Why appearance and body language is crucial for your success in professional life

Body language and appearance falls under the non-verbal communication category. The power of body language is often under estimated. The fact is that no matter how wisely you choose your words, if your appearance or body language is not supporting the message you are trying to convey, it’s not going to work. Body language is much more than making eye contact, firm handshake or continuously smiling (smiling is good but having a smile on your face all the time can make you look quite sheepish).

Following are some points that you must remember and apply in your business meetings and communications.

Getting the aid of appearance:

When we talk of appearance, it includes both.

i)          Your appearance in oral communication

ii)         The appearance of your message in written communication

Good brains are undoubtedly more important, but good looks do not go in vain either. In fact, they become essential if meeting with clients or making sales is included in your job description. Spend some of your earnings on buying good professional dresses, shoes, jewelry or perfume. As far as written communication is concerned, use good quality papers, envelopes, and most importantly a neat organized message. Typos or grammatical mistakes will also ruin the appearance of your message.

Body Language:

Your body posture, gestures, expressions, hand movements or your voice tone, each of them contributes in making your communication effective or ineffective. The sooner you realize it, the better your chances to improve. Imagine yourself in different professional scenarios and visualize your body language. Were you too aggressive or dominant when communicating with your subordinates? Did you have that closed body posture during the last business meeting you had? Do you think your interviewee noticed that you were nervous, even when all of your answers were reasonably good? Body language can convey some pretty useful messages even before you have uttered a single word.

Improving your body language:

Improving your body language needs practice and a lot of that. It’s not easy to change your gestures, movements or posture that you have been carrying since your childhood, but it’s not impossible at all. Start from your facial expressions and voice. Make eye contacts when necessary; try not to reveal the negative emotions during business meetings from your face e.g. boredom, anger or tiredness. Record your voice and then listen to it. This practice will give you an idea on how understandable your oral communication is. Avoid making gestures as much as you can, especially if you are meeting some foreigners. Don’t make unnecessary movements while talking; it will only distract your audience. You can even control your nervousness by just acting more confident. Ask your friends or family members to comment on your body language and if they are kind enough to point out some shortcomings, try to improve on them.

What does your brand name promise to your customers?

Do your brand promises something to your customers? Maybe some uncompromised quality, lowest prices, most innovative designs, unparalleled durability, or matchless customer support service? Theoretically, a brand promise is a statement that the company makes to its customers. Ideally, an established brand is in itself a promise. It’s not just a name, not merely an idea and most certainly not limited to a logo. Brand name is an image, trust and a set of expectations all associated with the brand. Till now only large companies have successfully used the power of brand promise, however, there is no reason why some small businesses cannot reap the benefits of branding in their respective niche.

Planning a brand promise:

Planning a brand promise goes beyond thinking of some fascinating tag line with a smart play on words. Planning your product or services as a brand starts from the very early stage of your business planning. You need to build your business around your brand promise. Your budget, advertising, sales, each and everything should be according to your brand promise. Think from the customer’s perspective, what unique offer do you have? Why would some customer want to buy from you repeatedly? The promise must be distinctive, apart from being deliverable.

Delivering what you promised:

Promises are meant to be broken? Don’t even think of this phrase when talking about brand promise. A brand that fails to deliver on its promises is a brand lost forever. It’s not about delivering once; it’s about delivering again and again. It’s about delivering each and every time a customer buys from you. That’s how you achieve customer loyalty. You cannot start with promising for higher quality and after realizing that you are unable to deliver, change it to lowest prices.

Putting it across your employees:

Remembering what you have promised to deliver is easy if you are a sole proprietor. The things may get a little difficult if you are running or managing a large group of employees. Many times the employees have no idea (strange but true) of what their business promises to its customers. You need to communicate, train and motivate them to deliver the same.    

If you are a small business, start from a single promise (e.g. quality, price or design, one at a time and not all). If needed, you can add more in future. Try to appeal a specific set of customers in your initial brand promise. Instead of changing your brand promise to attract new customers at expense of disturbing your old customers, try coming up with a new product or a new brand.