What does your company stand for? If it’s largely to make more big-time money and pay yourself an outrageous salary and perks, don’t count on employees, let alone your customers and prospects, to believe in you.

At the end of World War II, the Allied Powers sent a message to the Japanese demanding surrender. The Japanese responded with the word “mokusatsu,” which translates as either “to ignore” or “to withhold comment.”

Virtually all technician training, at the company level as well as the certification level, is focused on what we view to be the most common problem in residential carpet cleaning: emergency spot and spill help.

When a cleaning business finds itself facing problems, someone inevitably promotes training as the ideal solution. Perhaps it is, but before zeroing in on this as your salvation, slow down and examine your specific problem very carefully.

Much of your training efforts’ lack of success occurs for the very same reason.It boils down to communication failures. People will not believe what they cannot understand; if they do not understand the lessons, they will not learn them.

Peoples’ perceptions are their realities. Regardless of past efforts and intentions, today’s consumers recognize only what they feel, and if your good intentions and accompanying actions don’t give them the feeling that you care and are providing excellent service, they won’t be happy.

I have come to the conclusion, after years of confusing and often disappointing results, that training is much more complex than I ever realized.

I have discovered, after years of training and consulting with small businesses specializing in providing professional cleaning services, that a sizeable segment of what I refer to as "information addicts" exists in the industry. They are obsessed with gathering technical, marketing and/or motivational information.

Enhanced, unreasoning fears have become the norm - along with greatly diminished trust of anybody or anything unknown, unfamiliar or new. A trend that has been growing steadily for the last 20 years has accelerated into a tidal wave.

It's called "cocooning."

Sept. 11 affected us more deeply than we may have thought at first in our industry. But we can overcome.