We can’t deny that property is all about people, every way you look at it, and this was a phenomenal week for ‘people’. It kicked off with hosting brilliant people round a property mastermind table, while the rest of the week was spent (I should say invested) with one of my all time heroes and virtual mentors – Darren Hardy.
I’ve been learning from Darren and applying his wisdom since 2009 and this week I finally got to meet him and spend 3 intense days learning from him. Ok, it was meeting him virtually however on the final day he actually picked me out of the sea of 1000 faces on zoom and said a genuine ‘Hi’ to me with a wave. Even though he couldn’t pronounce my name correctly 😂it felt great that he spoke directly to me 😎.
Anyway, enough hero worshipping. Having come out of his business masterclass with literally hundreds of game changing ideas I thought it would be great to share one of them in this post. The ideas and tactics shared were not specifically being directed to people in property but the beauty of what Darren was teaching is that it can be applied to literally any kind of business, if you take the time to connect the dots. So, I wanted to share just one of the simple ideas to both reinforce it for myself, and so that it may help some others out there.
A large proportion of my notes came out of the 12 point plan Darren shared for garnering enthusiastic, repeated and consistent referrals. No matter what aspect of property you are in, it will involve people and by virtue of that, wouldn’t you rather have people refer new business to you rather than the heavy legwork of originating cold new business?
To that end, the essence of the first 3 points are:
#1: Deliver baseline expectations
#2: Overdeliver
#3: Create a WOW Culture
There are a handful of different avenues to our property business but to share an example of how I am applying these points to our Serviced Accommodation business, here are some thoughts.
1 – Baseline expectations
Before getting into anything else, the fundamentals of what you offer have to be good. Darren shared an insight from the Ritz Carlton Hotel – they found that if the first 4 points of contact that a customer has are all good then there will virtually be no complaints (ie those first 4 could be the doorman, the receptionist, the concierge and possibly a housekeeping member in a corridor). If however, one of those points of contact go badly, a judgement is made and then a guest will subconsciously be looking for negatives to back up that judgement.
So, knowing that first impressions are so critical it really focused my mind on going back through our SA customer journey to look at where this can be improved.
How could you improve first impressions by making things faster, simpler, easier and safer in your business?
2) Overdeliver
I noted this distinction from Darren, ‘Customer service is reactive, customer experience is proactive’. He shared some powerful statistics to prove that small increases in customer satisfaction can lead to big improvements in profitability over time. We need to WOW and the ‘WOW is in the relationship, not the product’.
Again, some great examples were shared from the Hotel industry – the Ritz Carlton sending a child’s lost teddy back to him overnight along with a series of photos making it look like the teddy had an extra day on holiday doing fun things at the hotel; then a budget hotel in Hollywood had rave reviews from guests and huge repeat bookings because of how they delighted young kids with unexpected free poolside snacks and ice creams.
3) Creating a WOW – Culture
This is about a shift in mindset, it’s about every team member understanding that first and foremost they are in marketing, branding and customer experience.
So the practical application for me and the team is to map out all of our customer touchpoints to audit where we stand and define what the baseline expectation needs to be. Literally looking at everything from our messaging, to our invoicing, the check in, the mid-stay check-in, you get the idea. Once all mapped out and audited we can then look at how we can PLUS each touchpoint, in other words add ‘micro’ wows.
In terms of the culture, it’s then about constantly discussing this in our weekly meetings and empowering the team with the tools and budget to offer up wow moments both proactively and reactively. You see, it’s all about people 😊.
Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road. I have over 100 pages of notes to filter through so I can then organise and prioritise the first three to put into action.
What will you do to weave some WOW into your property business?