Last week in Why the Sales Experience Doesn't Follow the Price Tag, we looked at a question Brian Wallace, the president of the CLA, put to a distribution group years ago on Steve Marcionetti's CCI Drivetime podcast. The question was whether the sales experience a buyer gets actually matches the price tag on the equipment. Last week's piece looked at why there's a gap.
That question wouldn't get out of my head all week. So I decided to expand on it today.
I've bought equipment myself, with my dad, with my brother and had conversations with other owners/operators about buying equipment.
From requesting quotes, evaluating machines, signing paperwork, waiting for delivery and dealing with what came after. Some of those experiences stood out and others didn't match what we spent.
One that stands out to date. A distributor invited us to their office, had a prepared agenda they shared prior to us arriving. Set up a meeting to meet with key team members we would be interacting with if we purchased their equipment. Arranged for a knowledgeable person to meet us out in the field, and coordinated in advance with the owners of client stores so we could walk the floors, look at the back of house, and talk with the management teams about how the machines were actually performing. A working store, working machines, working owners, and real world working questions. We could see what we were about to be part of and experience.
One that didn't fair well with me, was a purchase north of $800,000 with a single distributor, and the machines pushed toward delivery weeks before the store was ready. Follow-up And communications fell off dramatically after the payment was received.
Reflecting on all of it, one question kept surfacing. If somebody in this industry decided to build the version of this experience that fit the price tag, what would it actually look like? Not the aspirational slide-deck version. The actual thing, from the first call to the check-in five years in.
Four industries built this.
Frames sit in drawers, not on shelves, at an independent optician on King Street in Manchester, England. Clients arrive by appointment. A named team member has already been briefed on the client before the door opens. The eye test comes first, then a styling consultation with that team member, fitting, and follow-up. Multiple people from the same team touch a single client across a single visit, and each hand-off has a purpose. The business is called Jones And Co., housed inside a building that once held the Bank of England. They back the sequence with a sixty-day Love Your Glasses Guarantee.
Here's what those drawers with frames do. When frames aren't sitting on shelves for you to pick over, the whole interaction changes. Instead of browsing, you're being guided. The team member's expertise is what shapes the visit, not your guess at what looks good. Think about buying commercial machines. Multiple brands, multiple models, and, multiple configurations. You're doing the same untutored searching Jones And Co. took off the table.
The language they use throughout their business is worth noting. Clients, not customers (can’t count how many times I have said this in a presentation or talk).
Ferrari of Greenwich, operated by Miller Motorcars in Connecticut, prices a pre-owned 296 GTB at $360,000 and a new twelve-cylinder model at $640,000. Their About page frames the transaction in plain language. The purchase, they write, is just the gateway into an exciting journey. Seven Ferrari-dedicated technicians on staff. A track division that supports clients at motorsport events. Participation in Ferrari's Classiche program, which authenticates the heritage of older cars.
Here's what stands out to me. The sale isn't the finish line, it's the starting line for them and their clients. Every touchpoint after delivery has a purpose. Every follow-up has a reason to exist. A used 296 GTB costs roughly what a buyer spends on machines for a small store. Only one purchase is treated as the start of a decade-long relationship.
Their language convention runs the same as Jones And Co. A loyal list of clients.
At Steinway's Selection Room, in the factory in Astoria, New York, clients who have already decided to buy a Model D or Model B concert grand watch slips of wood being bent into the piano's rim before they see any finished instrument. They see hammers being cut and voiced. They watch cast-iron plates being lowered into the belly of an instrument. They meet the men and women who will build the piano they are about to choose. Only then does the last door open onto a room with five or six finished instruments, each of which has received hours of tuning, regulation, and voicing preparation from Steinway's chief selection room technician before the client sits down.
Here's what happens when the buyer meets the people who build what they're buying. The relationship changes and you're no longer an outsider making a decision, you're on the inside of the process. An equipment buyer who has spent time at the distributor's office watching machines run, meeting the service manager, meeting the parts person, has crossed the same line.
Rolls-Royce Bespoke at Goodwood, England, doesn't use the word purchase at all. A Rolls-Royce, in the company's own language, is commissioned, not bought. The Goodwood Studio, the Rolls Study, and the Royce Atelier are three rooms, each designed for a different phase of the commissioning process. Clients arriving to design their own car walk into the Atelier and encounter specialized lighting that replicates the actual driving conditions they will experience. Spools of colored thread, wood samples, paint chips, and access to designers who translate the client's vision into engineering. When the client cannot travel to Goodwood, Rolls-Royce built a private office in New York that recreates the experience. The car costs somewhere between $350,000 and over a million.
Here's what their word choice does. When it stops being a purchase and starts being a commission, you're no longer a customer waiting for a product to show up. You're part of building it. Now think about building a laundromat. The store gets built to your space, your market, your operating plan. That's a lot closer to a commission than a purchase. But almost no distributor in our industry talks about it that way. And almost no buying experience reflects it.
Four industries. Four price points. Same pattern. The buying experience itself is deliberate. Not accidental.
MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton has spent more than a decade researching companies that operate this way. In her book The Good Jobs Strategy, she examined how Costco, Trader Joe's, Mercadona, and QuikTrip out-execute their competitors by treating operational excellence as a strategic choice. The consistent finding across her research is that the companies that win over time are the ones where the sequence is designed once and run across every interaction. The ones where the outcome depends on which individual employee is having a good day get out-executed.
Every business named above operates on that principle. Which brings the question back to our own industry.
The version of this that fits the price tag
Approximately fifty washers and fifty dryers, depending on brand, features, and mix, runs somewhere between approximately, $700,000 and $1,100,000 in equipment alone. Add ancillary equipment, and the number climbs. What follows is one version of what the sequence around that size purchase could look like, from the moment a distributor first hears from a buyer to the moment the buyer decides to retool a decade later.
Call it the designed sequence. The specific mechanics can vary, but what matters is running it as a sequence rather than improvising it.
The call before the first meeting
A first-timer looking at a first store, a retooling owner/operator on their third build, and an investor putting money behind three stores all need different things from the same first conversation. The qualification call, before any meeting is scheduled, sorts which one is on the other end of the line. It takes fifteen - thirty minutes. Its purpose is to understand where the buyer sits in their journey, not to filter them out.
Once the distributor has the address, the site read starts immediately. Public records, demographic data, foot traffic patterns, competing stores nearby, utility access, permitting requirements, etc. Some of that homework produces a "let's move forward" answer, and some produces the harder one. Five people have asked about that address in the past two years, and here is why most of them didn't proceed. That harder answer, delivered honestly and early, builds a reputation the distributor will never build through advertising.
The two meetings
The first meeting happens at the property. The distributor walks it with the buyer. Takes details pictures, notes the utility rooms, the plumbing access, the door and window placements, the ceiling clearances, the parking, the neighborhood, etc.
The buyer leaves that meeting holding a template book. Thirty pages, bound in-house, hardcover with a clean spine. Industry education, machine categories and capacities, cost-per-cycle logic, utility economics, financing pathways, permitting overview, insurance basics, staffing model options, and warranty and service explained in plain language. It also includes a FAQ that captures the questions every buyer has asks before they can evaluate what comes next.
The buyer leaves the first meeting having spent an hour with someone who walked their site, and holds something substantial in their hands. That is the mechanism the template book produces. The buyer's understanding rises before the second meeting even starts.
Between meetings, the distributor's team builds the custom package. Photos from the walk, two or three layouts prepared for the space. An equipment mix recommendation with rationale and machine spec sheets attached. A pro forma with real numbers for this specific location. A demographic and competitive analysis. Utility and permitting notes for the municipality. A rough project timeline from paperwork to soft open. A financing side-by-side comparing SBA, equipment finance, commercial bank, and seller finance options with real terms, put together by their financing partner. Ten to fifteen pages, bound the same way as the template book.
The second meeting can happen wherever suits the buyer. Office, café, back at the property, online if the distance is too far and time is tight. The venue is a courtesy to the buyer. The sequence is the same everywhere. The custom package gets walked through in detail. Every layout, every number, every trade-off, and every question with a real answer.
Somewhere in the second meeting, ideally at the office, the buyer sees a live equipment demonstration. Real garments running through the machines. Load, spin, drain, dry. Water use per cycle displayed, energy draw shown, etc. When in-person at the office isn't possible, the demonstration happens at the nearest existing client store running the same machines, coordinated in advance with that client. A working store, working machines, and if the client is willing, a working owner who can answer questions about how the machines have actually performed.
Before the second meeting ends, the distributor tells the buyer to get a competitive quote. A different distributor, a different brand for comparison and their knowledge. Think about what that recommendation does. It's the strongest possible signal of confidence a distributor can send. If the buyer comes back after shopping, both parties know why. If they don't, they weren't a fit.
The thank you
Two or three days after the second meeting, a small package arrives at the buyer's home, business, or place of work. Inside, a notebook with the buyer's name embossed on the cover and distributors on the back that the buyer can use for anything from note-taking to coursework.
A handwritten card sits on top of the notebook, referencing something specific from the meeting. Something the buyer will read and know could not have been written for anybody else. Also, s bookmark tucked in with the distributor's direct cell number on the back.
Between decision and order
A second document appears before the buyer commits. An honest evaluation of every category of ancillary equipment the distributor sells. Payment systems, vending, tables, seating, carts, signage, etc. Every option available from every manufacturer the distributor works with, laid out side by side. Pros and cons and machine specifications where relevant. Client feedback from other stores where those pieces are in operation. If the distributor carries five payment systems, all five get compared honestly. The buyer walks away holding a comparison rather than a recommendation shaped by whichever manufacturer courts the distributor most actively.
The financing conversation happens in parallel. Distributors don't underwrite loans. What they can do is walk the buyer through the pathways, connect them to a relationship they have built with a financing partner where the handoff has been designed, and set up a communication rhythm where privacy rules allow. If the buyer brings their own lender, the distributor supports that and builds the same discipline around it.
