Does Your Home Business Have Appeal?

Emo­tion Sells

Peo­ple make emo­tional deci­sions. Every deci­sion from whom we marry to the clothes we wear to the color liv­ing room couch we buy is made from an emo­tional base. Often we rely on a host of log­i­cal rea­sons to con­vince our­selves that we made the best deci­sion. The truth remains that the deci­sion itself is emo­tion­ally motivated.

Adver­tis­ers and mar­keters know this and play to it. Think about it. Food com­mer­cials show happy faces rather than a list of ingre­di­ents. Smil­ing Bob in the Cialis ads aims to make you smile about an embar­rass­ingly painful male-​​specific con­di­tion. Adver­tis­ers shell out tremen­dous sums of money for endorse­ments by ath­letes and per­form­ers. Peo­ple iden­tify pos­i­tive emo­tions with their favorite celebri­ties. By asso­ci­a­tion, pos­i­tive emo­tions trans­fer to the prod­ucts linked to those stars.

So, how can you, a home busi­ness, use emo­tion to sell your prod­ucts and ser­vices? Cre­ate pos­i­tive emo­tional asso­ci­a­tions between your cus­tomers and what you sell. Sounds sim­ple, right? In con­cept, yes. In actu­al­ity it takes some effort, thought, and plan­ning on your part.

1. Enthu­si­asm sells

Begin with your own enthu­si­asm. When you talk about your busi­ness, do you get excited? Do you find your friends smil­ing tol­er­antly as you pas­sion­ately rant about your lat­est busi­ness innovation?

Peo­ple respond to excite­ment. Way back in the 1700’s, evan­ge­list John Wes­ley said, “Catch on fire with enthu­si­asm and peo­ple will come for miles to watch you burn.” His words have been bas­tardized and pla­gia­rized by count­less over the cen­turies, per­haps pre­cisely because the idea is time­lessly true. Your enthu­si­asm will excite your cus­tomers. When you catch on fire, not only will your cus­tomers watch you burn, a fair num­ber will shop and buy while you sizzle.

You can’t afford to be shy about your­self or your prod­uct. This is true for any busi­ness but is espe­cially impor­tant to a home busi­ness. If you aren’t enthused, why should any­one else care?

One of the rea­sons you likely work from home is to free your­self from hav­ing to work for some­one else. Per­haps you are tak­ing advan­tage of an economy-​​related lay­off to pur­sue your dream. Or maybe you sim­ply pre­fer a home busi­ness. Stay in touch with your rea­sons — there’s where you will find excite­ment and enthusiasm.

2. It’s Not About You

Your cus­tomers will con­nect with you because of your pas­sion for what you do and have to offer. But they won’t buy because of that. They will buy because in some way THEIR pas­sion con­nects to your passion.

OK, so maybe pas­sion is a lit­tle strong for you. Let’s take a bit of the emo­tion out. Think about the last time you were in the mar­ket to buy a car. Did you go to the near­est car lot and buy the first car that matched your bud­get? Of course not. You — the cus­tomer — searched for the spe­cific car that matched your bud­get AND your desire, your need, your style, your power spec­i­fi­ca­tions. You bought the car that con­nected to your passion.

Emo­tion sells. If it didn’t, we’d all be dri­ving iden­ti­cal square white boxes instead of a diverse range of vehi­cles man­u­fac­tured in a mul­ti­tude of shapes, col­ors, and per­for­mance features.

3. Appeal Sells

Pre­tend for a moment that I am a poten­tial cus­tomer. I have one ques­tion for you…why should I buy from you?

Hint: the answer should come to you nearly instantly.

You are in busi­ness to make money. Never doubt that. But so is the next guy and the next and the next. For your prod­uct or ser­vice to appeal to your cus­tomers, you must com­mu­ni­cate clearly what sets your busi­ness apart. Many experts refer to this as your busi­ness USP (unique sell­ing point, unique sell­ing propo­si­tion, it is not as impor­tant to name it as it is to do it). If you did not have an imme­di­ate answer to my ques­tion, you are prob­a­bly not doing enough to make your busi­ness stand out from the crowd.

Your cus­tomers must find your USP appeal­ing. One tech­nique guar­an­teed engen­der cus­tomer appeal is for you to focus on the ben­e­fit doing busi­ness with you brings to your cus­tomer. It is never too early in a business’s devel­op­ment — or too late — to define and refine your busi­ness appeal factor.

Set your busi­ness on fire and keep the siz­zle burn­ing steady. Cre­ate pos­i­tive emo­tional asso­ci­a­tions between your cus­tomers and what you sell. Show your enthu­si­asm. Get excited about your busi­ness. Focus on the cus­tomer and on mak­ing your prod­ucts and ser­vices as ben­e­fi­cial and appeal­ing as possible.

How do you con­nect with your cus­tomers? Share your opin­ion and expe­ri­ence in the com­ments below!

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