Going above and beyond!

Hello, everyone, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. This evening I want to talk to you about the concept that I learned when I was 18 years old working for Requostetta Resort and Golf Club. Shout out to you guys, you're amazing. And it's about going above and beyond for your customers or clients or guests, whatever business model you're in. And just a shout out to those of you who are tuning in. Hello, I am doing this on Streamyard, so It's going to LinkedIn, the Facebooks and YouTube. If you comment and I don't see it or I don't respond, you know, by talking to you. It's just that I haven't seen the comments. Sometimes they don't all come through. So I just want you to know that. But anyway, going above and beyond, sometimes when I talk to people about this concept, their fear is, oh crap. Well, it's going to cost a lot of money. It's going to cost a lot of money and I don't know if I can do that. Seems like a lot of work. It's not actually. And you can make it cost a lot of money. Absolutely, that's an option. There's also an affordable way to do this and I want to talk specifically to you service providers out there. So you serve clients, you provide a service for them and you're not selling widgets, okay? Of course there are ways to make the widget far more better or far more, far more of an enjoyable experience and go above and beyond for those customers. But for those service providers, like here are some basic things that you can do for your clients that go above and beyond that don't cost you anything extra. Number one, call. Call them to check in and see how they're doing. Okay? I don't care if you're a lawyer, you're a real estate agent, if you're a coach, if you're a consultant, if you're building websites, anything in that realm, you don't have to have a reason to call them. You can just call and say, hey, how are you doing with everything? And just want to check in and, and see how you're doing. A beautiful way to go above and beyond and tend to that relationship with the person rather than just on the particles, the little pieces of your business together. Okay? So that's one thing. Another thing that you can do is training, offering training. This is one of the things that I started upping my game with my one on one clients. I've now committed to a Schedule. So every single month, I'm bringing in an expert in some area that supports their business. So if it. Tonight we had Jessie Cohen, and she talked branding with my clients. Okay. She went through a whole slide deck and answered a ton of questions about what branding is, what it isn't. Here are some important things that you need to answer, so on and so forth. Next month, I have an Instagram specialist. I'm very excited about that because I personally am not there, and I'm hoping to get there July. I just booked Leah Turner. I'm so excited for this, and my clients should be super excited for this because it's going to be a huge game changer for many of them and so on and so forth. I could bring in podcast experts, I could bring in email marketing specialists, anything. You know, that's my client base. For your client base, it could be different. You know, say you're an interior designer. I just got a thumbs up. Thank you. I don't know who that was from. Say you're an interior designer. A way that you could go above and beyond by training your clients is you could, like, provide a video for them if they're planning on painting their house themselves on, like, the proper way to hold a brush and the proper way to, like, do corners. Or you could do a training on how to do, like, color swatches and how to tell if it works in a room throughout the day as the light changes. I'm making this up. I'm not a. I'm not a interior designer by any means. So interior designers, please correct me. But of course, you know your business. And oftentimes we think, oh, well, the things that I would teach are so basic, I don't think anyone would be interested. And hi. Hi, chef Camille, good to see you. But we forget that we're the expert there. Okay, we're the expert. So what's basic to us is actually, like, groundbreaking to other people. I want to just take a moment. One of the things that is so basic in coaching is listening, listening skills. I was trained in the coactive training institute where they teach on three levels of listening. So level one is I'm listening to you, but I'm really just paying attention to what I'm going to say next in rebuttal or to share a story or whatever level two is. I'm completely tuned into you, 100% tuned into you, and I am just going to listen to you, listen to what matters. I'm going to notice your body language. I'm gonna notice if your voice gets really deep and resonant. Or if it gets like dissonant, I can tell that you're kind of bullshitting me. And then there's level three, which is, I'm paying attention to the entire space of the room, of the zoom room, whatever. I'm noticing, you know, where tempers are getting hot or where someone's getting bored or where like that, like there might just be crunchiness in the room. Okay, super basic for coaches, but for everyone else, that's a new concept, that there are three levels of listening. It could be as simple as training on something like that. Okay, so offering training. And then of course, you know, there are, you know, small tokens that you can send your clients throughout your work together. A nicely thought out card, a silly little gift, perhaps a journal. If you're a coach and you do a lot of, you give them a lot of journal prompts for work, something that fits their personality. So, you know, if you see like a little wind up toy, that's a Yoda and you know that your client is a Star wars fan, like, send them that wonderful. Oh my gosh, it's. It costs you what, maybe a dollar for the wind up toy and I don't know, $3 in shipping. Why wouldn't you go above and beyond like that? You know, and it's just such a lovely touch to make sure that you're supporting your clients more. It's funny, you know, and listen, listen to the voice in your head while you're working with your clients. Today I was on a call with one, one of my clients and we were talking about sales and it just struck me like, oh my gosh, I need to offer a sales lab for my clients once a month. A group call where everyone gets to show up and we get to do a sales lab. I can have them do role playing and we can really dive into, you know, doing their sales calls really well, their enrollment calls really well. It doesn't cost anything. I mean, it costs my time. But like, if you can go above and beyond for your clients. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It's just, it's going to make a huge difference for them. They're going to have a far better experience with you and they are probably going to refer people to you because you've gone above and beyond for them. So why wouldn't they go above and beyond for you? But of course, like, going above and beyond is to be of service. It's to tend to the relationship. Okay, so energetically it is just to pay into this relationship and support this person. Never go above and beyond expecting something back. It's not a tit for tat kind of thing. If you want to talk about this concept a little bit more or read about it, there's a great book called the Go Giver. Actually, I don't have it on my bookshelf here. I forget who wrote it, but the Go Giver, it's a great little book. You can literally read it with one cup of coffee. You can just sit down, have a cup of coffee, read it cover to cover, you know, and in a world where there's a ton of people doing the same thing as you, this is the shit that sets you apart. This is the stuff that makes people choose to work with you. Over. I hate using the term competition, but over people who do the same thing. Going above and beyond and being of service to your clients and giving value is so valuable. And it is a marketing thing. You can. You can actually go on and talk about, you know, how, you know, you sell your service like this, but also an extra thing that you do is this thing. Um, for instance, like, one of the things that I offer my clients is on demand support, meaning they pay for their. Their sessions, and then they also get to access me in between, which means that if they have a meltdown or if they have a win or if they just have a quick question, like, I'm just a text or a phone call away. And of course, there are time limitations there. And like, there are, you know, times during the day that I'm not available and I'm sleeping. But what a beautiful thing to be able to offer my clients, you know, and that really sets me apart. And I'm able to go and talk about how I do this extra thing for my clients. So get creative. Think of different things that you can go above and beyond for your clients. You know, when I learned the Wequassett, we called them heroic acts. So the Wequassett actually had a standard. Every employee had to do a heroic act where they went above and beyond for a guest or a customer. Of the resorts, you know, many restaurants or shops or whatever, everyone had like a quota. We had to do a certain amount of heroic acts, just like stay in the red or in the green. And it was really cool because you got to, you know, do something nice for someone and then get credit at work. And what a beautiful concept if we just did that for our own jobs as well. You know, especially us entrepreneurs, we don't give ourselves, you know, enough credit on a lot of different fronts. Why don't we do this and give ourselves credit for that? Anyway, I have a puppy downstairs who is getting a little antsy and I can hear her. So I don't know if you guys can, but that is all I have to say tonight. Thank you for joining. I hope this is useful. If you have any creative ways that you're thinking about going above and beyond for your clients, I would love to hear them if you want to pop them in the chat or if you want to DM me. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Thank you so much for joining me and happy Thursday. I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye.