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Cappuccino for Jon

8/2/2011

2 Comments

 
Posted by Jon
‘m guessing most of you will call into coffee shops from time to time. You know the procedure: queue up, order your drink, pay, wait again whilst the barrista makes your coffee.

The drink’ll be thrust onto the end of the counter: “Venti decaf skinny capp”. You look at those around you – is that mine, or did someone in front of me in line order the same thing? And, the moment of minor stress duly over, you pick up the cup and wander off to enjoy your caffeine injection.

Now, picture the coffee shop at the APMP conference hotel a couple of months back. Same process – queue, order, pay – with one addition: the cashier asked for my first name. On to wait for the drink, which was then served with the phrase “large decaf cappuccino for Jon”.

Now, which do you prefer? The personalised approach certainly worked for me – and I saw an obvious parallel in writing proposals. Forget the standard, product-based approach – the more personalised the communication, the more
appealing it’ll be to the buyer.
2 Comments
Lauren Godoy
3/25/2016 03:35:52 pm

Jon, you always have such apropos observations! What a great ability to take something seemingly so far from the proposal arena and make a terrific and simply stated point!

Thanks for a great column.

Reply
John E. Bredehoft
3/25/2016 03:36:03 pm

My local coffee shop goes halfway in this regard. The cashier asks for my first name and writes it on the cup, but the barista doesn’t call out my name when the cup is placed on the counter. I can, however, look on the cup to see if my name is on it.

Thankfully, I don’t know of any coffee shop that leaves my name off and puts the barista’s name on the cup (”large decaf cappuccino prepared by Mitch”).

Perhaps we should have baristas write our executive summaries. They realize that it’s all about who the customer is and what the customer wants, and the baristas know how to economize on words.

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    BJ Lownie and Jon Williams are the co-founders of Strategic Proposals.

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