I would say, at UniFirst, it’s more complimentary to going after programmers, by our salespeople. And we’ve really developed, some algorithms in our CRM that have been refined to say, here’s what you do today, here’s who you call on based on scoring different prospects, and we always have a balance that, hey, these are the number and no programmers each week we need to touch and try to convert. We do train it separately, but the training, in terms of how we go about selling it, they’re both solution sales. Right?

 

So with a no programmer, we’re still trying to solve business issues. I heard earlier in one of the sessions, when we’re talking about pipeline, problems. Well, believe me, these little programmers have lots of problems, and in this tight labor market, which we’ve really pushed out to our teams, employee retention is critical and they’re paying the price right now. So a uniform program is an absolute benefit that we’re pushing to the talent, you you know, because the cost of turnover is significant. Like Jim had mentioned, we have a similar approach, so we campaign by SIC, and, we’ll build some marketing to couple that with, with a no program or script.

 

And, in our phone block sessions, you know, our competitive ones, we’ll really start touching those and pushing them. And, of course, we’re we’re trying to measure conversion rates. I would say, unlike Cintas, with our market share, there’s also a lot of programmer business out there. So, you know, we really, I would say, do it more complementary and balance it. Great.

 

I’ll I’ll I’ll ask the first question, and then we’ll go to the group. And I wanna build on kinda something Dave said. Dave mentioned the employee retention, is kind of a theme that’s resonating with some of the non programmers. We’ll start with Ryan. What other themes are there that are resonating with non programmers out there?

 

I mean, things like sustainability or safety or compliance, what what are some of those issues that are resonating with non programmers? Yeah. So Joe, what I what I would say is, listen, there are some kinda core topics that come up a lot with all the prospects. Right? Whether it be morale, whether it be image, whether it be branding, whether it be safety, whether it be environmental sustainability.

 

So we clearly have those messages crafted and ready and, and really, you know, kind of arm our frontline with the right messaging, but I think for us, it really becomes more about understanding that specific SIC, really arming our sales people with insights from that SIC and a playbook that helps them understand before they walk in the door, what is that environment like? What are they facing? What kind of challenges do they specifically have? Now it can be in some cases that if they’re a non programmer, you know, they’re gonna get not only their SIC specific messaging, but then some of the other benefits that they see that are kinda holistic across the industry come into play. But we really focus in on making sure that we’ve got the right story with that right end user at the at the right time.

 

Bob, anything to add to that? Or I I, you know, I think with where our economy is going, we have to follow that. You know, back when I was in sales in Nashville, we sold a lot of tool and die shops and machine shops and and, light manufacturing, so a lot of those jobs are are not are not here anymore, and it’s much more of a service economy and, of course, you know, properties like we’re in here at Caesars, and you have to, you have to pivot. And one of the things that I think is real interesting about our economy is the amount of home delivery, the number of times your doorbell’s ringing at home for something somebody delivering something, somebody there to service, your lawn sprinkler, your your security system, you know, of course plumbing and heating and air, etcetera, and I just think identification and and security of that, and telegraphing who you are as a company when you’re on somebody’s property is, is a great message, and I think and if you look at some of these segments or some of these, industries that are under programmed, if you will, a lot of them are those are those segments, so I think, as an industry, that that’s a a great place to go.

 

There’s not a business owner or an operator that’s gonna disagree with that. Like, yeah, the homeowner’s probably gonna like that that they’re that they’re our provider is in a uniform of some kind, even if it’s a even if it’s a a polo shirt or something of that nature. But so I think that’s a good place to go, and it’s and it’s, I think our product lines probably are all pretty much there. I don’t know that you have to go crazy from a product development standpoint to to, resonate in that in that segment. Jim, you got anything to add?

 

Or Yeah. I think these delivery, there’s a growing need for safety, high vis shirts and so forth, depending on what kind of delivery you’re doing. If you’re out on the side of the street parking your truck, you go in, you need some high vis. If you’re in traffic at all, I think you’ll start seeing that enforced a lot tougher than it has been in the past, so we’re seeing some demand for that pickup in that identity thing, I would I would agree. And that hasn’t changed much in the last 30 some years.

 

You know, people like to know who’s coming to the door. It tells you what organization they belong to, what they’re doing, or why they’re there. You have somebody knocks on your door with a t shirt on, you’re doing the peephole thing, trying to figure out what’s going on. I think that that builds on the you heard, the keynote this morning say he worked at McDonald’s and was responsible for Washington’s own uniform and never did. I I spent 15 years in the security industry with security guards, and they all are responsible for washing their own clothes, and they never do.

 

And it really impacts image. And And it was one of the first things when I got in this space, I actually met with some UniFirst guys out in LA and tried to figure out how to how do we go after the security market? And it’s very dispersed. Right? It’s not a they don’t go back to the same office or the same location to be able to drop off and pick up.

 

I think some of these home folks are the same, so it lends itself maybe to non rental, but I I how do you overcome that operationally? I think it’s a it’s a tough thing too. Now for a brief message I’m here today with Audrey Carmichael from 6 Disciplines Consulting Services. Audrey, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself? Sure, Jason.

 

Thanks. So I work with 6 Disciplines Consulting Services, and I’ve been involved in the laundry industry for about 2 years. Prior to joining 6 disciplines, I was the director of quality assurance and a continuous improvement manager for a large energy company. So I bring to HC Consulting my experience and and my background from doing auditing and in a quality control perspective. Other work that I do with 6 disciplines includes our strategic planning and execution process and lean and 6 Sigma training.

 

And let’s dive into your hygienically clean consulting services. Where can TRSA members go to learn more about this and sign up? As you know, more and more textile customers want hygienically clean certification from their laundries. The process for getting certified is very straightforward. You go to the t r s a web site and download an application.

