.jpg)
My Weekly Marketing
Join conversations about marketing, business, and life-in-between with marketing strategist Janice Hostager and a variety of world-class entrepreneurs! We will fill you with step-by-step training, marketing strategy, and life experiences from where life and business intersect. We'd love to have you join the fun!
My Weekly Marketing
How Disney's Secrets Can Elevate Your Business with Vance Morris
Disney is known for unforgettable customer experiences, but what if you could bring that same magic into your own business? Vance Morris, a former Disney leader turned entrepreneur, shares how the company’s systems, attention to detail, and customer-first mindset can help small businesses stand out. He explains how to create a consistent experience, build strong customer relationships, and turn everyday interactions into something memorable.
We also talk about the power of systems, the role of storytelling in marketing, and simple ways to wow customers without breaking the bank. If you want practical, straightforward strategies for improving customer experience, this episode has plenty of ideas to put into action.
- Show Notes
- Apply to be featured on My Weekly Marketing!
I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing.
Janice Hostager:When you think of companies with amazing branding and unforgettable customer experience, near the top of your list is probably going to be Disney, and for good reason. They were among the first to include an experience as part of their brand. And isn't it cool to think it all started with a cartoon mouse and some stories and just grew from there. When I mention Disney, you'll probably think about memorable movies or their theme parks, and when you go to Disneyland or Disney World, from the moment you walk through the gates, they want you to have a memorable experience. So how do you take a clue from Disney for your own business?
Janice Hostager:My guest today is Vance Morris. Vance is a Walt Disney World Resort Management alumni, having spent 10 years as a leader in the resorts. But beyond the Disney brand, Vance is a serial entrepreneur and has learned to harness what he's learned at Disney to stand out in his own business. Today he's sharing the insider secrets of how the Disney magic of customer service and customer experience can be integrated in your own business too. Here's my talk with Vance. Hey Vance, how are you doing today?
Vance Morris:I'm great, Janice, thank you.
Vance Morris:I appreciate you having me on.
Janice Hostager:Absolutely so. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started focusing kind of on customer experiences.
Vance Morris:Sure. Well, I'll blame it all on my first job, which was working for the Walt Disney Company down in Orlando. I worked for the mouse for 10 years and it was really an eye opening experience, but it gave me the basis for everything I was going to do further in my career. You know I get asked a lot what was the number one thing you learned at Disney? A lot of people think that it was you know customer experience or how to pick up trash really fast, or you know how to keep the place clean, and I hate to break it to people. Actually, I learned that Disney runs on systems and processes and that they have a process for everything. You know, if you want to change a bus tire, they got a system for it. If you want to carry a tray in a restaurant, they've got a system for it. And all the systems are also are simple, because if they were complex, the whole thing would fall apart. And you have to think about who's working there. It's a lot of young people, teenagers, not exactly thinking clearly all the time. So if they didn't have a simple system, again the whole thing would fall apart. So I was like, well, this makes a lot of sense. So I've carried that through with the jobs I've had and now with the businesses that I own.
Vance Morris:And I found that systems are very they. They give me a lot of freedom, they give the employees freedom, and I noticed this at Disney is because if you follow the process and you just learn it and it's like a muscle reflex, it's just almost by rope, you just do this, you do it that way, and then it gives you the freedom to be able to do all the little nice things that Disney's known for. You know, okay, so you're carrying your tray in the restaurant, but then you, oh, I need to take a picture of the guest for them. So they put the tray down, take a picture. I mean, it's all those little things that Disney's known for the cast members can do, because they know their job so well that it doesn't impact the job.
Vance Morris:And I've noticed that now as a business owner that all the systems I put in place in my businesses gives me freedom to not have to be in the business. So I think I've told you I own three home service businesses here in Maryland. And I put service systems in marketing systems, operations systems and I have a general manager who runs all that for me. I spend about 90 weeks, excuse me, 90 minutes a week on those businesses, essentially cashing the checks, kissing babies, and I spend 30 minutes a week in a meeting with the GM. So systems it just really was an eye-opener for me that that's what Disney kind of gave to me.
Janice Hostager:Interesting. So how does that translate into customer experience? So everything that Disney does like every so take me through. Like, what a typical role. Maybe your role there or somebody else's role there? How did systems contribute to that? So give me an example.
