Do you know the Value of Clean? Well, remember the last time you went into a public restroom in a retail establishment and realized that they might not value their customers?  You know what I mean — one of those scary bathrooms where you thought you might catch something if you touched anything. Would you go back to that store or restaurant?  According to the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), 94 percent of people would avoid a business in the future if they encountered dirty restrooms! While many business owners tend to view cleaning as a cost-center, P&G Professional studies have shown that cleaning can actually be a profit-generating activity.

People value going into a business that looks and smells clean, especially in the restrooms.

There are food chains who have built their brand promise as an inexpensive, consistent meal delivered in a clean environment. The last time you took a road trip with your whole family, did you stop at a gas station when your kids said they had to go and roll the dice on whether the bathroom was clean, or did you make them hold it until you saw a business you knew and trusted?

PG Professional provides the cleaning products from brands you know and trust, like Mr. Clean, Comet, Febreze and Dawn, but formulated for professional settings, both large and small. 95 percent of Americans would return to a business if they think it is clean and they’re more likely to recommend the business to their friends and family*. So keeping your retail business clean and smelling good could be another value proposition.

Here are a few steps to help you maintain a clean business environment. Create a checklist for employees responsible for maintaining your clean brand. Use an hourly check-in sheet in the restrooms that employees must sign to maintain accountability. Leave a sign in the restroom inviting visitors to notify a manager if the bathroom is not tidy.  Below is an example of a cleaning checklist.

Create a 7-Point Cleaning Checklist for Employees

• Clean Sinks and Countertops Maintenance people should spray the sink and all countertops with an antibacterial disinfectant and then wipe the surfaces down with a wet paper towel, which should then be disposed of.

• Empty Wastebasket The bag in the wastebasket should be thrown away and replaced with a new bag. Any garbage contained inside the wastebasket, but outside the bag, should also be thrown out. Periodically, the wastebasket should be wiped down.

• Disinfect Toilets & Urinals The toilet bowls and urinals should be wiped off or scrubbed out. The toilets should then be sprayed with a disinfectant like Comet Disinfecting Cleaner, and wiped down, both inside the bowl and outside. Urinal cakes should be replaced, if needed.

• Replace Toilet Paper Rolls, Toilet Seat Covers All toilet paper rolls that have less than one-fifth of their paper left should be removed and replaced with a new roll. The toilet seat cover dispenser should be refilled with new covers.

• Refill Hand Soap and Wipe Down Mirrors All hand soap dispensers should also be refilled to capacity. Mirrors should be sprayed with glass cleaner and wiped clear of all obvious smudges or stains.

• Replace Hand Towels and Check Drying Machines The hand-towel dispenser should be opened and examined for blockages. Once is it determined that the machine is operating correctly, it should be refilled to capacity. Electronic hand drying machines should also be checked to make sure they are working correctly too.

• Polish Fixtures & Sweep and Mop Floors All fixtures, including the knobs on the door, the toilet seat cover dispenser, the electric hand dryer, the paper towel dispenser and any other objects people might touch should be cleaned, disinfected and polished so that all visible stains are removed. All floors should be swept and then thoroughly mopped. A “Caution” sign should be placed outside and inside the bathroom until the floors are dry.

If you train your employees to use these cleaning steps, maintain hourly check-ins and a full daily maintenance schedule, your customers will know for sure that your business is a shinning example of the “Value of Clean.” Don’t forget P&G Professional products when you stock up on cleaning products for your business. They are specifically formulated for use in a commercial environment and if you trust these brands in your home, why not in your business too!

Door-to-door marketing is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public or gather information. People who use this sales approach are often called traveling salesmen, or the archaic name drummer, to “drum up” business. This technique is also sometimes called direct sales. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit.

With the realization of telephone “Do Not Call” lists it is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect with consumers and business people. An emerging trend is the deployment of very professional, highly skilled door-to-door canvassers to drive product sales and brand awareness.

Coordinating, training and motivating these teams to produce results are at the very core of Fulcrum’s proven capabilities. Fulcrum has the knowledge and experience required to implement these programs, such as best days and times to canvass, who will sell the most product; male, female, young or mature and what geographics and demographics respond best to door-to-door marketing. Put Fulcrum’s experience to work for you and avoid the costly mistakes of trying to manage these programs in-house.

Hire and Train Door-to-Door Marketing Team

If you’re in charge of hiring people, that typically means that you’ve found success in Door To Door Marketing yourself. You know what it takes to be great, but now you’re stuck with an entirely new problem. How do you find others who will be just as good (if not better) and will stick around and grow into important influencers invested in the long term growth of the company? A great D2D sales company is a great recruiting company. So what does that greatness look like?

First off, you need to realize that you’re not going to hire a superstar every time. If you think you have found one, be careful. It’s not hard for someone to seem golden during one interview and you don’t want to be fooled.

Even if you think the candidate does have a lot of great experience working in the field for other companies, you have to realize that success doesn’t always translate. What worked for them at previous companies probably won’t work as well for you. In fact, their success will probably make them stubborn; after all, what reason do they have to follow your approach when they’ve figured out their own?

It’s also possible that the rep’s previous company might have had much better-developed training and selling systems than you do, and that system was the key reason they killed it. If you’re not developing a competitive system, what does that communicate about your company? The more dialed-in you are about a rep’s success, the more likely you are to attract and keep strong performers.