How to Succeed With Plant Tours

Conducting tours of your facility is a great way to show outsiders what recycling is all about. This tour guide explains the whys and hows.

By Alan Ratner

Alan Ratner is executive vice president of Sims-LMC Recyclers (Richmond, Calif.).

Your office phone rings. You answer and discover it’s the president of Tress R Us, a citizens environmental awareness group in your community. Five members of the group would kindly appreciate a tour of your scrap processing facility. They heard you do something related to recycling and would like to learn exactly what you do. Would next week be convenient?

You politely decline. You have a business to run, you tell the caller, and your company doesn’t “do” tours. You’re sorry, but that’s that. Click.

Pesky call averted, you return to business as usual.

But wait. By saying no, you might have just made a big mistake, missing a prime opportunity to turn a potential foe into a friend. You might also have given up the chance to improve the image of your recycling business, not to mention the scrap industry in general. And you might even have missed out on some fun.

Opening the Doors

Plant tours are still a novel, even daunting, idea to many in the scrap industry. After all, plenty of recyclers see their companies as closed businesses, not open to outside scrutiny--introverted rather than extroverted. It’s a good bet, in fact, that the only bodies to see inside the majority of scrap recycling plants--besides employees and the occasional regulator--have been existing or potential suppliers and consumers.

Unfortunately, a lot of the problems recyclers now face stem from ignorance and misconceptions about the industry, misconceptions that all recyclers must work to correct if the industry is to remain viable into the future.

Offering plant tours to the groups and individuals that can affect a scrap business is one way to combat these misconceptions. The reason is simple: The more people see and learn about the industry, the less concerned, skeptical, and/or antagonistic they’ll likely be toward it. This can be particularly true when dealing with government officials, who are generally less likely to devise a regulatory requirement that would negatively impact your business when they can see firsthand what your company is all about and the role it plays in the community.

My company, Sims-LMC Recyclers, decided that giving tours was important for the future of our business and the entire scrap industry, and we started giving tours of our facilities in the 1980s. The way we saw it, we’re in a business we can be enormously proud of. We take care of our plants and operate them in a responsible manner, so we shouldn’t be ashamed to show them off, especially considering the good that can come out of it.

Since opening our doors to tours, most of our eight facilities have hosted a variety of groups--from local, state, and federal regulators and legislators to citizens and environmental groups to the media. We’ve given the most tours to local groups, with state and media crew taking up the middle, and federal regulators and legislators accounting for the fewest.

Some recyclers also opt to give tours to children, usually for educational purposes related to school field trips. Sims-LMC Recyclers doesn’t do a lot with kids, however, though we have on occasion.  Liability concerns and the time we had to spend herding them into groups rather than touring prompted us to minimize our tours for the preteen set.

There's nothing wrong with excluding certain types of tours from your repertoire.  After all, just because you start offering tours doesn't mean you have to give a tour to everyone who asks.  You have the right to draw the line somewhere.  Realistically, though, you shouldn't worry about being overwhelmed by requests.  At our headquarters plant, for instance, we give about eight tours a year-hardly a burden.

Tour Guidelines

Conducting a successful plant tour is easier said than done.  It's a feat that requires a little art and a little science, so here are a few guidelines to help you get the best results from your tours.

Have a Goal.  The first rule to remember is that you're not giving tours just to give tours.  You should have a goal for the tour that will somehow benefit your company and our industry.  This could be communicating an idea, presenting a positive image, defusing a bad situation, or simply educating.

Imagine you're a captain and the tour is your ship.  Without a good idea of where you want to go-a goal-who knows where you could end up?  Perhaps you could get lucky and reach a pleasant destination, but more likely you'll float aimlessly around, or worse, founder on the rocks.

Having a goal also enables you to plan in advance how to structure each tour which areas of the plant to emphasize, which to skip over, which employees to call on to participate, and so forth.  This doesn't mean that you have to plan out every tour to the letter.  Sometimes informal, spur-of-the-moment tours can also work out great.  The idea is simply to make your tours work for you, and establishing a goal will help achieve that.

Cater the Tour to the Group.  Your goal and touring approach will depend to a large extent on the group you're taking through the facility.  As chameleons change their color to blend in with different environments, so must recycling plant tours change to fit the needs and interests of different audiences.

To figure the best fit, put yourself in your audience's place and use a little perception.  Though some groups might not articulate their interests precisely, in most cases their agenda will be fairly obvious.

