How To Create The WOW Factor in Business
with Paul Dunn a.k.a The Wizard of WOW

Mazliza: Hello. I’m Mazliza Othman. Good morning. Welcome to the teleseminar with Paul Dunn, who is also known as The Wizard of Wow. Paul, are you here?

(Silence)

So basically what’s going to happen today is Paul is going to talk about how, a business can differentiate itself from its competitors and, how you can create a unique WOW factor in your business that will create, real user attraction, and therefore, bring more people to your business.

Okay... we’re still waiting for Paul to arrive. Paul, are you here?

(Silence)

Paul: Mazliza...!

Mazliza: Yes, hello... Paul! You’re finally here!

Paul: I finally made it! But I guess everybody is gone by now. Have they waited for me?

Mazliza: I hope not. I hope we still have people on board. OK.

Paul: I’m really sorry. I don’t know what happened. I had some trouble with the Star hub provider and all of a sudden it clicked through. So my sincere apology to anybody... to you and to anybody that’s been waiting.

Mazliza: OK. OK, shall we get started then?

Paul: Sure, sure.

Mazliza: Can you just tell people a little bit about yourself?

Paul: Oh, a little bit. It’s very hard for me to tell a little bit (laughter). So yes... I’ve been privileged to training and speaking around the world since 1981. And initially it started in Australia and it spread around the world. And in Australia my business was training and speaking with some 23,000 with small- and medium-scale businesses.

And then in 1992, I decided to focus on account and private practice and to give them some of the skills that we’ve been giving to small- and medium-scale enterprises. And we grew that... the first one we grew that to a $26 million business, and the second one... I grew it to a $39 million business.

And then in the year 2000, I was doing 200 seminars a year. So I retired and I went to live in France for 5 years.

And then in 2005, through a particular circumstance, I got to meet a guy called Roger Hamilton, and that got me, although I’ve been working kind of under the radar for 5 years, and writing books and stuff like that, I decided that my real passion is still for speaking and training and so, for the past 3 years that’s what I’ve been doing again.

Mazliza: OK. You’re also known as the Wizard of WOW. You help people, businesses to create this WOW factor in their business that attracts customers to their business. Why is it important to, for a business, to differentiate itself from its competitors?

Paul: Well, we all have competitors and many times what we believe is that a business is like a commodity. Now, of course a business is never a commodity. There’s always some to differentiate, some way that we can inspire, or as I would say, WOW a customer.

It’s kind of getting to a point as to why would you and I deal with anybody. Why would we deal with an Internet service provider? Why would we visit that website? Why would we buy that bar of soap?

Because in some way, shape, or form, that service is hitting us in the heart, not in the head. And so, the whole process of WOW is about moving from the head to the heart, and it’s very simple to do that.

So for example, if you look at something like, say, the iPhones, which when it was released here in Singapore, about 5 weeks ago, on the morning it was released, 70,000 iPhones were sold in a country of 4 million people.

And one reason for that is that it’s WOW! When you use it, it’s WOW! And so... one of the nice things about it is the ability or the way in which we add those sorts of things. It’s not necessarily technological thing. But we add that basic level of WOW to everything that we do. So everything changes the moment that we do it.

Mazliza: Many entrepreneurs seem to think that, especially people who are just starting a business, usually make this mistake. If I have, you know, the best product, or the newest thing in the market, people are going to buy this product because it’s the best. But often it’s not the best product that captures the market. So what is the factor that determines whether a product or service would actually capture a market?

Paul: Well, that’s very true. It’s not necessarily the most functional product or, or whatever. It’s whether the product resonates at a heart level as opposed to a head level. So there are some sources, and I know that you know that I quote these sources.

These guys called Ridderstrale and Nordstorm in a book called "Funky Business". They put it this way. They said, "We are afloat in a sea of sameness", and they say, "It’s high quality sameness, but it’s sameness just the same." "And to succeed, we have to stop being so god damn normal", as they put it, "because in a winner-takes-all world, normal equals nothing. "

That’s the key thing - normal equals nothing!

But if you go back to the beginning of that sentence - we are afloat in a sea of sameness. It’s true. Why is it that all hotels look the same? Why is it that all banks look the same? Why is it that all real estate offices banks look the same? Why is it that everything looks the same?

