Why Making Your Customers Happy Requires Entertainment
Trying to penetrate the immense busyness and clutter in the marketplace today is a daunting task. How can contractors and business development professionals cut through the clutter and noise so they can create opportunities to deliver the beautiful projects that owners want and need? What’s the secret?
Tune in this week as Wayne suggests there is a magical way to get attention in a busy, crowded world and offers Ray Bard’s philosophy of the objective of EVERY business. What do you think? Is it possible to stand out and be noticed in a business environment that moves faster and faster with every passing year? Please share with us in the comments.
The Denver class of The Contractor Business Boot Camp starts in August. If you haven’t yet enrolled your rising NextGen leaders to this career development program, do it NOW before you run out of time (and we run out of seats!). Please contact Charlotte at ckopp@familybusinessinstitute.com for more information.
Hello, this is Wayne Rivers at FBI, where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about why making your customers happy requires entertainment. This sounds like a strange blog
for a group of contractors but stick with me here. So, what's my source? My source is the Monday morning memo that I
get every week from Roy Williams. It's very entertaining. And I take all these newsletters, and blogs and stuff so you don't
have to. So, this one came from May of 23, and he says that to make a point, you have to tell a story. That's the way that
human beings communicate among the most effective ways. And the reason it's important to contractors is you've got to
cut through the clutter. I can look out the conference room window in our building and I can see at least 10 commercial
structures that were probably built to a terrific level of quality by 10 different contractors.
If your construction company went away tomorrow, would that really impact your local construction market, or would
somebody fill that void? We'd never like to say construction is a commodity, but I mean, it kind of is a commodity these
days, in today's world, isn't it? So, you've got to do something unique to cut through the clutter so you can get to the
minds of your owners and try trade partners and everyone else. So, Roy Williams told a story. He talked about this 19-
year-old kid, sitting about broke in a McDonald's parking lot one day. And he sees this ratty-old pickup truck go through
the parking lot and somebody had spray-painted on the side, junk hauling. So, this 19-year-old says, "Golly, I could do
that." And Brian Scudamore created, guess what? 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which this year will probably be a $1 billion a year
business. So, that was the genesis of that company.
So, Roy was visiting with a mentor of his named Ray Bard. And Ray said that every business success comes from only four
components, and everybody has the first two. So, the first one is, I could do that. They have the big idea. So, I see a pickup
truck with junk hauling sprayed on the side, I can do that. So, that's number one, the big idea. Number two, everybody
has at least a part of anyway, and that's the nuts and bolts, how to do X, Y, or Z, how to get started. What are the steps
that I need to take? The third thing they need is entertainment. And let me read this for you. Entertainment is the currency
that will buy you the time and attention of a too busy public. Information is the medicine they need, but entertainment,
wit, charm and enchantment are the spoonfuls of sugar that will help the medicine go down. I agree with that 1,000%.
How often are busy contractors bombarded with information every day? Is it 1,000 discrete pieces of information a day,
2,000? It's a lot. So, to cut through the clutter, you've got to do something, and entertainment can certainly be a part of
that. The fourth thing that people need in order to start a business is hope. And you have to give them a glimpse of the
future that's better than the past. When you help them see tomorrow that's better than today, and they see it is within
their grasp, you've done the only thing that any business ever needs to do, and that's make someone happy. So, think
about that.
Think about that in the sense of you're a contractor, you're building stuff, but in the end, isn't it your job to make your
customers and your trade partners happy? So, what can you do today? Think about this. What one thing can you do today
to make somebody happy in the context of business? How can you entertain someone in order that your message can get
through and break through the clutter? I'd like to hear what you have to say in the audience. This is Wayne Rivers at FBI,
where We Build Better Contractors.