Businesses: Overcome Your Personality Disorder

Guest Post today by Jeremy Secrest

“Wah, wah, wah.” – all the grownups in the Charlie Brown shows.

Is that what your potential customers are hearing when you talk? Are they not connecting with your message?

Maybe your personality (or lack of one) is getting in the way.

Personality can seem like a fluffy term for business. It can come across like a trust fall or some of the more odd team-building exercises.

Yet, your customer has a personality.

And so do you.

 

Your customer is a person. And so are you.

And unless you’re selling to robots, people connect with people.

People who need people.

 

People have personalities.

 

Discovering and defining your brand’s personality is key to understanding how to best connect with your customer.

Not in a smarmy, leisure suit kind of way.

In a people kind of way.

The way you communicate through your emails, sales messages, advertising and social media needs to match who you are. It needs to resonate.

Just like a bookish introvert looks awkward trying to be the life of the party (so I’ve heard), you’ll look awkward if your messaging doesn’t fit who you are. Or sounds like a robot.

You’re not talking with robots.

You’re talking with people who have a desire that you’re working to help them achieve.

To connect with them, the way you communicate needs to be really clear. Which helps them understand how you can help them find what they’re looking for.

Personality helps clarify your message and connect the dots to connecting with your customers.BrandTellShare_Square

How do you discover your brand’s personality?

Check out #brandtellshare, a workshop on messaging, media and marketing April 12 with Dana Nelson, Damon Hancock, and Erin Bemis at Fat Head Media. One day. $99. Learn more and register at brandtellshare.com

Not ready for that, but still want to learn more? Get a free branding starter guide at mybrandstory.co.

Jeremy Secrest is Director of Marketing & Development at the Evansville Christian Life Center and founder of Mybrandstory.co.

Follow Last Launch on Twitter

 

Last shuttle launch of STS135 planned for 11:26am EDT today.

 

Follow it in REAL TIME by going to twitter. No need to sign up, just go to www.twitter.com and type  #STS135 (Or just Click that link)

 

You will see tweets from NASA, Mews media, Space geeks and from the selected twitter users from the l tweetup STS-135.  (More about that tweetup here.)

 

If you love space, get it real time from many angles. Usually tons of great pics, vids, and conversations from the tweetup people that you just don’t get with traditional media coverage.

 

If you are on Twitter follow a few NASA handles:

@NASA

@NASAKennedy

@NASAGoddard

 

The Corporate Breakup

When I ran a computer consulting business, I started noticing some trends with businesses that were confusing to me.

  • We don’t like change, even if it is good, even if it saves us money and time.
  • That fear of change makes us very forgiving.
  • We fear conflict that ultimately leads to change.

For example, old antiquated hardware and software that breaks and requires constant maintenance cost us more than money. It costs frustration, employee productivity and happiness.  But we keep calling in the IT guy who band-aids us back together.  We fear the hassle of learning new software. Again time, money, productivity and company morale are all at stake.

But now I’ve noticed this pattern in other areas of business, not just where it relates to tech.

We forgive the mistakes of vendors over and over. It’s easier than finding a new one and making a change.

We forgive employees. There are times when managers and business owners look the other way because they fear the process of hiring and training a new replacement. We forget that by “protecting them” – we’re really protecting us from the hassle and fear; we’re hurting our other employees in the process.
We hang on to dead weight accounts. Yes, sometimes you need to let a customer go. The one who has burned you, taken more time, energy and effort than they’ve invested in your business; the one who refused to pay you or takes forever to pay. We forgive them too, for fear we won’t replace the income they represent. (If you have one of these customers… let him go. You’ll more than make up for it in time and happiness.)

I’m not suggesting that at the first mishap you drop a vendor, employees, or clients.  I’m saying if you’ve been dealing with the same old story from one of them for a long period of time, maybe it’s time you step back take an objective review, and evaluate that relationship.

You can be friends with any of those people; social media makes it so easy to fall into friendships with business acquaintances.  You need to remember, however, this is your business. We do forgive friends, but even with friendships, when a relationship is toxic to one party, it’s time to end it.

If you benefit from this post, great, but I wrote it for me.  I wrote it because after:


  • repeated bad customer service
  • hours and hours on the phone caught in a phone maze, transferred to the wrong department repeatedly, where I had to tell my story again
  • repair request after repair request; it took over 4 months to get help
  • help arrive and made the problem worse
  • a major cell tower went down and is still not replaced
  • countless dropped and missed calls
  • I have been emotionally and financially abused

I am leaving AT &T.

I’m standing up for myself and my business. I’m done forgiving and I’m taking back control of my communications.

My home box AFTER the 1st repair
My home box AFTER the 1st repair