 

After you submit the application and the fee and you’re ready for an inspection, you contact TRSA to schedule 1. But how do you know if you’re ready for an inspection? 1st, you have to have a deep understanding of the requirements. TRSA has 4 hygienically clean certifications, food safety, food service, health care, and hospitality. Each of these has its own standard, which lays out the requirements for obtaining certification.

 

Those are on the TRSA website too. You download those and make sure your program complies to the appropriate standard. At the inspection, the inspector will visit your site, conduct a thorough walk through, a review of your QA manual, and your records. Then they collect a sample of your product for bacteriological testing. If your QA manual and walk through show you’re in compliance with bacteriological test is good, you qualify for certification.

 

How does Hygenically Clean Consulting fit into the process? What we do at 6 disciplines is give laundry operators a third party objective assessment of their facility and their readiness to apply for certification. It’s a low risk way to see if you’re ready to schedule an inspection and understand if you have more work to do. We’ve designed our 6 disciplines HC Consulting and Coaching Service to work with the facilities from the early stages of their planning through to their application and inspection. Our commitment is to meet your organization where you are and help navigate you through the process.

 

We visit the facility and conduct a line by line review of the operation against the agency standard they’re working toward. It’s a multistep process. First, we’ll take the standard and verify that the operation has a policy and a procedure to address each of the requirements exactly. These all need to be up to date and all compiled directly in a quality assurance manual. That’s the first step.

 

Then we’ll look for evidence that the procedures are being followed. This can be through reviewing records that have been kept or by verifying compliance physically, Sometimes both. I’ll give you an example. This standard will require a pest control plan. I’ll look in the QA manual to be sure there’s a policy around pest control, and I’ll look for a procedure a procedure for how they go about it.

 

For example, how did they choose their pest control contractor? How often do they treat for pests? How do they handle this situation if a rodent is seen in the plant and so on? Then I’ll look for evidence they’re complying with their own procedure. I’ll check for a contract with the pest control company and invoices to prove they’ve done the work as often as the procedure calls for.

 

Out on the plant, I’ll look for traps or strips that show they’re following their own procedure in their pest control company’s program. During the review, I’ll make notes of any gaps in the program. Are they missing a procedure? Do they have records that are required, and are they located where they can be easily shown to an inspector? This way, by the time they schedule their inspection, they have everything complete and in order, ready to go.

 

But if they have gaps in their program and need some help, 6 disciplines can work with them to prepare for their certification too. We offer multiple levels of service to help guide and coach. And what are the level of services that you provide? This is where I think we clearly differentiate ourselves. We’re there every step of the way if you want us to be.

 

6 Disciplines has worked with TRSA to lay out 3 levels of service for hygienically clean consulting and coaching. The first level is a pre audit consultation and report. We conduct this as a mock interview at your site. We review your QA manual, perform a walk through of the facility, and review your records. We provide a report with actions we recommend you take prior to scheduling your inspection.

 

This is to give you some peace of mind that you’re ready or that you need to look more closely at some areas. The second level is a higher level of service. We review your existing SOPs and help develop additional ones so that your QA manual complies with the standard. This level also includes a mock audit and report. The 3rd level could be described as a turnkey service.

 

We work with your team and create your QA program and manual, including forms, records, checklists, pretty much everything you need to have in place. This service also includes a final mock audit and walk through of your facility. We’re there to help because the reality is your team’s probably focused on running the business. Bringing us in short term can help you achieve the goal of getting certified sooner rather than later. Also, if you need more help, we can work with you on activities like training your staff, project managing your tasks, and so on.

 

We’re committed to helping you however you need. Can’t TRSA member organizations do this on their own? Sure. Some organizations can and have gotten certified on their own, The others would like to have some guidance along the way in help putting the program together. Six disciplines offers our service as a low risk way to check on the readiness for inspection or even as a turnkey solution.

 

It all depends on where they’re starting from, but it does take time and resources, and it can be a big endeavor on their own. I say everyone comes to this differently, so we’ll meet you where you are, and we’ll help navigate it together. The truth is all organizations have competing priorities and are managing different things. So while certification may be very important to your strategic plan, your available resources may not allow you to complete it in the time frame you want. Our consulting for HC can provide focus and momentum and even some of the heavy lifting.

 

Now back to the episode. So difference in the sales process. Let’s start with GM if you got something. Well, I think, you know, a note programmer, for example, if you’re selling them uniforms, if you if you start talking to them about how you handle shortages and mending and so forth, you’re gonna scare them to death, you know. They might ask you that you may there’s a chance that I might not get this garment back if I turn it in.

 

LRs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you have to be careful the way you pose these things.

 

And you also have to be careful not to overpromise. When we do our customer loyalty studies, we separate, and take a look at that. If a customer has been with us as a for only 12 months as an op programmer, we wanna make sure that we’re satisfying that customer’s need. So it starts in that sales process, but it continues on into that service process. If you just treat them like everyone else, their expectations coming in are quite different than the than the non programmer.

 

So I think you have to be careful with that. Yeah. Like, the the the installation, you know, the day they get their uniforms, this would be a no programmer. Obviously, we come in. Right?

 

You got these giant bundles of uniform, and you find a table somewhere, and you’re throwing them. There’s this giant pile of uniforms, and they’re looking at it. What did I sign up for here? You know? Why do why do they get 11 again?

 

You know? Or whatever. You gotta you gotta stay real close in the early goings because people forget to turn them in, and when they forget to turn them in, they don’t see the value as much. And, you know, so I think there’s some handholding there. But as far as the difference in the in the sales process, I find it to be longer.

