How to make customers say WOW!

Almost without exception when business owners and managers are asked what their customers really want their answers are “service”, “good prices”, “knowledgeable staff”, and so on. And those owners and managers are wrong! Their customers, clients, patients, patrons, guests or whatever don’t rate any of those things as particularly important. So what is most important?

It’s simple, just three things that you must know, understand and implement if you are going to have people who are delighted with what you do for them. So much so, that they keep on coming back and, more importantly, they keep on bringing their friends with them. This is what they are:

1.   Whenever I come to do business with your business, make me feel welcome.
2.   Whenever I talk with your business, be interested in me.
3.   And remember, the business of your business is to solve my problems.

The critical thing to notice is that really none of these have very much to do with the technical, business side of your business. They simply boil down to making the people who do business with you feel special, very special.

So special, in fact, that they say “Wow!’

And to do this there are two other things you should remember. You aren’t Robinson Crusoe! And the great architect didn’t break the mould when your business was created.

You see there are other businesses (and I know that this will come as a surprise to you) that are as good, or even better, than yours and who can do it as well, or even better, than your business.

And not only that…

The people who do business with you are human and suffer from all of the human foibles that make humans so delightful and yet so damned frustrating. The two traits that will really annoy you are that even your best customers tend to be forgetful (they go to your competitors because they have forgotten about you) and promiscuous (they like to try your competitors because they want to know if they are better).

Almost makes you want to slash your wrists doesn’t it?

Well relax; the solution is at hand (and there’s a fair chance your competitors won’t know this simple secret so you’ll get the drop on them). All you have to remember one vital hometruth that puts it all into perspective.

The best business is never the most successful; the business that gives the perception of being the best is always the most successful.

And remember, perception is reality.

So the question you must come to terms with is really quite simple. What are you doing in your business to create the perception that your business is the best?

And while you’re thinking about it, ask yourself who creates the perception of your business in the minds of your customers, clients, patients, patrons or guests?

It’s your people isn’t it? They create the perceptions in the minds of the people who do business with you. If your team members are terrific, they create a terrific impression in the minds of your customers. If they are terrible the impression they create is terrible. Terrific is to success as terrible is to failure.

And it’s all in the hands of your team members and the perceptions they are creating right now in the minds of people who are doing business with you. If they’ve got it right, then your business will become a shining example of success; if on the other hand, they’ve got it wrong then you are well on your way to becoming a footnote in book of businesses that didn’t quite make it.

By the way, if your team members are doing it wrong it’s not their fault… they don’t or won’t know any better way unless you tell them or show them a better way, then keep on enforcing that better way.

And you can’t take the easy way out and say that you’re doing things as well as everybody else.

Because, if you do what everybody else does, you’ll get what everybody else gets. And, if you get what everybody else gets, you’re average. And average isn’t exactly the degree of excellence you’d want to kill for is it? After all, average is somewhere between best of the bottom and bottom of the best.

So how do we get our team members to create those perceptions that are going to have people say “Wow!”

Well, remember how the Director influences your perceptions in a movie or a stage show? They give scripts to the actors and checklists to the back stage crew and then they practise over and over and over, using those scripts and checklists, until the movie or the show is a perfectly reproduced and faultlessly delivered performance that creates exactly the right perception in the minds of the audience.

That’s what you’ve got to create in your business time-after-time-after time… a team who create exactly the right perception with a perfectly reproduced and faultlessly delivered performance whenever they are on show to your customers’ clients, patients, patrons or guests.

There’s the answer… you produce scripts and checklists for you and your team that are practiced and rehearsed over and over to deliver the perfect performance every time. That’s the only way you can consistently create exactly the right perception in the minds of your customers. And when you have those scripts and checklists you have a system. A system to make them say “Wow!”

This article has been written by Winston Marsh who is recognised as one of the leading business speakers at conferences and seminars where the objective is to motivate and train delegates in how to increase their sales results.

For more information or to book Winston Marsh for your conference contact :

Winston Marsh

Business Growth Centre
Telephone:03 9887 5511
Facsimile: 03 9887 5581
Web: www.bgrowth.com.au
Email: info@bgrowth.com.au

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