What is the personality of your business? When you think about your business, what personality traits would you ascribe (or have you ascribed) to the business? Even more important, how would your customers describe the personality of your business?
What is it that you want them to think and feel as they leave?
Understanding your business’s personality or what you want your company’s personality to be makes it easier to get there.
Define the Characteristics
Create a detailed definition of the personality, listing the aspects that would define the character, as it would come across to your visitors and customers. List the traits that would make up your company’s identity, those than would make it easy for visitors and customers to remember you and your products.
Get Buy In
All management and employees should be involved in the process of suggesting traits and qualities that the business should or does embody, whether the employees work directly with the public or not. The more people are involved with a project the more they will work to ensure that their words and actions meet the personality everyone has agreed on.
Once everyone has internalized the vision of the business personality, it will affect them and their work in positive ways. For example if you deem that your business is helpful, friendly, professional and knowledgeable, everyone will, in time, start to incorporate these traits into their daily dealings with vendors, customers, and each other, especially if you remind everyone regularly.
Once you have written your personality statement, it should be a part of your employee handbook, and employees, especially those who work with visitors and customers, should talk about it regularly in monthly or weekly meetings.
The business personality statement may also be used when assessing job applicants. Using it as a benchmark to match the personality of the applicant to the personality of the business.
This may be a project for a slower time of the year, so start thinking about it and encourage your employees thinking about it to.
A tip of the glass from me to you
E column
by Elizabeth “E” Slater, In Short Direct Marketing
A recognized expert in the fields of direct marketing and sales in the wine marketplace. Slater has taught more wineries and winery associations how to create and improve the effectiveness of their direct marketing programs and to make the most of each customer’s potential than anyone in the wine industry today.
