Executive Podcast #343: Delivering WOW

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about are we delivering the wow? Wow. The wow from our customers perspective. And we can look at this a couple different ways. We’re going to dig into this and I’m super excited because we challenge all of you listeners and those that are watching to take the content, learn it, then teach it, or facilitate it with your team. And so Perry and I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago, man, oh man, to be a part of a group of leaders that John put together. And we just got to sit and learn leadership.

Chris Goede:
And so we were talking about, hey, what are we going to do with this content? And I was like, I don’t know. But within already two days, I’ve already used like two pages of content just talking to my team and this and that. And so I said, let’s just, let’s share what we’re learning with the team. Let’s model what we’re asking you to do. And so the next couple of podcasts, Perry put together some incredible lessons about some simple principles that we learned that we’re learning that were wow to us. Right? Yeah, he’s delivering the wow. So that’s what we’re going to dig into today. Before we get started, I want to always encourage you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast, click on this podcast and there you can submit a form to learn a little bit more about what we do inside organizations.

Chris Goede:
So, Perry, I hope I didn’t steal your thunder there, but I just kind of riffed on that and the impact that we had. And we want to model what we ask you to do, but more importantly, we just want to share what we learned because it’s amazing.

Perry Holley:
And there were so many, as you mentioned, we were off mic, we were talking about how many lessons there were, and I thought one that I didn’t take full appreciation of at the moment, but being with John in a small group and watching him sit down and be a student, yes, he was with us in the audience and then he would always speak between. But just watching the guy that you look up to thinking that he’s still growing, he’s still learning. And so we Got so much great stuff here. We’ll share this with you. But the idea about this was are you delivering wow? And kind of let’s define wow, what is. And you can we do this, we can use other examples or we can use Maxwell Leadership, whatever you like. But I was thinking, you know, in our world and in our listeners world, you got to define what is wow like for your client, what do you, your customer, what is, what is wow?

Chris Goede:
What do you think? What, what does that look like? So what gets your customer excited now? As Perry said, it can be whatever industry you’re in, whatever you’re doing. I, I also want to let you know that there’s two ways to look at this as we go through this, because I kind of stumbled on this when I took my team through this activity, which I’ll share with you guys as we make our way through our lesson today. But it can also be not only with your customer or clients, but it can also be with your team members and their roles and how are you leading them? How are you influencing them? But where we were, it was simply, what’s the user experience? What is engaging and energizing your consumer, your client, whatever it might be, to want to be a part of what you’re doing. And you, you should know that and you should be very aware of what that is. And if you’re not, we’re going to talk about that as well. You got to figure that out. And so, man, what energizes them? What engage them, what keeps them coming back? And they. That’s kind of that wild thing about your business.

Perry Holley:
One person said, what makes you different from your competition? Is it what makes you different from the marketplace? And, and the speaker used had a great answer for this. He said, no, different. Different can be copied. What you want is distinctive. Are you, are you different or are you distinctive from your competition and from. In the marketplace? What do you.

Chris Goede:
Well, this goes back to. We talk about, at Maxwell Leadership, we talk about how do you get out of the people pile, right? John’s like, how do you separate yourself out of the company pile that’s out there? Let me share a story with you. I told you this, this just came to mind and I’m just going to share it. So recently we have the privilege and the opportunity of hosting here in our home offices in Gwinnett County, a, a Pro Am in front of a Senior Tour, Champions Tour event. And so we have the privilege to do that.

Perry Holley:
Golf event.

Chris Goede:
Thank you. Yes. Golf event. And so we have the privilege of doing that. So one of our incredible team members that was, happened to be playing in this Pro Am as fun got paired with a pro. And so when you do this as a golfer, you’re an amateur golfer first of all. And then the pros that are playing that weekend that they, to practice the course and to put up with a different pace of play. And also a lot of amateur golf swings, they will play, you know, with, with that pro and with the amateurs.

Chris Goede:
So in this group, we had one of our guests that was with them, and they happen to have the opportunity to be playing with Colin Montgomery. Okay. And so for those of you that don’t follow golf, he’s an international, very well known leader, very successful, very successful golf. A lot of mate, like, I mean, just the top and very prideful of his home country and where he’s from. And so we get up to the very first tee box and he, Colin’s very, very engaging. And he asked the gentleman, well, where are you from? And he said, I’m from, from Tennessee. And he says, you know, I was gonna wear my, I was gonna wear my University of Tennessee socks today. I’m like, where is this going, right? Cause I’m kind of sitting over the side.

