January 5, 2013
► Customer Feedback: Jean L from Groton, MA stated that her general shopping experience with us was Good. Did any of our team members do an unusually good job? “Patrick repaired our water filter. He was terrific – while performing work for me, he was able to assist other customers with questions or quick product selections. Thank you Patrick – the filter works great!” Sales help was Excellent. Operations, communication, and products were all rated Good.
► Advertising and Specials continue from last week: “Family Fun Sale”. Be careful of quantities – we are almost out of all game tables except the Bumper Pool and the Gibraltar Foosball table.
► Have a great time at the Wrap Party. If the driving will be dangerous, we will delay it to Sunday, January 6.
► Legacy is out of 12 ft. Elite Shuffleboards. They do not expect to see more until April, and those will be a completely redesigned table.
► We need to sweep up the leftover sand and salt in the entrances and walkways after it has melted the ice. At least for awhile, save it in a plastic bucket. Do an especially good job at the doors. Why? Because the salt destroys the concrete and the pavers. It is also destroying the steel doors and frames. The sand destroys the carpets and the floor tiles. Those are all going to be expensive to repair or replace
► From Anne-Marie: If customers are changing or confirming their email addresses, please drop a note to me, or just print out a copy of their receipt and leave it in my inbox. I have no way of knowing if you are confirming/changing emails in RetailPro, so the customer would still be on Seasonal Sense in my book.
► The new ClearCare water lab program has made the ClearCare colorimeters incompatible with Waterlink, so Anne-Marie has added a second colorimeter to each lab. I am sorry. We had no choice in the ClearCare upgrade – the old one expired 12/31/12. We are purchasing a Waterlink upgrade in the hopes that it will work with the other colorimeter, but it seems unlikely. Both companies don’t see why anyone would want to run two programs on the same computer – nobody else does.
► Congratulations to Landon, for graduation from college… Not a year or year and a half late, but a year and a half early!
► Mia has completed some excellent research on water lab use over the past few years. It shows a large increase in Baquacil tests, and a 5% increase in total tests. A problem overall, though, is that our UDV use is about 1200 above our water lab bonuses. Allowing for maybe 200 tests for our internal use, that means about 1000 tests were done without the tester writing it down. I would like to point out, that even if you don’t want your water lab bonus, I still want to know who is doing what test. And, Mia received only 85% of her potential over-ride bonus as Water Lab Manager, because it is based on our belief that people are writing down their tests.
► That brings up the subject of over-rides. Many people around the company receive over-ride bonuses based on sales in a particular department, or commissions paid in various departments. So when you ring something up wrong (particularly with a jackpot) or don’t find out who helped to sell an automatic pool cleaner, somebody else in the company loses a little money. So the better you do your job, the better off we all are.
► Olhausen is running an online promotion to buy a 7’ or 8’ Hampton directly from them, for $3750. If someone around here buys one, they will be sent to us for a package and delivery/installation. Olhausen will also pay us most of the profit on the table. So, if Olhausen processes the table through us, the customer can buy a package for the same price as they would if they bought it from us. Which would have been cheaper, because we are only $3250 when purchased through our kiosk!
► The 2013 Program for Seasonal Reward$ and Seasonal Sense is in place. Point values have not changed, since we finished the Introductory Specials last June. The primary difference this year is simplicity. The advertising, rules, and application are the same for both programs; and will be exactly the same on the web site as in the store. Please re-read them. You will look smarter when you know at least as much as a customer who has been to our website.
► We checked all the open above ground receipts, and issued three refunds totaling $500 on pools where the prices went down on January 1st.
► Internet Humor:
– If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
– Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
– Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?
– If a turtle doesn’t have a shell, is he homeless or naked?