When was your last WOW?
When Was Your Last Wow?
When was the last time someone said, “Wow!” to something you did for him or her? It’s an important question for salespeople because wows lead to sales. “Wow!” builds you not a customer base but a fan base, which is far more powerful. “Wow! leads to loyalty, referred business, and word-of-mouth advertising,” says Jeffrey Gitomer in his latest book, Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Black Book of Connections: 6.5 Assets for Networking Your Way to Rich Relationships (Bard Press, 2006). “Wow! creates reputation in the most positive of ways,” he adds, “and gives prospective customers anticipation that a Wow! may be bestowed upon them if they do business with you.”
If you’re in doubt as to the power of wow, think about times you’ve been wowed. You probably still remember those times. And you probably have told people about them. Gitomer tells the story of checking into the Burbank Hilton Hotel and being wowed. The hotel staff, instead of placing a traditional fruit basket in his room, had called Gitomer’s office, found out that he collected sports memorabilia, and placed a baseball in his room, autographed by more than 30 members of the hotel staff. Gitomer says he will never throw that ball away, and every time he retells the story he says wow all over again.
What can you do to wow your customers like that? Bob Carr of TLC sprinklers and outdoor lighting systems in Baltimore, MD, asked the same question and came up with the idea of spending $100 per week to wow one customer at random. “He’ll install an outdoor light that turns on when you drive up your driveway, or a timing device on a sprinkler,” says Gitomer. “It’s a $5,200 [annual] budget that will earn him hundreds of thousands of dollars in business and 52 lifetime fans a year.” Do you have a Wow! budget? Even if your company won’t give you one, consider investing your own money in one – it will come back to you tenfold.
If your funds are limited, you can create low-budget wows with a little creativity. For instance, Gitomer’s business card is a coin. Everyone who receives it says some form of “Wow! This is the coolest business card I have ever seen.” More importantly, they keep it and they often show it to others, and some of them contact Gitomer to request his card. How many people are so wowed by your business card that they call you to request it?
Gitomer also used to get a lot of requests for his cat’s business card. That’s right – in the late 1980s when he was starting his business he decided to give his pet cat, Lito, a business card. “She played a vital role in my office productivity,” he explains. “Whenever I needed an important paper, Lito was lying on it.” The minute he started giving out Lito’s card, word in the Charlotte business community “spread like wildfire,” Gitomer recalls. Everyone he met asked for one; “hundreds” of requests came into the office for it; he wrote an article about it; and everyone who had a card talked about it and talked about Gitomer. “I was at a networking event in Charlotte,” he remembers, “when a Fast 50 corporate president ran over to me saying, ‘Hey, Gitomer, show this guy your cat’s card.’ ‘Have one,’ I said, ‘and have one of mine in case the cat isn’t in. I usually handle her calls.’”
The point here is that you can create a Wow! experience with very little money. It’s not about how much you spend; it’s about getting people to say, “Wow!” Which brings us back to the question at the beginning of this article: When was the last time you wowed someone? If you don’t have an answer, take some time to think about what you can do to wow your prospects and customers. It’s up to you whether it’s every day or every week; the important thing is that you make a conscious effort to do it. You’ll be amazed at how your sales climb as a result.
For more networking ideas, visit www.buygitomer.com.
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"I'm a great believer in luck. I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." - Stephen Leacock
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