FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Mick Torbay: I’m Mick Torbay from Wizard of Ads Toronto and I help medium-sized businesses become larger. Extra medium. And one way to do that is to see what your competitors doing wrong, painfully wrong, and then take unfair advantage of that. So that’s what this series is. 10 Things Your Competitors Doing Right Now To Mess Up Their Business And How You Can Use That To Beat Them. Mistake number nine is related to mistake number seven which is talking about things that only matter to the business owner. Things like how long you’ve been in business or whether you’re family owned, but this one is even worse because it involves not just saying what’s in the interest of the business owner, but doing what’s in the interest of the business owner instead of, oh, I don’t know, doing what’s in the interest of the customer. The person who pays you money for stuff.
Mick Torbay: Have you ever called a business when you’ve called before and found that they’ve replaced the person who answers the phone with an infuriating robot phone tree system? It’s probably one that makes you listen to the entire outgoing message because they changed it again. So it’s press, one for service and two for sales. Have you ever been confronted with one of those systems that said, “Oh, thank God they got rid of that smart, helpful person who used to connect me right away? I much prefer to listen to this infuriating robot lady and go seven steps deep into their stupid phone tree, only to find out there’s no option for technical support on this menu. What number is it for me to go back to the previous menu?” It’s not good for the customer. It’s good for you. Stop that, stop it. Stop doing things that make it a little harder for them, but a lot easier for you.
Mick Torbay: Somebody is going to clobber you for that. My genius partner, Tom Waynick, has a three-part plan for making his clients truckloads of money. It’s surprisingly simple and yet almost never achieved. He charges thousands of dollars for what I’m about to tell you. Sorry, Tom. Step one, do what the customer expects. Give them the thing they want for the value they deserve. Table-stakes just be good at what you do. Just don’t suck. That’s step one. Step two, make it easy for them, not for you. Make it easy for the customer to do business with you. Step three, surprise and delight. Do something they didn’t expect. Go the extra mile. Exceed their expectations. Now, most businesses can’t make it past freaking step one because they can’t be bothered making it easy. I don’t want to take phone calls. I want a machine to sort the colors into groups. That makes it easier for me.
Mick Torbay: You think they’re all gonna line up and just do your bidding like the soup guy from Seinfeld just because your annoying robot voice tells them too. Are you nuts? There are too many options. Too many people are willing to make it easy for them. Small companies, small companies who can’t afford the phone tree robots. They answer their phones and help the customers and give them the confidence that they actually care about them and want to solve their problems and then they grow and they buy annoying phone tree robots but not you. Fire the robot. Customers don’t like them. Be the one, the only one who does what the customer wants. You call me, I answer the phone. Here’s my number. Call it. I’ll answer unless I’m in the restroom. That’s, that’s gross. I’m Mick Torbay from Wizard of Ads Toronto, making the world a better place one commercial at a time.
