According to Hollywood and certain so-called industry gurus, business success is mainly achieved through ruthlessness and focusing solely on oneself. But is this true?
According to a growing number of experts and thought leaders, the answer’s a resounding N-O.
And that’s not just because practising kindness makes your life better, but because the evidence reveals that courtesy and compassion can be just as beneficial to profitability.
Granted, being kind doesn’t automatically guarantee you’ll be making money.
However, as more and more folks — from leading entrepreneurs to individual marketing reps — attest, even a kindly smile can bring tremendous rewards.
Still unsure how kindness can impact your business? Here’re a few ways how:
Ensures customer loyalty
At its core, direct selling is about the relationship between you and your customers.
Yet, we’re often far too focused on short-term gains and closing deals that we forget to listen to our clients, hurting the entire organisation in the process.
Kindness in the context of customer relationships involves being attuned to everyone’s feelings and appreciating that everyone has different wants and needs.
Perhaps your existing customer needs a little more time to decide? Maybe they aren’t at the right place in their lives right now and or there are other issues weighing on their mind. Perhaps a potential customer has different expectations.
The trick to cultivating a long-lasting relationship and a positive sales experience is to ensure you’re always listening and being compassionate and empathetic to what clients are saying.
In short, let them know you view them as a person and not just a sales receipt.
Facilitates learning through failure
Failure in sales and marketing is never the end of the road. Instead, it’s often a stepping stone to glory and success.
Yet, how do those who’ve stumbled pick themselves up if they’re met with hostility and derision by leaders and peers?
The lesson for direct sellers and especially those of us who’re leaders and managers, thus, is to always think of failure positively.
True, it’s not easy to accept disappointment, particularly when it affects profitability. But showing kindness to team members who’ve made a mistake isn’t the same as rewarding error. It’s allowing them the space to learn from their blunders and do better.
Always remember that failure is life and business’ greatest teacher.
Increases productivity and performance
Kind leaders value team members and clients, regardless of their backgrounds. And that key behaviour has been found to stimulate growth.
One report even suggests that productivity and performance can rise to as much as 80% when team members feel recognised and accepted.
Of course, fostering inclusion and diversity across demographics and protecting against rifts can be challenging. Still, the facts show that diversity does drive profits and spur innovation.
An added bonus is a positive workspace, and good feels all around!
Inspires positive leadership behaviour
Kindness begets kindness, and kind leaders do just as much to empower and inspire positive behaviour.
Do you remember how you were influenced to foster certain practices by your mentors and leaders?
According to experts, leading with warmth and grace is bound to motivate your downlines and peers to behave in a similarly compassionate manner.
That can only mean good things for your network and the organisation as a whole.
Builds trust and likeability
Let’s face it: would you rather work – or even be friends with – a kind or unkind person? Many of the greatest and most loved people in history had incredibly kind natures or performed significant acts of kindness.
On a smaller scale, genuine kindness in life and in work will certainly win you friends and admirers, but more importantly will win you the trust that will make people want to support you and see you become a success.
The most beautiful part of this is that it will build a new cycle of virtue, with kindness feeding on itself and begetting even more kindness.
If you need proof, you don’t need to look much further than our work with RYTHM Foundation to see how kindness has impacted every aspect of business at QNET.
It shows that when you resolve to make compassion, love and kindness part of your business culture, it will shine through everything you do.
And before you know it, your network, organisation and brand will be associated with positivity.
This is a great experience for me to build my business and life with kindness.
Hello good day, am so excited to be among the settlers once I really want to thank god for his love and grace towards my life amen …?