Soul Business blog 9: Define your indefinable qualities

21 Nov Soul Business blog 9: Define your indefinable qualities

Soul Business is an ethos to inspire and enable people, businesses and organisations to communicate better by connecting deeper.

I’m going to ask the seemingly impossible – I want you to define the indefinable.

I want you to focus on your best-ever client. Now imagine the difference it could make to your business if you could replicate them x 10.

Not only would it make a huge financial difference (I bet your best clients are also prompt payers) but it will also provide a massive morale boost.

Aren’t your best contacts just a joy to work with? Isn’t meeting them always uplifting? I bet you don’t mind going the extra mile for them? And I suspect they will readily do the same for you too?

Wouldn’t life be great if most people you work with were like that? Well, it can be – if you can identify the indefinable characteristics that drive our most valuable relationships.

If you can pinpoint how and why you just sometimes seem to click with certain people and can focus on connecting at that deeper soul business level then you’re well on your way to success.

You need to focus – in fact, write a list if you feel it will help – on the characteristics you like about them. Then write a separate list of the features they seem to value in you. Now add a third list of the common ground you seem to share.

Where are the cross overs? What do you feel are the common attributes that count? How can you use these to your advantage in your marketing and your wider communications?

Trouble is, most of forget how we develop our relationships so we spend a disproportionate amount of time chasing elusive customers via long distance marketing techniques like social media, newsletters, cold calling and vague emailing.

Yet we all know qualified referrals and leads are better – so we just need to focus on winning more of our best type of clients.

And the values that bind us are far from indefinable.

Characteristics like respect and integrity are important. We don’t refer people we casually or merely like, we refer people we can trust.

Drill down deeper and being more specific, we can easily identify other positive characteristics that count – reliability, honesty, punctuality, creativity, politeness, endeavour, kindness, humility, patience and so on.

Identifying these features is one thing, promoting and communicating them is quite another. They need to be developed and to run as a strong core through the way we do business.

Defining your indefinable qualities is a unique way to revolutionise the way you communicate.

It means you don’t have to try to win as many new customers or suppliers (or whatever the relationship needs to be) as you may think. You just need to adapt a sharper focus to the ones you truly want.

As one of my colleagues once said: “You don’t need to kiss as many frogs to find your true prince”.

Wouldn’t that save time and work out better for all of us?

So what are you waiting for? Start to define your own indefinable qualities – and put them into action.

Chris Green is an award-winning author and broadcaster – and managing partner of Chris Green Media – which inspires organisations to communicate better by connecting deeper.