It’s 10:00 PM on a Saturday night. My wife needs some yogurt to go with some blackberries and strawberries she bought.
I head down the road, into town, towards my local Kroger. It’s a 60 second drive.
I walk straight to the dairy section, grab some organic vanilla yogurt and head staright for the Express Lane…except, it’s not open.
What The Hell Are They Thinking?
There are 3 “regular” check-out lanes open. They have an average of 6 people in line. Some have an entire shopping cart full of groceries, some have 1 or 2 items.
The people with 1 or 2 items are all glancing around think this same thing, “What the hell is wrong with these people? Are they this freakin’ stupid?”
Well, let me answer that for you.
Yes, they’re that freakin’ stupid.
And to make matters worse, it’s because they don’t care about your time or their profits.
Here’s How To Make More Money In Less Time
1 – Keep a Express Lane open at all times. Every minute the store is open.
2 – Tell everybody about it.
3 – Enjoy the fact that everybody who values their time will appreciate the fact that you do the same.
4 – You’ll process more transactions per minute than you do in a regular lane.
5 – People will make more trips, more often BECAUSE they know they’ll be able to get in, get their yogurt and get out.
6 – We’ll brag about it to our friends, who’ll start shopping there BECAUSE they value their time.
7 – You’ll have more customers and can stop wasting time advertising to untargeted, uninterested people.
8 – You now have more money to pay to your employee’s, who’ll be happier and do a better job.
9 – Shopping around happy employee’s will make the experience more fun.
10 – We’ll tell more friends and you’ll have more customers.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Simple, isn’t it?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Let me start with that usual – great article. Workers are just doing their job and if they do something out of the ordinary they’ll be punished. I don’t personally know many mid-level managers who would care about the reason behind leaving one’s cashier terminal.
Why would a mid-level manager behave like this? If it’s reasonably busy and lanes are moving without too much of queues a normal lane makes more turnover per worker. It is more efficient from the number management point of view of the business. All those transactions eat in the efficiency. If the downside is that for an odd 5 minutes the three lanes crowd up… that’s just too bad.
Now the marketer in me thinks that Express Lane is the way to go. Every shop should have one to attract recurring business. When you staff the lanes you start from the Express Lane and only the second cashier goes and takes the helm of a Normal Lane.
After your points 5 and 6 the shop notices that they have to turn all their lanes into Express Lanes and then they start thinking that people who keep on running in and out of their shop many times a day would be better served with 7-Eleven stores.
Maybe now I can write what I actually wanted to write in the beginning. I get so many pointless one liners that I try to make the effort not to duplicate that mistake… 60 seconds drive! What kind of Express Lane you take to the shop? Can you drive 120 miles per hour on it? Even so it would only take you 2 miles down the road. Bicycle, anyone? Now what the hell were you thinking?
I wish I had an idea as to how to respond to that comment, Jake, but I don’t, so I’ll just say thanks for chiming in and come back soon.
Hello Mike,
Sorry, I did think that it might be slightly over the top, but I had to write it anyway. Actually I do agree with most of what you wrote in this article, just sometimes it really is so that what is good for marketing, brand and company image is not good for the bottom line not even in the long run. If this is such a case, I don’t know.
Jake
I agree with you Jake, you don’t know.
There’s no way this is good for them…not one, single, solitary way. None. Nada.
I really believe your comment was just want a try to get a link or a click back to your fake-ass blog with your “over the top” picture.
Hmmmm…I believe I’m right, so I deleted your link and left your fakey comment to see if you come back and actually comment.