Recently, upon check-out at the Bloor-Yorkville Marriott in Toronto I had a ton of luggage and boxes and went to the lobby to get a cart. I immediately noticed that on one of the cart’s brass posts was a cloth pad to grab onto. As I wheeled the hall I realized that the pad served 2 purposes: 1) it clearly marked the post that the staff felt that I should grab in the sense that the wheels on the cart’s other end were fixed and the cart turned best by pulling the rail I did and 2) giving people a target to grab – one that didn’t introduce fingerprints onto the brass – meant that the staff would have to spend less time daily polishing the rails.
Think about it – they had 4 carts, each with 4 poles. For rough numbers, assume that each cart takes 10 minutes to polish and has to be done twice each day. After a year, the staff will have spent 486 hours – that’s 12 weeks! – worth of time doing nothing but polishing brass luggage cart rails. The benefits of this time saved should be more than obvious…
For a similar study on the same topic, scour the web for stories on the company that put an image of a fly inside urinals. Same result… smellier job.
The bottom line is that time and time again results will be better if you lead a prospect towards the goal that you want rather than letting them wander around on their own in the hopes that they’ll stumble down the right path. When setting up direct mails, emails, web pages, etc. you already know what you want them to do next, so don’t waste the opportunity – take them by the proverbial hand and lead them there.
Bloor-Yorkville Marriott gets a Rave!
