Franziska: Hi and welcome back to Basic Bananas TV. Today I’m sitting here with Nils Vesk. [inaudible 00:00:13] I assume you’ve already met him.

Nils: Hi guys. How’re you doing?

Franziska: Now last Friday I went to a seminar that Nils was running with one of our team members Aga, and it was fantastic. I thought while Nils was dropping in today to our headquarters, I just grabbed him. I said, “Hey can we share one thing you shared at the seminar?” He’s, “Yeah, but I’m looking all rough,” and I’m, “No you’re, it’s perfect.”

Nils: Definitely.

Franziska: This is how we are. I’m looking little bit, maybe under dress too in my holey. Basically what I wanted to share with you today, and what I wanted Nils to talk about, is something you spoke about which was delighting. Delighting your audience. Can share a little bit about it?

Nils: Sure, sure Franziska. The concept behind, I guess is kind of relaxed persuasion. How do we persuade our customers to do more business with us, or to be front of mind and make the decisions. And one of the concepts behind this is to create unexpected delight to our customers. At this seminar that I was running, I was mentioning a few different ways that we can do this. A good way about thinking about how you can think about delight is it’s almost like you’ve got a $10 budget. With 10 bucks, what could you do that will be unexpected but adds value in some way. It could be around novelty. It could be that it adds value. It might have some emotional nostalgia to it. But something that just adds a little wow to someone, to an existing client that you have.

Franziska: I love that. I love that because I think that the most successful businesses are the ones that are delighting and are adding value. Maybe what we can do is when you, right now you might be thinking, “Well, but how can I delight?” Maybe we use a few quick examples of different industries, so say if you’re a plumber. A plumber might be watching this and, “Well, how do I delight? You know, I’m cleaning pipes. How am I going to delight someone?” What would be a good idea?

Nils: That’s a good example. That’s a tough example actually because yeah a plumber would go, “Yeah, I fix pipes and I might only need to do that once every 3 years with a client.” So you think, “Okay, what’s under 10 bucks that I can do that somehow relates to water or cleanliness or something like that.” Good example, for $10 you could definitely get probably a few bottles of that … what do they call it, that?

Franziska: The hand sanitizer, yeah. Yeah.

Nils: Hand sanitizer type stuff, and you could brand that in your own way so it says “Joe’s Clean Plumbing,” and say “Hey guys. Really appreciated the work. In case the pipes do burst, next time you don’t have any water, here’s some sanitizer that will help keep your hands clean.” That might cost you $5, maybe a little bit more if you did some branding on it, but that’s kind of one example.

Franziska: It’s basically something relevant to your whatever you’re doing. So it could be something that ties in, but even it doesn’t have to tie in maybe.

Nils: If we kept going with plumbing you could do something like, you could get some branded bottled water that you could do. It could be …

Franziska: Let’s use another industry, or have you got really good choice. Did you just have the best thing, didn’t you.

Nils: Okay. I just got another one. While I’m thinking about plumbing, I’m just also thinking about water filters. Different water filters and things like that, so if you wanted a big delight you could actually try that. A nice sort of water filter thing, and things like that.

Franziska: Let’s use the service industry, like an accountant or a lawyer. Again, how can they delight? What do you think?

Nils: Yeah, that’s a good one. I think accountant’s a good one. Depends if they’re doing sort of your more lower common denominator tax return stuff, or is it more a financial.

Franziska: It really it could take any way.

Nils: I guess what you can do with them then, is you could break down the year into quarters. It might be, if you’re clients got to get their stuff for their business activity statement, the bank statement, or whatever it might be, or orderly payment, there might be something that give them a little bit of a headache relief. You might send them a box of Panadols, or some headache pills that goes, “Hey look I know that was a real hassle to get those base things done, but appreciate the effort. We’ll make sure that the dollars are safe for you and you’re not…” So it’s something …

Franziska: Yeah make it [inaudible 00:04:24]

Nils: Yeah, so it’s like, “We know that for you paperwork can be hard work, so that’s why we sent you these little headache pills.” Or it’s not headache pills, it could be …

Franziska: Or even chocolate.

Nils: Chocolate, yeah.

Franziska: Here we have delight here actually. This is Swiss chocolate that we’re going to delight on after this video. It can be, “To sweeten your next quarter, we sent you some Swiss Chocolate,” for example, so it can be really you can come up with anything.

Nils: Let’s keep going with accounting. Let’s say if you’re doing your own accounts, or let’s say you sending them off digitally. This is sometimes nice to go old school is actually send your invoice with a very thin, 70% cocoa chocolate because you can actually put it in the envelope without going too much with the weight, and it won’t take up too much. I put my invoice with a nice little slab of thin chocolate. Summers they’re always the best. I always know that my invoice gets paid way faster than any other thing at all.

Franziska: It better be good chocolate though.

Nils: But it’s a good delight.

Franziska: Yeah it is a great delight, and it’s unexpected. I guess when you do that as a business owner, it’s the whole law of reciprocity, but that’s not why you do it. When you’re delighting people, they’ll remember you. It’s really hard to then go and work with someone else if you are the one that sends me the chocolate, or the wine, or whatever it is that you can come up with, anything you like really.

One of our members, he’s a mechanic, and he just serviced my car actually. I jumped in the car and next to me on the passenger seat was a tube of lollies, and in the little note to it it said something like, “Since it’s a little bit weird for a mechanic to just give hugs only, I thought I’d give you some lollies.” He use to actually have on his invoice, “Free hugs from a mechanic.” Now he’s giving a tube of lollies which is, just again, it’s a delight because I go in there and I didn’t expect to have lollies next to me in the car. Delighting I guess is just one of the coolest ways to stand out.

Nils: Just really quickly some other things that you can considered. A lot of this gets used in gaming designs. If you’re playing a game digitally, and it’s like “Whoo,” and you get this unexpected badge or an award, so there are other things as well. Rather than have to have something like “The Best Client Ever” you can have novelty awards that might be a badge or a sticker that you send out to people, and it’s that kind of fun, crazy little things that you can do that add to it. I know you guys did this recently with one of your clients. I’m pretty sure you did a funky dance.

Franziska: The happy dance, yeah!

Nils: The happy dance, and you just sent it off to someone. It’s just unexpected, cheap, it’s either entertaining or it’s adding value.

Franziska: It delighting, yeah.

Nils: It delights you in one shape or form.

Franziska: Love it. So find ways how you can delight more of your customers, and I would love to hear some of your ideas. I always thrive on hearing from you and hearing your thoughts and ideas because you come up with really great things. Post below or somewhere, reply to this email and let us know how you can delight your customers. We’d love to know, and I’ll share them with you, too.

Nils: Good. Awesome.

Franziska: Thanks so much. Thanks for watching, and thank you. Thanks for being here again.

Nils: See ya.