Right Under Your Nose

A customer came in the other day, and she was a little miffed, to say the least. Her problem? A recently purchased new vacuum was not working properly, She felt we'd sold her a lemon. After about 20 seconds, the problem was solved. Every time someone comes in with a troublesome vacuum, we open the rascal up and check the bag. More often than not, the bag is stuffed full. A stuffed vacuum bag causes several problems. First, there will be little if any suction. Second, the full bag makes the vacuum work harder, putting strain on the motor and circuitry.In our customer's case, the reset button needed to be pushed because the full bag made it shut off. A third and glaring problem is that the job will not be done! All that work and much of the dirt, debris and allergens will be left in the carpet! That means an un-served and potentially upset customer.

What's the moral of this story? Ofttimes, solutions to our problems are very simple--they are right under our noses. All that is required to avoid many problems is a little attention to detail, consistency, and to not overlook basic maintenance. Stephen R. Covey, in the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People http://amzn.to/1AoD8JG, wrote about "sharpening the saw"--making sure the saw is sharp enough to keep doing its job. Sounds simple enough. On a regular basis, we need to put on the breaks and take a few minutes to do the little things that will keep us in line...kind of like a concert violinist tunes her instrument--just has to be done after a number or two.

This goes for vacuum bags as well as practically everything else in our businesses (and our lives, too!)