'You can’t polish a turd, a turd is still a turd, but you can roll it in glitter'

Sometimes, the starting line is where your last fu%k up ends. You can be fearful and sombre about this or be fueled by the opportunities a restart enables.

I’m calling us out again.

Yesterday was Sunday. We were set up in a local shopping centre with our brand stand and the key objective of booking free trials into our program. For context, we typically book busy thoroughfares with our display including a brand stand, pull up banners, and balloons for the kids, nothing groundbreaking.

We have been doing outreach activities for years with great success. In fact, most of our localised marketing spend is attributed to outreach related activities with on average 2.5 weeks every month directed towards promoting our service and generating leads in the community. We are everywhere.

Let’s call the employee Barbara. Yesterday was Barbara’s first solo shift on outreach. I arrived a few hours into the shift to check in, offer a coffee, which I often do. On arrival, Barbara was overwhelmed as she had been unable to get access to our CRM platform and had no balloons with her. This wouldn’t seem like much of a problem however, by handing out free balloons to children, we are 90% more likely to attract a parent to talk about the program and book a free trial. If we are successful in talking with a prospective parent, without the ability to check the class availability on our CRM platform we are wasting our time. Furthermore, Barbara was not confident to contact anyone senior being a Sunday (why have we not provided her with confidence to do so…?). Damn, we had failed her.

Barbara was quite disheartened and felt as though she had let us down. I apologised profusely as this was our failure. I couldn’t believe it, how did we let this happen…?

On reflection, we did not provide Barbara with the appropriate tools to be prepared for her first shift. Additionally, why are staff not receiving key business contact details throughout their induction? We are a seven-day business and need to be contactable at any time for support.

This highlighted fundamental problems with our onboarding and training for this position. Let’s remove the outreach efforts (or lack of) for a minute, It was a great Sunday for us. We were hosting a regional competition with a few hundred attendees, were running birthday parties, and had our typical Sunday classes. Yet, we stepped in turd with the outreach program with our focus elsewhere.

Here’s some numbers and the possible consequence of stepping in turd. It costs approximately $4.5K per week to be at a shopping centre (wages, casual leasing, supporting materials, etc). This week we booked 40 trials at outreach. Let’s say we convert 50% (the last month we have achieved a conversion rate between 70% and 90%), in 12 weeks we have our money back. Each paying member is worth on average $1,100 per year with more than 60% staying for over a year. Subsequently, we achieve a nice ROI and efficiency ratio.

Back to outreach, the shops were very busy, so we missed an opportunity for the first few hours. We rectified the login issues to the CRM platform, purchased a bunch of balloons, and within 15 minutes Barbara was booking trials. Importantly, Barbara was able to move on and was fantastic. Her approach and personality is perfect for the position. Within a few hours she had five trials booked.

We messed up. This has enabled or prompted a review, even a restart. Why does this position or activity receive less preparation to enable execution? How could we fail this new employee on her first solo shift?

Soooo ultimately, we should avoid the turds in the first place. From my experience, every footpath involves the risk of a potential turd. This involves reflection, honesty, and the willingness to act. In a nutshell, it comes down to two things: awareness and action. Awareness of the error, and the application of an alternative behaviour (followed by evaluation of its effectiveness and evolution of the ongoing alternative model).

We will put glitter on the turd next week ensuring we are prepared with quick improvements (we have four days until our next activation), with intent for a full review of the outreach and onboarding programs over a four-week period.

Note. In this instance, the turd reference is our operating process (not a person).