Vance Morris:Sure. So one of the things that we do is what's called scripting, and so I'll give you an example from my carpet cleaning company, and this ties into how to create an experience. So one of the boring and mundane things we have to do in the carpet business is get into the home. So I've created a complete performance, a complete experience, out of my technician getting into the home, and it starts out in the street. So we park in the street. We don't park in the driveway because, god forbid, I've got an oil leak. Now I got something else I got to clean up.
Vance Morris:And the technician gets out and he's in a clean uniform because he carries extra uniforms with him, and he also does not smell because I forbid smoking and he is not allowed to wear cologne, because there's nothing worse than a guy showing up inside your house smelling like the Marlboro man who just took a shower in Axe. All right. So and he gets his. He gets, it's disgusting. So you get, he gets his little mat. Um, he gets a little gift and he walks up to the front door. He lays down his mat and he knocks on the door because friends knock, salespeople ring the bell, takes a couple steps back and he waits for the customer to answer the door. Mrs McGillicuddy answers the door and he says Hi, my name's Josh. I'm here to create your healthy home. May I come in? We don't just barge in, we ask to be allowed in. She says yes, certainly. So he'll do an exaggeration or a performance of wiping his feet on the mat and then he puts little booties on his clean shoes and he enters the home. On his way in, he gives Mrs McGillicuddy a gift.
Vance Morris:Now, it's not a big gift, but it is still a gift. Now, when was the last time you had a home service person, you know, plumber or pest control or carpet cleaner come into your home and give you a gift before they did any work? Never, probably, never, right, right. So we give her a gift and it's not expensive. It's like five bucks. It's a custom little blue box. It's a bottle of spot remover, a bag of cookies and a little note from me saying thank you so much for allowing us into your home.
Vance Morris:Now that box does a couple of things for us. One obviously, it separates me from everybody else out there and that's what we want and it gives us. People will talk about us. They're like, oh my God, you never guessed. Carpet cleaner gave me a gift today. The other thing that it does is it starts a process called reciprocity, so if I give something to you, you feel compelled to give something back to me. So when we started the gift, we noticed a 26% increase in our mid-tier package, which equated to about $65,000 in additional sales every year. So that all in itself is a scripted, systemized process designed to deliver an experience. So I hope that answered your question.
Janice Hostager:Absolutely. Yeah, I love that you were able to just bring it right to the customer too. I think a lot of us have systems in our own business. I know when I very first started my design agency that I used to have I used to go ahead and well, initially I would just sort of put little sticky notes places and try, and you know, kind of go through the process that way. But I found that, even if it's just me, I really needed systems. So I had, we, I developed standard operating procedures or SOPs for myself, but I never really thought about implementing them for customers, you know. So I love that you do that and I love that you include all the details in it, because I think that's so important, because people notice those details and people, like you said, they will go to Google reviews and say, wow, he even brought me a gift, he wiped his feet at the door and things that we wouldn't necessarily think twice about doing maybe as an individual, but you've systematized them for your entire company.
Vance Morris:So that is very cool and you mentioned a key word, which is details, and I think, no matter what business you're in, you know paying attention to the details is paramount and you know, if you were to choose one detail that you knew was going to significantly impact your customer experience or your profitability, I mean, what would it be? And you know, I mean I consult with a lot of different niches and industries and the one that kills me is the medical field, and I'll go into an office or the waiting room and they have dusty house plants.
Vance Morris:And I'm thinking to myself.
Vance Morris:well, this is not congruent with the medical profession. You've got dirty stuff in the waiting room, well, what's your operating room or your exam room going to look like, you know? So you're planting this seed. That detail is not congruent with what you're, what you're serving, um, and so those, all those details matter. I mean, you know, cleaning business we're certainly in a detail oriented business. You know, my guys have to wash their trucks every day before they go out and drive around because, well, we're, we'd look stupid if we drive around in a muddy truck, um, so you've got to, those details have to be focused on it, and every detail matters.
Vance Morris:And the other thing is is that every detail is either enhancing or detracting from the experience. There's no middle ground. So it's either helping you or it's hurting you. You can't have a wishy-washy, it's, you know. If you've got a dirty window, well, that's hurting you. If you've got, you know, nice flowers in the waiting room and they're fresh, well that's helping you. If your front desk person, you know, marge, is having a grumpy day, that's hurting you. I mean it's so.