 

Now you there’s, and that’s, aside from any contract that you’re waiting out, but I just think, in general, the decision process is one that you have to be real patient with. You may not get that one this year. It might take you a while. And and the other one is, and this isn’t really a difference, but, the wearer, the wearer’s impression of what’s going to happen is normally a pretty big influence. That can be true on the rental side too, on the programmer, but but I think what the wearer’s gonna think of it and the fit and the comfort of the uniform and what it’s gonna look like and how’s this gonna work, and I think that’s an important influence.

 

I’m I’m gonna water ski off your comments first. Go ahead. That was really good. So I I really also believe that what the non programmer’s really understanding the wearers are important. You know, that’s a major stakeholder in that decision.

 

And listen, if if the if part of that sale is about improve improving employee morale, and part of that sale is about employee benefit, boy, are we doing the right job making sure we’re talking to those stakeholder groups and and really understanding their needs at a at a higher level? So I think it it in my mind, it plays a very important role. Yeah. I would say final comment. It’s incredibly important on an old programmer to be working with the right buying influence, and it’s normally gotta be a pretty high level person because it’s it’s gonna be an expense and how are they gonna get return on that investment.

 

It’s a big change. We try to in our pre call plans, we really try to find competitors and do the research and arm our salespeople with competitors of that business that do rent or lease to demonstrate, hey. There might be a competitive gap you’re not taking advantage of. And I I, you know, I heard a lot about stories and case studies. I think they’re very effective, at least they have been for us, when we approach the no programmer opportunities.

 

Just to carry on to that question, it sounds like it’s, you know, more expensive, more time consuming, obviously, more customer service hand holding, whatever you wanna call that piece of it. Is do you see a higher retention in the nonprogrammers or the notprogrammers? I mean, you do in in others? I think, initially, on some of the larger ones I’ll speak for UniFirst. Initially, they’re they seem a little rockier.

 

And I think it goes back to what Bob said is they’re the the users or the wearers are not quite sure what they’re doing. There’s some perceptions that you have to get over the hump. And then I think once you get there, if you can get through that first 6 months to a year, you’re probably in pretty good shape, but I have seen some that get pretty rocky out of the gate, at least from our perspective. Other questions? We have another question from the from the audience.

 

This one’s for Bob. Obviously, campaign for, Ready for the Workday, I’ve been for converting my programs. Do you have any to add on? I think it provides some very good air cover. I call it air cover for the sales team.

 

Those those commercials, digital spots and the radio and TV spots that we’ve, invested in touch on more than just, uniforms. You know, the fire extinguisher business, the first aid and safety, and some of the higher end uniforms like in, in the hospitality segment. Right. They’re designed to, again, provide some air cover so that when the sales team shows up, there’s something, some level of familiarity there. We don’t have a lot of, as you can imagine, a lot a lot of really careful measurement of that.

 

It’s really hard to do that with an advertising campaign, but, the anecdotal feedback we get is tremendous. We do measure, brand awareness and and awareness of, gee, I didn’t know Cintas did that. Right? I thought you were just this. I didn’t know you had that to it.

 

So we do some measurement as far as that, and we find that it’s effective and, we’re moving the needle there. How how that translates to more new business is is trickier. It does provide air cover. We get very good feedback from the sales organization and the the service organization too as far as renewals and and up sell, cross sell, etcetera. But it is a, a nice complement to other ways that people are familiar with Cintas.

 

The number one thing I hear is I know your trucks. It’s actually the fleet ends up being a bigger sort of air cover awareness driver, believe it or not, than some of the ad campaigns that we’ve invested in, but it’s, it’s a little bit early. I’ve been in the job for 2 years, and and some of those campaigns are still still, in play, but, you know, we think it’s providing the air cover that we want. They they know the name when you walk in. I mean, you know, we know the marketing stamp, but air cover is they’ve they’ve heard of it before.

 

They may not know exactly why or where, but they’ve heard of you before. I was They like the they like the song, too. The song is really I know others, others of you don’t do that level, but is there advertising or maybe some kind of campaign that you’re doing that you feel is sort of targeted at non programmers? I would and while it covers members, I would say that’s a are you the the get ready campaign is really focused on, to me, a non programmers, people that don’t understand either what you do or getting ready. So I don’t know if anybody else wants to come on any any advertising they’re doing or any tracking of any big issues like that that you do.

 

So we have we certainly don’t have ready for the work day. And I’m I’m getting kinda tired of watching those, actually. No. All kidding aside. I’ll make a note of that.

 

So we’ve we’ve really gone the whiteboard, path relative to we have some specific videos that with landing pages that speak to no programmers. And when we we get inbound hits on our website or through our telemarketing center, We’re really trying to deploy that through the landing page. We’ve got some triggers in our CRM to deliver emails when we know it’s a no programmer so they can hopefully watch that video, and and and we do track that. And we’re, of course, we’re trying to turn that into an appointment more than anything else, And those conversion rates are are are pretty decent if they come to visit, but but nothing wider than that. Yeah.

 

Anybody else? Yeah. Similarly, you know, we we absolutely have our campaigns that we launch against all of our segments, non programmers being a part of that. We also leverage, our Salesforce automation tool as well as marketing automation to help us enable that. And then, you know, to some degree, we’re still as as many of the sessions talked about, we’re still very reliant on a strong frontline sales force to help us make that happen.

 

Right? And and so we spend a lot of our our efforts. One of the sessions talked about marketing enabled sales. I mean, boy, if we’re not a 100% on that, I would be really disappointed. Right?

 

I mean, we should we have a lot of marketing enablement that allows us to make sure that we we’re saying the right things at the right time. Jim, anything? Or Yeah. We ours is more market specific. We’ll take on a campaign for a particular branch, and really focus, on whatever segment of business that we’re after there.

