WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘‘WOWING’’ CLIENTS?
Well, we gave the ‘‘Gang of 30’’ the charge to find five clients and to wow them. We told the clients that they had been selected as one of our wow clients and that we really want to work on being positively deviant. We explained what we meant by our wow client program and why we selected them. We asked them to join us in this effort. It was amazing. One of the clients we selected for the wow program was so dissatisfied with us they were ready to leave for one of our competitors. That client went from being ready to walk out the door to being our biggest advocate. Why? We engaged them. We talked about what’s really important to them. We listened to what they meant as opposed to what they said. It was not easy to do, but we tried a variety of approaches. When an idea worked, we did more. When it didn’t work, we just put it aside and tried something else. We also had to get rid of the clients who were constant sources of negative energy. Every company has them. Every firm has clients who just exude negative energy. We got rid of those clients allowing us to channel our energy back to those where we had the chance to be successful. What is fascinating is that those negative clients are sucking up the energy at one of my competitors as we speak. Good luck with that.