Jack, my 11-year-old son, loves camping. As regular readers of this site know, he saved his money up and got himself a tent before Christmas. Then at Christmas he bought himself a gas cooker.
He's been dying to use them, so on the weekend we packed up after the boys finished cricket and travelled to Byron Bay - a slice of heaven on the beach about 45 minutes down the coast. With swimming, sightseeing, beach cricket, eating icecreams and wandering through the Byron Bay markets we had a great time.
On Saturday evening at about 7 pm Jack and I were having a swim in the ocean. There was a guy swimming at about the same depth 20 metres away. He called out to us:
"Mate, there's a shovel ark humming your say."
At least that's what I thought he said. I said the only thing I could:
"What?"
"There's a shovelhead shark about 4 and a half feet coming your way."
Now these sharks are about as aggressive as a cat that's asleep. Jack and I had a look to see if we could get a look at the shark, but we only saw him glide past about 15 feet away.
We swam for a bit longer and then went in.
But when we got back to the campsite it was a different story!
My wife and 2 other children were relaxing back at the campsite when we got back. And my version of the story was a little different from the above.
* It wasn't a shovelhead harmless shark 4 and a half feet long - it was a 50 foot white pointer that I wrestled for 15 minutes! This shark made Jaws look like Nemo!
* It wasn't a relaxed paddle in the ocean - it was a titanic struggle between life and death!
And then the attack of the stingrays!
The next day I was swimming again with Jack and my 9-year old son Harry. This time Harry saw a stingray. It was about 2 metres wide and was followed by a smaller one.
And that just gave us more ammunition for our stories. No longer are we the Sinclair boys taking a dip in the warm coastal beaches of Byron Bay. We are now the courageous Sinclair boys swimming without fear in shark and stingray infested water. But we're so brave, so tough and so strong that it doesn't concern us one little bit.
We're basically like Superman, Spiderman and Batman rolled into one! That's us Sinclair boys!
The point of all this is to try and get across this point.
When we communicate - I mean all of us, not just the Sinclair boys - we tend to exaggerate our stories so they sound more exciting, more interesting and just plain better.
And keep that in mind about your business. If it's a positive experience your customer has had they'll often exaggerate just how good you were. This is done to basically demonstrate to the person they are speaking with that they (the speaker) made the correct decision in choosing to buy from you.
And if it was a negative influence then they'll exaggerate that to make the story sound even worse than what it was so that they (the speaker) appears as the highly aggrieved parties.
Either way, it's generally done to make the speaker look good!
This is why great customer service is so critical. And why, if your customer ever complains, you have to rectify it fast!
Cheers.
Brendon "Shark Wrestler" Sinclair
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