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Greetings, this is JP at Procyon and happy to be here with you on this week’s podcast instead of being technical this week. I want to share with you a little personal story from my carpet cleaning training that has stuck with me and really has to do with the human element of the cleaning business. And as you know, and I’ve spoken about frequently, I’m always so impressed by the heart and spirit of the people that work in the cleaning industry. And those people that concern themselves with green cleaning are, of course, especially near and dear to my heart and all of our hearts at Soap Free Procyon.

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So what I’d like to share with you is when I went to my first carpet cleaning certification class called out by the instructor, he noted that I had thick skin so he could pick on me a bit. And he saw I was pretty concerned about knowing everything and trying to get 100 percent on every test segment as we went through the three courses. So he said a funny thing to everybody. He said, here’s JP studying hard, getting close to perfect results.

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He said, there’s a lot of you out there that are getting 70 or 75 percent on your tests. And you’re going to be much more successful in business because you can know everything. Technically, what you do have the most up to date information, be an amazing technician, but unless you’re wonderful with people, you can still fail miserably in the business. So toward that end, and I guess I hope he was teasing because I think I’m a pretty nice guy, but it did get me to double down on the idea that I really needed to study human relationships and customer service and make sure that I was interacting in a very beneficial manner with my customers.

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So they understood that I really cared about them. Toward that end, I read a book that I suggest to all of you by it’s a classic by a famous author and teacher of customer service and sales strategies, Dale Carnegie. And it’s from his book How to Win Friends and Influence People. So this is just one excerpt. I highly recommend you grab this book. No matter how long you’ve been in the business, no matter how many wonderful relationships you think you’ll find this helpful.

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This is from a chapter entitled Do This and You’ll Be Welcome Anywhere. So it says, Why read this book? To find out how to win friends. Why not study the technique of the greatest winner of friends the world has ever known? Who is he? You may meet him tomorrow morning down the street and you get within ten feet of him. He will begin to wag his tail. If you stop and pat him, you will almost jump out of the skin to show you how much he loves you.

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And you know that behind this show of affection on his part, there is no ulterior motives. He doesn’t want to sell you any real estate. You ever think that a dog is the only animal that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk and a canary has to sing. The dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love. When I was five years old, my father bought a little yellow haired pup for fifty cents.

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He was the light and joy of my childhood. Every afternoon, about four thirty, he would sit in the front yard with his beautiful eyes, staring steadfastly at the path. And as soon as he heard my voice or saw me swinging my dinner pail through the brush, he was off like a shot, pacing breathlessly up the hill to greet me with leaps of joy and barks of sheer ecstasy. Tippy was my constant companion for five years. Then one tragic night, I shall never forget it.

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He was killed within ten feet of my head, killed by lightning. Tippy’s death was the tragedy of my boyhood. You never read a book on psychology Tippy. You didn’t need to. You knew by some divine instinct that you can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Let me repeat that you make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

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Yet I know. And you know, people who blunder through life trying to wig wag other people into becoming interested in them. Of course it doesn’t work. People are not interested in you. They’re not interested in me. They’re interested in themselves. Morning, noon and after dinner. The New York telephone company did a detailed study of telephone conversations to find out which word is the most frequently used, you’ve guessed it. It’s the personal pronoun. I, I, I it was used thirty nine hundred times in five hundred telephone conversations.

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I felt I could go on. The whole book is wonderful, but please take away from at this point. As you work hard to bring the best service to your customers, including using Soap Free Procyon for the healthiest cleaning, that you found the best air quality for your customers. People want to know that you are interested in them, so the way I put this to use is be like Tippy, be like a dog. Tell people that you are interested in them and show them through your actions and your service how much you care, it’s about them, not about you.

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No, this hasn’t been a technical discussion or sharing today, but I think that when you combine it with your already sincere, hard work as technicians and carpet cleaning, you can find that this greatly enhances your repeat business, the satisfaction of your customers and your success and happiness. That’s it for this week, this is JP from Procyon, wishing you a healthy, soap free, wonderful week. Take care.

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