In business today, most of the attention is paid to the sales staff. They win bonuses and are awarded trips because, Nothing Happens Until Something Is Sold. Ignored are the Blue Collar workers transforming the sales into profits. The route worker who services your customer or the service person who interacts with your customer and makes them satisfied. These are also heroes of your company. 
Like linemen on a football team, they don’t score the points; they make it possible to score. ALL of your employees have the ability to create or diminish company profits. You also need to motivate and show appreciation to those in the trenches. Appreciation and acknowledgement will work wonders and it does not need to add to your company expenses.
In 1968 I was part of history. I was a lineman for a high school football team who only allowed 19 points to be scored against us ALL SEASON. No one scored on the ground. If you were going to score points you needed to pass the ball and hope you could complete the pass before we sacked your quarterback. We averaged eleven sacks per game.
Most of our games were low scoring because we did not have an accurate passing quarterback. We had one of the fastest running backs in the state, but he only weighed about 110 pounds, so he was down at the first hit.
Our Line Coach convinced us that we could only win if we, the linemen, could keep the other team from scoring. It wasn’t going to be the flashy running that brought us a victory. It would be our ability as linemen. The victory would come from the trenches.
Ken Bear Cole
A Second Look Business Consulting LLC
