This week I want to chat about taking values offline and into reality. As always, I need you to think about your personal, business, & client values. Let me start with a story to help set the scene and hopefully make it a little clearer.
A couple of times a week, I drive through a school crossing. There’s no ‘guard’ on the crossing, just flashing lights before & after school. When the lights are flashing, you have to drop your speed. (Pretty normal here where I live) Unfortunately, this story is also pretty normal. I’d just dropped my kids at school, I approach the crossing, drop my speed only to have an electrician continue through the crossing at normal speed. Ok, so there was no one on the crossing, there rarely is, but that’s not the point. You see, as a Mum, I value the safety of children. It’s one of my personal values. And it doesn’t have to be just mine, it’s enough for me to think ‘what if it was my child crossing’. So, I made a mental note never to use that electrician and continued on my way.
Watch my Facebook Live about this:
Hang on, what? Yup, I will never use them because they don’t match my values. If they can’t value lives enough to slow down for 100 metres or so, then I’m not interested in giving them my money. And that business will never know that.
So it got me thinking, how often do we consider and apply our values and our clients’ values offline?
When I was working in the Australian Government these things were drummed into us. We were not allowed to take gifts, we were not
allowed to drink alcohol when representing the government, etc etc. These were some of the things put in place so that we were demonstrating the agency’s values to the public. Don’t get me wrong, it was hard and draining always being ‘on’. The thing is, it worked. It wasn’t just face to face either, it also extended to any correspondence we had. In fact, one of my former bosses used to say, ‘Don’t say anything you don’t want on the front page of the local paper’. It was true. And yes, I had journalists ring snooping for information.
So what’s my point? When you’re out representing your business, you’re on. There’s no down time. And the thing is, you also have to be mindful of who’s watching. Did you read my article on the number of ‘touches’ or interactions we need to have to convert someone over into a paying client. It’s whenever they see or hear your business name, & that could be anywhere. So you want to make sure that it’s a good thought they associate with your business.
The thing about these touches is that it takes one to turn a potential client off and 7-12 to convert them over. The other issue is that the thing determining if the touch is for or against you is if your behaviour aligns with their
values. If it goes against your values then you’re working uphill to recover them, that’s if you ever find out!
So, please be mindful of what you do and ensure that when you recruit, that you recruit people whose values align with those of the company and the company’s values can show clear links with your ideal client. In the end, you don’t always know where your next client is coming from and you don’t want to put them off before you even have a chance to show them how wonderful you are.