A security firm in 2008 New York dressed guards in Armani suits and briefcases instead of plain uniforms, turning them into a talking point that generated building inquiries. The tactic cost almost nothing but shifted how management viewed security staff, from invisible to marketing engine, letting the firm compete on presence instead of price.
What I want to share with you are some specific actions you can take in your business. The wonderful thing about these techniques, they cost nothing. But they all play into the behavioral psychology, the hardwiring of your customers minds. I'll start off with a story of how I did this. I was working with a security company. There's security, I don't know if you noticed in this building, but security guards are commonly in all different spaces and buildings. I'm from the New York area, so it's very popular there. And this small security company called me in 2008 as we were experiencing the steepest part of the recession. And they said, we have a big problem. We are a small security firm, we have about 50 employees. Where the big competitors down the street have thousands of employees, if not hundreds. And as a result, as buildings are having less occupancy, the building managers are coming to the security firms and saying, you better charge less for your service. And the big companies can compete on price. But us, the little small firm, we can't. What do we do? Well, if you practice like I do, in studying behavioral psychology and the implementations of it, how you first do an analysis of any situation, you do what's called a control. You simply observe what is going on. And so I went to this little security company and went to one of the buildings that they were protecting. Just watched how the security guards operated. Just like this building, they were wearing their little, I shouldn't say little uniforms, their blue uniforms. And they were just sitting near the elevator. As people would walk by the elevator, they would just nod their heads sometimes or say nothing. They were ignored. And I remember people coming in. This one guy, clearly from New Jersey, cause that's where I'm from, was walking in and he would have his phone and he'd be like, oh my God, last night was awesome. We were partying so hard. It was great. And he'd just walk into the elevator every single day for the full week. I observed every night was a great party. And he'd be walking in. There was this elderly woman somewhere between the age of like 80 and dead somewhere in there. And she would come in with her walker, walking, you know, one mile per day, slowly walking in. And she would work her way into the elevator, ignoring the security guard who was standing there. Now remember the lesson, better is not better, different is better. And as I'm observing this, my team decides to make a change. We decide to change the uniforms. So instead of the uniform being the undescript blue uniform that you see everywhere, or brown we put them in Armani suits. Armani suits. They were Chinese knockoffs. So we put. Yeah, I laugh at my own jokes a lot. So we put them in our mini suits. We give them a leatherette briefcase, sunglasses, and that little ear do hickey thing. And I tell Frank, who's the one guard we're observing. I say, frank, next time people come in, all I want you to do is touch your collar. Just touch yourself somewhere and kind of talk into it. When people walk in, something like that. I sit behind similar to this. The elevator's over here. I'm sitting behind this like huge vase thing observing what's going on, which is very creepy. I totally get it. But I'm watching. People are walking in. That guy from New Jersey comes in and he's like, oh my God, we had such a party last night. It was so. Huh. I gotta go. No, I gotta closer. I gotta go. He humph, phoned and he ran to the elevator when he saw our new security guard. Same guy in the new uniform sitting there. Next person comes in, oh, this was horrible. So Frank, just between me and you, me and a thousand of us. Thanks for laughing, Mom. So this elderly woman comes in and I'm sitting behind here, and Frank has never done acting before. He's never done the touch your ear thing. And I'm sitting there and he keeps on forgetting to do it. Well, I'm getting a little bit frustrated. So as I'm sitting behind this thing, I'm telling Frank, hey, Frank, you gotta touch yourself. For God's sake, touch yourself. I yell, which really added to the creep factor. But this woman comes in, shockingly, maybe she couldn't hear me. She kept on marching forward. And when she saw Frank in his new uniform, all of a sudden that walker became like the perfect pommel horse. Like she could apply for the Olympics. Like she leaps over it, starts running in to the elevator. I don't know, she skates in. I guess I'm doing here. She runs into the elevator and goes up. And all of us know what was happening upstairs at the water cooler. The conversations. I think the FBI is moving into this building. Obama is going to set up office here when. When Trump takes over. That was kind of funny. So the conversations upstairs took off. But the real miracle happened about a month later. We kept doing this process and the building management called. Now back in 2008, some of the buildings in New York had 50% occupancy. Half the space was empty. And what that meant is if you owned a building in New York, you were likely losing money. This building had become the talk of the town because of the new security guards. We get a call from building management and they say, hey, we want to tell you something. We know the gimmick you're doing with that uniform. But this has resulted in a lot of phone calls. People are inquiring about our building at a rate we've never experienced before. Even before the recession, people are moving into our space because of that. We got to tell you, you no longer are our security firm. You are our best marketing engine ever. What do we have to pay to keep you doing this? The lesson is better is not better. We could have provided better security, better people, better certified folks. In fact, we had that. The one thing that no one else considered in this industry was to do different. And when you do different, you get noticed and you break out of the price competition game.
