Date post: | 02-Jul-2015 |
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My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST
know
CommerceSciences.com
2 My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST know | CommerecSciences.com
10 Club Med lessons for entrepreneurs Intro When you hear “Club Med” you imagine
beautiful beaches, crystal blue skies or a warm
hut somewhere in the Alps of France. You
probably think about the team’s diversity and
the chit chats you had with a few
charming G.Os during a wonderful dinner.
When I begin to think about Club Med, I think
about the few months after I turned 21. One of
the greatest experiences I ever had and the take
outs I’m using in my professional life, up to this
very day.
How can principles from an all-included resort
be implemented into your everyday business?
3 My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST know | CommerecSciences.com
#1 Always smile The first experience I had when I arrived to the
resort (before it was even open to the crowd)
was the smiling faces that looked at me. That
was the rest of the team, that already arrived to
the resort before me, stood outside the main
entrance, clapped and showed us around the
village and onto our new residence. This is also
the way we welcomed new guests at Club Med
and the same way in which we said thank you
and goodbye. The same rules are implemented
in our company today. No matter if it is a new
employee that joins us or one that leaves us,
and obviously a new customer – always
approach them with a SMILE.
#2 Greet them in their own language If you’ve ever visited a foreign country’s local
bazaar, I can bet you that a big smile lit up your
face when the peddler asked “how are you?” in
your own language. After a few days at Club
Med, I already knew how to greet people and
ask for their names in over 10 languages. You
can imagine how it made me popular among
the guests, especially as a great first impression.
4 My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST know | CommerecSciences.com
To this very day, when customers from all over
the world are writing to me or subscribing to
our service, I continue to greet them in their
own language. You can do that on your site as
well, very easily, using Geo-Targeting capabilities.
#3 Have lunch (even a virtual one) with your customers It’s not a myth that the Club Med team is not allowed to eat together at the same table. We were always trying to interact with new people and have breakfast/lunch/dinner with them. That was great in order to initiate relationships but also to get some feedback and use that to improve. What I would call today – customer development. You should do the same with your customers. Try to have lunch (even a virtual one) with them. Don’t wait until they have a problem in order to communicate with them. If meeting them in person is impossible, pick up the phone and chat with them. Try to really get to know them, and let them know you. You can also use screen sharing solutions like GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts and many others.
#4 Join their daily activities Every day when our daily work was over and we had “free” time, we had to join the guests for a coffee or a beer, and hang out with them. That way we could see them during regular activities. For your business, a great thing to do is to see your customers in action and see how they really use your software or service. Check if they
5 My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST know | CommerecSciences.com
are happy with your product or how they interact with your brand. Surveys are fine (Qualaroo has a great tool for that), but there’s nothing like the real thing, to see them in their natural environment. (Try Inspectlet, Crazy Egg or Clicktale to see actual videos of how your visitors interact with your site.)
#5 Entertain your customers One of the most embarrassing moments came every day right after dinner, as the entire team took part in the entertainment activities. That could be dancing as part of a musical or playing any other role in the daily show. The guests loved it! They would arrive early just to catch good seats, and after the show, they would come by to tell you how great you were and some of them would ask to take a picture with you. Just as if you were any sort of world-known celebrity! So, I don’t mean you should dance with your online customers – but you should definitely find ways to entertain them. That could be by writing an interesting blog post, inspiring them and even sending them a nice freebie when they join your service (check out NewRelic‘s free T-Shirts campaign) or a personal gift for their birthday.
#6 Create your secret language If you’ve never been to a Club Med before, the following terms will be meaningless to you, but if you have been – it’ll mean the world to you: G.O, G.E, Crazy Sign, Chef de Village, etc. Club Med created a world of unique terms that every guest used and practiced on a daily basis. This
6 My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST know | CommerecSciences.com
is all part of the big picture of building a unique experience with your product and brand.
#7 Create new habits On average, it takes about 21 days to create or to get rid of a bad habit. Though most people stay in the club for between 7 to 14 days, the club manages to catch a part of you. They create daily routines for you. They tell you when to eat, when to play volleyball and when to participate in a stupid contest by the pool. When night falls, they turn the Crazy Signs (which are catchy songs for which they created funny moves) to the daily habit you don’t want to miss. So do the same, become part of your customer’s daily life. No matter if you are selling goods or a software as a service. Make sure to give time frames for your customers, guide them and then they will return for more.
#8 Work hard & live like there’s no tomorrow I know that so far my Club Med Experience sounds like great fun, but trust me I worked pretty hard. Very hard. I would wake up around 7 am every morning and never go to sleep before 1 am. As you already understood from the above, there’s no one moment in which you can really rest. My personal belief is that shortcuts are very rare. So I don’t even try to look for them. I believe that only by working hard you can get great results. But nonetheless,
7 My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST know | CommerecSciences.com
make sure to enjoy every day and have fun no matter what you do, otherwise, what is it all for?
#9 Join the party If you’ve read this far, you understand the Club Med ambiance. It is all about having fun. As a G.O (Genteel Organizer), you can create new events every day or you can invite people to join the parties that are going on. Having people to join an existing party is a much easier task. You should follow that rule when trying to get people to visit your site. You can do that by riding on existing trends on Google or Twitter for example.
#10 Make new friends Although many years has passed, I’m still in touch with a few guests and G.O’s that kept in touch with me over the years, and I’m very thankful for that. I don’t mean to keep in touch with people just because it might “be worth it” one day, but because I’m quite sure that among your customers and people that you meet everyday there are some that you really like, and have interesting chats with. Keep in touch with them, don’t be shy. I’m sure that they will enjoy that as much as you will. At the end of the day, it’s all about building great relationships with people. Because it doesn’t matter if you are dealing with direct to consumer products or business to business – you are dealing with real people, with real emotions. (If you want to keep in touch with me feel free to ping me on Linkedin, Facebook and on Twitter).
8 My 10 “Club Med” lessons every entrepreneur MUST know | CommerecSciences.com
When I first shared the fact that I worked at Club Med with my team, they simply laughed at me and mentioned that it’s probably the most embarrassing job out there. Well, it might be true. However, as my days at Club Med have been over for many years now, I’ve taken many lessons and carry them with me up until this very day.
Want to read about KissMetrics Chief
Evangelist, Neil Patel, work at Kirby (door-to-
door sales of a vacuum cleaner brand)? Visit QuickSprout’s site.
What was your most embarrassing job? What
did you take from it?