What makes a brand legendary? You might think it’s all about your product or service. The truth is, it’s not about how good you think your stuff is but what your customers say about you. Legendary brands are defined by their raving fans, and if you’re not creating “raving fan” relationships, you’re missing the mark.
Today, we revisit a conversation with Scott Wozniak, who breaks down the behaviors of raving fans. These behaviors aren’t opinions. They are measurable actions that show whether your customers are coming back more often, paying full price, and telling others about you.
Scott also shares the key lesson that can help you move from a “good” brand to a legendary one. He explains how to foster loyalty, avoid the race to the bottom with discounts, and celebrate your customers in a way that will have them singing your praises.
In This Episode You’ll learn:
- How to create a legendary brand that customers love
- Why trust is the first step to turning customers into raving fans
- How to measure customer loyalty and track repeat business
- Why discounts won’t create true brand loyalty
- How to make your customers feel valued
- Why operational excellence is the foundation of a successful brand
- How Chick-fil-A uses customer experience to drive 15% annual growth
- The role of CRM tools in scaling personalized customer interactions
Mentioned in the Episode:
- Scott Wozniak’s Book, Make Your Brand Legendary: https://a.co/d/01DXQuSU
- Customer Experience Engine Overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AnXNPon8nk
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Connect with Scott Wozniak:
- Website: https://scottwozniak.com/
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Connect with Ralph Burns:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Chick-fil-A’s Secret to 15% Growth for 37 Years Straight
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:05:20
Scott Wozniak
The question your customers are asking is this how do I feel about myself when I’m with you?
00:00:05:22 – 00:00:13:15
Ralph Burns
Let’s say I sell microchips or I sell heavy industrial equipment and I’m listening to this. How can I create memorable moments like that?
00:00:13:17 – 00:00:22:10
Scott Wozniak
If you are more in this technical business to business zone. Well, we have found overwhelmingly the best win is.
00:00:22:12 – 00:00:35:05
Ralph Burns
But the point is, is like the the end goal is to become a legendary brand. So yeah, like if we start from that, like what in your mind is a legendary brand of why should people be listening?
00:00:35:06 – 00:00:54:23
Scott Wozniak
So in some categories there are these people who just like set the bar, like they define the category. They’re there. Okay, let me oversimplify this because a here’s a the legendary brand is not it’s not, how good your stuff is. It’s not what you say. It’s how good your your your fluff is. It’s what your customers say about you.
00:00:55:02 – 00:01:12:06
Scott Wozniak
You really want to cut through the noise and say, are you a legendary brand or not? Do you have raving fans? Like, that’s that’s the game. Yes. We’re going to talk all about what we say to create that stuff. But man, if you want to start with how many companies say they’re legendary? Man, a lot of them.
00:01:12:08 – 00:01:31:01
Scott Wozniak
A lot of us are like, dude, our stuff’s the best. And we’re no, no. What are your customers say about you? And we talk about behaviors of a raving fan. So this is you’ll hear this theme all throughout. We already started with it, right? It’s moved from the vague general idea down to something specific and tactical. And man, that that hard translation work is.
00:01:31:04 – 00:01:50:23
Scott Wozniak
And you start getting the gold. So there are three behaviors of customers or clients and you’re setting the three. If your clients do these three things, they’re raving fan. If they don’t, they’re not right. It’s not an opinion. How how much does Scott love me and how happy was he like now did you have these behaviors. Right. So here’s the three behaviors.
00:01:51:00 – 00:02:13:11
Scott Wozniak
They buy more more often. Right. They come back. Turns a huge critical measure in this space. How long do they stay with us? Did did he increase the package over time? There’s a bunch of ways to measure this, and I would challenge every one of you listening. Mark that down. Like, put a number on it. Draw a line in the sand and say how much more and how much more often.
00:02:13:11 – 00:02:29:09
Scott Wozniak
And then you start getting really interesting conversations, because I bet you have some raving fans today. And what’s it about them? Like what? What? What are the ones that love you most? Why is it a a particular team that works with them? Is it a product? Is it is it a type of customer? Everyone in this space really loves us.
00:02:29:11 – 00:02:50:09
Scott Wozniak
Figure out what made them raving fans. That’s a lot of your insight right there. But you’ve also probably got people who are 85, 90% of the way there, right? The way you would market to them would be different than how you’d market to a brand new person who’s just figuring you out. So when you get specific, then there’s a such a big, oh, I hope our customers love us.
00:02:50:09 – 00:03:10:09
Scott Wozniak
Great. Me too. What’s your numbers? How much more? How much more often? And and some of you, can be a lot of frequent small deals, right? I’ve worked with restaurants. You know, chick fil A has been one of the the brands. I’ve been one of the leaders at. I they could have weekly, daily visits. Let’s say you’re, it’s a whole different if you’re a wedding planner.
00:03:10:11 – 00:03:28:05
Scott Wozniak
You don’t you don’t want annual repeat business from those customers, right? Right, right. You want bigger packages? Maybe you want to bring them back for their ten year, you know, renewal of the vows. I mean, there’s still ways to do fun stuff with them, but but again, you’re going to need your own measures. But put measures on it.
00:03:28:07 – 00:03:44:02
Scott Wozniak
Buy more more often. Second is they pay full price. And if they’re a raving fan, they’re not coming to you because you just hit a discount and sales go up. If they’re coming to you because you’re the cheapest, because your price is better, their loyalty is not to you, and you can’t discount you. You can’t count that, right?
00:03:44:02 – 00:04:03:02
Scott Wozniak
That isn’t. And by the way, that hurts you in the long run. There’s, there’s a ton of marketing, promotions and things you can do that aren’t discount promotions. There’s a lot of ways to add value and drive urgency and create scarcity and all sorts of cool stuff. You can do that, that we should do that aren’t in our prices.
00:04:03:02 – 00:04:18:12
Scott Wozniak
And it’s because do it now or you’ll lose your 20% off. And so that that that’s a rough place to be. That gets you in the race to the bottom where you just kind of grind your margins away. And now we’re we got to go for massive volume to make any money. So I, I try to avoid that.
