Can Laughter Increase Sales?
Yesterday I made an interesting connection between laughter and better interactions with customers, clients, or staff.
Follow my logic here:
- Laughter reduces stress – according to helpguide.org: “Laughter relaxes the whole body. A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.” You can find any number of resources that will say the same thing, and I am sure we have all experienced a time when a good laugh has helped us to relax and de-stress.
- Reduced stress means better relationships – I’m sure again, that we have all had some experience of being around someone who is stressed and feeling uncomfortable with the “tension” in the room. When you reduce yours tress level and are more relaxed people feel that too. Which would you rather be around?
- Better relationships means better (and more productive) interactions – When you come across in a much more friendly and relaxed manner you are more approachable and interacting with others on more of a “social” level.
- All things being equal people want to do business with their friends, and all things not being equal people still want to do business with their friends – I can’t remember where I heard this exactly, but it always rings true. The more you are “like” a friend when doing business the more people are going to want to do business with and for you.
Now some employers will say that a manager or executive should not be friends with the staff. To that I say you are stuck in the 19th century style of doing business where intimidation and fear were the ways of getting employees in line. Get into the 21st century.
These days you can actually hire people who WANT to do the job, and if you want to keep these people, well you’ll catch more flys with honey than with vinegar. I’m not saying you need to be best mates with every employee, I am saying that having a “friendly” attitude and demeanor when dealing with them is going to help them relate to you and the company in a more favourable way, which will probably translate into better productivity and higher employee retention.
Look at Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes of Food Network). Here is a guy who hired all of his friends to come work for him, and they get some absolutely amazing things done. Why? Because they are much more invested in the company and the boss and WANT to produce good product because of that.
I think it is fairly obvious why being more “friendly” would be good in interactions with customers and clients, so I won’t go into that too in depth.
So all of you salesmen, customer service people, managers, teachers and so on, remember: a little laughter goes a long way to having better interactions with those you are working with.