Janice Hostager:I mean all the details, they all matter and they all either enhance or distract. That is so good. You're absolutely right. I love that quote. Details either take away or they give right Black or white. So, and that is really something you definitely see when you visit, like a Disney theme park. For sure, I can remember going there with my kids when they were really young I think it was my daughter's sixth birthday and so they gave her a special badge or something to wear, and everywhere she went they did something a little special for her, like she might walk in a gift shop and there'd be a phone call from Mickey for her, or something that was engraved for her, embroidered for her, or something like that. So they are so good about details and I love that. You have translated that into your own businesses.
Vance Morris:Yeah, and you, you know I mean I cause I get the question a lot. You know they're like, you know people, they'll poo poo the whole thing about. Well, you know I can't copy Disney. You know I don't have a Cinderella castle, I don't have a roller coaster, I don't have a theme park and I'm like, well, unless you do own a theme park, we're not trying to copy Disney, we're trying to adapt what Disney is doing into our businesses. You know so. You know Disney has a particular way that they answer the telephone right. So how can we answer the telephone in our businesses? That is different and exciting and provides a better experience. And I'll tell you the secret to answering the phone these days is answering it live. Seriously, if that's the biggest tip I give anybody on this call, answer your phone live. You will separate yourself from everybody out there because nobody's doing it anymore.
Janice Hostager:That is true. You either get a recording or voicemail or something like that.
Vance Morris:Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, so how should small businesses start thinking about this? Do they just kind of mentally walk through the customer journey map and kind of figure out, okay, what's that first point of contact, and keep going and I'm talking about, like it could be coaches, consultants, photographers, so on. Like what's the process that you'd recommend they go?
Vance Morris:through. Yeah, you're spot on, spot on, with journey mapping. So take it from point one all the way through the entire thing till the end of the journey. Every single point where you or your business has a contact with the customer, that's a point on that map. And then, once you have that mapped out, you want to list it and then prioritize what is going to give you the most bang for your buck if you were to work on it. So what is going to give you most time saved, most money saved, or most revenue generated, or most excitement or fun or wow for the customer, which will then fall into making more money? So you want to prioritize it because you can't, you can't, I wouldn't start at the beginning, unless you're having a problem with lead generation, then well, maybe you want to start there, but identify where the problems are and hit those first. And I would, if you have a team, definitely involve your team in this, because they're the experts. They do this job day in, day out, every day, and just brainstorm how do we make this better? No bad idea is a bad idea. Just let it go. Money is not an object. Let's just see what we can think of and then so when you come up with it, I like to use again a simple system, just like Disney does. Disney runs on three words what to do, how to do it and why we do it that way. So let's just take answering the phone, for example.
Vance Morris:I worked with an all-state insurance guy. I can't remember, a big city down south and there were probably like 14 or 15 other all-state agents in the city, let alone all the other insurance people, and he really needed to stand out. So, you know, I kind of talked to him about his personality a little bit and what he liked, and he invited me to his office and he was a real rock and roll fanatic. So he had like gold records on the wall and autographed guitars and you know, posters of The Who and Led Zeppelin and all this stuff. And I'm like, wow, this is pretty cool. So we got into the brainstorming session with his team and one of his team members suggested that he become, you know, the rock and roll insurance agent. Um, it was like, okay, that's pretty cool. And we said, okay, well, you, well, where should we start with that persona? How should we get that out? And she goes well, it's probably going to be answering the phone. I said okay.
Vance Morris:So we started brainstorming how should we answer the phone, and an employee actually came up with it. So you know, when you call any office, you're going to get something along the lines of you know, thank you for calling Dave's Allstate, how can I help you? We've all heard that from a myriad of businesses, but when we implemented what she said, it was amazing. So now when they answer the phone, it's thank you for calling Dave's Allstate, the agency that rocks. You know now, I mean it's.
Vance Morris:It sounds a little goofy the first 20 times you say it, but it certainly separates him from everybody else. Nobody can claim that, nobody can copy that. You know your marketing is designed to do two things attract the people you want, repel the people you don't want. And just by answering the phone that way, he's sifting, sorting and screening out people who would make a bad customer. And people are attracted to that Um and so I mean that's how we would. You know, and that was like his number one point was how we answered the phone, and so now that became his standard.
