In this episode of “On the Brink with Andi Simon,” we engage in an insightful conversation with Chantal Cornelius, the founder of Appletree Marketing. Together we delve into the intricate art of marketing strategies tailored for service-based businesses, particularly coaches and consultants. With over two decades of experience in the field, Chantal’s expertise is rooted in a unique approach that emphasizes fostering emotional connections with clients to create lasting and impactful relationships.
Why Should You Foster Emotional Connections in Business?
Chantal begins by sharing her personal and professional journey in the marketing world, painting a vivid picture of how she transitioned from a traditional marketer to a strategic advisor focused on helping service-based businesses thrive. Her early years were marked by learning the conventional aspects of marketing and understanding client expectations. However, through years of hands-on experience, Chantal discovered that the most effective way for businesses to resonate with their audiences was through meaningful emotional connections. This revelation led her to refine her approach and establish five key strategies at the core of her work today: Certainty, Connection, Contribution, Growth, and Significance.
You might like to watch the interview here:
What are these Five Great Strategies to Build Emotional Connections?
- The first strategy, Certainty, is about creating a sense of trust and reliability between the business and its clients. Chantal explains that in the service industry, clients often seek reassurance that they are making the right decision by engaging a particular service provider. Businesses that communicate their expertise and reliability foster a sense of Certainty that can set them apart from competitors. Chantal shares stories of clients who, by focusing on consistency in their service delivery and messaging, built stronger, long-term relationships with their customers.
- Connection, the second strategy, underscores the importance of relating to clients on a human level. Chantal believes that service providers must go beyond just transactional interactions and cultivate genuine relationships where clients feel seen and heard. She highlights how listening to clients’ stories, understanding their challenges, and demonstrating empathy can transform a one-time customer into a lifelong advocate for the brand. Through relatable anecdotes, she illustrates how a consultant she worked with doubled their client retention rate by simply incorporating regular, personalized check-ins with their clients.
- Contribution, the third strategy, emphasizes the need for businesses to show how they add value to their clients’ lives beyond the immediate services they provide. Chantal shares how contributing educational content, hosting workshops, or providing additional resources can establish a business as a trusted resource. This approach enhances customer satisfaction and elevates the business’s reputation within its niche. She recounts a case where a coaching business expanded its network significantly after offering free webinars that provided actionable insights without any direct sales pitch.
- Growth, as the fourth pillar, is about fostering continuous improvement for both the client and the service provider. Chantal explains that growth-oriented businesses inspire their clients by showcasing how they adapt, evolve, and invest in becoming better versions of themselves. This strategy encourages clients to align themselves with businesses committed to progress and innovation. Chantal shares a success story of a consultant who rebranded their services to reflect their personal growth journey, which attracted a broader client base looking for that same aspirational quality.
- Finally, Significance, the fifth strategy, taps into the business’s and its clients’ deeper motivations. Chantal emphasizes that businesses should help clients feel important and valued, highlighting the powerful impact this has on client loyalty and advocacy. She explains that people naturally gravitate toward companies that make them feel like they matter. A powerful example she shares is of a small consulting firm that introduced a “Client of the Month” spotlight, recognizing the achievements of its clients. This simple gesture boosted client morale and encouraged more engagement and referrals.
Throughout the episode, Chantal offers practical advice and real-world examples, making it clear that understanding and meeting clients’ emotional needs is not just a soft skill—it is an essential component for business growth.
This episode teaches the audience that successful marketing is not just about promoting a service but about building relationships grounded in trust, empathy, and value.
To learn more about Chantal Cornelius, check out her LinkedIn page
And her website: Appletree Marketing
More about great strategies to help your business grow:
First, we introduce you to Melissa Robinson-Winemiller to discuss empathetic leadership.
404: Are You Ready to be that Great, Empathetic Leader?
And listen to Lisen Stromberg talk about “Intentional Power Takes you from Control to Significance.”
Reach out and contact us if you need work on improving your business. Let’s Talk!
