Do You Inspire?

In business, as in life, communication is key. You want to be understood. In your business you NEED to be understood. You need prospects, customers, partners, your people if you have them and stakeholders to ‘get’ what you’re saying.

But is ‘getting it’ enough? How much more powerful would your message be if you were able to create an emotional response – if you were able to inspire?

If you can inspire your audience you can establish a far stronger connection than if you simply got them to understand. And for your business, that can make the difference between making a sale or not.

What Inspires You?

What has inspired you in the past? A quote, a speech, a passage in a book, a piece of music, a picture, a conversation or a fact. Think about how you felt and how that inspirational something has stuck with you.

That is how you want to inspire others.

Like most, my inspiration comes from many sources including books and conversations. And if you’ve read my past posts you may know that I’m a bit of a science geek and for me science can be very inspiring.

So my challenge now is to try and inspire you – to stir you in some way with a scientific fact. OK, here goes…

A theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss described something that inspires him and which subsequently inspired me.

Recently, I related what Krauss had said during some leadership training sessions I was giving. I was talking about the importance of having a learning attitude – to want to learn new things, to be comfortable knowing that you don’t know everything and to have the confidence to seek the help of others.

I asked people to tell the rest of us an interesting fact. Inevitably I was asked to do the same and I described this scientific fact that Lawrence Krauss had described.

The fact he stated and then explained is that we are all made from stars. What a wonderful fact.

At the time of the Big Bang there were no heavy elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and iron – “all the things that matter for evolution – they were formed in the nuclear furnaces of stars and the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode”. Our left hand could be made from the atoms of one dead star and our right hand from another. We exist because stars died.

Much to my surprise a woman exclaimed how beautiful that was and wiped away a tear. She was clearly inspired and will never forget that fact.

Do You Inspire Others?

In business you want to inspire others to take action – especially your prospects and customers to buy your products or services.

Can you establish an emotional connection between your prospects and what you offer?

Think about your marketing messages and your discussions with prospects. Do you describe what you do or do you paint a picture of the difference you make and inspire them enough to take action?

Do you simply help your prospects ‘get it’ or do you inspire them enough to really want it?

Start Here

To help you create inspirational marketing messages and conversations about your business ask why your business exists. What is the purpose of your business?

Write it down. Does it inspire? If it doesn’t then keep working on it until it does. This should give you the foundation and inspiration for your marketing messages because it should be about the difference you make to your customers or clients.

Next, create a compelling vision for your business. Where do you want to get it? This will help inspire you and guide you. And finally, your mission- how will you achieve your vision and realise its purpose? This will keep you focused on what you should be doing and who you’re doing this for.

If you need some help with this – remember your learning attitude – I’ve written some guidance on how to write these compelling ‘core statements’ in an article that resides in my library of free resource. Click the link and gain access to this article and tons of other material that can help and maybe even inspire you.

Photo Credit: Dave Dugdale @ Flickr