Harness Your Energy to Engage Deeply with Your Customers
In Fans First, one of the core values of the Savannah Bananas organization is to “ENGAGE DEEPLY.”
“Human connection is everything. Love is better than like. It’s not about the number of followers, ticket sales, or customers through the door. It’s about engaging deeply. It’s about doing for one what you wish you could do for many.”
The whole purpose of this company value is to promote the creation of strong and meaningful relationships with their customers. They want their employees to truly know their customers and to go out of their way to deliver an extraordinary experience for them every day. Most importantly, they want to ensure that their organization makes each customer feel heard and valued. Author Jesse Cole describes our current economy as “a relationship economy,” in which value propositions can be duplicated, but relationships cannot. Relationships are truly what drive the success of marketing efforts, specifically referrals and word-of-mouth promotion.
Cole urges his readers to connect with customers on a deeper level at every possible opportunity. This means you make a true effort to learn more about them and how they live – their family, their occupation, their recreation, their aspirations. Adult customers differ very little from children in that adults too enjoy laughing, being challenged, being entertained. To do these things effectively, you need to know and understand these people. And yes – it may seem daunting (speaking personally as an introvert myself) to consider all of your customers and to think that you have to connect deeply with every single one of them. But that’s not necessarily the approach you have to take. Rather, focus on one person at a time to personally touch their lives – make them feel heard and valued. And over time, as you connect with one person at a time, the numbers will mass up. Think about it – if you work 200 days a year, and you just commit to connecting with one person per day, that will amount to you connecting deeply with over 200 of your customers. That is a meaningful number that will make a big difference in your business!
Struggling with what “connecting with them” really means? Try this visualization exercise: when you enter a service-oriented business as a customer and someone working there WOWS you with their attention toward you, what did that look like? What made you walk away feeling extremely valued as their customer? What did they do for you? Now, capture those same actions and implement them for your own customers. For me, the emphasis is always on moving beyond expectations. Every professional interaction comes with some base-line expectation. You exchange money for delivered value and there’s a certain expectation that must be met to just retain someone as a customer. But to have them as a raving, loyal fan, you have to move beyond just meeting that expectation; you have to do more.
To do this really well, you must bring great energy to every interaction. I speak about this often in the context of being a Steady Leader. Today’s popular leadership gurus call this being in your “Peak State.” This particular energy isn’t something you get just from eating or sleeping well. Rather, great energy is derived from leading yourself to a strong and healthy mindset. For me, I build up my great energy early each morning. I read my Bible, pray, learn from a business book, work out physically, and love on my family. And when I do these things consistently every morning, I show up to work with powerful, positive energy for others around me to absorb.
Tomorrow is promised to no one. I challenge you to live a life – today – you are proud of; one you are grateful for and enjoy. Let your team and customers feel and absorb that positive energy when you engage deeply with them. I promise that they won’t soon forget you or your company.
Written by Schuyler Williamson
REALTOR. Leader. Veteran. Business Owner. Investor.
Weekly Email List: https://www.schuylerwilliamson.com/weekly-leader-note
God Bless!
~ Schuyler Williamson