00:04:18:13 – 00:04:38:10
Scott Wozniak
Do you want them coming to you and paying full price. That’s when it counts. So they come back without a discount and they tell others about you and depends on your channel and your business how you measure that. But this is all measurable from from online referrals, how much you talked about, when new customers come in, you can ask them, how did you hear about us?
00:04:38:10 – 00:04:58:03
Scott Wozniak
There’s a lot of ways to do this, but you stack these things and you say, okay, do they they come back often enough, get a big enough package, are they doing it without a discount? And and are they telling people about us? And when you have that dude, they’re a raving fan. And if you’re raving fans, you can track how many of your customers are raving fans and not.
00:04:58:05 – 00:05:24:03
Scott Wozniak
And, and when you hit a certain threshold, like if you’re 50% or more raving fans, you’re a legendary brand. Like, they just love you, man. And so yeah, we’ll talk a lot about the marketing and how you do that in our conversation here. But, man, you don’t. Legendary marketing does not make for a legendary brand. In fact, let me let me give you my favorite example and favorites.
00:05:24:03 – 00:05:46:20
Scott Wozniak
Very ironic here. I’m going to pick on McDonald’s a little bit, as a brand. And this is like, honestly, for the record, I’ve got friends at the headquarters. Guys. You’re awesome. They’re great people. They make a lot of money. It’s not an evil, terrible company. But man, I just keep poking at them for this because they have world class marketing and advertising, and they are.
00:05:46:21 – 00:06:08:07
Scott Wozniak
And they’re spending to get that. It’s not an accident. Last year it’s not officially reported. But if you kind of read the, the indirect reports, experts say they spent over $1.5 billion in advertising and marketing in just the domestic U.S. That’s not global, just U.S. I mean, it’s massive and it’s brilliant. It’s beautiful. It’s catchy. Right?
00:06:08:07 – 00:06:31:14
Scott Wozniak
Did I did that? Yeah. Like even if you don’t eat McDonald’s, you finish that in your head. Right. And so and yet they don’t have any raving fans. They have some raving fans. They don’t have a majority of raving fans. Their brand promise and brand experience and customer client interaction when you actually measure their customer behavior, oh, they don’t show up on any.
00:06:31:14 – 00:06:50:17
Scott Wozniak
And there’s tons of, by the way, fast food restaurant measurements. There’s tons of these industry measurements. They don’t show up as a winner on any of the measurement categories. They have legendary advertising and they don’t have raving fans. There’s a there’s a separate piece there. Yes, the advertising helps. And we’ll talk about some of the stuff you can do there.
00:06:50:17 – 00:07:09:15
Scott Wozniak
But there’s more to the equation. And they throw in part of the equation out and they’re getting none of the benefit. And and man, in my opinion, they’re, they’re blowing tons of money. They could pull some of that budget back, put it into the client experience stuff we’re going to talk about. And they’d probably rocket up their sales and process.
00:07:09:17 – 00:07:16:06
Scott Wozniak
But they, they’re just kind of like throwing all their eggs in the advertising basket. And, and I don’t think it’s working, man.
00:07:16:08 – 00:07:28:10
Ralph Burns
Yeah, yeah, they are, they are making a ton of money. But I mean, you know, you don’t it doesn’t check the box. Well, let me, let me. Yeah. A lot of the year one, a lot of your three reasons like.
00:07:28:12 – 00:07:45:19
Scott Wozniak
I’m making money. But let me put it this way. They could make more. So chick fil A is a wholly private company. So most people won’t know the numbers I’m about to share with you. I’m allowed to share them. They’re not actually secret, but. But they don’t have to publicly report this stuff where, like, McDonald’s and all their big competitors and fast food are.
00:07:45:19 – 00:08:15:05
Scott Wozniak
So just give you an idea of what could be done if you build it. So Chick-Fil-A, McDonald’s, they sell a lot of similar products. Right? Direct head to head competitors, from chicken sandwiches to salads to milkshakes. Right. Very similar. Okay, so McDonald’s on a good year grows 2%, which is pretty awesome. There are $24 billion in sales last I checked, and just domestic U.S, chick fil A, U.S, they have a tiny bit international footprint, but chick fil A is almost all U.S chick fil A.
00:08:15:07 – 00:08:36:07
Scott Wozniak
Last year was their 37th year in a row that they had at least 15% growth. Wow. Yeah. If you’re in if you’re in the marketing space, like start doing the math, right? In fact, last year was seven close 17% a little over. They’re killing it and they’re on track for year 38. Like, there’s just they got this thing dialed in, they just cranking it out.
00:08:36:09 – 00:09:03:20
Scott Wozniak
Man, they roughly double every five years. A little bit less than that. It just like boom, boom, boom. And so this little bitty regional brand, who spends 3 to 5% of McDonald’s spend on marketing and advertising, has a but eight x growth rate beyond them and just keeps doing it, even though they’re multibillion. In fact, if they hit their growth target this year, chick fil A could pass.
00:09:03:20 – 00:09:25:18
Scott Wozniak
McDonald’s this year is the largest fast food chain in the US by volume. Total volume sales real at over 24 billion. Yes, they’re on track for 24. Oh my God. Oh. And if they don’t hit it this year, there’s absolutely no reason to think that next year won’t be year 39. And they’ll just blow them out of the water like they just.
00:09:25:20 – 00:09:49:09
Scott Wozniak
So McDonald’s is making money if you’re okay with, you know, 2% growth. Go good. Good job. Or or you could like, you know, a 15% growth stacking year over year. And McDonald’s is like 0 to 2 zigzags up and down right. Yeah. You can see McDonald’s is a is a standard brand. They’re not bad. They’re normal.
00:09:49:09 – 00:10:09:12
Scott Wozniak
They’re regular company with regular customers. Sure. This is the next level. It’s like, yeah, you’re fine. You. Hey, you’re making money. Good job. You figured something out, but there’s another level where, man, it’s killer. It’s just like it’s the kind of stuff people write books about and become raving fans of.
00:10:09:14 – 00:10:29:20
Ralph Burns
All you have to do is, you know, the last time we we just recently, I’m in Massachusetts, so we have limited amount of chick fil A’s, but there is one probably about ten miles. Actually, there’s now two, about ten miles each from my house. And right across the street from a Wendy’s, right across the street from McDonald’s.
