2018: Merchants Of WOW!!

Be so good at what you do that we can’t get our eyes off of you

- Steve Martin, Actor

Hey! Opinion shaper,

My warmest New Year wishes to you and yours.

From maintaining the course of Mastery in our respective crafts that we set out in 2016, to challenging ourselves to step out of our comfort zones in 2017, we are going to sustain the momentum this year by focusing on one of the most important people in our lives:

The Customer

This is any person whom we are fortunate enough to be of influence, and in the present context it is any person who looks up to us for more light.

As you can already tell, the theme this year is on building and strengthening meaningful relationships by regularly adding value to them.

The great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once said that you can get anything you want in life if you will just help enough other people get what they want. Therefore, our aspiration this year and beyond should be to make exciting our customers our core competitive advantage and leave them desiring more from us.

As a problem solver and an optimal solutions-provider (which we all basically are), you derive best business when you delight your customers, and you will agree with me that each time that is accomplished handsome dividends thereafter are almost always guaranteed.

So, in order to Wow! our customers, a few pointers need to be tattooed in our minds and we’ll be on our way.

Quick and to the point:

      1. Dare to look foolish

Truth be told, no one really knows what they are doing!

This may sound a bit of a paradox but history is replete with instances of great men and women who produced genius-level work by simply performing ordinary tasks in an extra-ordinary manner. These were nonconformists who expressed their highest selves in their work and charted new territories by daring to go against the grain.

Even today, for instance, when an author is publishing a book or an artist releasing a new music video or a designer a new line of clothing, what guarantee do they have that their end product will receive critical acclaim and fly off the shelves, so to speak, once it is released to the market? None whatsoever! But does it stop them from giving their all in terms of resources and time to ensure that they put their best product out there? Of course not!

Legendary musician, Cher aptly put it that, ‘‘Unless you are willing to look foolish, you will never achieve greatness.’’

This entails identifying your passion and ensuring that it occupies most, if not all, of your working day. Author Robin Sharma advises that we should aspire to be minimalists and focus on our most important tasks – our magnum opus – that will bring out the most value in our lives.

A good test for a valuable passion is that activity which you like doing that you can use yourself. Rarely can one sustain the passion if they are selling products or services for which they have no application in their own lives. The discipline to stay the course might wane if faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

You are like a fish in water when you engage in what you are passionate about, and coupled with creativity, optimal solutions may be arrived at to the customer’s benefit.

Learning something new every day is a prerequisite if one is to stay ahead in his field and become valuable. Author Myles Monroe captured this point so well when he noted that if you become valuable to the world, the world will pay you to be yourself! Your constant rumination then will be, “I can’t believe they are paying me for this! and so much at that!’’ Because that is the net effect if you wow! your clients with excellent services and products.

One does not require a reason or platform to demonstrate excellence; you just bloom where you are planted. Find the low-hanging fruit and work with what you have now; and over time, it will evolve in to a unique selling proposition.

Whether you’re running a small business or just fresh from college, you need to first get the requisite experience that only patience and discipline can provide. The business cycles are similar year in year out, therefore, focusing on growing laterally first rather than vertically in order to understand your career path and exhaust all opportunities around you will guarantee that life will pull you up once you outgrow where you are.

With passion and experience under your belt, you can produce Taj Mahal level of work by injecting creativity in to your daily tasks. The cardinal rule is to start asking questions such as, “How else can it be done..” and, “What if?”

      2. Rewrite your obituary

The biggest mistake that most people do is once they attain a certain level of stability in their professions or in business, they no longer get interested in personal development. They stagnate and now solely depend on their experience, which is not a bad thing, until changes in their market environment force them to mutter the nostalgic words, “This is how it has always been done.” on their exit.

I have expounded this elsewhere in an earlier blog post on the importance of daily personal improvement and the fact that continuous learning is what enables leaders to see further than the rest, so I will not belabour the point.

The crux of the matter, however, is that you cannot wow! your customers if you only know what they are already privy to. Keeping abreast with the developments in your field and self-educating to complement areas where your expertise is limited can be instructive.

Success coach Brian Tracy advises that the core purpose of a business is to create and retain customers. The sure way about this is getting better one skill at a time, because if you improve on your skills, you are bound to improve on your earning capacity as well.

Do not be like those who literally retire from life after leaving formal employment, but aspire to write your obituary daily by recreating yourself. Be like Tupac Shakur whose obituary is still been written today through periodical, posthumous release of his work by his executor, twenty two years down the line!

If your obituary was to be written last year, would it it differ from what they would say about you today? Would you have added some qualifications, expanded your network, increased your family, touched more lives and so forth?

      

      3. Follow the well-beaten path

Sometimes in order to wow! your clients, all you need to do is to find out the methods that others have successfully applied in the past so as to achieve the same goals .

This means that there is no need to re-invent the wheel or start from scratch.

It is said that genius is revealed from just working  1%  harder than the ordinary population and , therefore, application of tools and methods that have been used elsewhere successfully can help you produce quality work much faster.

Leveraging on your education, knowledge, experience, money, networks, wealth and other strong points  will help you deliver more value to your customer faster than the typical competitor will.  

A classic example of this is on the quick adoption of knowledge. Knowing is one thing, but the application of such knowledge before others do might just make the difference. This has been true since the Stone Age whereby, for instance, those who first used the wheel moved much faster and transported a lot more than those who did not.

The same is applicable in today’s information age whereby those who take advantage of the internet and to be specific leverage on social media are always ahead.

As someone rightly said, “Whatever got you to where you are now is not enough to keep you there.”

We are in the re-order business, not the selling business; so, what new skill are you learning today to wow! your customers for them to keep giving you repeat and also referral business?

The same is true to reading. Those who imbibe the easy stuff seldom grow. I have encountered some avid readers who are addicted to these feel-good novels and blogs that do not challenge them whatsoever but leave them empty. It’s like a shot of adrenaline that keeps them on a high for a while but never prompts them to act once it subsides.

If you consider yourself as an artist (Steve Jobs) and your work as art, you will definitely be driven to produce excellent and quality work that will wow your customers.

In Conclusion

Hard work is only advantageous if you put in the time, not the sweat. This means that one ought to work harder when it comes to thinking (which is the highest paying job); as Bedros Keuilian says, “You should not use the shovel. You should aim to sell it!” Aim beyond the blue-collar tasks to becoming a decision maker.

Solving problems through nonlinear thinking (creativity and imagination) is what will move you from an unknown to a known quantity in your field thus offering you more solid opportunities for you to wow! your customers.

As author Jim Rohn said, “Life is not just the passing of time, but a collection of experiences and their intensity.” Aim to be the superstar in your field by outworking everyone and over delivering value.

Lastly, pray to God for a miracle so big that people will say only God can help someone do that.