Chris Goede:
I’m just part of organizing this put together. And he, he slowly pulls up his pants and down by his ankles and so that Colin can see his socks, he goes, but I decided to wear a different pair of socks today. And it had Great Britain flags all over his socks on behalf of Colin from where he’s from Montgomery. And he was like, that is amazing. And so they were only together. They were only together for less than three minutes right there. And they had already created a connection, the energy, the engagement of the team because this individual had intentionally thought about creating a wow moment. So this is a personal example, but man, like, what is that, that you’re doing for your clients in creating this? Wow.

Chris Goede:
So, Perry, I completely derailed us there. But I just had this thought happen just recently. I was like, I got, I got to share. That’s what comes to mind. That was a wild moment.

Perry Holley:
That is, that was really get out.

Chris Goede:
Get out of the people pile.

Perry Holley:
But it’s distinctive.

Chris Goede:
But it’s distinctive. So back to your point, right. You know, different simply means it’s not, it’s not the same or unlike. While distinctive implies. No, it’s, there’s a noticeable, unique quality about what you do that’s different than the rest of them. And into my example, this individual right there on the first te, as soon as he met Colin was distinctively different than the others that were in the group.

Perry Holley:
So funny. I think I know who you’re talking about. Yes. All right. So wow can be found in the distinctive, I believe is worth saying if you’re trying to be distinctive from your. And I really hear him saying that different is somebody can copy that and just one up. You know, distinctive is something that you may have a unique ability to do. So I was thinking about, you would run a real estate business, and some wows that I might see in your real estate business would be your highly professional, experienced agents.

Perry Holley:
So, you know, but other people can have that as well. You have unique financing programs.

Chris Goede:
You.

Perry Holley:
You bundled some of the moving services and. And things like that. Is this the kind of wow where.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, I think this is.

Perry Holley:
Start at the start of wow.

Chris Goede:
Start of wow. Right to your point. I think the distinctive word is really key for us to understand here, because while other people may be able to replicate that, it’ll take a lot of work and a lot of effort versus just being different. You could do that. But you think about it like, how do people see your product? How do people see your service does it as Perry’s talking about the real estate, right, the examples there. Is it the speed of service? Is it the level of concierge? You’re doing some things differently that. That are not just different, they’re distinctive than any other person that is in your space. I know a very, very good friend of John’s in the mortgage business long time ago decided he was going to take the normal mortgage process, talking about real estate.

Chris Goede:
Maybe it was 21 days to get approved, to get underwrite, and he promised everybody he’s going to do it in seven days. And it immediately made him distinct versus all of his competitors, and his business grew through the roof.

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Chris Goede:
Now, there’s also the other side of this wow thing that we. We learned, which we both agree we’re not. We’re not sure. We don’t think. We know it’s not a word.

Perry Holley:
Not a word.

Chris Goede:
But it is a word to us now because it had a huge impact on us. Right. And this was. He said, now you got to ask the same question, which is the more important question for you and your team, which is, what are the unws? Unwows. Unws. Yeah. And I don’t know if we have them in the show notes for you if you download that. I’m not sure how Perry spelled it, but if it’s wrong, it’s Perry’s fault.

Chris Goede:
But the unws. And he said, you should immediately be able to list 10 unws like you as a leader and your business and how you should be. And if you don’t, that’s a problem. But also, you and your team should go through that process of saying, what are the three to seven unwows about our product, our business, that our customers feel that we’ve never taken time to even articulate.

Perry Holley:
And he’s telling stories. But he said, most people, when you. You say, what are the wows of your business? They just start clicking them off.

Chris Goede:
Oh, yeah, that’s right.

Perry Holley:
You say, what are your unw. Can I get back to you on that? You don’t know. You said, no. You need to be able. Like you said, he used the word 10, and you should be able to identify all the unwows you can find about your business. And he said that this is the only way we can grow and improve. And one thing I really liked about the concept of this looking for your unwows is that it requires you to look at the business from the customer’s point of view. So he would.

Perry Holley:
I’ve heard several people say that they go. Some of the chick fil A operators goes into the chick Fil A, not as an operate. He comes in and orders a meal, and he looks to see, how are things? How are things operating? How did he. Was he made to feel? How does. How. Who had paid attention to him? Did he. How easy was it? How hard did we make it to do that? And so the questions you’re kind of asking yourself as you do the unwell search is, you know, what it’s like to do business with you. How difficult is it to do business with you, the leader? You know, I think one thing he talked about, are you the only one on the team looking for the unwells what do you think about that? How do you.

