As we approach the holiday season, our thoughts turn to families and friends sitting around their living rooms. What are they talking about? Probably politics, little Joey’s grades, the football game, etc.

What would it take for your customer to talk about your dealership during Thanksgiving dinner?

When you offer the same-old-boring-message, boring services, boring offers, people will NOT talk about your business at Thanksgiving dinner.

Where I live, the Las Vegas City Council is voting on whether to allow fish pedicures. Yep. You read that right.

This is a pedicure in which a garra rufa carp, or doctor fish, nibbles on the toes. I don’t know if it works for others, but I am way too ticklish for that to work for me. It would feel like a new kind of Chinese water torture in which I could be coaxed into giving all my top-secret marketing strategies to the enemy.

And yet. This ticklish pedicure does get people talking. 

At dinner with a client in South Dakota after a consulting day, I asked the server about dessert. The server was like a robot. He handed me the dessert menu and did zero selling.

I ordered the dessert seen in the image at the top of this page. The picture doesn’t do it justice. This was a s’mores plate with ice cream in a bowl that was filled with dry ice. I could see the smoke from the dry ice all the way from the kitchen until it was delivered to our table.

 It was a great tasting dessert with a unique presentation. It was an attention-getter for sure, one that got me talking.

I ordered this dessert in spite of the server’s lack of enthusiasm for any after-dinner sweets.

Two things to do to get people talking about your dealership

No. 1: Have or do something worth talking about. Don’t be boring.

No. 2: Make sure your employees are excited about your products and services — unlike the server at the restaurant in South Dakota.

Perhaps when he first started, this server was excited about the smoking s’mores dessert. People’s energy tends to fade when they get used to something. Keep their energy and excitement up — your customers will benefit from your exciting offers and their unique experience.

Kenny Atcheson is a business strategist, marketing consultant, customer service/sales trainer, and author of Marketing Battleground: How to Deploy Under-the-Radar Strategies to Explode Your Profits. He teaches workshops and speaks at conventions all over the country. His website can be found at www.DealerProfitPros.com.