Smile a winning strategy
AS a small-business owner, you can spend countless hours and thousands of dollars focusing on fine-tuning business systems and software to deliver an optimum operation.
But there is one critical element to business success — across any business — that is overlooked, and yet, is possibly the simplest to add to your portfolio of winning tools. A smile. That is right, a smile. Because successful small business is all about connecting positively, and humans respond instinctively to facial expressions, especially a smile.
Obviously, you still need to deliver quality goods and services because no amount of inane grinning is going to win you friends if you have dropped the ball.
But, generally, we all like to be greeted with a warm, genuine and positive voice or face on the other end of any transaction.
Even an online business needs to smile, electronically. It is not about dropping a few smiling emojis into your website, rather in any of your electronic communication it is more about concentrating on the language and tone of how you and your business look and feel online.
Because smiling not only improves your mood, the experts tell us it also it improves your attitude and how you face everyday situations, including your sales and customer support.
As Sir Richard Branson says: “Smiling can be a competitive advantage — it makes every person feel a little better, and every situation a little brighter.”
He is right. And forget the fact Sir Richard has more than 400 businesses under the Virgin banner, an estimated net worth of more than $5 billion and plenty of reasons to smile, but it strikes me he has an infectious smile and is a hard bloke not to like.
So did his attitude — and smile — have something to do with his business success? Quite likely.
“My general attitude is to enjoy everything I do, every day,” he says. And apparently from his smile, he does.
I think his attitude is testament to the theory that a smile is contagious and a positive and enthusiastic attitude on your part can improve your customer service and business interactions.
And did you know your smile is genuinely contagious? The part of your brain that is responsible for your facial expression of smiling when happy or mimicking another’s smile resides in the cingulate cortex, an unconscious automatic response area.
I read of a Swedish study where subjects were shown pictures of several emotions: joy, anger, fear, and surprise.
When the picture of someone smiling was presented, the researchers asked the subjects to frown. But, effectively, they could not.
Instead, they found the facial expressions went directly to a reflection of what those subjects were looking at and it took a conscious effort to turn that smile upsidedown. So, if you are smiling at someone, it is likely they cannot help but smile back because each time you smile at a person, their brain coaxes them to return the favour.
From a business perspective, what could be more essential, useful and simple than a smile?
That smile is the personal touch that extends our customer service promise and reflects our passion. Smiling says we want to be serving our clients and customers.
It says we are ready and willing to go the extra mile and we enjoy what we are doing.
If your business is not making you smile, that is a conversation for another day.
I think this quote from a Forbes Magazine article sums it up perfectly: “A smile alone won’t guarantee excellent customer service, but excellent customer service almost always starts with a smile.”