Where’s your courage?
If there is one thing we lack today, it is courage. And when I say
courage, I am not talking about performing a tightrope act
without a safety net or skydiving. I mean the courage we all
need in everyday business life, the courage to be different and
to stand out from the rest of the field.
Just being different won’t automatically make you better
than your competitors, but it is often enough to give your
company the reputation of being innovative. Be different and
better, is the motto!
For example, when you ring a company and there is no one
available immediately to take your call, you will almost certainly
be asked to wait, with a canned version of Verdi’s ‘Four
Seasons’ playing in the background, or alternatively, a monotonous
voice intoning the dreaded words, ‘Please hold the line...
Please hold the line... Please...’. Why not play a comedy CD
instead, so that if your customers do have to wait, at least they
will have something to laugh about?
In my company, we have been using a comedy CD for quite
some time now to make waiting a more pleasurable experience
for our customers, and quite a few companies have already
copied the idea. Imitation is a form of flattery.
I admit that the idea might not exactly be ingenious, but it is
certainly courageous. When I tell people about it, they can
usually think of numerous reasons why this idea would not
work in their particular company:
‘That just wouldn’t work in our branch!’
‘Our customers might not take us seriously.’
‘What if they don’t like that particular comedian?’ and so
on and so forth.
They can come up with a host of arguments against the idea,
but none in favour. What a fainthearted attitude that reveals.
Just be like all the others, don’t experiment, and never try
anything new, because it might be a flop.
I would like to tell you another story on the subject of
‘courage’, one that really did happen.
One beautiful autumn day, I met Heinrich Gruben, the CEO
of Hightech, for lunch. I was very proud that this top-shot
manager had expressed an interest in our services, and I had
done my homework thoroughly before this, our first meeting.
After the usual words of welcome, the waiter handed us the
menu and we both began to study it. Suddenly, Mr Gruben said
‘Mmmm, they serve crepes Suzette here!’ (Crepes Suzette are
flambeed pancakes.) He didn’t order them, however, despite
his appreciative ‘Mmmm’. Our lunch went well, but without
any direct ‘financial reward’ for our company. When I arrived
back in my office, I opened our Customer Loyalty System (we
deliberately don’t call it a database, as we don’t see our clients
as data to be managed) and typed in: ‘Mr Gruben loves crepes
Suzette!’
And that, for the moment, was the end of the story. Nothing
special. My notes only came into play about three months later.
In mid-month, we always print out the list of clients who celebrate
their birthdays in the following month. And one entry
read, ‘15 January: Heinrich Gruben’.
In our company, I am the person responsible for the
implementation of our customer amazement strategy, and so it
was my job to decide whether we could amaze Mr Gruben and
how. I switched on my computer and found various entries
under ‘Heinrich Gruben’: address, position, phone number,
comments. Under ‘comments’, I found the following:
Dresses very elegantly.
Smokes Davidoff cigarettes.
Drives a roadster.
Has two children (David, 6 and Lisa, 3).
Wife, Anja, comes from Sweden.
And then, right at the bottom:
Loves crepes Suzette.
Three days before his birthday, I phoned Mr Gruben’s secretary
and asked whether he would be in his office on 15 January.
She informed me that he would be in a company meeting until
3.30 pm and then in his office until about 5.30 pm. I thanked
her, dialled the number of the restaurant we had had lunch at
– it is not far from Mr Gruben’s office – and gave the waiter the
following instructions: ‘On 15 January I would like you to take
your flambe trolley to the company Hightech and serve crepes
Suzette in the office of its CEO, Mr Heinrich Gruben.’ At first,
the waiter thought I was someone from the local radio station
playing a joke on him, but with the help of a 10-euro tip and
my considerable powers of persuasion, I managed to talk him
into carrying out this, as he put it, ‘unusual order’.
I didn’t have to wait long for a reaction. After carrying out
my instructions, the waiter phoned me, bubbling over with
enthusiasm, and told me what had happened. He created quite
a stir from the moment he entered the reception area of the
office building pushing the flambe trolley loaded with pans
and all the necessary ingredients. ‘Who do you want to see?’
‘Where are you taking that?’ ‘To the boss?’ Eventually, he
entered the lift, pressed the button for the managers’ floor and
soon found himself face to face with an amazed Heinrich
Gruben.