From Observation to Innovation,
CEO | Corporate Anthropologist | Author
Simonassociates.net
Info@simonassociates.net
@simonandi
LinkedIn
Read the text for our podcast here:
Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. Thanks for joining us today. I’m Andi Simon and as you know, I’m your host and your guide. My job is to get you off the brink. I want you to see, feel and think a little like an anthropologist about things that you’re doing, maybe in your business or your personal life that may be working or maybe not. And the times they are changing and changing quickly. So what worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow. Somebody once said the future is already here. It’s just not widely distributed. So I guarantee you as we talk today, you’re going to say, it’s time for me to rethink a little bit more about what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and how can Andi’s guests, our guest today, help us do this really well? So today I have a wonderful woman from the UK. Here we are global, as you know, and Chantal Cornelius has a company called Apple Tree Marketing. You can see it on her name there. I am delighted to bring her to you because she is going to help you do what you need to do, which is to begin to build your business as a coach or consultant. Somebody selling services and the service industry isn’t a manufacturing or a product driven industry. So a lot of the marketing that you may think about are more difficult when you have another to sell, as opposed to the only. And it’s hard for people to taste your cookie and know that’s what they want to buy. So how are we going to do it? Chantal thank you for joining me today.
Chantal Cornelius: Thank you so much for having me. And it’s lovely to be here with you.
Andi Simon: Let me read her bio. Short bio, since founding Apple Tree Marketing in 2000, we’re both about 20 years old in business, Chantal Cornelius has spent the last two decades helping hundreds of coaches, consultants and speakers grow their businesses and achieve their goals through making strong emotional connections with their clients. Now, at the end of the day, people buy from people. And that’s something you should remember, because regardless of how you tell them what you do, they’re going to choose you because of the way you connect with them. Chantal knows a very key to standing out from competitors is to build strong, long-lasting relationships and it’s all about belonging rather than simply buying. And the relationships with clients realize that the path to success doesn’t involve churning out endless social content. But Chantal introduces service-based businesses to the different stand out strategies they can use to make the best emotional connection with their clients. And she’s going to explain to us how to utilize them in order to stand out from their competitors by incorporating more emotion and empathy into their work. Now, just a little neuroscience as we start. Remember, we buy with the heart and the eyes. If you understand that, then all the words you say are really nice. But how does it feel? And if you can’t get a feeling you can’t trust. The words mean what you think they mean. Oh, by the way, what you think they mean and you hear isn’t necessarily what the person said or meant. It’s a complicated world we live in. Chantal, thank you for joining me. It’s going to be such fun today.
Chantal Cornelius: It is. Thank you for that. Thank you for that beautiful introduction, Andi. And you’re absolutely right, it’s people buy from people. I know I’ve been hearing that for many years. And it’s true. And we buy on emotion. And this is a big part of what my work is all about. And my new book, it’s the fact that we buy on emotion. We buy because we want something, not necessarily because we need it. Business owners and marketers, we have to get it. We have to understand it. Otherwise we’re going to be shouting into the darkness and not getting anywhere.
Andi Simon: So who are you? Tell the audience or the listener who you are, so they can get a better sense of how your journey has taken you to where you are today, and how it could help them as well.
Chantal Cornelius: Who am I? I love that question. I am a marketing consultant who has a passion for helping other people. I absolutely love helping people who run service businesses. People come to me and say, well, it’s intangible. It’s really difficult to promote a service business, isn’t it? And I say, no, that’s what I love doing. If you ask me to promote a product, I run away because that’s just not me at all. I’ve been in service business marketing for probably nearly 30 years. I set my business up in 2000. Before that, I worked for about five years for a couple of training companies, a printing company. I fell into marketing purely by chance. I actually left university and went to work with horses because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I thought, I’ll go and do horses. I was passionate about riding and teaching people to ride, and I did that for three years and I mostly loved it. And then one day I woke up and thought, I am so sick and tired of being bitten and kicked and falling off other people’s horses.
Andi Simon: Forgive me, but you’re talking to a horse person. We fox hunted for 25 years. My daughters are riders. My granddaughters are semi-professional riders. Wow. We do love horses. But I do know you tighten that girth and you get bitten and it is not nice. And please continue.
Chantal Cornelius: It’s when you tighten the girth of the person who’s on the horse, and the horse turns around and bites me, and not the person holding it like, that’s not fair. Yes, I was, I was tired of not earning any money and looking after other people’s horses. And I actually had a yearning to have my own horse and be able to go out and ride, which I now have. And I can. And it’s gorgeous. So I realized I needed a proper job, and I ended up working in an office, and they started giving me some of the marketing work to do.
Chantal Cornelius: And eventually somebody saw, I guess they saw some potential in me and said, would you like a job in marketing? And I kind of wonder what’s marketing? And, I learned how to do marketing. I was working for a business college in Oxford, and one of the courses we did was a diploma in marketing. I went through that. I learned on the job as well and discovered that I really love doing it. And after five years I thought, actually, I need to do this for myself in order to help more people. I was working for a firm where it was a printing company, and all I was doing was helping that company, and I thought, there’s got to be more to life. I want to help more people. So I set up Apple Tree, and it meant that I could go out and talk to lots and lots and lots of different businesses and help all of them. I get bored very easily. I love variety in my life and to be doing the same thing day in and day out was just not not doing it for me. 24 years in my business, there’s still no average day. They are all completely different and I love that. I love being able to talk to a multitude of different clients and talk to them about different challenges that they’ve got and look at what their particular issues are. So that’s what really drives me.
Andi Simon: Well, you know, as you say that, I like how similar you and I are, because if things are working well, you don’t need me. But when I launched my business in 2002, my PR firm said, you’re a corporate anthropologist who helps companies change. And as you know, humans hate to change. And I said, oh, it’s going to be fun. And so it’s very interesting. Now, you’ve developed a process, though, even though each client has a different particular need or opportunity, you need to figure out how to tell their stories in a particular way so that it connects and helps them stand out. Tell us about what you discovered and how you developed your process.
Chantal Cornelius: As I was working, particularly with coaches, I noticed that a lot of them were saying that what made them different was they were all saying the same thing. So if I said to a coach, what’s your USP? What’s your new unique selling proposition? The majority of them would say, I help people get from where they are to where they want to be, and that’s what makes me different. And I was thinking, that’s not different. I started researching this. I started looking for what it was that people were actually looking to buy and what and how we could make ourselves different. And I came across an idea which isn’t new, which is about buying on emotion. The research has shown that we make something like 95% of our decisions, emotionally and subconsciously and irrationally. So I will look at a pair of boots in a store window and I go, I need that pair of boots. I want a pair of boots. I don’t I don’t need them, I want them.
That’s the subconscious messaging going on. My rational brain then comes in the 5% and goes, well, yes, you could have those boots because they go with that new dress that you’ve just bought. Now, what’s happening with all of our businesses is our clients are making those same emotional, irrational, subconscious decisions. You know, we talk about how you’ve got milliseconds these days to make a first impression. And that’s exactly the same thing. You walk into a room full of people and people instantly, whether they want to or not. I’m making subconscious judgments about you. They are. And you might get a gut feeling about a first interaction with somebody, and you might try to push it away. But generally, as soon as that reaction has been, that emotion has been created. That’s the one that your brain will stick with. Your rational brain might try to come in and say, no, no, they’re not really that bad at all. So there’s an awful lot going on emotionally and subconsciously. And in terms of marketing, companies are now beginning to realize that they have to be very gentle and not manipulative, only talk to customers on an emotional level. You might go into a store, you might see a product or a service, you might meet somebody and you might get a feeling of, I want to buy that. I want to work with this person. And I’m not sure why, and it’s because of the emotional connection. As I carried on digging into this, I discovered that when I identified five different strategies, every business that I’ve tested this on has one of the five strategies. Some of