Vance Morris:So what do we do? We answered the phone. How do we do it? You know, the agency that rocks. Why do we do it that way. Well, it separates us from all the other, all state agents in town and it brings us the clients that we like to do business with. And that why column is vital for the employees, because that's where you get engagement, because most of the time, employees are just told what and how, they're never told the why, and so if you want them to be engaged, they need to know. Why do we answer the phone this way? Yeah Well, because you know Dave is. He's a rock and roll fanatic and we need to be. You know he wants to be known above and beyond all the other agents in town. So this is how we answer the phone, and they're like oh, okay, it makes sense.
Janice Hostager:So I love what you did with Dave, the Allstate agent, I think. So you really started with his brand right. You figured out what made him unique, what made him stand out, and really kind of spread that to all the touch points, which is exactly how I you know, I used to do a lot of of logo designs for people back when I had a design agency and they would come and they would have an idea and I would start them with all right, you know who, who are you, what are your, what's your mission and vision, and really take them on a deep dive into their personal branding before I ever put pen to paper. And what was interesting about that is that there were some people that would push back on that and say no, no, no, I just want a logo it's not important, or the logo that looks like everybody else. So I really think that what you do is brilliant in that respect, because you are number one making them pin down their brand right.
Janice Hostager:There's no other Disney out there. This all started with a mouse, right, and he grew that into an empire. So think about what is near and dear to you, what you can do or what you do differently and how you can set your business apart with that, and then, like you said, take it to the next level, walk through your customer journey and spread it throughout the entire business.
Vance Morris:Yeah, 100%.
Janice Hostager:So do you see, a lot of times when I get a client they're a little nervous about standing out, especially, I think, if it's a brand new business. They want to look like everybody else, because everybody else looks legitimate and they want to look legitimate and I get it. When you're first starting out you don't know which way to turn. I'm assuming that's kind of a big mistake they make. Do you have any other things that you see that businesses make or that businesses do that you feel like they could just maybe improve it a little bit?
Vance Morris:You know, I will start out saying that, you know, while vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream in the entire world, being vanilla in your business will kill you. That sea of sameness that, looking like everybody else, you become a commodity. That means you have no way to increase your prices because you can't separate yourself, you don't have an experience, you don't have anything to help boost that. I remember when yellow pages were still a thing and I and I was, you know, flipping through them cause I was going to be you know, I'm going to have my ad in there and every single carpet cleaning ad had a picture of a carpet cleaning van. I'm thinking to myself well, what does a van have to do with carpet cleaning? I mean, we assume you're going to travel to the house. Why put the van in there? Plumbers do the same thing. What does a plumbing truck have to do with plumbing? Absolutely nothing. I mean, I think, like the first guy who ever did a Yellow Pages ad, just decided to put his van in the picture and everybody copied it. Oh, I guess that's what we're supposed to do. Well, you know, look at what everybody is doing and do the opposite. Seriously, I mean it's probably the best advice I could give you, because you do want to stand out and be that sore thumb and don't do whatever, because you're just going to blend in and you're going to look like everybody else. So you know when you're doing your marketing. Certainly you know. I mean, obviously some industries have regulations, I get it. But you want to be able to be so different that you stand out, but you don't want to be so outlandish that it's ridiculous. Um, one of the things that I teach my coaching clients and when I work with the consulting people is um, there are two words that you want to be able to put in your marketing and in your advertisements that will separate you from everybody else, and those two words are the only. So if you can put the words the only in front of whatever you want to say, you are now heads and miles above everybody else. So my carpet cleaning business we are the only green and non-toxic cleaner in eastern shore Maryland.
Vance Morris:Nobody else can claim that, it's mine. You know they may. You know some, and if somebody else does it, then I just change it to. We were the first, you know. But if you can claim the only, that is a very powerful marketing message. Um, you know. And if you, okay, you can't claim that and say, well, okay, we're, we're the only um plumbing company with an on-time guarantee. Oh, wow, okay, you know. So those two words themselves that'll help you stand out. And you don't, I mean, and you don't even really need to really think of anything. Just put those two words in front of something and you're good to go. Um, yeah, I think that some people I mean, you know they they worry about what their spouse is going to say.
