Thinking Of Window Washer Jimmy At Christmas

Thinking of Jimmy the window washer at Christmas.

When I was ten years old I used to put the New York Times Sunday newspaper together at a small store on Union Street where I grew up. My mother would get up at 4 a.m. and drive me there. It seemed like an endless amount of sections that I had to piece together. I would put up a small table that was about six feet long and line up everything and then started hammering away. It was a lot of work for $10 and it took me about three hours to get it all done. When I was done, I’d have breakfast with the owner of the store and then walk to meet my parents at church.

One day I noticed some guy washing windows outside at a diner that opened at 6 a.m. He had a bucket of water, a sponge and a squeegee. I didn’t pay much attention to it until I kept seeing him every Sunday washing the same windows. I wondered why anyone would need their store-front windows washed so much. It wasn’t like we lived in a dust bowl. Then, one weekday afternoon after school, I was going to the diner to get their three bean soup. It was the best soup I ever had. I asked Charlie, the owner, what the guy was doing washing his windows all of the time. He replied, “That’s Jimmy. He lives on the street and I give him meals for washing the windows.” It was the first time I heard of a trade out and the first time I ever heard of someone giving a damn about someone on the streets. Trying to understand it all when you’re a ten-year-old from a good home and has a bed to sleep in is difficult.

People talk about Christmas as a time for being thoughtful and giving but that’s just once a year. I have friends that refuse to celebrate it because they think the whole concept of caring about people once every twelve months is bogus. As I get older, and in looking back, I can understand their argument. After midnight on Christmas all of the poor people that we act like we care about suddenly turn back into pumpkins. It just doesn’t seem right.

One Sunday in the winter, I saw Jimmy mixing rubbing alcohol with the water in the bucket. I thought he was going freeze as he sat outside the diner on a ladder trying to reach the tippy-top of the big window that was on the right side of the restaurant. He knew me from my family and I stopped to ask him why he put rubbing alcohol in with the water. He explained that it was to make sure the water wouldn’t freeze. It was a trick he learned from another window washer who actually made a living at doing it.

I was done early that day and had time to kill before church, so I went into the diner to get a breakfast sandwich. They used to make theirs with scrambled eggs, provolone cheese and roasted peppers. It was 75 cents and delicious. I sat at the counter and told Charlie to make another one for Jimmy for when he was done. He told me that he already got free food for doing the windows. I asked him to pay Jimmy some cash so he could have a meal for later as well. After all, I had a ten spot in my pocket. When you’re a little kid it’s a great feeling and I always thought money was a dumb concept anyway. I left before Jimmy finished and said goodbye to him on my way out.

The next Sunday, I didn’t see the window washer when I was done. I didn’t think much of it and went on my way. The Sunday after that I didn’t see him again and this time walked into the diner to ask Charlie what happened to him. Charlie said that Jimmy just didn’t show up anymore. I thought he moved onto another town. I always thought to myself, “If you’re going to be homeless why not be homeless somewhere where it’s warm?” Why do homeless people stay in cold cities in the winter? I never understood it and I still don’t.

Later on I found out, through the usual newspaper stand gossip, that Jimmy died of pneumonia at the local hospital. He never made it out of the city and the whole thing made me feel pretty damn bad. I was upset that I didn’t try and do more, I was mad that he had to sit in the freezing weather and wash windows in order to eat, but most of all, I was just sad at the fact that I would no longer be able to say hello to him on my way to church. Life is funny like that. We get so used to our routines that, when they suddenly have a wrench thrown into the works, we feel lost.

To this day I think about him around the holidays. I really don’t know why. Maybe Christmas, more than anything, isn’t so much a time for gifts, but a time to reminisce about what’s important in our own lives. It’s an occasion to be humble, gracious and most of all, thankful for the friends and family we have and the memories and experiences that have made us who we are.

I think Jimmy stated it best and made a good analogy for life when he said, “You have to keep stirring the bucket or it’ll start to freeze up and then it’s useless.”

Selling Window Cleaning To Store Front

5 Things You Must Do To Sell To a Small Business Owner.

5 Things You Must Do To Sell To a Small Business Owner: Small business owners are an odd lot. I can say this without judgment because I am one: Cracking the small business code is something that routinely perplexes large organizations. I see it every day, and I’ve been asked numerous times to consult on that very puzzle. The thing is, however, a lot of small businesses want to sell to other small businesses too. Many times I find that they miss the subtleties of attracting small business even though they need look no further than their own buying habits for keys to the sale. So, today I’m going to share how I, one long-time small business owner, think and make purchases in an effort to create what might become your cheat sheet for how to think about selling to small business. I suspect there are Fortune 500 consultants that would charge tens of thousands of dollars for what I’m about to reveal below, but you get it for free!

1) Realize I don’t plan that far out: Small business owners would love to have a three-year and five-year plan, but the reality is we often have a one-week plan and it’s a rough draft. I’m not saying it’s perfect, I’m just saying it’s the reality of the time and resource sparse business. We don’t respond well to future ROI messages or value received over time because mostly we’re usually looking to fix something right now. Talk to me about the pain I have today, fix the problem that will get me immediate relief and then we can talk about the future.

2) Help me buy value over price: I actually don’t want to buy on price, but I will. If you don’t give me a way to see how your solution makes better sense to me right now , I’ll choose the lower price. But if you can demonstrate that you’re going to be here whenever and however I need you, that switching to your solution isn’t going to be painful and that this time it’s going to be different, I’ll pay a premium.

The problem is, I don’t believe your brochure. In fact, the greater problem is I don’t fully trust myself to implement what you’ve suggested either. So, demonstrate by building a relationship, don’t sell, educate. Prove to me that you really understand my business by using my language – if you use the terms synergy or value proposition it will hard for me to hear anything else you say.

3) Make the service as sexy as the sale: Good marketing makes you hungry for how your world is about to change for the better. Good marketing paints a picture of your new shiny world once you’ve bought the product or engaged the service. That’s the job of marketing – to build know, like and trust. The problem is that once I say I want to buy, good marketing seems to come to a crashing end. Good marketing also understands that I need to be oriented to what I just bought, I need to know what to do next, I need to know who to contact with questions, I need to know how I pay, how I get more, how I add features and I need to know it all as part of your sales and service process. In fact, good marketing doesn’t ever end. It also wants to measure the results I got and it wants to make sure I’m thrilled.

4) Know that I am loyal to a fault: Okay, I’m playing with fire sharing this one, but you need to know that I value loyalty as much as anything. So, that’s a great thing to know, but it’s a two-way street. I will be loyal to companies that are loyal to me. If you fix my problem, you do it in a way that is simple, effective and affordable and if I come to trust your words and actions – I’ll buy anything else you present to me in the same way. I’ll go out of my way to keep buying from you because what I know about you is more comforting than what I don’t know about someone else’s pitch. Take advantage of this by making it easy for me to share you with my friends, neighbors and colleagues. Make me feel like a champion for your business and I’ll willingly become an unpaid member of your sales team.

5) Continue to educate and I’ll buy more: Don’t change once I become a customer. If you want me to buy more, don’t just toss me into the up sell and cross sell sales funnel that consists of little more than canned sales messages. Continue to educate me, share things that real people share with each other, talk to me like someone you want to have a deeper relationship with – do that and you’ll earn the right to come to me with the unabashed intention of selling me something else.