4 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
the efcient and effective handling of enquiries. I showed them a new and
proper structure for this, changed the methods of call handling and gave
the relevant personnel some guidance and training.
Six months later, with no money spent at all on external business develop-
ment or marketing activities, this legal practice was converting 82 per cent
of exactly the same type of enquiries into protable business. In nancial
terms this was worth an extra £404,340 per year.
How much are you losing each year by overlooking this commonsense
truth?
I will be looking in much more detail at this issue later in the book and
providing special techniques and guidance which have the potential to give
you some equally massive improvements (see Chapter 5).
2. Exceed customer or client expectations
Let me ask you a really simple question. Can you instantly name three
occasions in your life when an organisation you’ve done business with has
massively exceeded your expectations? I don’t just mean delivered on its
promises and done a good job, but consciously given you a positive and
excited feeling that it has gone way past what you expected.
Have you immediately got three names in your head? Actually have you
got one?
Despite the clichéd mantra of many corporate leaders and executives, that
‘we strive to exceed customer expectations’, when I have asked people this
question, very few have quickly been able to come up with three really
great examples.
To be blunt, it is a business development truth that exceeding customer or
client expectations is not as common as it should be, regardless of the fact
that it really is the holy grail of sustained business success. If, as a business,
you can consistently exceed customer/client expectations, then subject to
market factors you are able to charge premium prices in your sector, get
very high levels of repeat business and fantastic word-of-mouth referrals.
By the way, I can’t immediately think of three answers either, but I can
think of one. My wife and I recently took a holiday to China with a
company called Viking River Cruises. No prizes for guessing what business
they are in! Not only was the overall trip as good as we had hoped, but it
totally exceeded our wildest expectations in every possible respect and was
1
The 21 commonsense business development truths 5
an absolute ‘masterclass’ in customer service. This was not just my opinion,
I spoke to a very large number of other passengers who felt exactly the
same.
Now before I get too carried away sharing my personal holiday experiences,
my interest as a business writer is in how Viking River Cruises manages to
achieve what so few businesses are able to do. What is the strategic thinking
and activity that makes these high business aspirations a reality? What
lessons can other businesses of all types learn from Viking? With these
questions in mind I spoke to the company’s UK managing director Wendy
Atkin-Smith.
She gave me several answers, all of which can be conceptually modelled:
‘We track feedback on everything, even the small details. For example,
we spent a huge amount of time recently just reviewing and discussing
the quality and appearance of our crockery and cutlery.’
‘We deliberately don’t oversell in our brochures, in fact we consciously
undersell. We want people to be surprised when they get even more
than they had expected.’
‘We nd the best people, look after them and pay them well.
Excellence starts with recruitment. We identify people at the outset
who are prepared to go the extra mile.’
‘We like to keep control over every aspect of what we do and we never
give anything out to third parties. All elements are controlled and
staffed by Viking River Cruises trained people, even if they are based
locally.’
‘The overall Viking ethos is about exceeding customer expectations
and in training we are massively passionate about customer service.’
There are two other factors I would like to mention that show how seriously
this company takes this issue and commitment. Firstly it communicates
and builds its aims into its branding. With its registered strap line, Viking
River Cruises . . . The World’s Leading River Cruise Line . . . By Far®, it imme-
diately and very publicly establishes, both externally and internally, high
standards to achieve. If you set such standards and targets in the rst place,
you are more likely to achieve them than by setting no standards!
I was also intrigued and impressed with the passenger feedback sheets
given out at the end of the trip. Gone were the usual questions and boxes
to tick, inviting holidaymakers to select excellent, good, average or poor.
The whole of Viking’s evaluation process was based around questions
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