them have two, but it’s not about having all of them. It’s about understanding which of the five strategies is best for your business, and then using that in your marketing. For a quick example, one of the strategies is called certainty. And it’s about being a safe pair of hands. It’s the least exciting, the least sexy of the five. When I was first looking at this, I thought that my clients came to work with my company because they wanted growth, which is one of the other strategies. I thought they wanted to grow their businesses. They wanted some fun, exciting marketing. They were going places. And so that’s what I was trying to use to promote the business. And it wasn’t working. So I started asking my clients, what do you actually buy from me? What do you want? And they said, we work with you because you are a safe pair of hands. You get on with the job, you tell us what marketing to do. I’m a marketing mentor. I tell people what marketing to do. They said that’s what we want. So I had to look at my marketing and go, okay, so they don’t want growth. They want certainty. And I had to completely change my marketing messaging. And as soon as I did that, the clients were like, yeah, that’s what we want. Oh, are we going to recommend you to people? The phone was ringing. People were coming up to me at networking events going, oh, you’re the one who just is the straight talking, challenging one. We want some of that. Please. When can we buy? I know, I know like but I don’t want certainty but it’s what works. So I use it. I’ve been using it for years. And in my business, the next stage of the research I did was looking at the language that goes with each of these strategies, and I’ve identified words, emotions, feelings that go with each one. So when I speak to my clients, when I ask them what they want from suppliers, particularly marketing, they say, oh, I want peace of mind. I want somebody who’ll take responsibility, somebody who will keep me informed. And they say, I want confidence in the person I’m working with. I want them to build up my confidence. That to me says that they’re a certainty client. When I listen to other people talk, I’m always listening to the language. And if they don’t use those certain words, I know that they’re not an ideal client for me.
And I can say to them, I’m not the right person for you. Let me put you in touch with somebody.
Andi Simon: They are around you because your brand has been created by them in some ways. And in a collaborative but interesting way. you protect their status, improve their certainty. They’ve given you the autonomy to build the business with them or for them. Right? And the relationship is strong because of how they feel safe and how they feel you’re fair. I don’t know if you know David Rock’s work on how the brain works, but that’s how the brain works. It’s a scarf model, and our job is to predict their status, give them certainty, autonomy, relationships, and fairness. And intuitively, you have done that and the clients who come to you don’t feel broken. You don’t have to fix them.
Chantal Cornelius: Just they just want more, particularly with their marketing. They don’t want somebody to say to them, oh, well, maybe you should go and do lots of social media.
I say to them, don’t do social media. Stop it. Get off Facebook and Instagram. You don’t need it. Do LinkedIn, do a newsletter to your website. You know what they want from me, they want somebody straight talking. Now, that’s not to say that’s what works for my brand. There are other marketing agencies for whom growth or significance, or one or the other strategies that I’ve identified is more important, and they will. Attract the people who want those strategies. So it’s about understanding. It’s about identifying for each of us, which is the key strategy for our business to use. And you’re right, it is based on what the customers want to feel. Our reputations are built on how they want to feel, not how we want to feel about them.
Andi Simon: That’s exactly right. And they are interpreting both your behavior, your face, your behavior, physical body, the words you say in their mind story in a way that makes them align with you. It’s as if you are now one of them and they are a part of you. Do you do their marketing or do you advise marketing people in their company what to do and how to do it?
Chantal Cornelius: I advise people how to do what to do and how to do it. I used to do marketing for companies and for clients. I used to have a team of staff here. There’s just me here now and I’m much happier on my own. So yeah, I just, I, I advise so I might go in and run a workshop for a customer and help them identify which is the right strategy for them. I can then work with their marketing team if they have one, or whoever’s doing it, so that they know how to use the marketing, how to use the language because it actually goes through their sales, their marketing and their customer service, their delivery. So I can work with the sales teams, the marketing teams, and the customer service department. Equally, if there’s just one person in the business, I can do all of that with them.
Andi Simon: Is there an illustrative case you can share that makes it come alive?