00:10:29:22 – 00:10:34:14
Ralph Burns
And all you have to do is just look at the lines, like the lines tell the story.
00:10:34:16 – 00:10:37:10
Scott Wozniak
It’s gone. And people don’t even like, even if.
00:10:37:10 – 00:11:03:09
Ralph Burns
You go into a line, you know it’s going to be so efficient, which is the whole next sort of section, which we can talk about. You know, you’re going to get the right stuff, everything’s going to taste great and you’re going to come back over and over again. The experience is pleasant, which we’ll talk about obviously through your book, but whereas, you know, there’s maybe 1 or 2 people, I mean, maybe a million, there might be a time rush, you know, at McDonald’s, but nothing like chick fil A.
00:11:03:09 – 00:11:19:10
Ralph Burns
And people always wonder. I remember I look this up, we did a podcast on this is the value of an individual chick fil A franchise, like gross sales wise, is typically is double that of a McDonald’s. It’s like 6 million to 3 million, right? Or three times. Okay. And you’ve got insider information.
00:11:19:15 – 00:11:27:07
Scott Wozniak
They have cleared more than 8 million per location. On how old? It’s ridiculous. Now that’s.
00:11:27:07 – 00:11:32:16
Ralph Burns
Crazy. And it’s about 3 million for McDonald’s and that okay. Yeah.
00:11:32:18 – 00:11:56:02
Scott Wozniak
They’re like 2.6, 2.7 million per location. So there’s they’re almost triple McDonald’s size. And by the way that’s in six days to their seven. So it’s not a triple per day three per day yet. Yeah. It’s like if you did a day to day comparison it’s almost quadruple. And then Chick-Fil-A takes a day off. Yeah. We got to, catch up a little bit and.
00:11:56:03 – 00:12:13:16
Scott Wozniak
Right, you know. Yeah, yeah, we’re there now. It’s crazy. So there’s three years at the heart of the engine. You deliver these three gears, they become raving fans. It’s just this is the heart of the deal, right? And the first gear is not where anyone expects and and don’t tune out here because I know the marketing leaders. We got you.
00:12:13:16 – 00:12:37:00
Scott Wozniak
Awesome. Yeah, it’s operational excellence. And it’s the fundamental weird. I’m not an ops guy, right? I’m the the creative, right? We don’t. It don’t bore me like, dude, here’s the deal. It’s the first question. It’s the most we say it’s first in sequence and in priority. If we don’t get this right, it doesn’t matter how fancy we do the other stuff.
00:12:37:00 – 00:12:54:15
Scott Wozniak
This is where McDonald’s, I think is struggling the most. It’s what’s killing their brand and more and better at. They could triple their advertising quality and volume, and they would still be held back by this factor. Okay, now I got to confess, when we talk about excellence, my bias, personally, is like, I’m gonna think about how good it can be, man.
00:12:54:15 – 00:13:17:12
Scott Wozniak
I got great people and proprietary tools and and I literally have geniuses on my staff, like, this is going to be awesome. And that’s not what my customers care about. Not first. The first question they ask is can I trust you? And I trust you. And man trust is a different calculation than how smart and creative and clever you are.
00:13:17:14 – 00:13:49:08
Scott Wozniak
There are some fundamentals that we have to deliver on a regular basis or they don’t trust us. And if they don’t trust us, nothing else matters. You cannot out party out, market out, play out creative. A lack of trust. Like it’s just it’s the first hurdle you got to clear or nothing else happens. So yeah, we talk about tactical systemic things in how you deliver a client experience that gives the client confidence and clarity.
00:13:49:13 – 00:13:57:06
Scott Wozniak
Man, I can trust these guys. That’s where you start.
00:13:57:07 – 00:14:33:02
Ralph Burns
That’s that’s a harder one I think for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. But I think I always go back to the chick fil A analogy. I trust these guys because they’re going to wait in line with the, the, you know, the, the woman or the man that has the iPad in the line. And I know, like the chicken sandwich is always going to be, you know, it’s going to taste good and the nuggets are going to taste like the, you know, the whole thing, like I the trust is because I know it’s going to be consistent and I don’t really care about the temperature of the oil or how many chefs
00:14:33:02 – 00:14:47:18
Ralph Burns
they have in the kitchen or, you know, I mean, obviously I care about like the cleanliness and all that, sort of take all that for granted. But because I’ve been there 4 or 5 times before, the same place, I know it’s going to be the same. Or if I go to some place in Atlanta, it’s going to be the same down there.
00:14:47:18 – 00:15:11:04
Ralph Burns
Like that’s I guess when you say trust like you, they trust in the fact that what you deliver to them is going to be consistent and like, better than just good. Like McDonald’s delivers good, like it tastes good when it’s going down. Meals are good a half hour later. But you know, if that sort of McDonald’s remorse bowl is Chick-Fil-A like, it’s consistently good.
00:15:11:06 – 00:15:16:21
Ralph Burns
And like that’s really what we’re talking about here because I trust the fact that they’re going to deliver on operational excellence.
00:15:17:00 – 00:15:36:17
Scott Wozniak
Yeah. Okay. So this is the key. When the customer the client centric focus that you talked about, the first layer you want to think about is, as you mentioned, they have goals. It’s not just they want really good SEO numbers. They want their business to actually get more clients themselves. They want to see revenue growth. They want to hit their vision.
00:15:36:19 – 00:15:58:18
Scott Wozniak
So your first layer is like, are you actually helping me get there? And man, I wish this wasn’t true, but you can’t assume they’re going to connect the dots. Like you often have to connect the dots from voice behavior here turned into this client outcome for you here, which should be driving an extra bit of revenue for you here.
00:15:58:20 – 00:16:23:19
Scott Wozniak
And if we don’t make that visible, we just assume, look, our numbers went up. I literally was talking to a client of mine a month ago about this and they’re like, oh, I got my we’re talking about their technology. This is an AI consulting gig we’re doing with them on their AI. And they just started ranting about their marketing external partner and they’re like, they show me these monthly reports with all our SEO numbers, but I don’t see any increase in sales.
00:16:23:19 – 00:16:40:09
Scott Wozniak
And so, like, why are we paying these people right now? Maybe it’s not working and that they have a conversion problem. Or maybe it’s just they haven’t connected the dots. But either way, I was like, dude, you literally a month ago, a client telling me, like, I don’t, I don’t see what all these numbers have to do with my business.
