Do you like to smile? Do other people? According to Robert I. Sutton of Stanford University and Anat Rafaeli of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “service with a smile and a friendly attitude will keep them (customers) loyal and keep them coming back…”
This seems like common sense, doesn’t it? Customers like friendly people. People who smile.
So smile. If you’re not happy one day, pretend to be. If your customer is in a bad mood, giving them a smile will help them forget their problems (if even for the moment) and they’ll appreciate your service and product even more. They’ll feel closer to you and comfortable with you and your brand. That translates into more sales. And that’s what you want.
Give it a try and prepare to be pleasantly surprised!
What Value Really Means
In a previous section I discussed the issue of value vs. price. The fact stands that customers and humans in general will pay more for something they perceive to have more value. The key here is perception. You can choose to help craft the perception that you offer the most value, or you can take a 50/50 gamble and let your customers decide. The chances of winning that gamble depend on how well your competitors do at promoting and creating the appearance of value for their products and services.
In almost all cases you can’t beat your competition based on price. Even if you could, you’d have to control such a large enterprise to make it add up and worth your while – like Wal-Mart does. But in most cases, that’s a bad route to go. The point is, you want to decide what your source of value is. What makes you different? What do your customers value most? Then deliver and over deliver on that to them. They’ll thank you for it and keep coming back.
What’s the best way to go about this? Well, at the most basic level you need to ensure that all your communications, from emails and phone calls to your ads, literature and your sales visits use language that promotes and supports your key value promise.
If you’re selling organic dog food and your big difference, your big point of value, is that you use only natural ingredients, and other companies use a mix of natural and processed, stress that point in all your communications. Use it in your brochures, on your website, on your answering machine, and so on. Communicate it…your customers will start to pick up on this and remember you based on your message.
This concept has many names: positioning, value proposition, USP, and others, but it all comes down to deciding what makes you different and how you can provide your customers with more value than anyone else… and then communicating it. Do that and you’re sales will soar.