How to Show the Human Side of Your Brand

How building relationships save future businesses (part 2)

In How to Grow Brands we can Trust, we shared our learnings on why building trust has become more relevant in business today. To simplify the topics of building your business presence and listening to your customers I promised to share a part two of our article. So here it goes. Tap into three more tips to help you build the business and customer relationships suitable for your company.  

But first, let’s do a short reflection

In our previous article we listed the following important steps to follow for building trust:

  1. Recognize the difference that you make
  2. Continue to build a strong offline presence
  3. Dare to ask questions
  4. Truly listen to your clients

And now you can insert the drumroll for the rest.

5. Be Devoted to Making Meaningful Connections

Making connections intentional is key in any business. I learned about the details of this concept working for this major company I referred to in our previous article. At this company we eventually succeeded in being part of the average household within a 3-year period. Part of that was showing a ‘human side’ of our personalities in every interaction possible.

A human side

One of the first ways we showed our human side was by showing honesty when at fault instead of communicating our company pride. Another way was making meaningful connects interacting through telephone by finding points of common interest to talk about. Doing that with no ‘fakeness’ added to our goal to make every contact with clients a memorable one.

Admit it

If you love cats and your client loves them too, it could bring an opportunity for a pleasant small talk. Admit it, cats have captured your heart. Say it out loud and get back to business. Also, I’ve learned not to shut out people that don’t have any relations to my work. I simply communicate where I’m strategically going for now and hope to meet them once our paths cross for business.

I won’t lie, my personality easily interacts with people. I have acquired leads from simply talking to people I had no intentions of talking about my business to. Showing the human side of my personality allowed clients to trust my service over someone else’s.

6. Handle the Small Talk “I’m Glad we’ve Talked”

I actually enjoy a small talk. Small talk is the informal conversation to cover interest, your last-weekend experience and the how-is-your-family-doing question (dependent on what side of the world you are doing business). Okay, I’m a talk show host, so ‘small talking’ comes naturally.

Small talks make room for leads. If you are a service focused company, you might find out that small talk brings about new kind of problems that you can end up creating solutions for.

Small scenario

During the pandemic, a previous business partner called, and we talked about the last book he had been reading. He shared that he started reading a particular book cause his sister was yet to publish hers and she had some challenges building a buzz around the release and making her expertise visible.

One tip

I shared one tip about scheduling a release and building a following and how there are many organic ways to promote your expertise. He ended up linking me with her and we designed her roadmap to boost her brand, her expertise and make her company visible for new business. He even said, “this was a good talk. I’m glad we’ve talked”.

7. Show your Face and be Honest

Concluding on the learnings I have applied in these last 5 years of business operations. I know this: a personal connection overpowers a general reference. I say this, cause working in sales helped me to understand the impact of someone knowing your name or face when doing business.

We’re more likely to invest when we know who we are working with. Even in the time of handling complaints, you can use the personal connection to your advantage and simply keep it real.

This ‘relationship thing’ is not everybody’s cup-of-tea

I’ve come to find out that relationship management doesn’t suit everybody’s ambition or personality. I’ve worked with people who simply don’t have the patience for all of this. So, they hire someone who can.

If these pointers have given you a bad taste in your mouth, I would recommend finding someone who can pleasantly apply this for your sales, marketing and account management. Trust me, you will reap benefits.

Share your voice

I’m curious to know your experiences with building trust, communicating your brand values during customer interactions. Feel free to sent an email to online@byaustin.com.

Have a productive week.