00:16:40:11 – 00:17:00:16
Scott Wozniak
Why are we paying them, you know, thousands a month to pull this thing off, like, wow. Can they trust that what you’re doing is driving value to them? Can you connect the dots? Do you know what they want? Right? What are their outcomes? What are they trying to accomplish? And can you show them how your work connects to that stuff?
00:17:00:17 – 00:17:20:17
Scott Wozniak
This is the fundamentals, man. It’s basics. It’s I mean, baby basics like, hey, we promised you. And you sometimes have to remind him of the promise you hired us to. I’m going to make numbers up here. Right? You hired us to get, you know, ten new ads run, this month. Ten new ads were run this month.
00:17:20:17 – 00:17:40:06
Scott Wozniak
Here are the ads. You hired us to get an increase of your, you know, your hits in your landing page. Here are your old hits before you hired us. Here’s the ones we currently have. Like, just remind them, hey, this was the first set of things you asked us to do. We’re doing it. And if you don’t on some of a regular basis, say we did it.
00:17:40:06 – 00:17:59:20
Scott Wozniak
Now some of the other stuff is like reply quickly, come on, it’s not sexy. I hate all this hate email. Right? They get flooded and we do that stuff like some. Even if the reply I this was an unlock for me years ago. Sometimes they ask me these long complicated things and I’m deep creative mode. I don’t have time to shift gears all the time.
00:18:00:01 – 00:18:20:01
Scott Wozniak
I in fact, I would advise everybody turn your notifications off. Don’t reply in the instant unless your job is the customer service reply person, right? But at the end, like every at lunch and at the end of the workday, like even when I’m in deep maker mode doing creative stuff, I pause and I skim through and I’m like, hey, got it.
00:18:20:03 – 00:18:39:03
Scott Wozniak
You know, I can’t get to you today. I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Just an acknowledgment of receipt, simple basic communication that says, hey, I got you. I’m not going to let the business day close without letting you know I got this, and I care about you. Yeah, okay. We’re going to get the fancy stuff in a minute, but these are all the little markers that are like, you know what?
00:18:39:03 – 00:19:00:00
Scott Wozniak
Ralph Burns sees me. Ralph Burns. Actually, he’s on it. He’s reading my emails. You know, he did ask them to do that. They are doing the thing we asked. Until they trust you, man. Your creative process and your cool stuff. That might be fun, but. But, man, if they don’t count on you in the basics, nothing else matters.
00:19:00:00 – 00:19:01:04
Scott Wozniak
Man. Right?
00:19:01:06 – 00:19:09:01
Ralph Burns
Those little chips they’d like eat away at the trust like little withdrawals from the trust account. As I always tell my team and.
00:19:09:01 – 00:19:28:17
Scott Wozniak
Here’s here’s the the hard, painful truth. Partial trust to their partial excellence doesn’t create partial trust. It’s an all or nothing proposition. And so we see this a lot. We like where most of the time we get it every once in a while we’re a little. I don’t always reply quickly, but most of the time, here’s what we learned.
00:19:28:17 – 00:19:51:23
Scott Wozniak
Inconsistent excellence creates the same amount of trust as consistent failure. You don’t get partial for partial. No partial credit. No. It’s, it’s a human nature, right? Like, yeah, he’s a great input. He and he steals from us once or twice a year. But the rest of the year, he’s a great guy. Like, right? Heck no, man. You trust or you don’t, there’s no half trust.
00:19:51:23 – 00:20:12:08
Scott Wozniak
And so. So I see this there, like, I’m a creative. And, you know, I don’t get through all the details sometimes, and, like, I’m a creative, like, that’s my natural wiring, my background. I’m the grand visionary, not the careful, methodical guy. Which is partly why I’m so passionate about these systems. Because I have done that my early career.
00:20:12:12 – 00:20:29:12
Scott Wozniak
People would tell me, Scott, we think you’re brilliant, but we don’t want to put you in charge of anything because we’re not sure you’re going to actually follow through on a regular basis. We can’t count on you. And though those were hard early years because I couldn’t argue with them, I wasn’t consistent. And I’m like, what? You should give me credit for that.
00:20:29:12 – 00:20:45:10
Scott Wozniak
And eventually somebody realized like, because I kept saying, hey, every one of those is just a little thing, who cares? It’s just a little thing that I was five minutes later that it took me a week to reply, or like you should, just little things. And they said, well, no, one thing is a big deal, but a pattern of little things will break trust.
00:20:45:12 – 00:21:04:23
Scott Wozniak
Yeah. And so I was inconsistently excellent. And I didn’t have trust in that, that zone. I had to like, leave, do some serious soul searching, started a whole new category, like switch companies and try again. And I finally figured out how to to like, build trust. But yeah, inconsistent excellence earns no trust.
00:21:05:02 – 00:21:26:12
Ralph Burns
Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing. Yeah. Actually, I think in the book you use an example of the McDonald’s ice cream machine. Yeah. As people think that, yeah, it’s down all the time. But the survey was like it’s only down like 20% of the time. But because it’s only down 10% or whatever 10% of the time, literally everyone still that because it’s inconsistent.
00:21:26:14 – 00:21:37:04
Scott Wozniak
Because you can’t rely on it, that’s it. And 90% like you’re in school. I that’s a pretty good grade, right? Right. Yeah. 90% excellent is enough to make you famously broken.
00:21:37:10 – 00:21:44:07
Ralph Burns
Yeah. But it’s an all or nothing proposition. So that’s operational excellence. Like what are the what are the other components of the engine?
00:21:44:09 – 00:22:05:05
Scott Wozniak
Okay. So you just buckle down and you earn trust. Can I tell you that alone will put you in a really interesting brand category? We’re like, oh, man, I can count on these guys. Sadly, that is not a given. And a lot of long term relationships just are mean. I just the count on them. They’re just reliable.
00:22:05:05 – 00:22:18:09
Scott Wozniak
We know they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do. But if you want to go raving fans, right, two gears and you see these are small little gears. We don’t have to put a ton of time and energy into them, but we actually say is once or twice a year do 1 or 2 things in each category.