Order to opening
A second thank-you arrives after the order is placed and confirmed. Something the buyer can actually use as they enter the pre-opening phase.
The salesperson runs a check-in calendar the buyer sees before anything happens. Site prep milestones, equipment delivery scheduled to the day the store is ready to receive it, install and commissioning windows, staff training slots, and soft-open dry run. Each touchpoint has a defined purpose. The buyer knows what to expect from each conversation before it happens.
When the store opens, a third package arrives, sent to the store itself. Something for the space, the team, or the owner personally. What it is matters less than the fact that it comes.
After opening
Someone from the distributor's team, not the salesperson, spends a full shift working in the store thirty days after opening. Watches the machine cycles, the client flow, the payment system in real use, the small operational choices the team is making, and writes a report. What they observed, what’s working, what to watch, and what to adjust. It gets delivered to the owner within a week.
Sixty to ninety days after opening, a different team member sits down with the owner. The thirty-day report sits on the table. So do the actual operating numbers from the first ninety days. Revenue per turn, utility spend, machine utilization, client patterns, what’s trending which way, Where the numbers agree with the pro forma and where they diverge, and suggestions for tweaks.
If the store was purchased from an existing owner, the utility history the buyer collected during due diligence can be modeled here against the actual current numbers, alongside what the proposed equipment mix would produce at comparable client volume. The picture the buyer had before purchase now has real data behind it.
The salesperson runs a longer cadence of relationship check-ins at six months, one year, and every anniversary after. Different from the operational review and the advisory review. This is the relationship.
Buyer Education and contacts
The service side runs on a written service level agreement the distributor publishes against last year's actual performance data. A published record of what response times actually were, alongside what the SLA commits to for the coming year. A buyer choosing between distributors can read those numbers and know what they are getting.
Warranty gets explained in plain terms. The quote might read “3 years all parts, 7 years major components." The designed-sequence version defines what qualifies as a major component versus a wear part versus a consumable, spells out what is excluded and why, and walks the buyer through exactly what happens when something fails in year seven. Who to call, what to send, what gets paid, and how long it takes. The warranty stops being a marketing line and becomes an operating document.
The buyer knows the names and cell numbers of the salesperson, the service manager, the parts person, and the after-hours contact. The buyer knows two or three other owner/operators running similar setups because the distributor made real peer introductions during the pre-opening phase, and those relationships have kept going.
When they retool
When the buyer is looking at the next generation of equipment. The distributor offers a real trade-in value on the machines still in the store. Not a haul-away fee, a trade-in. The used equipment moves through the distributor into a refurbished secondary market where first-time buyers on tight capital, commercial accounts, or others can access it. The retool math changes for the buyer and the distributor gets a second revenue stream from the same relationship. The used-equipment channel pulls in first-time buyers who become the next generation of retool clients later on.
The relationship starts over. So does the sequence.
The math supports it.
Ferrari of Greenwich runs its full sequence on a sale that clears $360,000. A full laundromat build can costs two to three times that number in equipment alone. Roughly 29,000 self-service laundromats operate in the United States, with new builds and retools happening at a pace well within what a distributor's live-deal book could accommodate.
Some distributors in our industry do pieces of what I've described, and a few do more of it. What I have not yet seen is any one distributor running all of it as a designed sequence across every buyer, consistently. The industry defaults get inherited. The sales conversation depends on whichever salesperson's week you catch. Follow-up depends on how conscientious the individual is, not the distributor's system.
Thinking about the thinking of laundry:
When you realize the person who brought a Ferrari, Had a better pre/post buying experience than you, and you spent more money.
I wrote a few weeks ago in Two Companies, 47 Distributors, Seven Years about how the two publicly traded consolidators now hold roughly twenty-three percent of the listed distribution layer, with the pace continuing. The independent distributor's competitive question gets sharper in that environment. Out-scaling the scale players is not a game an independent distributor is set up to win. Building a designed sequence that a national machine can't consistently run across every buyer is a different game entirely. The consolidation isn't a threat to the distributor who has built the sequence, it’s a moat.
Distributor shows illustrate the pattern at smaller scale. For years, most have run the same format. A few distributors have started rethinking what the show could be. Treating it as another avenue where the buyer experience gets designed rather than repeated. That's worth paying attention to.
Maybe the buyer experience question sits where it does not because our industry can't recognize the distributors who are trying, but because no one has yet spelled out clearly what a better version actually looks like.
What comes next isn't for me to decide. If you want to talk about it, you know where to find me.
That's all I got for you today.
Waleed
Echoing the thoughts of Vincent van Gogh.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
FOOTNOTES
¹ Jones And Co. Styling Opticians
² Miller Motorcars — Ferrari of Greenwich
³ Steinway & Sons Selection Room
⁵ Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy (2014)
⁶ Two Companies, 47 Distributors, Seven Years — Wash Weekly, July 5, 2026