 

Of course on a national basis, we have NASCAR to leverage and so forth, but most of our feedback is coming from those local campaigns that we do that brings business to the branches. And can I say one more thing about the ad campaign? What people wear, you know, as you know, is really, really important. If you think about in your life, what’s hanging in your closet and what you, decisions you made when you packed your suitcase to come out here and it’s a big deal what people wear and that’s not, that is not absent in the, you know, at ABC Wrecking Record, you know, towing company or whatever. Those those people care about what they wear and they wanna feel good.

 

They wanna show pride, and I think that as a as an industry, we just have to keep reinforcing the value of what they have, right, to the to the existing wearer, so they don’t lose faith in what they have. In fact, it’s a weird phenomenon. Some people, when uniform wears dye, they wanna they wanna be buried in their uniform. Have you heard of this before? They take a lot of pride and I think that’s, again, what the air cover is meant to reinforce.

 

Yeah. And I think we’re we deal we work with the ETSA, which is the European counterpart kinda to TRSA, And they really look at a lot. They’re they’re really into fashion and Yeah. The fashion of uniforms, more wearers, more female wearers of uniforms, and how that fashion works, the size of people, whether they’re small and you can’t fit the same kind of, reflective gear that somebody who’s a little bit bigger. And it’s just you can’t even do 70 inches of reflective wear for somebody a certain size.

 

Then obesity. So dealing with those kinds of issues, I think we’re seeing more of that come back into the into the space. And how do we, you know, overcome those issues? One of the first questions that we had in here, and, and I’ll ask this. Our room’s probably 25, 30 percent associate vendor operator.

 

You know, they support our industry in a variety of ways. But one of the questions that came from them in several different forms was, you know, how can how can they support your efforts as vendors and suppliers to the industry to go after nonprogrammers? What can is there anything they can do, or what can they do to to help you do that? Well, we get a lot of help from our suppliers. I I I think we we have what I would call a clear supplier integration with our company, opposed to it being strictly a transactional relationship.

 

They are part of our planning. If we go after certain markets, they’re part of that. When we’re looking at new products or they’re looking at new products, we do that planning together. So the suppliers that we have are excellent at doing that. You just have to open up and let them in.

 

They’re they’re they’re out here to help you if you’ll let them, but some some folks are so so closed minded. They don’t they don’t want the help. So I think they’re available for us anytime we need them. I know that folks in this room certainly are. Yeah.

 

And I would say you’re just adding new products, bring us new product opportunities that, that might create a new sandbox for us. You know, that’s one of the things that Cintas has done is, you know, in, 1998, I think, we, dedicated a separate division to First Aid and Safety, so that we could continue to drive our growth and create a new sandbox, right? And then, fire protection probably about 5 or 6 years later and document management. And, you know, we’re looking for new new things that our customers can, obtain from us. And I think a lot of those have come from, ideas from vendors.

 

Yeah. I would I would add that well, first of all, we absolutely value our vendor relationships and partnerships really important to our business. Me, personally, I love the insights that our vendors bring to us around certain industry types, around certain SICs, really educating us on some of the trends that that they’re researching and they’re seeing and sort of lining those up with the same research that we’re doing and and validating or finding new areas to grow. So between finding new product opportunities, but also just the intel and the insights around those users, around those segments is really valuable from a collaboration standpoint. I think that’s all well said.

 

I would just say our key partners and suppliers, you need to take the time, and and we try to do it. Sharing strategy, sharing what innovations, you know, each is working on and how you can bring that to the marketplace together. Because sometimes you get transactional and you’re worrying about whether it’s back orders or the supply side, and you’re not working on the strategy of how they’re gonna add value and how you’re both gonna go forward and grow together. I think that’s real important. So, one of the questions I had too is where do your great marketing or sales ideas come from?

 

Well, you want me to start with that one? Yeah. Sure. Alright. I believe in, a lot of it comes from the front line.

 

You know, we have a tagline, frontline first, and and so we really look at what’s happening where our brand is being touched with the the customer. Right? And, you know, we can have all kinds of ivory tower ideas, and we have a lot of them from time to time, but if we don’t do a great job of stimulating thoughts and ideas from our frontline and really get their insights to match up with what we’re finding along with what we talked about with our supplier base, we never get to an innovation that really resonates in the marketplace. So for us, it really starts really at the frontline where we understand our customers the best. Then when we identify those real significant needs that the clients have, whether it’s overt or it’s unarticulated, we’ll find them, and then we start working collaboratively to find ways to solve for that.

 

And so that’s kind of how our innovation process works, and if we tried it the opposite way, boy, we’ve had a lot of things that have have not been commercial successes. When it comes up from the field, boy, they’re they’re they take on a much better life. Do you do you reward that, or how do you incentivize those? Or any way to Well, I think the first thing is we just, appreciate and honor that it’s coming from the field. We don’t have all the answers in the ivory tower is what I like to say.

 

So so from my vantage point, the first thing is just dignity and respect of where the work really happens, which is where we touch those customers. And so when you really get that and you understand that, in my opinion, the idea is just you get more than you ever expected to get. Right? And then people take pride in ownership in being a part of finding and identifying new opportunities. And so the second part of that to me is is developing the right cross functional team that gets to play a part in making that come to life.

 

Then you just have a collaboration that’s kinda hard to it’s it’s like an inertia that just keeps keeps rolling. Anybody else wanna comment on that? I I think, and and you touched on it there. The the route sales people are are such a great source of data and, you know, it’s hard to hard to sort of lasso that data, but when you think about it, our customers are not, and we we looked we talked about big data earlier in one of the, breakout sessions, a very good session. Our customers, though, are not a giant mystery to us.