00:22:18:12 – 00:22:42:09
Scott Wozniak
That’s it. So the next gear is personalized service. So if the first question they’re asking is can I trust you? The second question they started asking is, do you care about me? Do you see me? Do I matter to you as a person? Not not just as a transaction here. And this is where these little personal touches the the beyond the basics of like, hey, we delivered also.
00:22:42:09 – 00:23:00:01
Scott Wozniak
Hey, how are you doing? Or I see you, you’re doing this or congrats on that or I’m sorry for this, simple thing. No. And you don’t have to be a lifetime best friends. Yeah. In fact, once or twice a year. Right? You shouldn’t do it. Maybe once a month. Like slow down. That could be a little creepy, like, but little things, if they have kids, find out their kids names.
00:23:00:01 – 00:23:17:18
Scott Wozniak
Right. Listen, if you have kids, I feel pretty safe in saying they’re one of the most important things in your world. I love to know everything, but I should probably know if you have a more. Hey, what do you do for fun? Or, you go on vacation somewhere or just little touches, and you can do this for the person.
00:23:17:20 – 00:23:33:17
Scott Wozniak
You can do this for a team that says, hey, we get you guys and your goals and congrats on your win. Like we care about your business goals. You guys hit your goals. Yeah. For you. Right? We see you. We like you. That’s really what’s going on here. And so there’s there’s two basic ways to pull this off.
00:23:33:17 – 00:23:58:06
Scott Wozniak
Yeah. Let’s get tactical high touch kind of white glove concierge stuff. And then high tech tools that allow you to communicate at mass or customize efficiently or react more. So, you know, high touch stuff’s going to be, phone calls and account wraps and, you know, personal handwritten notes and all sorts of lovely, wonderful things. And then high tech is going to be things like using a CRM.
00:23:58:08 – 00:24:18:13
Scott Wozniak
Listen, CRM is are phenomenal. If you actually set it up fully and use it with discipline, like, you got to actually do the work to put it in place. But man, the ability to do lots of customers at scale, sync it with your advertising, your landing pages, your operations, like more than just to get the sale, like all the way through the process.
00:24:18:15 – 00:24:35:13
Scott Wozniak
They can be beautiful things like Google News alerts to kind of find out what’s happening in your industry. If you’re business to business especially, you can do that where you sync into what’s going on with the business and see your clients in the news and congratulate them. And then, man, this is the AI stuff I alluded to earlier.
00:24:35:13 – 00:24:58:12
Scott Wozniak
There’s a ton of tools. That’s a whole other podcast, Ralph Burns, talking about what’s happening in the AI world right now. I’ve got a whole new division and team that we just help people bring in and integrate AI into their company engine. But man, AI is got some phenomenal ways you can do personal touches at scale, and ways that are like faster, cheaper and more high quality than we’ve ever done before.
00:24:58:12 – 00:25:16:18
Scott Wozniak
And so so it’s not either or. It’s some, some high touch and high tech. But just if I list a ton, don’t do all those once or twice. Do 1 or 2 things per customer to say, I see you, I like you. If you’ve done your work in the Operational Excellence little touches, we’ll say, oh yeah, I remember these guys.
00:25:16:20 – 00:25:35:20
Scott Wozniak
Let me say this can’t be a sales email. It’s like sales email and I personalized it for you. You should do that. You get a marketing push like. And there. Yes, you should do all that. Right? We love that. This is the man I just thinking about you. It’s proactive and it’s personal. It’s not, a generic.
00:25:35:20 – 00:25:56:18
Scott Wozniak
Hey, everybody. Yeah, it’s to Ralph Burns, and it’s about something happening in Ralph Burns’s world. That’s when this gets like, oh, man. Yeah, these guys are awesome. They actually like me. And. And that’s just enough because you want someone to love you. You love on them first. I mean, it just unlocks so much here.
00:25:56:20 – 00:26:21:23
Ralph Burns
Such a simple thing. And I will say, it’s it’s easy to take your customers for granted. It it’s really it really is. But when you do do those tiny little things, like, it’s incredible. I can think of a half a dozen examples where I’m at the top of my head. It’s like people just remind me of something.
00:26:22:02 – 00:26:30:00
Ralph Burns
It’s like I forgot that I even did that. But it was like just a tiny little thing. I’m like, man, I should do that more. Yeah. It’s like, man, does it make a difference?
00:26:30:02 – 00:26:48:17
Scott Wozniak
Having said that, oh yeah, I fall down is I care and then I forget. But I again I got warm hearted impulses I like these, I’m just going yeah. When it shows up I’ll do it. Man, this is the creative who’s, like, going to get around to it. And then I’m in consistent. No, I have got a system reminder.
00:26:48:17 – 00:27:08:23
Scott Wozniak
I mean, literally this morning I had a reminder tick up in my my monthly system and once a month it says, hey, send three personal notes. I’ve got cards that are like, I’ve got my return address and a stamp on them, and a little thank you note or a little how are you doing thing? I’ve got a little variety of them and just gets three a month and they’re kind of preset up.
00:27:08:23 – 00:27:26:01
Scott Wozniak
My assistant helps me set them all up. It’s going to take me three minutes and that’s being generous. It might take me one minute if I’m quick at it. Scribble, scribble. It’s already stamped right. It’s even got a little sticker. I only leave the lick on. It’s just like stamp close, stamp, scribble close, scribble, go scribble close, put it in the mail.
00:27:26:03 – 00:27:45:06
Scott Wozniak
That’s not hard. But you know what happens if I don’t have a reminder? I’ll send three a year because I get busy and forget. Because. Because this isn’t, Something went wrong. I’m trying to apologize for it. This is the. Nothing went wrong. I was just thinking of you. How are you doing? And so setting reminders, setting systems, that little deal.
00:27:45:11 – 00:28:11:16
Scott Wozniak
There’s a system, right? I pre buy the cards, I stamp, I do one chunk of time where my sister and I, we go stamp a bunch of them, make a stack, address them all, and then they just sit on like they’re right there, sit on my desk right over there. And when it’s time, I’ll just pick one up, scribble that system, and the reminder means I’m going to do these little simple things on a regular basis versus, yeah, I kind of remember to do that, sorta, but I forget I’m busy.
