How to Instantly Attract Potential Customers

Scenario: "Dude, to make them instantly like our company, we just gotta tell them we have the best customer service in town. And, we're nice. Nice people rule! Yay!" Dude, there's a much better way. Try answering this sucka: How do you make Charlie -- who's never heard about your business, never met anyone in your business, never read anything about your business -- instantly like your business? Some answers:

• a) Impossible.
• b) Say you care about customer service!
• c) Make your company look sexy.

Let's pick those suckas above apart:

1. a: In business -- and in your fabulous life: Nothing's impossible.
2. b: Yeah, but a million other companies rave about their customer service. To Charlie, you're just another one of those "companies that say they have good service, but oh-no-they-freakin'-don't!"
3. c: Ding! Ding! Ding! You're correct. Carne asada tacos on us.

Why Sexifying Your Business Attracts People

Before we confuse you -- and before you send us hate mail -- let's define what "sexy" means: "Sexifying your business" means creating an image for your business that visually attracts your target customers. "Fo' sho?" Oh, you betcha.

First, think of your business as a person.

It has values. It has a personality. It has a manifesto.

• It loves: __________________.
• It dislikes: __________________.

It has heartaches, and it has triumphs. When customers interact with your business, it's like they're interacting with a pseudo-person. For instance:

• Apple: rebellious designer dude
• Starbucks: cultured, environmentally-conscious dude
• Nordstrom's: chic fashionista

Like looking at somebody's appearance, your business's corporate image becomes what everyone first notices.

Why Sexify Your Business

Without interacting with your business in any way, people will already have assigned associations to your business. Think of the usual scenario when meeting someone attractive:

1. Jane: Oh fo' sheezy. Kathy, look at that freakin' oh-mi-gosh hot guy!
2. Kathy: Oh-mother-gosh. Oh-mother-gosh.
3. Jane: He's coming toward our table. Ahhhh!
4. Hot Guy Hugo: Hey. See ya around.
5. Kathy: My heart just melted.
6. Jane: Ahhhh! I bet he's super nice, and ambitious, and loves his parents, and cares for third -world children. He'd risk his life to save a dolphin.

It's the classic halo effect: assigning freakishly positive attributes after judging one independent quality. (And folks, it works vice-versa.) When you see someone/something attractive, your subconscious mind starts associating that positive feeling with other positive-but-totally-independent feelings. According to researchers Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo in Robert Cialdini's Influence: "We automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence. We make these judgements without being aware that physical attractiveness plays a role in the process" Some examples for ya:

• "In one study, good grooming of applicants in a simulated employment interview accounted for more favorable hiring decisions than did job qualifications."
• "A study of the 1874 Canadian federal elections found that attractive candidates received more than two and a half times as many votes as unattractive clients."
• In another study, researchers found that "the handsome men had received significantly lighter sentences."
• And another: "A defendant who was better looking than his victim was assessed an average amount of $5,623; but when the victim was more attractive of the two, the average compensation was $10,051."
• And finally, Cialdini concludes: "[The good-looking] are better liked, more persuasive, more frequently helped, and seen as possessing more desirable personality traits and greater intellectual capacities."

So without any interaction whatsoever to your business: if people are freakishly attracted to your corporate image, they will form freakishly positive associations to your business.

To Get Your Badass Started...

Some ways to make it the most beautiful sucka on the block:

• Clean your floors, your desk, your face.
• Clean up your corporate identity (logo, business cards, letterheads, etc.)
• Have your front-line workers wear fashionable clothes that attract your target market.
• When you're meeting customers, put that big smile of yours on your face,
• Your ideas: ____________________________________.

So when you're out running your fabulous business, remember.

To attract potential customers, sexify your business.

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