Businesses, like people, get

their faces locked in to 

negative expressions  

You think those who are considering a purchase of your goods or services are not paying attention to how the “package” of your business facade is wrapped? You think it doesn’t matter?

You think” the face of your business” has no power of suggestion? If you’re engaged in professional selling (who isn’t?), do you think no one notices your facial expressions? (You do of course know they’re contagious?)

Try this one.

I’m going to give you a single word that sums up my total customer experience at a business I visited recently. It was something that the receptionist did.

And you will likely do the exact same thing the minute you read this word, which should –all by itself– be a  clear enough demonstration that every business “face” communicates.

My guess is that odds are within one minute, you’ll be hooked.

You will prove to yourself that the power of suggestion is far from imaginary. Are you ready? Okay:

Read the following word and think about it for five seconds. 

Ready?

Here it is: YAWN 

Think about the word now for five seconds.

Well? If you didn’t yawn yourself, did you at least feel that queasy little tremor in the corners of your jaw where upper and lower teeth come together?

No? Well, maybe you just woke up, or just took some amphetamines or someone just put some ice down your back.

How about this word?: SMILE

                                                              

Who is “the face” of YOUR business? 

Does that person pass along smiles or stretch and yawn most of the day? (And, no, this is not intended as a corrective action seminar for air traffic controllers . . . who, by the way, it’s worth noting, get paid $160,000 a year to NOT sleep on the job; it’s stressful and requires special skills? So what! What about truck-driving and mothering!)

Similarly, a health food store clerk or medical clinic is hardly well represented by even the most smiling individual if she or he looks like a walking billboard for some local tattoo and body-piercing parlor. The face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

Credibility registers in the eyes of the beholder in less than ten seconds. There are no second first impressions.

So you get the WHO part of this, what about the WHAT part? What is “the face” of your business? I know of a physician’s office with an absolutely filthy-beyond-belief office front door. You need antiseptic wipes just to touch the handle. One pint of paint and a teaspoon of metal polish would do the job. It’s been that way for many years.

It probably goes without saying that this doctor is not considered the town’s gift to healthcare, and has been struggling financially for probably as long as the door has been hinged. The face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

If you’re in construction or landscaping and pull up to a prospective customer in a disgusting truck full of muck, don’t think your slightly lower estimate will land you work. The truck tells people that you’re a slob. People don’t hire slobs. The face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

Computer techies who can only communicate with their thumbs and say little more on the phone (if they answer it at all) than  “Uh” and “Huh?” OR who rattle out stuff about SEO and Mashables and Tweets to another business owner who doesn’t want to know how to make a clock when she asks what time it is, will not get hired. 

In this case —on the phone or on the screen– the face of the business is locked in a negative expression.

You have the key. It’s in your head. It’s called consciousness. Open minds open doors! 

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Discombobulated? 

     When overwhelm strikes, like a tsunami, and you dive under the nearest pillow or cannonball into your hot tub from the second floor deck, or run screaming down the hall that little chickens are falling from the sky, you may be on the cusp of committing to some daily psychotherapy explorations, but you’re probably normal. You may simply have spent too many years locked in your office.

     We all feed ourselves to the clock and occasionally become time-stricken. Great, you say, to hear so many others share this misery, but, you say, whassup with how to get out of the clock before it chews off my feet –or head, depending on how close it was able to get to me when the hickory-dickory docked?

     The answer, my friend, is not blowin’ in the wind. It’s in chunking up your day so you’re never in any one place mentally or physically or emotionally long enough to get gobbled up by Old Man Time. In other words, start planning your daily schedule by “CHUNKS” instead of by hours.

Motivational guru Brian Tracy suggests we ask ourselves, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” as many times as we are able to think of it, day after day.

He says that asking ourselves this question consistently makes us more productive and guarantees success.

     If you’re finding yourself lost in your work for days on end or corkscrewing yourself into a bottleneck of problem-solving, you may want to re-visit some of what you might have forgotten about the art of delegation, and you may want to simply start taking more breaks.

     Some of the world’s most UN-productive people are those who dedicate their efforts to their work so single-mindedly that they eat lunch at their desks, cannot relax around family or friends, injure themselves anytime they try some kind of exercise that takes them away from their jobs, and have to have it be a real effort…to smile ;<})

     When you can chunk up your work schedule, your exercise, family time, your goals, decision making, even travel, you will be happier, healthier, and more productive more often. Remind yourself that your body is not a machine, that you ARE your body.

     I mean imagine that carnivorous clock noted earlier eats your body, now what? What’s left? Don’t give me “heart and soul” stuff here. Think it through. You run a business. You know how to think. Do you know how to chunk it up? Give it a shot. What have you got to lose? More valueless time?    

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!