00:28:11:16 – 00:28:22:22
Scott Wozniak
I’m solving problems. Man, the power of a simple little reminder system for these basic touches that might be all you need, and you start blowing their mind.
00:28:23:04 – 00:28:52:05
Ralph Burns
Yeah, and it’s proactive and it’s unsolicited and it’s non transactional. It’s like it’s all of those things. It’s like it’s amazing how far a little stuff like that goes. And you know personal notes I mean obviously there’s plenty of Chick-Fil-A examples there as well. We’re going back to the customer experience engine. There’s one more component here, which I find is even more fascinating, and something I kind of blew me away when I first read about it.
00:28:52:05 – 00:28:53:14
Ralph Burns
I’m like, oh my God.
00:28:53:16 – 00:29:11:21
Scott Wozniak
Yeah, I love this one. We’re really getting into the, the marketing deeps. I mean, all of us have to do all this stuff, but this is where you really break away from the pack and do some truly unique, creative things. You know, operational excellence. That’s not unique. I didn’t create that concept. It’s like, I just gotta remind us.
00:29:11:23 – 00:29:28:09
Scott Wozniak
But this one is actually one of the more unique ones. We end up having to create and be part of the process to figure out how do you do this? Okay, so if you’ve done everything except this last one, I’m about to talk about, right, insight and excellence and service and personal touches and go, great. They love you.
00:29:28:09 – 00:29:54:04
Scott Wozniak
They rigid lead love you, but they aren’t telling anyone about you. What we’ve learned is there’s just because you have loving fans doesn’t mean they’re raving fans. Raving fans rave right? So and sadly, people don’t tell facts. They don’t even tell feelings. Do you want him to talk about you? What we learned is people tell stories, so you have to create a story that they want to share or what we’ve termed a memorable moment.
00:29:54:06 – 00:30:11:07
Scott Wozniak
That’s the last year memorable moments. And so you create these little moments that pop, that are story worthy and interesting and exciting, and that, oh, again, once or twice a year for your customers, you do something that gets them to like buzz and talk about you. But okay, I’m gonna tell you how to do it in a minute.
00:30:11:07 – 00:30:27:21
Scott Wozniak
But first, let me tell you what not to do. The the mistake we made in the early days trying to figure this out. Okay, so so the question is, who gets to be the hero of the story? And logically, I’m thinking I need to be the hero of this story because I want I the outcome I’m after is they talk about me.
00:30:27:21 – 00:30:42:20
Scott Wozniak
So I’m going to make this moment that celebrates how good we are at what we do and how awesome we are. And then they’re going to be like, check that. Actually, the metaphor I’m going to use will be Star Wars. Hopefully this will work for your listeners here. I might be a bit of a Star Wars nerd, so bear with me.
00:30:42:20 – 00:30:45:20
Scott Wozniak
I got a I got a Jedi robe and lightsaber in my closet right there.
00:30:46:00 – 00:30:49:11
Ralph Burns
They’re all Star Wars fans of pretty kids. Right after me. Yeah.
00:30:49:12 – 00:31:05:08
Scott Wozniak
Thank you, thank you. Come on. We all want to be Jedi. That’s what’s going on here, right? 100 like, you know, I don’t know. Hey, Pro tip, this, this might be the most fun little tip. I’ll get out of this. You can figure out which crack on the sidewalk is where your foot lands in front of your grocery store.
00:31:05:08 – 00:31:23:09
Scott Wozniak
You know, the sliding doors in your grocery store. If you time it just right, and you put your three fingers out and you swipe your hand to the side right when you step, I’m just saying, I’m pretty sure my kids thought that the only way to get in a grocery was dad use the force. Every time we went in the grocery store.
00:31:23:11 – 00:31:25:07
Ralph Burns
Did I totally do on that next day?
00:31:25:09 – 00:31:41:18
Scott Wozniak
Like, really stinking awesome? Yeah, that’s pretty epic. Come on. So Jedi moment, right? So okay, so back to the actual marketing here. I keep wanting to create these moments where I get to play the role of Luke Skywalker. I’m the Jedi that’s going to save the day, and everyone’s going to love me, and it’s going to be awesome.
00:31:41:18 – 00:32:01:12
Scott Wozniak
And and what we found is it doesn’t work, man. No, we did pretty good storytelling. Like, they actually thought we were pretty awesome. And they might believe you’re a Jedi. They’re like, check that guy. No, they don’t want to tell your story. They want to tell their story. So if you want to get them to talk, you have to create a story where your customer feels like the hero.
00:32:01:18 – 00:32:20:07
Scott Wozniak
You celebrate your customers. You don’t celebrate yourself. You highlight them. You honor them. Now we got to be in the story if we’re going to get some business value out of this. So who do we play? You read the book, you tell me. I’m guessing you might know the answer to this. Who do we play if we’re not Luke, who do we get to be?
00:32:20:09 – 00:32:26:13
Ralph Burns
You’ve got to be Yoda or or or everyone, depending on, you know.
00:32:26:13 – 00:32:35:04
Scott Wozniak
Which would you. Obi-Wan? That’s the thing at which all of you are right. You know? Obi’s. Yeah. He’s been padawan to the master to like the old man.
00:32:35:06 – 00:32:40:23
Ralph Burns
Young Obi-Wan was Darth Vader, you know? But then layer us and. Yeah.
00:32:40:23 – 00:33:06:04
Scott Wozniak
So, yeah. Who does the always only mentor. So I’ll go with him. But yeah, some young some Obi Summerbee. Yeah. So we’re the mentor, the guide that helps them. So this is the story right. The story is look how awesome they are. And we are so glad we could help. We’re going to celebrate them and kind of be like hey, we’re glad we could help these people be the Jedi they really like revealed and show the world they’re really that awesome.
00:33:06:04 – 00:33:37:09
Scott Wozniak
Hey everybody, check these guys out. We’re so glad we got to help and see the question your customer is asking is this how do I feel about myself when I’m with you? Not how do I feel about you? How do I feel about myself when I’m with you? And man, that is a game changer to the process. Once or twice a year, celebrate each customer and say they make them feel awesome about themselves because they do business with you.
