Once on a rainy and muddy day when I was a child, my mother spoke crossly to my father when he tracked mud into the house just after she had washed the floor.
Shortly afterwards, a local dry cleaner and family friend named Paddy stopped by to deliver some dry cleaning. Paddy apologized for his muddy boots and said he didn’t want to step into the house.
“No, no, don’t worry about it,” said my mom. “It’s pouring outside. Come in, come in. It’s easy to wipe up the floor.”
After Paddy left, my dad commented on the difference in how my mom handled the two situations.
“Do you love me?” he asked my mom.
“Yes of course,” my mom answered.
“Do you love Paddy?”
“No,” my mom answered, somewhat offended.
“Well, stop loving me! Treat me like you treat the dry cleaning delivery man!”
They both started to laugh and the story became a family joke, but there’s an important question at the core of it. How do we express love to the people we care about?
Five love languages
A while ago I picked up The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman.
The basic premise is that we each have a preferred way of expressing love, and a preferred way of having love expressed to us. Sometimes people who love each other don’t recognize they ways they express love to each other because they are speaking different “languages.”
I scanned the book and decided to buy it because it had a quiz in it. I thought it would be fun for my husband and I to compare what the quiz suggested about our “love languages.”
My husband humored me by doing the quiz, and we enjoyed learning more about each other’s styles of expressing and receiving love. Fortunately, our styles are complementary. But we have both been in previous relationships where the styles were not compatible. We can definitely tell the difference!
What’s your style?
Chapman says there are five “love languages,” or ways of expressing and receiving love.
· Words of affirmation – saying kind and affirming things to one another; expressing appreciation; being a cheerleader;
· Acts of service – doing kind and thoughtful things to make the other person’s life easier, or so the person feels pampered and appreciated;
· Quality time together – creating time and space to pay attention to one another;
· Physical touch – this includes but is not limited to sex; hugs, gentle touches, reassuring touches, holding hands also express love;
· Gifts – tiny gifts or expensive gifts, we vary in how important gifts are to us, and the kind of gifts that best express love to us.
Different sending and receiving “love languages”
We do not necessarily send and receive messages of love in the same style. For example, I often say affirming things without even thinking about it. Speaking words of love comes naturally to me. I am especially moved when someone does an act of kindness for me. That makes me feel loved. So “words of affirmation” is my natural “love language” for expressing love, and “acts of service” is a “love language” I can receive and understand most easily.
My least likely expression of love is to send a gift, and though I appreciate receiving gifts, they are not all that important to me as a way to receive love. On the other hand, a famous actress was once quoted as saying to a man who brought her a single exquisite rose, “That’s nice, but where are the diamonds?”
What is your most natural way to express love? And what is your favorite way to receive expressions of love?
And the connection to entrepreneurs is…
As soul-driven conscious entrepreneurs, we want the best for our clients and customers – which is a form of love. We each have natural ways of expressing that love. However, our natural ways of expressing it may not include all five “love languages.”
Our clients and customers almost certainly include people who receive expressions of love in all five “languages.” Are we expressing our care for them in all five ways?
What words of affirmation, what acts of service, what quality time, what “touch” (e.g., reaching out) and what gifts can we use so that our clients and customers really “get” that we care for them, and really “receive” that feeling of love and support?
Your Coaching Challenge
1. In the next week, write yourself a chart with five sub-headings, one for each phase of the marketing process:
a. “Lead” activities – getting attention, attracting interest
b. “Prospect” activities – gaining trust; helping people to know like and trust you
c. “Customer” activities – at the time your clients and customers make their first purchase
d. “On-going client” activities – follow-up to the first purchase; follow up to subsequent purchases
e. “Champion” activities – when clients and customers rave about you and refer other people to you
2. Under each phase, list the five “love languages”
a. Words of affirmation
b. Acts of service
c. Quality time
d. Touch
e. Gifts
List all the ways you now use some form of this “love language” to express your care for the person at this phase of the marketing process.
If you notice that some “love languages” are missing from some phases, think how you can add them.
3. Choose one area to strengthen in the next week. And over the next weeks, add one thing each week until all the “missing love languages” are present at every phase of your marketing.
4. As you develop and launch new products and services, continue to use this “love language checklist” to make sure your leads, prospects, first-time customers, ongoing clients and champions really “get” how much you want the best for them.
Going Global
1. Use words of affirmation to write a love letter to the earth.
(You can post your letter at www.unitedworldhealing.org, the website of an organization that gathers together millions of people in group visualizations to manifest a world that protects, respects and reveres humankind, animal kind and the environment.)
2. Think of ways you can also use acts of service, quality time, touch and gifts as ways to express love for the earth.
3. Each day, take time for one action that expresses your love and appreciate for the earth.
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