Published: 6/25/2024
Brett McCready
SVP, Sales and Customer Experience, Dynata
I was recently lucky enough to vacation with my family over in Europe for almost two weeks. During our travels, I found myself thinking about Dynata, and “work” more than I’d hoped. I did my best to 100% focus on my wife and daughter and our time together visiting some great cities without having to worry about forecasts, end of quarter and the countless other things I think about daily as a leader of 7 sales professionals and countless clients.
Over the course of the trip, there were a few instances where the kindness of strangers reminded me of how anyone in the sales and service business needs to differentiate themselves. You may have a better product, better pricing, or you can communicate your value prop in a better way. A lot of the time, it doesn’t matter. What matters is caring, kindness and making a personal connection that will be remembered. This approach has always helped myself and the teams I’ve led to succeed in business and create both lifelong clients and friends. No matter how much automation you build into a process, providing genuine care and service to help people separates you from everyone else. These small gestures with a big impact lead to more trusted partnerships vs. a vendor mentality in the Corporate research space.
The first reminder was when we landed at London’s Heathrow Airport and my daughter quickly passed through the automated passport control as my wife and I got ‘stuck’ and were forced to wait in a long line. Although we could see our daughter safely inside the UK border, it was a bit disconcerting that we could not get to her, and she was alone. Incredibly, a stranger yelled over to us from the front of the line and told us to get in front of him. He could see the worry in my wife’s face about being separated and wanted to help us get through passport control as quickly as possible. The generous, kind offer put my wife in tears as she was so appreciative and thankful. Regardless of who it is for, any act of kindness like this doesn’t get forgotten. I only wish we remembered his name since we’ll never forget what he did.
About a week later, in the middle of our European adventure, we arrived early to our hotel in Venice, Italy and hoped to check in. A nice older man by the name of Johnny, remembered our request for an early check-in and he made it happen. He knew our time in Venice was limited and he ensured our room was ready so we could quickly get settled and head out to explore. Additionally, the hotel provided a free tour of a Murano glass factory, and they took us by private boat over to the factory so we could see the ancient tradition of hand-blown glass making. We’ll be forever grateful to Johnny from this little boutique hotel in Venice and will recommend it to anyone who may be visiting in the future. The hotel doesn’t have the best location or the best amenities, yet it has caring folks like Johnny who make your visit special and one that we will always remember.
Lastly, after flying thru NY on our return to Charleston, SC, we landed in JFK earlier than anticipated. On a whim, I called Delta to see if we could be put on standby for a flight to CHS that afternoon vs. staying overnight and flying home the next morning. The Delta representative, Deanna, could tell we were looking forward to being home and seeing our dogs and made an exception to allow the 3 of us onto standby for that flight. She went beyond to help us, and we made the flight and got home later that day. The joy in my daughter’s face as she got to hug her dogs was priceless.
I will be sharing these stories with my team this week and will be challenging them on how they can find a unique way to make a difference to a client by taking time to show their genuine appreciation for their most recent project opportunity, or to a colleague for the extra support or to a family member for just being there to listen.
I will forever remember these 3 people and it was a good reminder to me to do the same in both my personal and professional life. In whatever way it may help, I hope these examples remind people what does make a difference. I can promise you it will since people always remember kindness and caring about people is never something you can put on the shelf.
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