"Same is Lame"

That's what Jay Baer kept telling me throughout his actionable book, "Talk Triggers" that is a recipe for business owners like us (or marketing team.. he scales his directions for big companies!) to create an operational difference from our competition that will help EXPLODE our word of mouth marketing! This week on The Meredith Kallaher Show I reviewed, or summarized really, Jay's amazing marketing book to I wrap up a 5 week series on Word of Mouth Marketing. Over the last month, we discussed that word of mouth begins with our friends because friends do business with friends and we spent 2 weeks strategizing how to make more friends. :) Last week we discussed the 7 key elements of exceptional customer service. Exceptional customer service will ensure that your customers will come back to you... and when you are playing the long game and consistently deliver exceptional service, your customers might even start talking about you. But if you want to ensure that they will tell others about you, you must build an operational differentiator, a TALK TRIGGER, that surprises them. Something that your customer doesn't expect, but brings them joy, saves them time, makes them feel understood or makes them laugh.. THEN you can explode your word of mouth marketing. In his book Jay teaches that a good talk trigger is relevant, relatable, reasonable and repeatable. He takes us through a detailed how-to-create process to build our own talk triggers and gives us LOTS of examples. According to Jay some of the talk triggers you might have encountered (or even heard of if you haven't experienced yourself) are the Doubletree chocolate chip cookie, the Cheesecake Factory menu and the excessive french fries given with each order at Five Guys (had you guessed the french fry thing was intentional?) Check out my short youtube video on Talk Triggers for more details.