Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced. Feelings and emotion do have a critical role in your marketing messages, don’t they? And body language signs will contribute significantly to those feelings and emotion.
Check out our thoughts on customer focus.
What does your body language say? Does it say you’re confident, smart, and enthusiastic—or quiet or insecure?
Related post: Customer Loyalty …10 Ways to Gain, Build, and Retain It
Here is an interesting fact to keep in mind. Only a small percentage of communication involves actual words: 7%, to be exact. In fact, 55% of communication is visual (body language, eye contact) and 38% is vocal (pitch, speed, volume, the tone of voice). The world’s best business communicators have strong body language: a commanding presence that reflects confidence, competence, and charisma.
So here are 10 ways you can augment your messages with strong body language communication:
Body language signs … draw attention
Use visual descriptions as examples to help people understand your key points. It will help them be remembered better.
Employ eye to eye contact.
Eye to eye
Always, always look people directly in the eye. For large groups select several people in the audience to look at. Engage them with your eyes.
Use facial expressions explicitly
Reflect passion and generate empathy with the listener by using soft, gentle, and aware facial expressions. As much as possible avoid negative facial expressions, such as frowns or raised eyebrows. What is or isn’t negative is dependent on the context, including cultural context, so be guided by your situation.
Body language signs of lying … a pause
If you have been asked a hard question or you want a different way to draw attention, simply pause. Pay attention to your breathing … slow breaths.
Be natural
Even if you were to succeed in controlling your body language “by the book,” you would look fake. While there are certain aspects of body language that can be improved upon to create a more effective message, you still need to act like yourself and not be robotic.
Body language signs … vary your gestures
Avoid being stiff and unemotional. Vary your gestures to remain personal and real.
Direct gestures toward the audience.
Direct gestures let you more clearly indicate a favorable outcome for the listener. Direct the most negative gestures away from yourself and the listener. Clearly, indicate that you wish that no obstacle stands in the way of your intended message.
Get buy-in
Get your audience agreeing with you by using positive gestures like nodding in agreement, smiling, and using open gestures.
Body language signs of lying … a smile
A basic must do. Puts your audience at ease.
Related post: Client Engagement … 4 Actions To Improve Engagement
Encourage participation
Use open gestures and walk around and towards the group naturally.
So do are you sending the unspoken messages that you are intending to send? It does make a difference. No one is born with this skill … it takes lots of focused practice. Dive in today and notice your body language communication improvements.
Remember this simple fact. The body language communication influence you have on others is usually way beyond what you imagined it to be. Let it be your difference maker.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Complaint Management … Tips for Small Business Success
Complaint Handling … 14 Effective Business Relationship Recommendations
Influence Consumer Behavior by These 9 Personalization Strategies
Employee Engagement Activities …13 Mistakes that Destroy Engagement
Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.