Chantal Cornelius: Oh, I’ve got lots. I’ve got a lovely client at the moment. Let’s call her Tara, because that’s her name, who I met a little while ago at a networking event, and it was a really fun event because we were all asked to put sticky notes on the wall as to what we were looking for. And then the lady running the event was going around and matching people up, which is the connection strategy, by the way. And Tara had put up some sticky notes saying she wanted a book coach and she wanted some help with her marketing. And the lady running the event just grabbed the sticky notes and gave them to me and said, Chantal, these are for you. Go talk to Tara. And we had a conversation. Tara is a coach. She helps people to tune into their intuition. And I’m fascinated by that, by that sort of work. But a lot of corporations are still going, oh no, I don’t understand that. And Tara was saying to me, I’ve got so many ideas, I can’t get them out of my head and onto paper. I don’t know where to go. She was in total overwhelm with her marketing. With all these ideas and lots of people. I get this a lot at the moment. There are so many people out there saying, oh, you should be on Instagram, you should be on Facebook, you should be on TikTok, you should be here, there and everywhere. And Tara was in this kind of mess of overwhelm. So we sat down and I said, tell me about your business. And I think she talked for about an hour and then eventually took a breath. In that time, I’m listening for what she does and what makes her different. I then developed a test which helps people to identify their stand out strategy. And you can either do it on my website or I printed it out and gave it to Tara, and we sat and worked through it. By the end of it, we’d worked out that the reason people were coming to her was for the strategy. That’s called significance. They wanted to feel seen and heard, and they wanted to feel respected and understood. But she wasn’t using any of that language in her marketing. So we’ve changed the language. We’ve rewritten her LinkedIn profile, we’ve rewritten her work on the website copy, we’ve written things, rewritten things like her email signature. She’s even learning how to use language when she’s having a sales conversation with somebody, and she’s finding that people are going Tara’s me. She really understands me. She does a lot of online networking. And you know, you’ve got the little thumbnail and you’ve got 20, 30 people in a room and you’ve got a minute or two to say what you do. And she can now explain what she does in the significance language that leaves people messaging are going, yes, please. When can I start? Because she’s building that emotional connection with them far more quickly than you know. If you’ve only got a minute to explain what you do, you’ve got to be really succinct. If you’ve got an hour, that’s a bit different. But most of us, you know, we go to networking events, people find something to say, what do you do? We don’t have an hour. We have a minute or two to do it. So when you understand the strategy like Tara does, you use it, and she’s flying. She’s using it in all of her marketing and sales now. And she’s loving it. Fabulous to see.
Andi Simon: Well, you know, there’s a movement underway where success is important, but significance is even more so. And people have created, whether they’re women entrepreneurs or guys or businesses where companies of purpose are extremely successful because they have a community purpose, something significantly beyond just success, and their connection to the communities they serve elevates their business. Because people can buy from anywhere. There are lots of red oceans where everybody is a duplicate of each other. So the question is, how do you answer that brand question? Why me? And if I hear you so far, I’ve heard significance is one strategy. growth could be another. comfort and consistency was certainly one. You said you had five. You want to make sure you have all five of them.
Chantal Cornelius: I haven’t mentioned all types. So the first one is certainty. That’s about being a safe pair of hands. The second one is called connection. And this is not about me or us having a connection with our client because we have to do that. This is where clients will want to work with you because you can connect them to other people. And an example of that, I’m involved in the Professional Speaking Association here in the UK you have NSA, the National Speaking Association over in the states, and there are associations all around the world, and we all actually use connection to promote the associations because it’s bringing a group together of like-minded people and people who want to make money from speaking so that that’s connection. The third one is contribution. And this is where people want to buy from you because they want to feel a sense of something bigger. I’ve recently been introduced to an amazing company called Stand Out Socks. I’m wearing Stand Out Socks today and they were set up by two brothers, one of whom has down syndrome, and a lot of their staff have learning disabilities, so when I buy socks from them, it helps a lot more people rather than just my feet. So I will probably never buy socks from anywhere other than stand up. And their designs are great. They’re great fun. So that contribution growth is the fourth one and that can be about personal or business. Growth works very well for a lot of coaches. It’s where people want to be motivated and inspired by the person, the supplier that they work with, they want to be, they want to be challenged, but they want somebody who’s there to cheer them on. And then the fifth one is significance. And that’s where people work with you because they want their help in helping them to stand out more. So they want to be seen, heard, respected more.
