How Does Your Business Feel Today?
“The bottom line of business is having an emotional connection while being sustainable, predictable, and consistent.”
That’s the key point in a new business handbook by coaches Brad Sugars and Monte Wyatt. Pulling Profits Out of a Hat is intended to help entrepreneurs multiply their profits. Brad and Monte have identified five disciplines that business owners need to master in order to achieve sustained success. Those disciplines cover strategy, business development, people, execution, and mission. In each discipline, they identify a key factor that brings success: sustainability; predictability; consistency.
But it’s the role of an emotional connection that really struck me.
Shopping has never been easier or more convenient. Online retailers like Amazon have made it simple to find a product, read reviews, and place an order. Anyone can now buy almost anything they want from a single store without leaving the sofa. Every retailer is feeling the squeeze.
But online shopping does have a weakness. It might be convenient and the prices are competitive but it’s also impersonal. Knowing about a customer through their data isn’t the same as knowing a customer. Buying from a big store is a transaction. Buying from someone you know—and who knows you—is an experience. It’s a human interaction. It’s fun!
That can even happen online. The real benefit that social media has brought to marketing was never the piles of demographic data that Facebook leaks like a broken umbrella. It was always the opportunity for sellers to talk directly with customers. They can answer comments that their customers write under their posts. They can put names and faces to their buyers. They can even chat with them in real time using live video as though they were in the store with them. Those conversations are enjoyable. Business owners enjoy making those videos and audiences enjoy watching and participating in them.
Those events do more than just convey information. They do more than tell customers about the products they’re buying. They build a human connection—and every human connection brings an emotional connection.
It’s a huge advantage that no big store can match. Sites like Amazon might have enormous warehouses and endless inventories but buying from a website is like buying from a catalog. A business that shows that it knows and understands its customers—individually, in the same way that a café owner knows how his regulars like their coffee, and smiles as he pours it—will be providing a service that just can’t be beaten.
The opportunity is too big and important to miss. Every business now has a giant competitor who is never more than a click away. Business owners need to do more than simply take their customers’ money and give them the goods. They need to make their customers feel good about shopping with them.
Of course the quality of their service needs to be sustainable, predictable, and consistent but it also has to be emotional, and that emotion needs to be a sense of fun.
Brad and Monte might stir that sense of fun for you. Grab a copy of Pulling Profits Out of Hat today!
This post has been sponsored by Adding Zeros