Perry Holley:
How do you get the team so it so attuned to the customer’s point of view.

Chris Goede:
This is a culture thing, Right. Like, this is led by the leader. And so what we have to understand here is that it’s okay that even if your name is on something that’s an unwow, we’re going to talk about it, we’re going to change it. Right? Like, we’re gonna. We’re gonna go after it. And it’s a culture statement of what the expectations are of how we’re going to do things here. And it’s not a negative thing. It’s like, how do we continue to take the UNWs and make them wows? And the only way to do that is everything’s on the table, whatever it might be.

Chris Goede:
And so you have to. I think we also talked about in around this, the continuous improvement. You have to be challenging yourself. And he used the example. He said, I was standing up in my office one day and they’re on a campus. And he looked down and he saw a student kind of walking in between two sidewalks that led to the point, but they were walking right down the middle of the grass.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And he thought, wow, that that needs to be improved. That. That customer of mine, that student wants to walk right there. So that evening he had a crew go put pavers right down, and then the next day they’re walking down the pavers. And so he may have been the one that designed where the sideway sidewalks went. And so he was leading from the front saying, this is part of what we’re going to do. We’re going to continuously improve everything that we’re doing so that our customer has wow.

Perry Holley:
Experienced at a golf course. And they had to follow the cart path around from here to get to there. But the golfers had figured out, you know, if you just drive across right here. But it had this huge rut that was being made. But instead of, hey, why don’t we pave that the easiest way? They put boulders up to keep you from doing it. We’ll see how hard we can make it for you to get to the next level.

Chris Goede:
We end up damaging their golf carts and all kinds of stuff.

Perry Holley:
So go ahead and wrap it up.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. So let’s talk about this. We have told many, many times, we’ve told you, as culture is, how do you think act and interact? This is part of that. This is what are our wows. Okay, that’s awesome. But what are the unws of what that looks like. And so we want to. There’s also a statement that I think goes along with this and the continuous improvement, which was, hey, let’s make sure that we’re being actionist versus activists.

Chris Goede:
Right? Let’s not say, oh, we should have put a sidewalk right there, like, take action like you did, like, right away. It’s like, we’re gonna. We’re gonna figure out how do we get to the wow and what that looks like. Okay, so what do you do with this information that Perry put together for us? Well, as a team, I would encourage you to sit down, and I would send the question out ahead of time. Okay. And at your next team meeting, say, bring me your list of unwells. And the first meeting, have it customer facing. Like, what.

Chris Goede:
What is your perception? Wouldn’t it be interesting, though, if we asked our customers to tell us what the unwel experience was?

Perry Holley:
How brave are you? Right?

Chris Goede:
How brave are you? That’d probably not. Probably that would get us the real truth to get to the point where we knew we had wow experiences. But. And then spend time figuring out, what is that list and how do we begin solving that? How do we begin taking action right away, ranking them, putting them in priority, and just start knocking them off the list and assigning them, hey, Perry, you go figure this out. We got to fix this. Chris, go figure this out. What does that look like? And be able to do that. And remember I told you then the next step would be, okay, then come back a week later and build a list of.

Chris Goede:
If they’re willing to share it with you, what is an unwild? What it looks like to be on the other side of your leadership or on that team or in that organization, whatever it might be. When I did this with my team, I didn’t give them exact parameters on which side to go, customer or personal. And so I got a blend of both. And I was talking to my executive partner the other day, and we were talking about, okay, what’s the next steps coming out of our. Our quarterly meeting where you did this exercise? And I said, oh, it’s simple. You and I are going to make sure that we take action on everything that we heard that was an unwow. And we can’t just have a conversation about and then not do anything about it. That doesn’t.

Perry Holley:
That’s an unwell itself.

Chris Goede:
That’s an unwow itself. And that. That’s also attributing to a culture that we’re not trying to create here on our team. So Anyways, just some additional thoughts. But man, take what we’re talking about something we learned. We’re super excited about it. We wanted to share it with you, and then now we want you to take it and share it with your team.

Perry Holley:
Fantastic. Well, thank you for that great insight. And if you’d like to get the learner guide for this, you can do all that as well as see our offerings. The other offerings in our podcast families are also listed there. We have several. You can also leave us a question or a comment, all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast. We love hearing from you and very grateful you’d spend this time with us.

Perry Holley:
That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.