Can a Clean Car Increase Sales?
If you have kids, you know how trashy your car can get. During the school year my car fills up with my son’s old homework, dead pens, art projects, and snack wrappers.
Over the winter the floor mats become crusted with sand (put down on ice-covered sidewalks and parking lots). Dog nose prints cover the back side windows and the windshield becomes “foggy,” reducing visibility.
When you’re busy and juggling work, kids, and volunteer duties, it’s easy to not see the mess. And truthfully, spending a weekend day “detailing” the car isn’t on the list of priorities.
However, after listening to Alan Weiss give suggestions in his teleclass for moving from “panic to profitability,” I decided to take his advice. Namely, I washed my car. (I did many of the other things he suggested, too, but you’ll have to listen to his teleconference yourself.)
Not only did I wash my car, I vacuumed it out — including the trunk and under the seats. I cleaned the foggy windows and sticky cup-holder, and threw away a ton of trash. I even bought new tires.
What a difference. Suddenly, my five-year old car, which had been looking a little ragged around the edges, sparkled again. I drove it around, enjoying the clean and crumb-free interior. What a nice ride!
A few days after I cleaned it out, I ended up driving one of my clients to lunch. Now how cool was it that I didn’t have to apologize for a messy interior?
The clean car lead to some other changes . . . I started dressing a little better for work. I took Alan’s advice and bought a nice pen to bring with me to client meetings. I traded my beat up 10-year old portfolio that holds my notepad and business cards for a high-end leather one.
And, instead of reading the gloom and doom newspaper at breakfast and lunch, I started reading books about positive mental attitude.
These changes, although small, improved my attitude. I felt *good.*
And here is the crux of the matter. Although sales didn’t magically increase over night, the phone did start to ring again. Each day something good happened until one day I was just as swamped as I had been before the financial meltdown / recession hit.
The reason for the turn-around is this: Your conscious affects your sub-conscious. If you drive around in a messy car or show up at a client’s with frayed cuffs or worn heels, these “little” things affect your attitude — without you realizing it.
Change these things . . . and you change your attitude. Change your attitude . . . and you change your outcomes.
So here’s my advice: go wash your car. Really spend some time on it — make it so clean that you can drive your best client around in it.
Once it’s clean, put on your best suit and take yourself out to lunch at a nice restaurant. While you’re there, read a book such as What It Takes to Be #1 by Vince Lombardi, Jr. or Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by W. Clement Stone and Napoleon Hill.
Take notes on what you can do to improve your attitude — now, today, tomorrow.
You’ll come away feeling 100 percent better — and you’ll be open to all the opportunity that exists out there in the world.
Do you have a story for how you’ve weathered the recession? Be sure to post it in the comments below!