00:33:37:11 – 00:34:00:05
Scott Wozniak
That is how you kick raving fans. I mean, this is like the next level. It’s not you. It’s how they you’re just the means that you, you’re what they use to prove to themself in the world. They really are awesome and extremely fun. Example. This is, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, right? Listen, pro tip, guys, when they tattoo your logo on their body, they might be arriving fed, right?
00:34:00:05 – 00:34:23:09
Scott Wozniak
Like something’s going on there, right? So, what is it? Why would they do that? Get the jackets and the bandanas and, like, do all the stuff. It’s not Harley’s awesome. It’s. I’m awesome because I ride a hog right now. The hogs got to be good, but. But all that stuff leads up to, like, well, I’m a bad mama Jabba, right?
00:34:23:09 – 00:34:43:04
Scott Wozniak
Not not hard. He’s awesome. I’m the man because of my bike. Like, that’s how I would feel on the Harley if I’m a raving fan. What do you know? This is where customer insight so critical. Like don’t forget. What do they want to feel like? What do they guess, right? Some people really want to feel like like a wild hog on the Harley.
00:34:43:06 – 00:35:00:13
Scott Wozniak
But you know who else is raving fans? Is Volvo like? Yeah. They don’t want to feel wild and crazy, right? They want to feel safe. And actually, the researchers say they want to feel a little bit superior, right? Like, I don’t know what’s wrong with those morons, but I’m driving the safest car on the road, right.
00:35:00:15 – 00:35:17:04
Scott Wozniak
So what is it, like, dangerous. Safe? Like, which one do you. You don’t guess. You go back to your insight and you say, What is Charlie? What is Ozzie want? Ozzie might run a ride. Harley and Charlie might want to drive a Volvo. Which feeling do we want to create? What do we want to celebrate for them?
00:35:17:04 – 00:35:35:18
Scott Wozniak
If you come, tell Charlie. Do. You’re the wildest guy out here. Will everybody check him out? He’s not going to tell that story. You tell Ozzie, do you? You might be. Check us out. Look, everyone, how awesome Ozzie would be like, hey, I got everyone needs to know this, and that one will go viral. What do your customers actually want?
00:35:35:18 – 00:35:55:17
Scott Wozniak
What kind of Jedi do they want to be? What do they want to feel? Celebrate that in their life? And then man, now you’re still doing your work. You’re showing up, you’re doing all this stuff. And then once or twice a year you just make a big deal. Like check these guys out, everybody come look at them. And men that that kicks them over the edge.
00:35:55:17 – 00:36:15:21
Scott Wozniak
They feel amazing. They attribute that to you. And that story goes viral in their community. You know, if your customers are not, you know, superstars, then the story might not go, here’s chick fil A is a good example. This, you know, chick fil A is the most talked about brand on social media, not most talked about restaurant in the U.S, not global because they’re not global.
00:36:15:21 – 00:36:38:09
Scott Wozniak
But in the US where they are, they are the most talked about brand in any category by far. No one else can beat them. But they don’t often hit national news. And for the record, most of that is actually fake news. That’s a it’s a different conversation. They I’ve challenged them like, man, you should go correct the record and they, they their policy is anything we say just makes it worse.
00:36:38:09 – 00:37:02:15
Scott Wozniak
We’re just not going to say anything. Right? So they’re not in the net. They don’t do national ad campaigns very much. Very little. Here’s what it is. Every restaurant does one memorable moment every month for their customers. That’s the goal. And these little bitty stories their customers tell their friends, that’s it. But there are over 3000 restaurants as the time of this recording, that have a little moment, that buzz and tell their friends and they tell their friends.
00:37:02:15 – 00:37:21:19
Scott Wozniak
And every month there’s just another little group of them telling their friends and those little aggregate moments of those people been like, dude, check this out. Check this one thing. That’s how you get 15% growth every year. That’s how you get this crazy. But I say become the most talked about brand you don’t need. You know, Drake. Now, if you can get Drake, or Beyonce to like, talk about you.
00:37:21:19 – 00:37:43:18
Scott Wozniak
Heck yeah, you should do that. But you also could just get every customer to tell ten of their friends and that that actually could drive more business value than spending billions of dollars trying to get famous people to talk about you. That it is tremendously powerful what happens when people feel honored, because they associate and do business with you.
00:37:43:20 – 00:38:14:16
Ralph Burns
So in that case, I believe the example used in the book was like Daddy Daughter Day. Chick fil A, and. All right, which is which is great. And you’re going to have to go read the book to read more about that. But let’s say I’m a like, I sell microchips or I sell heavy industrial equipment, and I’m listening to this and like, how can I create memorable moments like, that’s Harley Davidson, that’s chick fil A, like, like that’s actually where I this is a personal question to that’s where I sort of stopped at the book.
00:38:14:16 – 00:38:36:00
Ralph Burns
I’m like, I don’t really know what it would be like. What would your suggestion be like? How do you brainstorm that? Because I think this is a key component, like operational excellence. Hard to get really right, by the way, like that. That’s why it’s the biggest gear in your diary. I will leave a link in the show notes to the diagram, but these other parts are so integral to it, you gotta get it right.
00:38:36:02 – 00:38:38:21
Ralph Burns
But I think people might stumble on this one a bit.
00:38:38:23 – 00:39:07:04
Scott Wozniak
100%. Okay, so if you are more in this technical business to business zone, what we have found overwhelmingly the best win is, okay, so your work typically is to set up the customers new thing. You you’re construction, you’re manufacturing your industrial. Right. You’re microchips even then. Right? You are setting tools up in their hands. The end of your work is the beginning of their productivity.
00:39:07:06 – 00:39:24:01
Scott Wozniak
And so there’s there’s a couple of moments that are really naturally built into your business cycle. We would go to these companies to be like, okay, what do you do when you’re done? It’s all over and the customer leaves with with your stuff. Like they take your you got your building, they got your product. They have you got your chip in their machine, like, what do you do?
00:39:24:01 – 00:39:32:22
Scott Wozniak
And they’re like, well, we’re done. Like, I know we clean up. No, no, it’s all done. We invoice them like, what are you talking about? Right.
00:39:32:23 – 00:39:34:02
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Invoice them. Right.
