CREATE THE WOW FACTOR IN YOUR BUSINESS WITH CRITICAL NON-ESSENTIALS

The WOW and Critical Non-Essential Factors are about systematizing the 'Little Things' in your business and deliver an incredible customer experience that will make your customers Raving Fans! Imagine your customers describing your business in glowing terms to their friends and help you grow your customer base. This service concept changes your perception of the customer experience.  For example, Dr. Paddi Lund is known around the world as the crazy Australian dentist who:

- Ripped up his front reception desk with a chainsaw

- Fired all of his C and D clients

- Built his lobby around a kitchen so you smell fresh baking instead of dental smells

Critical Non-Essentials

In Dr. Lund's dental practice the little things make all the difference.   During the ramp-up of his new dental practice, he did a variety of the proven and tried methods. After years of struggling with the usual methods of what was expected in building a dental practice, he found is that most people had no idea what the standard of quality of care really is. Instead, he found that the finer aspects of dentistry and the patient atmosphere were the items that truly impacted his patients. Why? Well that's because:

·       All patients are served tea impeccably in fine china.

·       Each patient's names and their photographs are actually on the door of their own personal lounge.

·       Each patient is greeted by name by their own Care Nurse when they ring the doorbell.

·       Each patient is served 'Dental Buns' (freshly baked buns) when served with their tea.

·       If the patient doesn't want tea, he also has a cappuccino machine.

·       The lobby is full of fresh flowers.

·       There is also an array of dried fruits and nuts.

Do Your Customers Perceive Your Quality?

When you begin to understand what customers remember about your business, you will realize that it is rarely associated with the core part of what you do. The WOW Factors and Critical Non-Essentials are the little things in business that are so important in determining how clients or patients judge your product or service even though they have very little to do with the product or service itself.

Creating the WOW

Marketing the WOW Factor is all about doing something that makes others smack their foreheads and say, "WOW why didn't I think of that?!"  It's about taking something ordinary in one place and re-purposing it another place and making it extra-ordinary. Home staging consultants do this all the time when they are asked for their expertise in marketing a home that has been difficult to sell.  So for example, if you move an old piece of furniture into a different room and restage the room, you give a new environment to the room and the furniture.

When you implement existing marketing tactics in unexpected areas, you offer a new perspective of your products that could potentially pay off.  Marketing the WOW is a new twist that could have your customers saying WOW long after you've cashed their checks

To Do List:

Take a look at what your competition is doing? Yes, you've heard this before and yes you might say you've done it, but did you research it as far as you needed to go? This means talking to customers, watching the competition, do research about others in your respective field, and discover why some businesses are seemingly on the ‘cutting edge’.

1- Make it a point to offer one product or service that can add real bottom-line dollars to your business.  A uniform company out of Arkansas added deodorizers to their already-full trucks realizing that the deodorizers were an opportunity to brand themselves differently from their competitors. Other uniform businesses have followed suit with profitable results.

2- Throw away pre-conceived ideas such as "customers don't want it that way." How do you know? Have you asked the customers you currently have or have you asked those who don't purchase from you?

3- Group some of the products you offer by solution, not by type or vice versa. Catalogs like Victoria's Secret often will run the same product in several places. This is meant to increase the odds of purchasing, since the viewer now is in another state of mind. In addition, they might not see the item when it's on Claudia Schiffer, but notice it on another model in another color.

4- Look across industry lines to see what has brought success to others. Schwan's food company sells high-quality groceries, not vacuums or encyclopedias, door-to-door. Again, implementing a tactic that you wouldn't normally see in your industry can yield surprisingly good results.

Conclusion

Start thinking outside the box and think about the WOW Factors and Critical Non-Essentials that you can create with minimal expense, but with maximum impact.  What three things can you start doing this week?