‘Triage’ key to
productivity, profit
f you saw the
blockbuster movie, Pearl Harbor, you’ll no doubt recall the scene
shortly after the initial bombing when the wounded sailors, all
blackened and bloody, begin staggering into the hospital by the
hundreds.
A very anxious doctor, literally up to his
elbows with a dying patient, looks at nurse Evelyn Johnson
(Kate Beckinsale) and pleads with her, saying, “I need
you to go outside. There are too many to help. You gotta sort
’em out. Only bring those that can be saved in here. You
got
that?”
 |
Triage is a battlefield medical term.
Webster’s defines it as the sorting of and allocation of
treatment to patients, and especially battle and disaster
victims, according to a system of priorities designed to
maximize the number of survivors.
The definition is simple enough, but in
practice the triage process is a matter of life and death. You
either make the cut or you don’t. Nurse Johnson used a
tube of red lipstick to mark the forehead of each sailor. An
“F” meant the sailor wouldn’t make it. Those
who didn’t make the cut were moved to the side to die, so
that others with a higher chance of survival could be attended
to.
In the harsh reality of the battlefield,
triage makes sense. With limited resources and time, you can
only afford to treat the patients who have the best chance of
survival.
Running your business isn’t war, but
if you want to survive and thrive, it might help to adopt
this particular battlefield strategy.
Apply triage in a ruthless manner and you’ll do more than
survive. You’ll prosper.
 | ||
Triaging your business, broadly speaking,
is the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of
where funds and resources can be best used or are most needed.
The Golomb Group offers a number of
products and services and we hope they’ll all be
successful and profitable. Unfortunately, that’s not
always the case and, in keeping with good battlefield
management, we have to recognize when a product or service is
beyond treatment and must be allowed to die. It’s always
difficult to take a project off life-support but it’s
absolutely necessary. Failure to do so will cost a great deal
in lost resources and missed opportunities.
For example, a few years ago we offered
drycleaners a “Perfect Shirt” program. It was a
fantastic promotion for the few cleaners who tried it but it
didn’t pay for us to convince others to give it a try. We
were left with a couple of hundred thousand cards, which we
eventually put on a large barge and dumped in the middle of
Lake Michigan. (Just kidding. We terminated them in a
responsible manner.)
Our beautiful gold-embossed “Thank
You” card was another battlefield casualty that
hemorrhaged in our warehouse until we finally pulled the plug
on it as well. Given the cost and effort to develop products
and promotions, the decision to cut losses is always a tough
one but in hindsight, we’ve managed to make the right
decisions. (We think.)
Do you offer services that few people take
advantage of? Maybe you’ve made an investment in
equipment to repair shoes but nobody seems to want the service.
Now the equipment is taking up valuable productive space in
your store, but because of what you paid for it… you
can’t seem to part with it. Or perhaps you have drapery
equipment collecting dust in the back of the plant. I know a
local cleaner who invested big in soaps, paints, dyes, spray
booth, the whole nine yards to say nothing of his time. But his
hopes of making it big in suede and leather just aren’t
paying off.
From time to time, I talk with cleaners
who operate drop stores that lose money month after month.
I’m convinced they often don’t even realize how
badly these businesses are bleeding because if they did,
they’d scrawl an “F” on the front door, lock
it and walk away.
You can save yourself time, energy and
money by spotting a losing service in its early stages and
eliminating it. However, if you’re extremely ruthless,
you can take triage to its fullest extent and eliminate all but
one service. This is true focus. And at this level, you begin
to cultivate the skills that lead to expertise in any given
field.
Several years ago, a friend of mine in
Maryland sold four profitable retail drycleaning plants, bought
a warehouse and focused his efforts on fire restoration and
nothing else. Today he’s an expert and when I have a
question in that field I know who to call.
Another cleaner in the Orlando area
converted one of his stores to a wedding gown restoration
specialty shop. He now concentrates his attention in this area
exclusively and he’s become an expert in the field.
I know a very successful cleaner in Tulsa
who doesn’t do draperies or household goods. He refuses
to take in suede and leather and he won’t even offer to
do repairs and alterations. Is he crazy? I sat in on a cost
group and saw his figures. He’s not.
About six months ago, I revisited a suede
and leather operation that I hadn’t been to in more than
20 years. Some time ago, they totally abandoned all efforts at
retail drycleaning. My jaw dropped when I entered the fur vault
and saw thousands and thousands of furs from all over the
country. “That’s all we do,” said the owner,
“suede, leather and fur.”
In today’s rapidly changing
marketplace, where consumer demand shifts direction as rapidly
as birds in flight, it is common for services to become out of
demand, with little chance of continued success, no matter how
much you tend to them. The question is, what services do you
now offer that give you very little payback… no matter
how hard you promote them?
As quickly as some services go out of
demand, others may come into big demand. For example, at the
end of March, the Golomb Group hosted a seminar on how to start
a pick up and delivery business. One of our featured speakers
was a 26 year-old entrepreneur. While in college, he worked on
a sales counter at a local drycleaner. He started to pick up
cleaning from his fellow students on campus and suddenly
realized there was money in it… big money. Two and a half
years later, he has his own 20,000 square foot facility doing
more than $2 million a year in route service. That’s
focus.
Where can you apply triage to your
business and where can you focus your attention for greater
profit?
Bill Bishop has been a consultant with the
Golomb Group for the past 12 years, designing marketing and
promotional programs for drycleaners. He can be reached at the
Golomb Group at (800) 679-5856 or by e-mail at billbishop@golombgroup.com.
 |
