How do people feel about your business?

I heard a guy in my local coffee shop explaining to a friend, why he bought himself an iPhone. “I needed cheering up, so I decided to treat myself to a new iPhone. I had to wait 3 days for the phone to arrive and to be honest, the wait was pretty exciting.”

That’s an example of someone using the purchase of a product, to improve how he was feeling. His feelings about Apple and the iPhone brand are extremely positive and he knew that he’d feel better if he ordered one.

Now, can you imagine someone feeling so strongly about the prospect of working with you, that even the process of waiting was exciting?

Marketing and feelings

Whether you are a service provider or a vendor of products, you need to be aware that feelings have a huge part to play, in the purchasing process. The relationships you forge with prospective clients at the pre sales stage, are extremely important. Equally, the way people feel about the idea of working with you (or buying from you) is a key factor in whether you earn their custom or not.

Here are a few things to consider:

• Do you demonstrate how passionate you are about helping your current clients, to your future clients? In other words, do your marketing, networking and social networking interactions suggest you love working with your clients, or are you one of those who finishes work every Friday, by posting ‘TGIF!’ all over Twitter and Facebook, because you can’t wait to get away from them?
• Does your reputation showcase you as being friendly and approachable? The balance you are aiming for is professional and human. Business is all about people, so it’s essential to show your human side if you want people to feel good about the prospect of doing business with you.
• Is there a feel good factor associated to working with you or buying your products? If not, you are losing more business than you can possibly imagine.
• When people arrive at your website, does it look polished and professional or does it look like something that was done on the cheap? If the latter, you need to think about the image you are creating. If a prospective client sees a cheap looking website, it suggests the person behind that site either doesn’t care about presentation or is unable to pay for professional site. Both of these will hurt your business and lose you money.

Success leaves clues

Take time to think about the businesses, which YOU have strong, positive feelings about. Look at what they are doing, in order to earn that positive feeling from you and see what you can learn from them.