“Being Delightful”
This week’s blog is about looking inside ourselves and our businesses to determine if we are the highlight of our client’s day; the very BEST part of their day. We must be exactly that in order to stand apart from the competition, and in this market and economy, the ones that go the extra mile are the ones who will rise to the top and succeed. In fact, in a Seth Godin blog I read a few weeks ago, one thing he said stood out to me. He said everyone goes 90% of the way, but it is those who push through and go the final 10% that will be the successful ones! The final 10% is the hard part, the part that nobody wants to do. After all, isn’t 90% enough? Not in this business!
I love this quote, “It is our professional responsibility to be absolutely delightful!” from the book “Indispensable” by Joe Calloway. We are in a business where people and our relationship with them is critical; we don’t sit in a cubicle in a huge office building entering data into a computer…no, we meet and greet the public daily and we must win them over and form bonds immediatley.
In order to do that, we need BIG VISION, CREATIVITY and the WOW FACTOR.
It takes BIG VISION to see down the road and understand the immensity of your business and how all of the parts interact with each other. Even after 30 years, I am not very good at seeing down the road, but Tim is! Between the two of us, we succeed because of his vision of who we are, where we need to be in one year, five years and ten years, and then, what it will take to get there. I am more in the moment of the day, rarely meditating on the future. If you are like me, you need to find a “Tim” who can help you make a plan for your future. However, the vision of your business and how it needs to develop should be birthed from you.
Second, we need CREATIVITY. I used to teach how to be more creative in artistry and photography. Now, I see creativity as being useful in running our business and help us to stand out from the rest. One example I can think of is a mailing we just sent out to names our “partners” gave us. Our partners are businesses in the community that help us gain clients and we do the same for them. We asked for a list of ten of their best clients we could send a special mailing to, and we wanted these mailings to be something that was more hand-made, not a press product. In other words, we wanted these people to notice our mailing since everyone gets so much “junk” mail these days. We had some beautiful, soft blue watercolor type paper, a rubber stamp set and black ink. What we did was cut the paper into 5 3/4″ squares, stamped them with the stamp that said “A Note For You” with a tree branch and a little bird and then we hand-wrote our message. These went into vellum 6×6 envelopes (envelopemall.com) with an image we printed in-house the same size. They looked really sweet and different and we felt we had created a unique mailing piece for this handful of potential clients. So, open your mind and brainstorm often. Don’t be a follower all of the time; create a path for others to follow every once in awhile.
The WOW FACTOR, to us, means doing something totally unexpected for a client! We provide a WOW experience with our facility, our staff, our work, our service and our experience. It takes all of these things working in harmony to create a fully finished WOW factor. The scary part is that this can be destroyed by one staff member doing or saying the wrong thing. That is why we must work on building a culture of WOW experience within our studio.
Think about Starbucks employees. We go there at least 5 times a week and have our order taken by different people working the window, but they are all similar personalities. They are young-ish, quirky, talkative, kind, interested in us and what we are doing, and in general, very engaged with us on many levels. I LOVE that! It makes me feel special. It is the culture of Starbucks!
To build the culture we desire at Walden’s, we meet weekly, we talk, we teach leadership principles in our staff meetings and we understand that what we put importance on is what our staff will put importance on as well. It flows from the head down! We also live what we preach! We do love our clients and they are like family to us! We are authentic!
So…are you ready to up the ante and be more delightful this upcoming week? I would like for you to write and tell me how you create a delightful experience for your clients. Have a great week! Bev
