For those few of you out there that don't like tomatoes you know what I'm talking about. "Why don't you try this fresh one from the garden? They are so good!" But the result is always the same, once the slimy seedy acidy insides hit my mouth its over.

I know all the arguments for liking tomatoes..."How can you like salsa, ketchup and spaghetti sauce and not tomatoes?" Sorry, they taste different.

Put yourself in my place. Everytime you order a burger you have to special order, and half the time they blow the order so you are picking off the tomato yourself. Like that's easy...the carcass comes off pretty well but the seedy sludge left over reminds me of trying to wipe up...well, it is too gross to specify. (Let just say it happens when kids have eaten then you drive through a winding canyon.)

Ever try to get a salad without tomatoes? There is no pulling those out, the tomato fluids are lost in the forest of lettuce, just waiting to get you.

I would like to love tomatoes, I have tried, honestly. I would love to have a life where I enjoy them. But I don't. No one seems to accept that. There is always a bit of judgment as you tell them you would not care for tomatoes.

I heard once that they were a member of the nightshade family. A very deadly plant. Ever wonder who tried those first? "Hey, Eb, give these a try..."

My favorite places to eat are those that are happy with a "special order" or the ones where you have to pay extra for tomatoes (why should I pay the tax for others tomatoes?).

OK, this is going somewhere. The point is we all have different tastes and preferences. And no matter how much we educate or communicate, those tastes and preferences remain. And trying to change them is like trying to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Think about your business. Do you have customers that prefer things a little different than the rest? Do you have policies or people that just refuse to change.? This is a great chance to give them a bit of your own "secret sauce" where you show them you take care of the customer. Sometimes things shouldn't be changed for the special case, but if your competitor will change for them you know where your customer will be.

September 17th to the 23rd, 2006

Gorgeous weekend here in sunny Mesa, Arizona. Our 8 months of "spring" seem to be on the way! Here are the best seeds of the week:

From Seeds of Growth--How Will You Be Viewed?
The video alone is worth the click (be sure to click on the "video" link to see how the illusion works), but the principle is powerful as well: developing a healthy relationship with your customers during the good times will put the benefit of the doubt on your side when a mistake happens.

From Other Business Blogs
Number 3-- How to Deal with an Angry Customer. from Seth Godin.
When the mistake does happen and you have an angry customer on your hands, do you know what to do? Do your employees? Seth provides a great tutorial...

Number 2--Simplifying Simplicity from Brand Autopsy.
Maybe a simpler offering will soothe your customers. From the book "The Laws of Simplicity" by MIT Professor John Maeda: "The more complexity there is in the market, the more that something simpler stands out.” and ”…adopting a strategy of simplicity ... will set your product apart.”

Number 1--Be Provocative from Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users.
How do you cut through the chaos and get and keep your customers' attention? "The secret is to be more provocative and interesting than anything else in their environment."

Have a provocative week!

Dave
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Best of Seeds is a service of Promoterz--Happy Customers Talking

I love optical illusions. It is fascinating how our minds can be tricked. The good folks at grand-illusions have a dragon illusion that you can download and build yourself. Here is a video showing the illusion in more detail.

This seems to be another example of the brain assigning a symbol to something (see earlier post) to make processing lots of information quicker. In this case, it seems the brain "knows" that if a dragon is looking at us that its nose would be closer to us than its eyes. It is called the "Hollow Face Illusion".

Just as our brain can interpret what we see as two completely different views, it appears it does the same thing with people. For example, let's say you are looking at a playground and you see a child climbing up a slide. You also see an adult in the shadows hiding behind a nearby tree peeking out and watching the child.

If you don't know this adult chances are you will remember being taught "stranger danger!" and you will immediately become suspicious that this might be a predator. However, if you knew this adult you would assume that they are playing hide-and-seek. Two completely different conclusions from the same situation. Obviously, previous experience colors our perception.

Inevitably you, or someone in your company, will make a mistake. At that point your customer's view of you will determine the conclusion they draw. If you are a stranger they may view the mistake as a callous disregard for customers from a company that only cares about its profits. However, if they have had several good experiences with your company they will be more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.

If your customers only hear from you when you are selling something you are missing out on a chance to build trust and change from being a stranger to a friend. Why not send a non-salesy greeting to them on their birthday, let them get to know you, it is good insurance for future mishaps and it is what friends do.

