What's your Sign say about you?

I really wish I had a picture of this one, really. But I will try to draw you a mental picture of it. I was driving passed a very busy intersection on the weekend when I saw one of those light up changeable sign boards for a nationally recognized tutoring business. It started with 'does your 3-5 year old know how to read?' so it caught my attention as I have a 5 year old. So I continued to read and was totally shocked at the next line - 'bring them in so we can touch them'.

WOW!

I hoping that they either meant touch them as inspire them to read or 'teach them'. Someone really needed to be checking (AND FIXING) that sign on the way in. I can tell you one thing for sure, I'm in no hurry to take my son in to be 'touched'!

What's wrong with this picture?

I don't think this one needs explanation. What do you see? I think this store owner needed to use one of our circle check sheets!

Are you open?

Happy Mothers Day to me! Today, while I was having a nice hot bath while the family went to get me my coffee, a Trucker Management moment presented itself. Not to me, but to my hubby. He went to a different Starbucks then usual (that's where the problem started) and pulled into the drive thru, waited for about 10 minutes and no one came. So he pulled around front and finally found the hours on the door, which if he squinted just right it looked like they open at 7, but it was only 6:55am so he went to get gas first then would get coffee. He came back at 7:10 but still no one around. So he thought maybe they were just getting a late start and waited for another 10 minutes and still nothing. Finally he got out of the car to go read the 14 point font on the door for the hours and it didn't open until 7:30! So, he left and went to our usual store. The funny thing is, is that we use this exact example in Trucker Management. Most people need to know your hours when they're in the car. So test your hour sign, can be seen from the road, parking lot or car? Is it posted at your drive thru? Not to mention, that today it's the mothers who had to be up before 730 that really needed a coffee!

The holidays are over - can your customers tell??

I drove by a restaurant/banquet hall here in town yesterday, and their sign out front still said "Reserve now for our New Year's Buffet". I'm pretty sure they aren't talking about next year's already, and so this is an example of a business failing to do a proper and regular Circle Check of their premises. If they were practitioners of our Circle Checks, they'd have noticed this out-of-date sign right on January 1st or 2nd, and wouldn't be suffering the embarassment of now having it still up on January 17th.

For those of you who ARE already using the Circle Check in your business, this won't be an issued, but for those of you who aren't, or who maybe have slipped off the routine, TODAY is the day you need to look around your business and ensure that all evidence of the "holidays" is removed from your space. Are your decorations all put away? Have all your kind wishes for a great holiday season been removed (including from places like memo lines on invoices and till tapes)?

We're likely all sad that the holidays are over......but, fact is, they are. So lets make sure our businesses reflect it!!