 

Right? We step out of our how many how many industries get to say hello face to face with their customers every week, and and not only say say hello, but roam their hallways unsupervised, coming in and out of janitor closets and restrooms and locker rooms and boiler rooms and and, coming in and out of the back door, so, the trust that’s there is gigantic and we need to take advantage of that trust and and listen to our customers because, now we got and we also have to capture good data, but it’s not a giant mystery and vice versa. They’re not a mystery to us and they’re not a and and and the other way too. So, I think that’s where a lot of the ideas and innovation and listening has to happen because it’s there. And our s our what we call our SSRs, our route salespeople, are they’re the king for us.

 

They, king and queen. Right? So they do all the heavy lifting, literally, and, are out as the face of Cintas, so we, obviously have great respect for that. And here’s a quick quick story. When I led the sales organization, you know, we used to have sales meetings in, you know, for lunch.

 

We’d have some pizzas brought in and we would be done with our pizzas, right, and there’d be like a couple pieces left over, you know, one one with the olives picked off and, you know, one with a bite out of it. And what do you do with the with the leftover pizza when you’re done with it? You take it to the route room. Right? Because when the people come in, when the route or they come back in, they’ll eat it.

 

Well, we realized what really what an insult that was. And and it never dawned on us as salespeople. We thought, hey. We’ll give it to the you know? And, and at one point, we heard that, hey.

 

Stop doing that. That’s kind of, you know, so Not full of olives. Not full of olives. Yeah. So so now, we have a regular practice of having hot, complete pizzas in the route room when they come back, but, instead of, you know, the scraps.

 

So, just a little twist there. You think you’re doing the right thing and you’re doing the wrong thing. But they’re, they, they’re doing all the heavy lifting, and that’s where all the listening, I think, has to has to take place. Dave, did you wanna add to Well, I was just, we just did this 2 years ago. We really set up a sales and marketing advisory board, and we took people with solid track records that have helped the organization in other areas and we bring them together on video conference And we work on a handful of things, and we send them off in separate teams to try and cultivate their ideas and bring back a plan.

 

And it’s, it’s helped us significantly on a lot of areas. So I think we did it informally somewhat, and then we formalized it. And I feel like with the follow-up and and the and the way we move forward, we let them present to our executive team. That’s helped us great deal. So that that’s worked out.

 

That was gonna be my next question. Is it a formal process or informal process? Do you have a process for that, Jim? Or Well, they come from one person right there, Ryan Matthews. You guys can ask him when it’s over.

 

I’ll tell you. They all come right from him. But, but no, I think we’ve got some 20,000 people that work for us. And I think we’ve got a great bottom down, top, bottom up, top down communication system. And we get most of, most of our great ideas from within our company.

 

Somebody will send an email to somebody that’s forwarded, forwards it to someone else. And, I think most of our great ideas will will come from that direction and our and our suppliers. And, we have customers that ask us about, could you do this for us, or could you look at this for us? And so so I think it’s pretty much all the all the same for all of us. So Bob mentioned big data and, talk about big data.

 

What is one of the the largest impact of technology on your marketing and sales performance? It could include big data. It could include something else, handhelds. Whatever you think is the biggest impact on improving your marketing sales from a technology standpoint. Well, from a sales perspective well, listen, the big data presentation was was one of our guys, so so I don’t wanna steal any any of his thunder.

 

But from a sales perspective, one of the biggest transformational things for us was when we went to salesforce.com as our sales automation tool. Clearly, it allows us to do great segmentation. It allows us to provide real important information in the hands of our sellers when they need it. It also provides us with a really great ability to kinda learn and talk to each other in in some of their chatter formats, etcetera. So so from a a single source of truth from a sales perspective, and and clearly, it has all of our metrics in there, but more of an enablement tool to to really arm our sales organization at the moment of truth with the things that they need to be successful.

 

So CRM system, Salesforce, which is, you know, gives anybody can really afford to do some kind of CRM like Salesforce at this point. It’s not an expensive system. Obviously, more users you have, the more expensive it is. But I mean, similarly, I mean, we we went to Microsoft Dynamics, but we were we were really itching for a change from where we were. And probably similarly, we built workflows, into the sales process.

 

We integrated training and marketing, into the milestones of the sales process. It helped us score the prospects, develop the funnel. But, you know, we try to say, you know, like bull Durham, don’t think. It can only hurt the ball club. We really want a guided process for our salespeople.

 

We heard earlier in the in the initial keynote that, you know, whether it be introvert or extrovert, we want them to execute the plan, and that’s really helped us quite a bit. We use Microsoft Dynamics too, and getting the reps to use it to its fullest extent, and some of that goes back to the sales manager, is a challenge. Yeah. You know, having I my slogan when I led sales was, if you want to be the beneficiary of technology, you have to be a giver of data, and and you have to you have to put information in there and leave breadcrumbs for yourself. Right?

 

And that’s that was that’s the big challenge, I think, with Salesforce or any of these other products. So Garbage in, garbage out. Yeah. Or You’re not using it. So Or nothing in, nothing out would be the Yeah.

 

Yeah. I think if you make it attractive enough and there’s enough in there to enable them, maybe you’ll get a little more effort to do it. That’s what we’ve tried to do. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more.

 

Yeah. What I say to our team is, you know, when you order on Amazon, you still have to put your credit card in and you have to submit or they don’t ship you anything. It’s kinda the same thing with CRM. You gotta you gotta move across and submit. Well, and and, to build off of that, both of your comments, if we wouldn’t have done some heavy lifting ahead of time to make sure that all of our processes were already really lined out, you know, the first several years at of my, tenure at Aramark was really about building the sales process and and making sure that, you know, what was happening in Pittsburgh was the same thing that was happening in, you know, Poughkeepsie, or you you get the gist.