And what I think is important for us to get is that in order to move above that sea of sameness, it’s not major things that make the difference. It’s just little, tiny things.

For example, I was reading a book recently, in fact last week, called "Inside Steve’s Brain" which talks about some of the stuff that happened at Apple. And I don’t want to make everything we talk about today, you know, revolves around Apple, but it just happened that they do it very well.

And it talks about how Job himself looks at even the packaging of the product, and the opening. The way in which people would open that package so that... It’s just concentrating on little, tiny things because it’s always those little tiny things that makes the profound difference to lead us away, or above, the sea of sameness.

Mazliza: You talked about... I attended one of your seminar, and you talked about the way people ask for feedback. Usually, poor.. satisfactory.. good.., and then you told a story about this...

Paul: (Laughter)

Mazliza: (Laughter) Can you tell that story to people because I think it’s really great.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. There are some businesses that simply get it and, and some that simply don’t. And it’s really obvious when you see those businesses that get it. There is kind of a buzz about these businesses.

And one of these businesses that there is a buzz about, in fact, they’re one of the fastest growing airlines in the world right now. They’re based in India, in Mumbai. They’re called the Kingfisher.

In fact, if anyone joining us now was watching Formula 1 last weekend, here in Singapore, Kingfisher had a couple of cars, and, and.. which is interesting. They didn’t win, though (laughter) but their business is not about winning a car, it’s about winning an airline.

And so yeah, I travel a lot, as you know. And often when I travel, I see an air hostess, they go up to someone and they give them this random questionnaire. And I had never in my life, despite spending 250,000 km in the air each year, I’ve never been the recipient of one of those, those random surveys until I was flying on Kingfisher.

And so here I was sitting in seat 23G, and I got the envelope and I opened the envelope. In fact, I still have the envelope as I’m speaking with you now, I’ve still got the envelope. And it was a fascinating thing. It, it highlighted every aspect of the experience.

Like.. How was the check-in experience? How was the on time departure? How was it getting to your seat? How is the in-flight music? How is... you know, all sorts of things.

And then alongside each of those it has 5 boxes where you were to mark how you felt about the experience. So what is fascinating is what is in those boxes.

The left hand box, this is from left to right. The left hand box is, the name of that one is "Abysmal". So in other words, if I’m flying at 35,000 feet and I feel like ejecting, that’s the box you would tick (laughter).

The next box is called "Poor", which is kind of a starting place for most people.

And then the next box, the third box, is called "Satisfactory". Now what’s interesting about this box is, if most of who are listening today, went to a restaurant, or went to a hotel, and after seeing the survey that they do, that would be the top box for most of them. They aim to satisfy.

But in Kingfisher, and in companies that get this, they understand that it is a real problem if what you’re doing is setting out to do is to satisfy the customer. That is so normal, it’s not funny.

And what we need to do is to recognize that there are studies that say that as many as 70% of customers who are quote, unquote, satisfied, will go somewhere else because satisfaction is just a sea of sameness.

Anyway, get back to Kingfisher. So the middle box is "Satisfaction". So what are the next two boxes because there are five of them.

So the second, or the fourth box is called "Delighted", which is tall. It’s like I was delighted by the level of service that I receive. Again, you can get the distinction between satisfaction and delighted.

And so the question is, what’s in the fifth box? And the fifth box is, of course, the three-letter word that you and I have been talking about. The fifth box is "WOW!". It’s like... you really stunned me today. WOW, it was extraordinary!

The great thing about a company that has that kind of thing is that, what you know now as an employee, or as a team member of that company - your job is to WOW people. Which, by the way, also means that the company also understands that their job is to WOW their employees. That is to provide an environment in which you and I as employees, can truly feel inspired and truly feel WOW. So that we then can carry that to people called customers, with whom we connect, in that particular day.

So companies really get that WOW is not just something that you do with the product or the service. I mean it obviously do, but it starts back further than that. It’s a holistic process. So it’s what my office look like, it’s all that kind of stuff, which means it’s the great experience the team members are having through to the great experience to the customers.

So thank you for reminding me about the story. It is an enjoyable one, isn’t it?

Mazliza: Yes, I really like that story.

Paul: (Laughter)

Mazliza: How can you... OK, can you give an example of how having this WOW factor would help you generate more sales and therefore more profit in your business?

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