Vance Morris:They worry about what the neighbors are going to think. They worry about what their mother-in-law is going to think. And what they should really be thinking about is A does it work? And B is it bringing money in? And that's the only measurement that you should be worried about with your brand and with your marketing. If it's bringing money in, nobody else's opinion matters at all. You know your wife says, oh, that's a dumb ad. Well, honey, you brought in $50,000 last month, you know, all right. Well, I still think it's a dumb ad. Well, okay, you know.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, and that's something I take clients through when I do their value proposition. I throw a little tag at the end saying, unlike my competitors, I will do blank and just really try to get them to really think hard about how they can differentiate themselves, because oftentimes we're so busy with our day-to-day service business or we're just doing all the things all the time that we don't really even have time to to sit and think about okay, how can I stand out? And I think it's especially hard, I always say with personal branding, because it's hard for us to see our own business. I always say a jar can't read its own label. So I think, do you find it's helpful to have somebody else come in and help you with that process? Or how do you go about thinking about what it is?
Vance Morris:Certainly. I mean, I think that you know if you have the financial wherewithal to get a coach or a consultant to come in to help you, certainly, and you need to get one that kind of knows what they're doing. But you know, to work with you on those types of things so that you have the right direction, so that you have the momentum and that you have tangible things to implement, is vital, and it's going to be faster. You know, if you can spend a little money, the implementation and the results are going to be faster. If you're going to bootstrap and grassroots it, certainly you can still do that. It's just going to take a little longer. I'm not saying it can't be done, it's just going to take a little bit longer. You're going to have to YouTube it, you're going to have to read a book, but it can still be done. But either way it needs to be done.
Janice Hostager:It does. Yeah, absolutely so, um, talk to me a little bit. So when I was prepping for this, I really did a deep dive into what Disney does well, because I know that's kind of what you base a lot of your programs on. One of the things I think they do really really well, and obviously they do really well as well, is storytelling, because it all started with a story. Do you see that businesses work with stories kind of and build their business around that, around a narrative?
Vance Morris:Oh, certainly. And we'd be silly not to use stories. You know, just look at a society today and you look at what we pay a public school teacher and what we pay a Hollywood movie star, right. School teacher, I mean maybe 70, 80,000 a year. You know, movie star, I mean, they got $70,000 just for showing up in the park and a lot of the studio. And so, as a society, we place a lot of value on entertainment and, as such, we need, as business owners, we need to entertain and we can do that through storytelling. Now, does that mean you need to do once upon a time? No, of course not.
Vance Morris:Storytelling can come in the form of a case study. It can come in the form of a white paper. It can come in the form of like with my newsletters that I send to my cleaning clients. I shamelessly use my children in my marketing. I mean I've done it my whole life. I mean by my kids were five years old on up, and I tell stories about my children because for me, that is creating. Stories allow you to create an emotional connection with your customers and when you do that, you create this bond that is almost impossible to break. And if you only talked about widgets and things and coupons. There's no, there's no attraction, there's no connection there. So, real quick. So my um, I mentioned uh, you know I do a print newsletter every month for my uh, for my businesses and um, my daughter, Emma, uh, she's a.
Vance Morris:I used to do ballet from the time she was like five until 12 or 13. And I, every year for her recital, I took a picture of her and her tutu and she would be front page of my newsletter. You know Emma and her ballet thing, and you know it got sent out and I think she was like 10 or 11 years old and we're in the grocery store and this woman comes running, running up to us and I'm like, well, actually she didn't come run up to me, she ran up to my daughter. She said, oh my God, Emma, how was your recital? And my daughter and I looked at each other and we're like who the hell is this lady? We're ready to go hide in the frozen food section and I had to think she's gotta be one of my customers.
Vance Morris:Oh right, I had created a connection with her. She is never leaving me and my kids now have thousands of aunts and uncles where I have made a connection, an emotional connection with them, where they will find it painful to leave my company. So now, if I've created this connection, now, when I raise prices, now when I want to try a new service, now when I want to try anything, they are going to be more apt to A go ahead and say, okay, well, price increase, I have renoticed, needs to do it and they'll also be more willing to try a new service because they're connected and I can make a mistake, and they'll forgive me because that's what people do. But if I didn't have that, if all I did was hit them with, you know, offer after offer and coupon after coupon I mean, nobody likes to be sold all the time.
Vance Morris:Can you imagine? The only time you ever hear from a company is when they want your money? Right, I mean, you know your accountant, the only time you ever hear from him is when you get the invoice for him doing your taxes. That's not a relationship, that's here give me money, you know. Or the only time you hear from the department stores when they're having a sale. They want money.
Vance Morris:So you've got to create that, that connection, and I think something from your personality I saw. So you don't want to use your kids, fine. Maybe you're a fisherman. Okay, do you know what? Show pictures of your fish. Maybe you like basket weaving. Okay, great. But let that kind of stuff show through, because you're going to immediately connect with a certain population. When I do public speaking, I seed all of my speeches with little parts of my life so that I connect with different parts of the audience. I'll make fun of the fact that I've been married a number of times, because that will connect with certain people in the audience that have been married a number of times. I talk about my kids, so that connects with people in the audience that have kids. I make myself human and that creates the connection. I think so many business owners try to look like a corporation and that's where they go wrong.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, I agree, I think, especially now I see a lot of clients wanting to turn to AI for everything, which I'm okay with for like an outliner for ideas. But when you're writing your weekly newsletter, I recommend that people send it out weekly. You really want to pull in who you are personally and beyond that, I like to throw in things that my ideal customer likes. For example, if they're a certain age, I'll know that they grew up with certain movies, certain music, for example, and I'll toss those in, just like you were saying, to connect with your audience. It's just to kind of sprinkle in sort of some hooks, to kind of you know, hooks is not the right word but something to sort of help them relate to you so that you have some common ground right. And I love that you do that in your talks as well, because that's super important. When you are speaking to a crowd, they want to know that you can understand them and know where they're coming from.
Vance Morris:Yeah, it's vital.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, yeah. So with AI, do you see that there's some other trends that are shaping the future of like this experience that customers are having? You know there's like this is all changing so quickly.
Vance Morris:Certainly as a research tool, I agree 100%, you know, and I mean I am not a tech guy by any stretch of the imagination, so you know, I mean I still have a flip phone for Gus, okay, but you know I think that yes. And for developing, you know the systems and processes. I mean to have your own custom GPT to develop that stuff.
Vance Morris:Yeah, it's going to save you so much time, right, but to allow AI to come in and do some of the service functions, maybe I mean like these chatbots that are on websites, I think that, okay, that's great if it's a general question, but on that bot there needs to be a big fat button that says get me to a real person right now, and not hidden and not in fine print, but get me to a real person, and you know. Same thing with the telephone. And I think I said it earlier If you want to impress people, answer the phone live, because nobody's doing it, you know. I mean, it's just there. They have those phone trees press one for this and two for that, you know. Or it goes to voicemail.
Vance Morris:If you're relying on voicemail for your business, you've lost that customer because they're just going down to the next guy on the Google listing and they're calling them. They're not waiting for you to return a voicemail. Get somebody to answer the phone line. I mean it's the biggest piece of advice these days that I can give. I'm a partner in a uh, in a call center, and when we were doing the research for it, we called 4 000 home service businesses 4 000 and we got the numbers from Google pay-per-click. So these are people paying to have their phone number advertised. 17 percent answered their phone live. 17% that means 80-some-odd percent are flushing money down the toilet. They're paying Google for nothing. I don't get it.
Janice Hostager:That is really true. I know I had a question about. I had an issue with Google's tag manager last week. It was like very frustrated. I tried to Google the answer. I kind of I finally hired somebody to try and figure out who figured it out. But that's the thing it's like. If you have a question and I'm trying to give them money, I'm trying to give Google money right. To run some ads, but I couldn't connect it with this client and dah-da-da, but there was nobody to call, there was nobody to ask. It's such a big conglomerate that it does really get frustrating when you have a question that no bot is going to be able to answer, that no Google search is going to be able to answer. You just need to talk to a real human being. And I agree. I think that is a really good insight that instead of going high tech, maybe standing out is going low tech.
Vance Morris:I mean you're describing the sales prevention department. I mean, really you are. I mean, that is you know? People are literally shoving $100 bills at you and you're saying no, no, no, go talk to my bot, I don't want your money.