 

Right? And so we needed to have a real our all of our sales processes and all of our common language defined and all that. And so we we spent a lot of time making sure that we had that right because I think you saw in the in the, data section that if you automate a poor process, it doesn’t make any sense anyway. Right? Right.

 

So then when we automated, we spent all of our energy on first making this a tool that the sellers would want to use, not a tool to smack them over the over over the the, you know, the the legs with or the hands. Or big brother. Right. Or big brother. Or hovering over them.

 

Yeah. It’s just that wasn’t gonna that wouldn’t advance our cause, and it certainly wouldn’t advance theirs. So we spent a significant amount of time in the change management piece really trying to understand if you were a user, why would you want to be in this tool? And why and what’s in it for you, and how do you make sure that it’s a win? And boy, that that that way of thinking helped us make sure that we could adopt it at a very, very high rate.

 

Yeah. Having the processes in place before, and we heard a lot of it that from the keynote this morning about having the right processes and the right messaging that then ties in with your differentiation and what’s going on in the out in the field, and you’re tying it back to marketing. Right? I mean, it’s, difficult to to align that in one plant with 10 you know, with a handful of salespeople. And to do it nationally is even much more difficult.

 

So a lot of time and energy goes into that. Jim, do you have anything to add to that or your thoughts? I think for us, it’s pretty much the same. We’ve got a program that’s been in pilot for, it seems like, 2 or 3 years, but we’re we’re finally launching it and it starts in the in the sales database and it moves over to the proposal stage from the proposal to the service agreement, and then once it’s signed electronically, it comes back all the way into data entry. So it saves a lot of people a lot of work.

 

You can find what you’re looking for instead of going to a file somewhere. So I think that’s been a big breakthrough for us. I’ve heard a lot about marketing automation. I know it’s something we’re trying to do. So, Equinox has marketing automation within their system.

 

So just one other person. It’s it’s it’s kind of an it’s relatively new, I would say. But, boy, it’s it’s, so cost effective. Saves a lot of time if you can figure out how to implement it correctly. You have the right data in if you put the right data in your CRM, to be able to automate that marketing can save you a tremendous amount of time.

 

Because, I mean, a lot of, as you heard earlier today, a lot of marketing is really it’s I always said it’s like 90% accounting. It’s really just putting a process in place and hitting timelines and getting it to the right people. You know, the whole idea that marketing is this big creative umbrella where we’re coming up with these, you know, new pictures and new messaging is kind of it’s not really what it is. It’s really it’s more science than art, right? That’s what makes it important in the CRM to capture those milestones because once you have the email address and the IP device, you can remark it.

 

You can float things out at the right time if you know when the contract expires, so that’s why getting the users to adopt is so critical. That’s exactly, the challenge is, you know, you wanna be the beneficiary of marketing automation, you have to be the giver of data. Because I get asked that by a lot of reps, why don’t we do more with marketing automation? And I’m like, are you kidding me? If this is easy, why aren’t you giving us more data?

 

You know, so, it’s a, you know, it it’s a data driven thing. Yeah. Without data, it can go really wrong. I mean, if you’re sending people the wrong messages everybody, we talked a lot about targeting and targeted messaging and finding the right niches, but you know, you get that wrong a couple times and they’re getting some automation that says their contract’s expiring and it’s not, or they’re, you know, you call them healthcare vendors and they’re a restaurant. I mean, just do that once and you’ve pretty much destroyed your relationship with them.

 

So awfully, if you move to that automation, you gotta have the information in the system. Well, we and we can we tell stories. That’s been a common theme, I think, from the day. We tell a lot of stories. We share with our, reps.

 

The stories of the folks that have have great databases. Right? That have, you look at the quality of the data, the quality of what they put in, and what their outcomes look like. It it’s so it’s such a one to one, you know, relationship. And so we’re constantly educating our teams on the what’s in it for them and the value for investing in it, which is exactly what you were saying as well.

 

Yeah. And because you’re meeting customers’ expectations that are used to technology. They’re on Amazon, and Amazon’s predicting what they wanna buy and what they wanna read and what to buy their spouse or their kids based on how their information they’ve taken in. They’re used to that. They want to be able to do it whenever they want and order whenever they want and look at the data whenever they want.

 

And, you know, just the gener it’s a generational thing too, millennials. Right? They’re used to shouting across the room, Alexa, you know, play play Shakira. And it does. And and, but you can’t shout across the room and say, you know, give me more marketing automation.

 

You actually have to feed it. Right. You know? And it’s, they’re not used to feeding. Right.

 

Especially salespeople. I apologize to all millennials. Yeah. But it’s it’s especially salespeople. That’s not their do they wanna get out and sell, sell, sell, and be on the street?

 

Yeah. Meeting customers. My favorite personalities. Yeah. Yeah.

 

One of the other questions we had was, and reason though, you know, we pulled this whole conference, and the theme of the conference together was to talk about, how can we, together as an industry, expand the market for linens, uniforms, garments, and facility services. So what are your thoughts on how we might be able to work together? Obviously, we’re gonna work on our own and we’re gonna come up with our own plans and have some differentiation and things like that. We’re working as an association to help with tools. But what are your thoughts on how we might be able to to work together as an industry to expand the pie, and so we all benefit from that in at some level?