‘Mr Gruben, I am here to wish you a very happy birthday on
behalf of NeumannZanetti & Partner and to serve you your
favourite dessert in honour of the occasion.’
Mr Gruben was so delighted that he called his colleagues in
for an impromptu ‘get together’. Over crepes Suzette, they
speculated about how NeumannZanetti & Partner could have
known Mr Gruben’s date of birth and what his favourite
dessert was. Some of the employees themselves wouldn’t even
have known it was his birthday if it hadn’t been for our little
surprise, let alone that he liked flambeed pancakes. (The
answer is, of course, we acquired our information through
active listening!)
The following week, we received a page-long letter from Mr
Gruben describing how delighted he had been with our
birthday gift. I really had succeeded in amazing this client, and
years later, people would still ask me about it. Today, Hightech
is one of our clients and Mr Gruben more than just another
business associate.
The question I would like to ask you is: was this particularly
courageous of me? The answer is: no!
It was not courageous, because I wasn’t just guessing that
Heinrich Gruben loved crepes Suzette: I knew! If it had been
just guesswork, I might have been wrong, and then the whole
operation could have been a flop. But since I knew he was
partial to crepes, I didn’t need courage. All I had to do was to
put my knowledge to good use. And by the way, the whole
campaign cost my company just 30 euros, including the ‘bribe’
for the waiter.
What would have been the alternatives:
a bouquet of flowers for 30 euros?
a bottle of wine for 20 euros?
no birthday present at all?
Decide for yourself whether it was worth it and how effective
our little surprise was.
All successful companies demonstrate courage. You can’t be
innovative without taking risks. If you aren’t innovative,
customers will avoid you. And when customers avoid you, your
company goes down the drain.
Dale Carnegie, asked about the motto of his life, once said:
‘Make a fool of yourself, every day!’ A motto well worth taking
to heart, don’t you think?
Goodwill, or mutual liking
It is mutual liking that ensures that customers identify
emotionally with a person, a product or a brand. It is mutual
liking that compels us to return to a restaurant where we are on
first-name terms with the waiter and where we can expect good
service.
Mutual liking makes it a little easier for us to spend our
money. We are inclined to be more generous to people who are
friendly and, above all, our level of tolerance is higher when
others are friendly. Even if mistakes are made, we remain
calm and collected, provided that we like those we are dealing
with. And it cannot be denied that it is a mutual liking that
leads us to fall in love. Friendly and pleasant people are
more attractive. They radiate warmth, energy and an aura of
success.
If you want to buy a new car, you can choose between
hundreds of dealers. If you compare, you will see that prices,
even for a new car, do vary considerably. By haggling with the
dealer, you can almost always knock the price down to the level
of the cheapest dealer. But the question is: which dealer will
you buy your car from if the price is the same everywhere? The
answer is: from the one you like best!
In other words, what we need today is not experts on prices
and policies, but experts on dealing with people. Why should
you hand over your money to someone who is rude, is not
interested in your needs and doesn’t even pronounce your
name properly? To someone who is badly dressed and has no
manners?
If you have courage, and if you genuinely like people, there’s
just one more thing you need to make you an innovative
amazer of your customers: consistency.
Consistency
Consistency is what you need to pursue your goal unwaveringly.
Recently, a shoemaker who makes orthopaedic footwear told
me how delighted his customers are when he phones them
about three weeks after they purchase shoes from him and
inquires whether their new shoes are comfortable and whether
there is anything else he can do for them. His customers are
completely amazed by so much customer-orientation and tell
him that hardly anyone bothers to inquire how satisfied they
are once a sale is completed.
Well, this shoemaker has proved that he has the courage to
be different, and it is certainly a very kind gesture, but it is a
pity that he doesn’t follow through and extend the same courtesy
to all his clients. He told me that he only has time to
contact about 30 per cent of his customers.
He is full of enthusiasm and proud of the success of this
measure, which brings him a lot of trade as his customers
recommend him to friends and acquaintances. Yet at the same
time, he confessed that his business is struggling.
I am firmly convinced that he should extend this service to
all his clients, as this would bring him even more satisfied
customers who would advertise actively for his business. The
question is not how much time something takes or how much
it costs. The only legitimate question is: what’s in it for the
customer? | 
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