Janice Hostager:So I just have one more question and we'll wrap it up here. But so for small business owners, what are some cost effective ways that they can really wow and delight somebody like this. Similar to what you do with your carpet cleaning company or what Disney does with their entire experience or ecosystem,
Vance Morris:and like I said, you know, I mean wowing doesn't have to cost anything.
Vance Morris:You know, I mean just heck, just saying, you know, good morning and smiling is, you know, sometimes enough. You know, and actually I, I think I mentioned, you know, I've I've just created a hot sheet 52 ways to wow your customers without breaking the bank. Um, you know, I, I think, um, one of the ways is, uh, that I use is um handwritten thank you notes, um, and say you know what would grandma do? Um, and you know, and you know, now we've outgrown being able to do it in-house, because we're doing 75 to 100 a week. That's a lot of handwriting, but I still do it. In my consulting business. If I have half a dozen business meetings a week, I'm still writing half a dozen thank you cards and sending them out. Nobody does it anymore. The mailbox is empty. So it's a great place to be for small businesses.
Vance Morris:You know, I think little surprises are fantastic. I think food is okay, but the problem with giving food as a gift is it disappears. People eat it and then there's no memory of it. So if you can give something that's got a little bit of staying power certainly offering a beta test of a new service that you're pondering or a new product, saying, hey, find your top five clients and say, hey, look, I'm thinking of offering this service or providing this product. Can I give you some samples and just get your feedback on it? People love to be included in that stuff. Can you have a customer of the month? People love.
Vance Morris:When we were growing up, my mom always used to love cutting my picture out of the newspaper and tacking it up on the refrigerator. Trust me, adults love that too. They love seeing their name in lights. So how can you do that with you know, with your customers, you know, recognizing them? You know, for anniversaries with your company, I mean, I've got people that are still with me 17 years later. So when I have an anniversary with my company, I'm looking for um anniversaries with how long my clients have been with me, and I'll send anniversary cards, say, hey, look, we've been together 15 years already, and you know, and now I'll give them a special offer. Uh, so there's all sorts of ways you can, you know, do those things and you can do.
Vance Morris:I'm not saying not to do food, um, you know, and some, and there's a place for it. Um, we actually here in Maryland we have a steak cake. It's called the Smith Island cake. Um, and they'll ship it actually anywhere and they'll ship it anywhere in the US, um, but I will take my top five customers every month and they get shipped a Smith Island cake. Five customers every month and they get shipped a Smith Island cake.
Vance Morris:Now, when was the last time you got a cake in the mail from your carpet cleaner? Probably never. You know, it's impressive. It's a box of cake and, oh, my goodness, actually, down in Texas I can't remember the name of the company, but they have the Brazos or Brazos pecan pie. It's enormous.
Vance Morris:This thing weighs like nine pounds, it comes in this wooden crate and it's an amazing gift to give, either for a client or for business. But you know, and if you got guys as clients, there's a company called Man Crates and they've got stuff. That is just, you know, it's all I mean. Well, it depends on what you do for a living, you know, but you can get stuff that's inexpensive, you know, and sometimes just picking up the phone and say, hey, you know, Mrs Smith, you know, I know I'm not in the field anymore. You know cleaning, you know I'm sitting here high on the hog and my throne, but I just wanted to call and check in on you. Sometimes it's just a phone call.
Vance Morris:Yeah, that's really all it is.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, and it doesn't have to cost a lot. You don't have to go with the cake and the pecan pie. Yeah, yeah, I love that, and you do have a freebie. You said was it 52 ways to wow your customers? Was that it?
Vance Morris:52 ways to wow your Customer Without Breaking the Bank.
Janice Hostager:Love it, love it, and of course, we'll put the link to that in the show notes for today. So, Vance, it was delightful talking to you. You have generated so many ideas in my brain now, so I need to go quick write them down before I forget them and, of course, most importantly, putting them into processes.
Vance Morris:Right, Well, thank you, Janice. I appreciate you having me on.
Janice Hostager:Thanks so much. So what did you think? Did you get some ideas about ways you can improve your own customer experience? I love his recommendation about brainstorming with a coach or your team, ways that you can wow your customers, and I'd also recommend starting with Vance's free download. To learn more about anything we talked about today, visit myweeklymarketingcom. Forward slash 99. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you like what you heard, please subscribe. See you next time. Bye for now.