 

One of one of the things I think we’re all gonna be faced with is recruiting great people, great talent, and, you know, again, I started this conversation talking about how much I love this industry and how special I really think it is. I think we need we we really need to work together to educate talented people, coming out of school and and folks that are maybe on their second or third, job that, boy, this is a attractive industry to be a part of. This is an industry that you can really build a long and fruitful career. As we are all gonna need that that talent, I think that’s something collectively that that we should do. You know, I think because we’re all in the service business, at some at some point, it’s kinda hard.

 

We don’t do it probably enough patting ourselves on the back because we’re here to serve. But man, this is a really special place to be. Right? I think we have to tell that story more aggressively to attract as many people as we can. Anybody else?

 

Jim or Dave? I I agree with the recruiting side. I I feel like there’s positives that the industry delivers that would be attractive to millennials or Gen Z. You know, there’s sustainability and green initiatives that I think the industry has as a strength that maybe, we’re cautious about touting, but when when we’re trying to find talent or we’re we’re speaking to prospects, I think in general, we could probably do a better job there. I think there’s opportunity there.

 

Yeah. I agree. I think it is. We have we started an internship program at TRSA. And one of the things that we found and it’s just to come work in an association for 6 weeks.

 

But we found really resonates with these, rising college seniors, which is what we recruit, is really the sustainability of our product. And that and our we talk about this business as being a green, sustainable business. And that that resonates with them. This this generation, whatever you want, millennials or whatever generation you wanna call it, it resonates with them. And I think they like that aspect of it.

 

And so you’re I think we we’ve not only done our own, but we did an industry internship program last year. We had, 250 applicants in, like, 30 days for internships. So we’re, you know, we’re trying to go out and do those kinds of things. And we know a lot of our members. I know that ALSCO’s got a relationship with some colleges and universities where they do some recruiting.

 

I know that Cintas is very tied to the military and brings in a lot of veterans and military veterans. So I know each of you have some different types of programs to reach out to folks. And we’ve been trying to do that from our standpoint in a lot of our programs. We’ve been in the neighborhood. I think that’s critical is it’s only gonna get, labor shortage is gonna continue regardless of the economy, just because of the population changes and the aging demographics and things like that.

 

So, we’re gonna be competing for people in all different types of industries. So one of the other questions we had on here, I think, that lends itself to that same is, you know, what are the characteristics of a good, either marketing manager or sales manager and and, what could you share in that kind of area? I think oftentimes they just sort of rise up. They’re good salespeople and may not be good managers. Yeah.

 

Ones that know there’s a difference. I would say that, and this was touched upon earlier in the, sales and marketing collaboration speech is, a marketer that is connected to the business as much as possible. I try and encourage our marketers to, I call it upstream connectivity. Not just connectivity, but, you know, I don’t want after the business unit decides we’re going to have a contest around something, I don’t want marketing brought in after the fact to make a poster or something. And, like, I said I want to be in those meetings, of course, much earlier and in the in that thought process.

 

And so I try to encourage our marketing managers to be I don’t wanna see them run or I wanna I want them to be running with the business, traveling, attending their meetings, getting in the car with sales reps. That’s what I call ups upstream connectivity. So that’s, in my opinion, that’s a trait of a great marketer. Yeah. I’d I’d say from a marketing perspective, I want someone that is passionate about understanding the customer.

 

I mean, you really, really care and wanna understand that customer. Second thing is someone that’s, metrics driven. Absolutely is, because there’s there’s there’s always a balancing act between the art and the science. I I lean towards the science of this. Right?

 

And I want someone that’s that absolutely is metrics driven. And then I couldn’t agree any more strongly. Gotta have people that are connected to the business, because you can’t do things in a vacuum, Right? And it just doesn’t work if it’s in a vacuum. Mhmm.

 

And then on on the sales side, you know, we generally promote all of our sales leaders from within, but clearly, they’re not always the best salespeople. Right? The sales the sales, characteristics that I that I look for is, a, they you have to really care about developing people more than you’re selfishly kinda concerned about your own paycheck. And when you get someone that first has that leaning where they really wanna help someone grow, k, now we’ve got something. Then then I look for, can they attract great talent?

 

Do they recruit and attract great talent, and then do they develop it? Then I look for, you know, are they process centric in their approach? Again, back to the idea of, I’m I’m way more on the, you know, the the the process side of driving a sales, forward. And then and then lastly, are they passionate? Do they have fire?

 

Do they do they get up every day to wanna do a great job? And I think if you find those things in your sales leaders, well, you’re you’re cooking. Anything else to add? Jim or Dave? I mean, these guys did a great job.

 

I would just say this. The number one mistake we make in promoting people to sales manager, and it’s the knee jerk reaction or the easy decision, is you take the best seller with the best selling results. And, I think probably everyone’s fallen over that grenade. Right? It’s they’re selfish.

 

There’s a reason they’re great sellers. They’re competitive. They’re selfish. They’re in it typically for the dollar or the glory or some combination of the 2. And your sales manager really has to be almost the opposite.

 

I mean, they have to have good sales acumen, but they have to be selfless. That’s right. They have to be great coaches, and they have to be willing to overcome some adversity and do some babysitting, right, which some of the best sellers just don’t have the patience for. They’ll go out and do it themselves. I call them, you know, Beagle sales managers.

 

They send their reps out there to sniff it out, and they’re not self sufficient and they’ll run-in there and try to close it. And that’s just unsustainable. This will be my last question. So I’ll open it back up to the, audience again. But, for each of you, what are the what are the 3 biggest challenges or threats from a marketing and sales perspective facing our industry in the next 3 to 5 years?

 

Jim, I’ll start with you. That’s a that’s a tough question. It is. I think, you know, maybe ourselves. We might be our largest challenge.

