What The Heck Is "Delivery Sauce" And How Can It Change Lives In Under 2 Minutes?
"Hi! How are you? I'd love a small, black coffee, please.""Uh, yeah, I'll be with you in a second."
Has this ever happened to you?
You bring the courtesy and it's not returned?Your job, whether you're on the clock or off the clock is to treat people with respect.
If you're in the service industry, it's your job to go above and beyond that benchmark.
Let me explain how this is relevant to life and how it's not just me complaining.
Our job is to deliver value, not just create it.
If you make the coffee and deliver it with a smile, the coffee tastes better and people want to come back to your cafe.If you make the coffee, push it to the counter and yell "CHRIS!" you're not making customers for life.
Just creating the deliverable isn't enough.
You need to DELIVER it in a way that your customer, student, client, patient, or user can accept and enjoy.It's like adding bearnaise sauce to a steak, or Caesar dressing to a salad. It will work by itself, but the enhancement is a differentiator from the usual.You need to add your special delivery sauce!
2 Minute Action
How can you add more delivery sauce to your work?Is it reading an article on bedside manner?Is it sending a follow-up thank you email to customers after their first purchase?Is it getting a coffee with the teacher in the grade ahead of you to see how to you can better "on-ramp" students from your class to his?
Do you know what doesn't even take 2 minutes?
A smile. A fist-bump. A pat on the back. A "thank you." An anonymous post-it note on the monitor of your colleague.You have all the resources you need to improve the state of the world around you.And you can make a difference right now.
Your Privacy Is Very Important To Us
How many emails have you gotten like this in the past few weeks?They all sound the same, right?How about these familiar lines:
- Your call is important, please hold.
- We value your business.
- Thanks for shopping.
These lines probably made consumers feel good the first time. No one else was saying it, so hearing "thanks" felt good.It was a step above the norm. It made businesses stand out by making their consumers feel special.And I bet you know where this is going . . .If everyone is doing it, it loses its uniqueness, it's special shine.The point was to stand out, not to follow what everyone else is doing.Of course, this isn't what we learn in school. It's not how we've been trained to operate.We've been trained to sit still and stay in line.Don't run.Don't shout.Follow the formula and you'll excel.Of course, it's hard to realize at first, but it's obvious now that this is well-intentioned bad advice.How could doing what everyone else is doing help you excel!?So if you're goal is to tell someone their privacy (or attention, or time, or business, or affection, or whatever) is important to you, perhaps you should tell them in a way that actually means something--in a way that stands out.If you don't, I promise, you will fit right in.And it gets worse; you'll lose the confidence of whomever you're addressing.
2 Minute Action
What's something you're doing right now that is intentionally done like everyone else?Or maybe it's something that you've just always done that way.
- An email footer?
- The way you answer the phone?
- The same gift basket you always send?
How could you make it more personal? More special? More you?I bet it only takes 2 extra minutes and ends up making all the difference.