00:39:34:06 – 00:39:56:15
Scott Wozniak
Perfect. Thank you. With what you do. Not all the time. Not for everybody. Every. But once or twice a year. Throw a party and celebrate their launch. Your end is their beginning. You often exist to get them launching the next level of the new thing. And so maybe it’s a private party. Maybe it’s a public party, depending on their their business and their space.
00:39:56:17 – 00:40:15:07
Scott Wozniak
New core. I’ll give you a fun example from New Core. So they’ve got a variety of different ways they do it. New core is a big behemoth with lots of different divisions of products and types and customers. But one of their guys, one of their divisions, they do the steel frames for like Walmart and Amazon Warehouse is massive industrial buildings.
00:40:15:07 – 00:40:32:09
Scott Wozniak
Right. Commercial buildings. Okay. So they’re the first part of the construction process. Then they’re done. And like they’ve been putting up walls and painting floors and like they’re not involved in any of that stuff. And so, so in the part of that process, they just stay in loose touch. Right? Personal. Just a little bit. Hey, we see you.
00:40:32:09 – 00:40:49:22
Scott Wozniak
What’s going on? You know what they do? They come back sometimes. It’s six months after they’ve been off the job site and they host a dinner. Nice place. Like a Ruth’s Chris Steak house. They’ll get in this nice steak house. They’ll bring everybody together and they’ll just reminisce on the project. It’s all the project leaders for their clients, the different subs and the.
00:40:50:00 – 00:41:05:11
Scott Wozniak
They’re one of the subs. They’re not even the main guy. Right. And they bring in all the folks and they bring in the main client, and they celebrate how everybody did. One of their guys has a really good sense of humor. Hilarious. I love this stuff. He gives out awards, but the awards are things like, hey, most likely to drop your phone down a trash chute?
00:41:05:11 – 00:41:22:12
Scott Wozniak
Congrats, Ralph Burns, because you did, and we’re still giving hard time or, you know, best singing voice because Scott was always singing on the job and it was terrible. And we’re like, oh, you stink. And but they have fun. But they’re also like little slideshow drone footage they captured throughout. And they’re like, man, we just love being on projects with you guys.
00:41:22:12 – 00:41:39:17
Scott Wozniak
You’re great partners. Look at what you’re doing in the world. And then they post a little publicly. So a little bit of public posting. But there’s also a very private like man, we just want you to know we love working with you. You’re doing good things. You did this. We took a rough lot. They visualize it. Right. Look at this rough lot.
00:41:39:22 – 00:42:13:10
Scott Wozniak
Look at the pretty building you ended up with. Man, we can’t wait. This is our launch dinner to celebrate your launch. They’ve already been paid. They’re out. Right? They don’t. They don’t fit. Sour that moment by like. And would you sign the next contract right here? It’s just a pure dinner to celebrate them. Launch it. For some construction companies have literally bought a red carpet, and they’ll, like, roll a red carpet out, and the staff show up with cameras like old flash cameras and all this stuff, and people walk in and they ribbon cut and they make a moment and they’re like, check, check out our people.
00:42:13:10 – 00:42:29:05
Scott Wozniak
Look at the community, look who’s in the neighborhood, and they make a big deal out of them. So there are ways to do this launch moment that really move in, where we’re glad we could just be a small part of the process of helping you guys launch. You do good things in the world, or Yoda, you’re that.
00:42:29:06 – 00:42:56:02
Scott Wozniak
You’re the Jedi. This is going to be great. So that’s one of the key ways you can do this. One of the other key ways to do this is you just track their business progress. And when they have a business, when you show up and celebrate them for their business win. So this could be far delayed. But they hit their business goal and you’re just like, dude, we just want to make a big deal out of you.
00:42:56:03 – 00:43:17:12
Scott Wozniak
And so you you I’ll give you a couple other examples. We worked with a group, the, big physicians network, multi-state, hospitals and private clinic, you know, surgery practices and all this big, massive health complex, and one of the things they did was instituted an award for the top 20% of physicians in each of the major in discipline categories.
00:43:17:12 – 00:43:42:12
Scott Wozniak
And medicine’s got that, you know, like internal medicine and orthopedics. And, and they just they would track their patient numbers. And the client was somebody who ran high data stuff, that they did kind of, AI data algorithms. It’s very high tech kind of tracking trends and, you know, patient outcomes and efficiencies. And one of the things they did, the key, one of their key people, they needed these physicians to actually engage and use the tool very often.
00:43:42:14 – 00:44:01:06
Scott Wozniak
So they just honored the top physicians in the space. And what do you know, Ralph Burns? It just so happened that the vast majority of the top people used their tool to get better outcomes because they’re measuring outcomes. And so the people using the tool, they didn’t have to say it because it was such a tight correlation. It’s like we’re just going to celebrate the top.
00:44:01:11 – 00:44:27:01
Scott Wozniak
You guys are awesome. We’re so glad our system can help. Call out that Ralph Burns’s one of the best physicians in the network, so you just track their business goals. So microchip Guy, maybe you’re going to have, like, a launch party. Hey, new chip out, new wave out, new business season. Or maybe you’re going to come up, like, say, hey, you guys had a banner quarter to, like, we just we’re going to highlight everybody check out these.
00:44:27:02 – 00:44:46:02
Scott Wozniak
It’s your client. Check out these. Because maybe you make microchips. You sell them to people who do the actual, you know, consumer product computers or or consoles or whatever they sell. And you’re like, you know, number one console in the market. Are you guys had 30% sales growth this quarter. And like, we’re so great. And of course your chip is a part of what they’re selling.
00:44:46:02 – 00:45:08:10
Scott Wozniak
But you’re celebrating. You guys are having business success. Everybody look at how great they are. That’s the kind of stuff you do that honestly, Chick-Fil-A can’t do that in some ways, is more directly tied to the business value you provide and makes it more important. We should keep doing business with these. It’s actually better for you. On the business to business technical side.
00:45:08:12 – 00:45:15:21
Scott Wozniak
You just got to get a little creative or maybe have a bigger delay in that process. But oh man, this is very much for that category.
00:45:15:23 – 00:45:30:19
Ralph Burns
The impact is major. And I think it’s just so like you’re obviously you’re evoking the law of reciprocity here without asking for an ask. I mean, once again it’s non transactional. Like you’re legitimately doing it. And oh by the way it’s probably pretty damn good for repeat business.
