Cultivate an emotional connection to your customers

- Do you remember the P&G ad about the moms that aired during the Olympics or that Folgers commercial where they snuck the Christmas tree into the little old ladies house next door? They're great ads and most great ads have one thing in common. They create an emotional connection. Sure, they might tell you how their coffee tastes better or just how much better their detergent is. But rather than throw a million statistics at you or give you some vague corporate speak, they show you one example of a real person and they make a specific connection. Because as humans, we relate more to the specific than we do the abstract. It's science. When we're focused on one thing, like a specific person and their situation, we use more of our senses. We remember how they looked, how they sounded, where they were and what they were doing. We pick up on things like eye contact and facial expressions, tone of voice and emotions. This combination of senses gives us vivid memories that stick with us for a long time. But unfortunately, a lot of companies talk about their customers in abstract ways. Instead of thinking about one mom who needs to get her kid to practice on time, we talk about the 2.5 million women between the ages of 30 and 45 that are the purchasing decision maker in their household. No emotional connection and much less memorable. To develop a mindset of service, you'll need to get clear about the specific impact you're having on real customers. That's where customer personas can help. If you're customer facing, pick a few of your favorite customers, or the ones you've impacted the most, and write two sentences about how you help them. If you're not customer facing, talk to someone in sales or customer service about real customers. Remember, you want to be detailed here. Include their name, what business they work in and their pain points and how your company helped resolve that pain. One of our clients in the software business puts up posters about actual customers. They include photos and a description of their challenges and the solutions they provided. Another one of our clients use the information to create fictitious but still realistic customer personas that they use in meetings. And they routinely ask, how would this impact Mary? Or is this a good idea for a Bill? You can use these personas, real or made up, to motivate yourself and those around you. Talking about specific people and what they need, instead of those abstract customer bases, gives our mind something to latch onto and it unifies you as a team.