What Smart Brands Know About Capturing Heartshare

First, you wanted to grow marketshare.
Then, you wanted to expand mindshare.
Now, you need to capture something bigger.

After all, humans are emotional creatures.

Not integers. Not categories. Not demographics. People.

And if you want to reach the ones who matter most, you need to capture heartshare.

Now, while I’m not claiming squatter’s rights on this particular term, I am going to officially pen the definition of it:

Heartshare is the level of emotional responsiveness your work commands.

And when you capture it: Engagement ensues, followership grows and loyalty skyrockets.

Here’s how to make it work for your message, your brand and your organization:1. Achieve perfect pitch with your own heart first. People don’t need another book about authenticity – they need leaders whose lives are walking bestsellers.

The question is: Whose reading list is your life on? If the answer is, “Just my mum,” than perhaps it’s time to audit the consistency of your life.

Because if you plan to capture greater heartshare, it’s going to be one hell of a slog if you’re not in alignment. That’s what it means to have perfect pitch: When the message you preach is the dominant reality of your life. When the proclamations of your lips are consistent with the demonstrations of your legs. And when there’s no difference between your onstage performance and backstage reality.

Are you smoking what you’re selling?

Commit to closing those chasms, and you’ll build a foundation of consistency that will support your heartshare efforts forever.

Remember: If you want to capture the hearts of the masses, you have to invite them into yours first. But you can’t hit the right notes with your own; you’ll never capture the music of theirs. Is the example of how you live your life a document worth reading?

2. Align with your audience’s fabric. I’ve never had a real job. Started my publishing company the day I graduated college and never looked back. As such, when I give presentations I always make it a point to tell my audiences that I’m not one of them, nor will I pretend to be one of them.

False relatability, in my opinion, is the ultimate crime of public speaking. And when presenters commit it, the collective heart of the audience puts its ear buds in and completely tunes out the message. A helpful formula to avoid this barrier is:

“While I have no idea what it must be like to (x); what I do know is what it feels like to (y).”

If you’re addressing insurance salespeople: “I have no idea what it takes to sell insurance – but I do know what it’s like to sit across the table from someone who doesn’t want to be the first one to trust you.”

If you’re addressing unemployed professionals: “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be unemployed in a down economy – but what I do know is how it feels to have your career at a standstill.”

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who your audience is or how many people comprise it. When you share your message from their backyard, when you touch them where they live, you become the mirror into which they can see their own heart reflected. What universal human experience will unite you to the people who matter most?

3. Lay bare your belief. If Martin Luther King’s speech were entitled, “I Have a Plan,” nobody would have showed up. Fortunately, he didn’t have a plan – he had a dream. And he spent those famous seventeen minutes painting a stunning picture of what it looked like.

As a result, he captured the heart of an entire generation. All because he laid bare his belief. And if you want to follow his example, try this: Instead of telling them what needs to change – show them what you believe.

Because as much as people hate change, it’s still (awfully) hard to resist a man on a mission. Especially when that mission reflects their worldview.

The cool part is: When you radiate belief outward and give full scope to your colorful imagination, you’ll challenge people to consider their own dream. What’s more, you inspire them unleash the love to make that dream come true.

As long as you believe what you believe because you actually believe – not because someone told you to believe and you mindlessly followed – heartshare will be yours. Are you selling to people who want what you sell or believe what you believe?

4. Breathe out the love people need. I just finished studying a fifty-year old nursing textbook about social interaction and patient care. Fascinating read. Picked up a few key ideas on heartshare.

First, a good nurse treats the whole person and not just the disease entity. Ask yourself: Are you wholehearted in your support of your people?

Second, in small hospitals, it’s easy to preserve friendliness and informality; whereas larger medical institutions make patients feel like a piece of furniture. Ask yourself: What do you see when you see people?

Third: When you first satisfy a request for a concrete item of physical assistance (bedpans, water bottles) the expression of deeper emotional need usually emerges. Ask yourself: Are you big enough to care about the small?

Look: You don’t need to be a medical professional to provide people with the oxygen their heart needs. But you do need to confront the human condition. And you do need to thread that reality through every experience.

Otherwise your interactions with the people who matter most will be as sterile and bland as the surgery suite. Is your organization’s service environment forgettable or stealable?

REMEMBER: The emotional responsiveness your work commands is the chief indicator of its relevance, longevity and profitability.

If you want the people who matter most to engage, follow and stay loyal to what you do, stop focusing on marketshare and forget about mindshare.

Capture heartshare.

Because when it’s your heart, you don’t need to prove to anyone that you can’t live without it.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Does you brand speak to the brain or the chest?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “22 Unexpected Ways to Help People,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

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