 

You know, we have to treat our existing customers with care. We have to be careful about, everything that we do connected to that customer. There was a recent study over service agreements, that led me to believe that if we’re not careful, we might have a customer base that’s unwilling to sign our agreement. So I think we have to look at ourselves. I don’t think we’ll we’re gonna fall into any trap on the sales and marketing side, but I think we will with, maintaining a good customer base and going out and creating new possibilities with no programmers if we don’t watch ourselves the way we behave toward our customers.

 

All set. Anybody else wanna take that on? I would say, you know, besides talent acquisition, which I think is the biggest challenge our industry is gonna face, is, I just think we have to keep an eye on product and making sure our product line continues to evolve with with the rest of the world and also our sales messaging. Like, we’ve got to be really sophisticated if we’re going to go after no programmers. We have to, it can’t be let’s just go see if anybody wants any of this stuff.

 

Like, you gotta really and I think the the, young man this morning, Matthew, he said, he touched on this, like, you you need to learn to talk to that prospect about that prospect’s wants and needs and and and, day in the life kind of thing. So as we go after these new segments and these new things, we have to have a product line. You can’t take the you can’t take the, industrial product line into Caesar’s Palace or what what have you, and you have to have a sophisticated sales approach and be, have have a a level of sales rep on your team, the hiring profile of that person, who’s able to do that. So that might change who you hire too. So, I think those are challenges.

 

Yeah. I’ll I’ll echo, I think, the largest threat and challenge is is a people challenge. We’re it’s gonna be a a real fight for talent, so that’s that’s number 1. I think there’s I call it the Amazon effect. Right?

 

There’s, we are as consumers, we are really interested in right now, really easy, really, quick, and, boy, we have to be cognizant of the changing consumer and be be able to be sure that we make it really easy to do business and find ways to to really, connect with our our customers because their expectations continue to rise. And I think that’s, something that’s on our our plate. And then I think the third threat is I think we have to innovate more. We are we we generally have not innovated, at the level that other industries have, to to really make additional, expansions into maybe non programmer markets, etcetera, that that really can can bolster, the business over time. So in my mind, it’s really it’s really around people.

 

It’s around making sure we make it really easy to do business, and it’s around making sure that we innovate. Yeah. I’ve read somewhere that people are willing to pay more money for an inferior product if they can do it right away anytime. You know? And even if they don’t have to talk to anybody, that was the other the variable.

 

They wanna just do it whenever they wanna do it and get it done, and they’ll take an inferior product at a higher cost. They said it well. I would just say in terms of ease of doing business and customer experience, you know, and there’s variability in the industry. Some are better than others. But in general, we’re not automated enough.

 

We’re not proactive enough, and we’re not easy enough to do business with. And with the gig economy and losing wares and all the challenges these guys talked about, If we don’t get easier to work with and transact with, we’re gonna have real trouble, appealing to people and wanting to do it anymore. Yeah. One one of the things that came out of we had a June leadership conference, and we had, CEOs from, some of the same companies plus some additional folks. And one of the things came out was how how many uniforms are available at Walmart?

 

The whole section, you can go there and buy your own uniform that’s sold at Walmart. So we’re competing with retail, competing with online, competing with and and specifically more in the health care sector, disposable products. So there are beyond some of the things that you pointed out, there’s some small things that are overlaying some of those challenges as well. How do you challenge yourself to be innovative and to keep other people innovative around you? I I I have 4 daughters, between the ages of 29 and 22, and, that generation is just, I’m just so impressed with how quick they learn and and and it excites me about where the world’s going because they’re they’re they are so much farther ahead than I was at age 27, 28 years old.

 

So I think that’s what, inspires me to to innovate and because these are the, the future leaders of CentOS and the future, providers to our customers, and, I just want, as a leader at Centas, to make sure that the entire leadership team is dialed into that and whether it’s, our technology in the office and what we use or the next generation of our product line or how we communicate, etcetera, You know, we’re a company, and I don’t have one on today. In 32 years, the number of days I haven’t worn a tie is I can count on one hand, but I I just didn’t wanna look like a like a goofball up here. But, you know, my question is when is that gonna couldn’t tie one. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Yeah. When when is that gonna start working against us, you know, as a company? It is. Yeah. Well, yeah.

 

When is it gonna work? We’re the same. Yeah. When is it gonna work against us? So, those are the types of questions that where you have to find your inspiration.

 

I would say, I mean, that’s a great question, by the way. What what I would say is I mentioned earlier that I believe innovation starts on the front line. But I think for an organization to embrace innovation, the messaging does have to come from the the top of the organization as well. Right? It has to be really important to the leadership team.

 

You know, we talk about innovating the everyday, as part part of our approach to it where, you know, not every innovation is kind of the, you know, the this change the basis of competition type wow factor intellectual property. It it can be, just an idea from that front line that makes some process better. It can be a product idea that, helps us grow a market. It can be any number of small innovations, but if at the top, you absolutely value that, and then you empower people throughout the organization, recognize that, I think it fosters an environment where people want to be, dreaming and and be a part of that process. I think you also have to be introspective.

 

The senior leadership has to be willing to say, these are the things we don’t do well that we have get better at, and you have to get, you know, and deal with things you’re not comfortable with in order to innovate. And it starts with, you know, self assessing and saying, hey, if we don’t get better at this, we could get left behind. So it’s gotta be on your strategic road map and you’ve gotta be committed to it. And it may not be comfortable, but, man, if you don’t do it, you’re probably gonna suffer for not dealing with it. It’s all about the environment that you create for your people.

 

If you create the right environment, they’ll always be innovative for you. They don’t need to be afraid to come to you and talk with you about ideas and so forth. If you create that environment, they don’t ever stop coming. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time and for being here. I really appreciate it.