Now contrast the above story with this one:  It too is a true story.  Last weekend, I stopped by an Ulta salon for a haircut.  The stylist was a good conversationalist, took her time, and did a good job.

As I was paying for the haircut, Roxanne expressed genuine interest in a cut that I had bandaged on my right thumb.  She hadn’t noticed it before now and asked, “O-h-h…what did you do to your thumb?”

I explained that I really didn’t injure it.  It was just that during the winter months in Colorado, it’s especially dry and my skin tends to crack on my thumb and one or two other areas of my hand.  I told her that I’d tried a variety of lotions but nothing seemed to help.

She then said, “Have you tried Glysolid?” as she lead me to the product.  She handed me the thin red container saying, “You should try this.  I used to have the same condition but now my hands are silky smooth—see?”  She held out her hands for me to inspect and guess what?  They were smooth and she made a $9 sale!

Think about it:  How often do you really encounter employees like Roxanne who express genuinely interest in you?  Now, consider how often you encounter employees who are apathetic—employees you might characterize as indifferent toward serving you, the customer (e.g., employees who might say, “If you didn’t see it on the shelf then we don’t carry it.  Have a nice day.”).

Would these employees demonstrate the care and concern necessary to ask about an injury you may have received to your thumb?  Would these employees really bother to take a personal interest in you?  Probably not.  Would they have made an additional $9 sale like Roxanne?  Probably not.

Memorable service drives sales.  Forgettable service does not.

I recently brought my car in to Discount Tire here in Denver to purchase a new set of tires.  The rep suggested a suitable tire and then began to put together a deal.  This included a credit for my old tires, a road hazard warranty, free installation, and free quarterly rotation and balancing for the life of the tires.  So far, so good.

Then, before presenting me with the total, the rep asked me a question: “Mr. Curtin, does your wife ever drive this car?”  I said, “Sure.”  He then said, “Would adding a feature called ’siping’ to the tires in order to provide extra safety by increasing road traction while decreasing braking distance by 200% be important to her?”  Naturally it would.

Although I’d never before heard of siping, I added the $10 per tire treatment and increased the amount of the sale by $40.  It turns out that siping involves scoring the tire with tiny grooves that increase the tire’s elasticity and grip on the road.  Now, some of you skeptics may think I was taken but that’s not the way I see it.  From a psychological standpoint, I feel assured that these tires will do the best possible job of gripping the road in the elements and braking to a stop quickly when necessary.

For me, safety is a priority when buying tires.  Guess who else knows that safety is a high priority for me—and most of its customers?  That’s right: the people at Discount Tire.  Now I don’t know what their profit margin is when this feature is added but I imagine it’s pretty high.

Now consider your own customers.  What’s important to them?  Safety?  Comfort?  Speed?  Accuracy?  Convenience?  Something else?  Think about the products and services that you offer.  What sort of value-added enhancements might you make available that your customers will feel good about purchasing?

Not every customer will bite but if it’s positioned correctly and matches one or more of the priorities of your target customers, enough will to make it well worth your while.

As a trainer or presenter, you are likely accustomed to receiving feedback from your audiences. There are always a couple of pieces of conflicting feedback I can count on: temperature of room (too hot for some, too cold for others); and length of session (too long for some, too short for others).

Other times, there are constructive pieces of feedback that make a lot of sense (e.g., “the discussion following the simulation seemed to drag,” or “I couldn’t see the screen clearly from where I was seated”). The idea is to use this constructive feedback to improve. For instance, during my next presentation I’ll make sure to watch the time and group’s body language during the discussion following the simulation. I’ll also be more attuned to the room set-up to ensure that everyone can clearly see the screen.

So far, so good but have you ever received – from multiple sources – feedback that truly left you perplexed? I recently received feedback from a training session that “more examples” would have been helpful. While I agree that examples are vital to assist participants in transferring theory to application, I was surprised to receive the feedback because (by my count) I had included 62 separate examples over the course of a two hour presentation – that’s an example every two minutes!

I later met with the group contact and shared my confusion with this particular piece of feedback. He reassured me by saying that it only represented the views of a couple attendees out of an auditorium full of people. Still, it’s important to recognize the legitimacy of every single perspective in the room.

That got me thinking about individual and unique learning styles. They’re referred to differently depending on the source you’re citing but generally they distinguish between a learner’s preference for theory or practice, fast or slow, people or things, etc. We all have our own set of highly-evolved, nuanced preferences and tend to operate out of these preferences by default – especially when stressed (as in speaking before a large group…).

My take away: This was a great reminder to me that, while I had prepared 62 examples in advance, every participant would filter these examples differently based on his or her own unique background and set of preferences (e.g., job role, learning style preference, etc.).

Many of the examples were contained in the PowerPoint presentation or workbook. Perhaps I could share more of them orally in the future? Most of the examples were prepared in advance. Maybe I could be more spontaneous next time? The great majority of examples were my own. It might be more effective to solicit the majority of examples from the group during my next presentation.

How about you? Do you have any examples (no pun intended) of perplexing feedback from your own presentations?