Amazing your customers requires careful timing. You want the positive effect for your customer to be as lasting as possible. So the question is: what is the best time to stage your little surprise?

For example, while talking to one of your customers, you hear that he is to deliver an important speech before an audience of clients. This is the sort of thing likely to make anyone slightly nervous and anxious to make a good impression. You have come up with the idea of surprising your customer with a can of ‘Red Bull’ and a book entitled ‘Top Quotes from Top Public Speakers’. A hand-written card with the following words of encouragement will accompany the gift: ‘… gives you power and lends your words wings. With best wishes for a successful speech, from…’. The parcel is to be delivered by post. When do you think would be the ideal time for your customer to open this parcel:

two to three days before he is due to give the speech?

the day before?

on the day itself?

Psychologically, the ideal timing would be for the parcel to arrive two to three days before your customer is due to deliver his speech, first, because your customer can appreciate its symbolic value longer, right up to the moment of truth, and secondly because this will give him time to find some great quotes for his speech in the book you are enclosing.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment, and imagine what you would think if you were the recipient of this surprise parcel. Wouldn’t your thoughts run along these lines:

 ‘How nice of him to think of me!’

‘Amazing that he found the time to go to such trouble, even though he must be an extremely busy man!’

‘Wow, he really knows how to motivate people!’

‘I ought to think up something like that for my customers!’

You will see that instead of merely identifying yourself with your own achievements, you are identifying yourself with the person who sent you this ‘amazing’ gift! Follow the example and be unforgettable for your customers! Discover the brand ‘Me’!