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Business Is All About Who You Know, Right? Wrong!

It’s not about what you know or even about who you know. What matters most is this ...


“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” right? Wrong. It’s not about what you know or even about who you know. What matters most is who knows you and who likes you.

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“We do business with people we know, like and trust. If people don’t like you, they won’t buy from you. If you sell something someone else sells, why should a customer buy it from you rather than them?”

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We do business with people we know, like and trust. If people don’t like you, they won’t buy from you. If you sell something someone else sells, why should a customer buy it from you rather than them?

Increasing your likability is one of the best ways to separate yourself from the rest. Likability is accessible to everyone. Like anything else, it can be learned. If you offer a good product or service and people like you, your competition can’t touch you.

 

The Likeability Philosophy

Ask yourself this one question every day: “What have I done today to make my customers feel special?” It’s a simple yet profoundly powerful question. Every day, without fail, you should do one thing to make at least one client or customer feel special.

It can be as simple as sending a handwritten thank you letter, sending customers an unexpected sales incentive, or making a valuable introduction for someone in your network. If a day goes by and you didn’t make someone close to your business feel special, you did not have a complete day.

You’ll notice the extra mile of ‘likeability’ is a lot less crowded.

 

The Likability Action Step

Send “touching base” emails.

Sending mass emails is a great way to make an announcement, but a horrible way to build relationships. People are smart. Everyone knows how mail merge works. If your email looks personalized, but has an unsubscribe link or a mass email service’s logo at the bottom, people will view it as a poor attempt to connect.

Email filtering is also making it harder for mass emails to reach someone’s inbox. For example, Gmail usability has changed, offering separate tabs for primary, social and promotions email and mass emails hit the promotions tab. If you are not hitting their primary inbox, odds are your emails are not opened.

Instead, get in the habit of sending emails that come directly from you. This email should have no other goal, but to let them know you were thinking about them and wanted to see how they are doing. Sadly, we are not used to people reaching out just to touch base. Most people want something from us or are pulling for our attention to help them reach a goal. It’s rare to find someone who wants to reach out and simply make sure we are doing okay.

Sending an email like this to customers or your network increases your likability because it shows you care. If you do this only once a day during your work week, you’d have 260 people who potentially like you more by the end of a year.

And please, do not end the touch base email with, “If you ever need more widgets, give me a call” or anything similar. They already know what you do and what you offer. At the very least, what you do is probably in your email signature.

Also, none of this will work if you don’t genuinely care. People can spot a fake. Nothing can help you succeed if you don’t actually care. If that’s the case, please quit and do something else.

Now apply what you just read. Break the pattern of someone’s monotonous day and make them feel special. What’s not to like about making someone’s day brighter while building your business?

 

This article has been edited and condensed.

Arel Moodie is a best-selling author, authority on likability, professional speaker and the host of The Art of Likability, a top business and career podcast on iTunes. Connect with @arelmoodie on Twitter.

 

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