Local groups, for instance, may want to know what you're doing to be a good corporate citizen in the community, the benefits you bring through local employment and the "economic ripple effect of buying local goods and services, and how you address environmental concerns related to noise and dust.  In fact, we've found that demonstrating a solid commitment to the community is more important to local leaders today than ever before.

Government officials, on the other hand, may tend to focus on how you're responding to specific legislative, regulatory, and environmental issues, such as flow control, storm water management, air emissions, and employee safety.

Municipal and state waste management managers, meanwhile, might focus on your contributions to postconsumer recycling and landfill diversion efforts.

Put Your Best Face Forward.  The old adage that first impressions are lasting ones has never been more applicable than it is here.  So a day or two before every tour, give your facility a good once-over, cleaning up your working areas and sprucing up your landscaping so it comes across neat and tidy.

It's also important to make sure that the areas of your business you want your visitors to see will be up on the day of the tour. Any idle operations, in fact, could detract from your company's image and the effectiveness of your presentation.

Obviously, you can't anticipate every eventuality-especially the weather-so in some cases you may have to make the best of unfortunate circumstances. 1, for one, once toured people around one of our plants in hip waders when a tour that could not be postponed came on the heels of a major storm.  Of course, this probably wouldn't be a wise strategy to emulate if your plant tends to look muddy after a big rain.

Keep It Small.  Plant tours are definitely one instance in which smaller is better.  You can't get your message across if a group is too big, and you can't effectively answer each individual's questions.  At our headquarters plant, for instance, I don't think we've ever had a tour that numbered more than 10 people.

Encourage Your Employees to Interact.  Though we have five or six managers/supervisors who are particularly capable of performing tours at our various plants, we encourage other employees to interact with tour groups, when appropriate, to show our guests more of our company's human side.

Take Your Time.  It's our philosophy to take as much time as our guests want or as much as they'll give us.  If you rush through a tour, your guests are sure to feel that you don't consider their visit important, which can only hurt your cause.

At the very least, you should devote an hour to each tour, but we've given tours that have lasted as long as four hours.  If your schedule is fight, hand off the touring duties to someone with a lighter schedule. (This is one reason why it's nice to have a handful of tour guides available.)

Speaking of time, we make it a point to always have a "quiet time," usually at the end of our tours, in which guests can sit down inside our offices and collect their thoughts, discuss what they've seen, and ask final questions.  This time is a great chance for you to show them a company- or industry-related video to clarify or reinforce your points and further address their concerns.  It's at this point that you can also usually gauge how well the tour group has absorbed the information you've presented.

Try to Enjoy Yourself.  Part of making your tours successful is overcoming the mindset that tours are an inconvenience to be tolerated.  Your guests will certainly be able to read your mood and attitude toward them and the tour, so it's a good idea to be as welcoming and positive as possible.

Keep Them Safe.  The last thing you want is for any of your guests to be injured while touring your premises.  Make sure, therefore, that everyone in your tour group wears all the necessary safety gear required to enter certain areas of your operation, and never lead guests into unsafe situations, such as standing too close to a shredder.  You should also do what you can to keep them as clean as possible.  You don't want their thoughts of your operation to be marred by memories of hefty dry cleaning and shoe shining bills.

Offer Something to Remember You By.  At the end of your tours, it's a nice gesture to give your guests some company freebies such as coffee mugs, baseball caps, pocket magnets, keychains-you name it.  We try to give our guests one of everything.  Such gifts don't cost much, but they can go a long way toward generating goodwill and getting some free exposure for your company-

Follow Up.  A tour isn't over when the guests drive away.  The final step, for us at least, is to call or send a letter thanking our guests for coming and inviting them to return, perhaps with other associates.  With some groups and individuals, we request a subsequent meeting to discuss our issues further.  This kind of follow-up is not only good etiquette, but it also helps affirm the image that your company-and the scrap industry, in general-is professional and visitor-friendly.

Rating Your Success

After you've given the tour and done your follow-up, how do you know for sure if your efforts were successful?  For Sims-LMC Recyclers, a successful tour is one in which we've done what our guests were interested in, answered their questions, and achieved our own goals.  We've had people come in knowing nothing about our company or industry who, after taking a tour, have moved from being opponents to reasonable supporters.  They see the vital role our industry plays in the community, the nation, and the world.  That's what makes it all worthwhile.

Is touring easy?  No.

Is it worthwhile?  Definitely.  In fact, I might venture to say that tours are a necessary part of running a successful scrap recycling business today.

So the next time the president of Trees R Us gives you a buzz, pull out your appointment book and tell him that next week would be a great time for a tour.•