Smile Philosophy

Smile! In business it’s always important to be approachable and have a warm and caring presence towards others. Smiling is super important in sales. There’s a story about an apple cart salesman (back in the day of castles, this dude sold apples) who was across from another salesman and couldn’t understand why he could never sell as many apples.

The bitter apple salesman’s apples were actually better and cheaper but everyone bought their apples from the vendor across the way who was always smiling when this vender was always scowling. One day the frustrated apple salesman asked a wise woman why he wasn’t successful like the other apple cart vendor; she said it’s because you don’t look friendly, you don’t smile enough.

He started smiling and engaging everyone who walked by the next day and sales boomed. He started giving away apples to little kids and that made their moms’ happy who then bought a bunch more apples and his business was better than ever. It’s a great lesson on why it’s important to always have a smile in business.

I believe in this philosophy and have taken it to a more technical digital front lately. I’ve started to use the smiley face (: in business conversations. Conversations that in the past I wouldn’t have thought it would have been professional to use an emoji smiley face.

I’m sure some old school people will still think it’s not professional, but I really don’t care. I think it’s all about getting the message across and we are starting to get comfortable with emojis in our lives nowadays, so I think everyone’s okay with it.

What it does is soften any requests or statement. For example, if I need to address something that a customer needs to do still it’s so much better to request that with a smile (:

It’s hard to understand where people are coming from (context) in text sometimes, like emails or text messages and so a smile (: helps us to contextualize that we are being nice and anything that we’re saying is friendly and that we only want something that’s in the best interest of the person we’re asking it of.

It may seem like such a small nuance, but to me it really does matter in interpersonal relationships to be able to have these little extra touches that are going to make all the difference. Character is developed in the smallest little details.

Have you thought about using emojis in your business conversations? Let me know in the comments below if you’re using them and how successful it has been. I’m also curious to see if anyone is using any other emojis besides smiley (: that have been successful with their clients?

Have a great day! Thanks for reading (: