The power of WOW
by co-director of Dent Global,
.As a business scales and grows, every founder faces the challenge of balancing the need to build and empower a team with maintaining the customer experience they became known for as a small business.
When you’re small, it’s relatively easy to WOW your customers. You’re able to respond with your flair and enthusiasm in a way that surprises and delights. But transferring that experience and knowledge to a team of people that are less invested than you are, can be tricky.
Penny Spencer, MD of the Spencer Group of Companies has done a remarkable job of that. Her flagship business Spencer Travel is doing $35M+ in revenue and crushing it in delivering a remarkable proposition in a highly saturated market.
Her proposition to break through a highly saturated market is…
Being Ungoogleable
What the?!
Every business advisor grimaced as they read that but Penny’s explanation is interesting. She continually urges her team to create a real-world experience that you simply can’t get online. When you’re a brick and mortar travel agency that makes a lot of sense — but is difficult to execute.
“Our brand is all about our service and the knowledge that my consultants have and the creativity they can offer the client,” Spencer says. “If the client wants to go to London they don’t just… book them to London. They’ll say, ‘when you get there you’re going to be exhausted, and you’ve got a meeting at 1pm, so let’s get you a limo and I’ll pre-check you into the hotel so you can have a shower.’”
To adopt that positioning in a market that is experiencing severe price pressure from online direct-to-consumer competition takes guts. And systems. And knowing the real problem you’re solving.
What’s the real problem you’re solving?
Too often people get fixated on a solution to a problem that they lose sight of the real problem they’re solving in the first place and other more creative ways to solve it. This is called convergent thinking vs divergent thinking in psychology. If Spencer thought she was in the business of booking people’s travel, she’d have missed the point. She’d be providing a product instead of a quality solution to a problem.
Half the battle is truly understanding the problem you’re really solving for your customers or your team.
When Spencer found her travel consultants were struggling to manage the number of computer windows they had open during a customer inquiry, immediately your mind may go to streamlining software and processes. Instead, Spencer found she could increase productivity by 25 to 30 percent simply by giving each consultant three computer screens on their desk — one for their email, another for the reservation and the third for a website or the agency’s billing system. “It’s very simple and inexpensive, but it’s a big deal,” she says.
If you’d like to get some more tips direct from the source, join Penny for an intimate evening of Q&A, we’re hosting Dent LIVE with Penny Spencer on 13th April from 6pm-9pm. I’ve invited Penny to share the strategies she’s used to build a consumer and B2B service empire.
Penny Spencer — MD of the Spencer Group of Companies. Annual revenue — $50M.
It’s $50 bucks for a ticket and you get:
- A great speaker sharing their no-holds-barred story.
- Quality networking with entrepreneurs and business leaders.
- Drinks and nibbles.
Have fun with those two tips. If you’re interested or want more tips from Penny, click here. Tickets are limited.
Until then,
Be Brave, Have Fun, and Make a Dent in the universe.
