What is the power of a smile? A smile shows your friendly, warm, approachable, positive, trustworthy, welcoming, helpful, accessible, you have a good attitude, inviting, responsive, very cordial etc etc.
You try this test with yourself, smile at anyone you see on the street and see how many people smile back. In business, a smile does wonders. It makes your customers feel welcome, it alleviates the tension of their buying decision because they know they can approach you for advice/help. A smile breaks the ice and creates an overall positive customer experience. This positive customer experience is what you as a business owner wants to achieve.
If you have an online business, you smile using positive language in your emails by making your email sound like its from a real person and not a generic mechanistic spiel. Take a template reply and customise it. Ask how people how they are, tell them to have a great day, say you look forward to matching their face with a name one day, tell your customers they have a beautiful name (if they have one that you like), ask your customers if they would like you to call to make it more personable and there are many more friendly compliments and questions.
If you have an internet business, you can smile through your website by having people smiling in your graphics, use colour to create a warm feeling to your site and use language in your copy to relate to your customers.
Ohhh and here's a nice trick to try when you're hiring people to sell your business, smile at the potential job candidate when you first meet them. Try not to look like the boss or get someone you trust to do it. Then watch their reaction. If they smile back at you, then the chances are this candidate will smile at your customers. If they don't smile back, then imagine if you were a customer? Not good.
So get smiling my friends!!
Join our discussion here for your opinions on smiling.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Smile and the world smiles with you!
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4 comments:
nice post! i agree about smiling, even though i don't have a nice smile, haha.
This is a great post.
You've captured a point that is often overlooked.
I think a lot of people know that smiling has a positive impact on business - especially in the service industry.
Not many people really think about how the lack of smiling on websites. Or, of course, in call centres.
There are many ways to smile at someone, or more importantly - to get them to smile.
This is an interesting post. I of course fell in love with the monkeys...
Smiling is very important when you want to be seen as friendly. Sometimes just a smile at a stranger can change their whole day!
A smile is so under-rated, that everyone should do their bit for society and smile at a stranger at least 10 times a day.
Now there's a viral campaign ;-)
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