Yesterday my bill from Cingular arrived. Two months earlier I had added my daughters phone to our family plan. For the first month a new phone gets free, unlimited text messaging which allows you to figure out which messaging plan to sign up for. Let me tell you that teenage girls text a lot!

After the first month I got on Cingular's web site, logged into my account, and changed her texting plan to allow MANY text messages, 3000. Turns out that's just enough. But, when the phone bill arrived yesterday it showed that I didn't change the plan so the text portion of my daughter's phone bill was $170. If you're wondering, that represents 2700 text messages in one month (busy fingers).

I called Cingular, 611 on my cell phone. I explained to the customer service rep how I got on the web site and made a change to my plan to accommodate my new rapid texter. She checked the records and found out that I made a change to the account but that I ended up with the same plan. To me that means "no change" but they have record that I did something that day. She said she would refund half of the $170, not because she had to but to show good faith. "I don't have to do this sir". She didn't believe that I made the change. By-the-way, if you didn't already know, Cingular has a website that frequently has problems. Well, at least that's been my experience over the past 1 1/2 years.

While having this discussion with the customer service rep my Cingular call just dropped. It makes a sound when that happens, "da-da-da-da-daaa".

I called right back, got a different rep, and told my story again. She listened. She checked and found out that I had the same plan before and after the "change". Then she said "I'm making changes to your account sir, I'm post dating your text package to the date you tried to make this change". Then she took care of the overage and other assorted things she needed to do to get it to all work out so that my bill would be correct.

THANK YOU!!!

Cingular is an immense company. I won't argue that Cingular is a good wireless provider or not. Mostly it's worked well for me but a bad experience with them and I would be pushed to change providers, it's hard to have a lot of loyalty to a mega-company. It's hard unless they deal with you correctly in all circumstances The experience with the first rep wasn't good, it was exactly what I had feared would happen. That coupled with the extra $170 and other fruity action from their web site and I had plenty of reason to leave Cingular's service. Had this story ended there I'd be with another wireless company right now. But, one customer service rep made all the difference for me. She made it all right, over the top of the first one and other bad experiences I've had with the company. A huge company and one person in it makes the difference. A remarkable person.

I don't talk about my cell phone company unless something gives me reason to, whether it's good or bad. It's good this time and I'm telling others. I'm using a megaphone (this blog) to do it. If Cingular were my company... I'd be rich! No, no, no. If Cingular were my company... I'd find out who my happy customers are and give them a megaphone to tell their friends about how great a company I have.

If you have a company you should do the same with your happy customers. Find out who they are and give them a megaphone to tell their friends about what a great product or service you have. You can do it and you should do it. If you need help with the finding and the megaphone you can get it here.

Did a little substitute teaching this morning at a local high school ( Go Toros! ) Think you are a good presenter? Go volunteer at your local high school. If they're not interested, they don't even pretend to be.

As part of the lesson I played a game with the kids. I made some motions with a stick, tapped it on the ground a few times and asked the kids to guess the word I was thinking. Of course, none of them could (the word was hat). I then gave one student in the class the "decoding ring" to make sense of my stick motions and senseless babbling and sent her out of the room while the rest of the class picked a new word. The student with the secret was now easily able to "guess" the word. The really interesting thing that occured was that after a few rounds other students began to figure out the code. Their reaction was always the same, they shouted "Oh I got it!" and immediately wanted to tell the world. The first student that was given the code never had the same reaction.

Here is the principle (based on purely non-scientific data): people are more excited to share that which they "discover." In fact, you have to work hard to keep them from sharing. It was all I could do to get the "discoverers" to sit still and keep it secret. After all, what fun is discovering something if you have no one to share it with?

Do you let your customers discover anything?

What? Are you saying I shouldn't shout everything I have to offer to my potential customers?

Exactly. In-N-Out Burger is a master of this. They have an entire "secret menu" that you cannot find anywhere in any In-N-Out store nor on their website , but it is part of their process. The items are in their point of sale system and print out on the receipt.

What good is a secret menu? Have any third parties ever created web pages dedicated to your menu? You can read about In-N-Out's here , here , and here and several hundred other places. Oh, and you can download a pdf version of it (complete with pictures) here. Ever met somebody that loves In-N-Out? They've got the secret menu memorized and will describe every option for you. They've discovered something and can't wait to share.

So, what are your customers going to discover today?