Andi Simon: This is terrific. So we have certainty, connection, contribution, growth and significance. What a wonderful list of things that people strategically can think about. That’s very different from competing or creating something new. It’s terrific. Now, are these going to be articulated in your forthcoming book Stand Out Strategy.
Chantal Cornelius: That’s exactly what the book’s about. So for each of the strategies, I’ve gone into a lot more detail about what it looks like, what it feels like, what it looks like in business, how you can live each one of these strategies, if it’s when you find the right one, how not to do it, that’s very important. I had fun writing those. So there are details in there about how to identify which is the right, the right strategy for your business.
Andi Simon: And go into detail, if you don’t mind a little bit more, how to identify what’s not the right strategy. How would you know the best way?
Chantal Cornelius: To do it is to take the test. So it’s in the book, but it’s also on my website. And what I’ve done is I’ve created five lists of words. If you look at the page on the site, it’s about ticking words that you. So if you say to a client, how do you feel when you work with me? And you listen to what they say and you find those words on the list and tick them. Generally, the more if you have, for instance, if you have more ticks in the certainty column, that means that certainty is your strategy. So that’s how to identify the right one. In the book there are then details of if you think certainty is your strategy, how not to do it, or what happens when you get it wrong. So for instance, certainty is where you answer the phone within a couple of rings and you’re always smiling and cheerful no matter how you’re feeling. Getting it wrong is inconsistency, where you might not answer the phone or you one day you might answer the phone. Just go hello? Rather than good morning, Andi Simon, how can I help you? So. Yeah. So it’s about starting to write details of what certainty looks like, and then I flipped it and went, okay, what does it not look like? What do you say if a client is buying from you because of certainty, if you start delivering on something else and they’ll spot it because they’ve bought on certainty, they want that. So that’s where all of that is.
Andi Simon: This is so interesting because all of us have had clients, who’ve been with us. I have some six years now. but I’ve never asked them why and they keep adding more and I keep thinking, well, maybe this is sort of like the end of our tour, but instead it expands in new directions. It’s an interesting reflection for me on who stays, who comes and goes and what the magic is to long term relationships. Because I’m not quite a contract employee, but I’m not quite a consultant either, and I’m a provider of something that fits into what their gap is. And it’s a very interesting thought process about better understanding what magic is. Because I jump and they I don’t even sometimes know what I’m going to do. But we do it. And there’s a confidence that, of course we can. You know that.
Chantal Cornelius: That is the magic where they trust you because you’ve got that emotional connection with them. And I have this with a fabulous client out in Switzerland, and they contact me every now and then and say, can you do such and such? Could you come and run a workshop for us on networking? Now? I can because I’ve been networking for years, but I have that relationship with them. They trust me implicitly. They would rather book me to do the work than bring somebody else in who they don’t know. And after I did the networking workshop with them, they then said, oh well, could you do basic presentation skills for our research associates? Yes, I can, and that’s magic. So I think what would be lovely for you, Andi, is to take the test and let’s have a look at your results. I’m going to after this, this episode and then because what you can then do is be yourself when you know what your results are and which is the right strategy for you and your business. You can then look at what your clients are, why they’re coming to you. You may find that the ones that stick with you, let’s say your strategy is growth. The clients that stick with you are there because they want growth, whereas others who don’t stick around for very long might be looking for something completely different.
Andi Simon: Well, it’s interesting because one of my clients has embraced the Performance Culture Index, and it was a group of words and everyone in the organization took them to, and they have a chart to see whether they are an, A, B, C, D, and what that means in terms of how to relate, you know, who’s really into the detail and who’s very social. And I was a philosopher. And I said, that’s interesting. My archetype is that of an explorer. And so those two give me a persona. That is a very interesting one to build a business around. Those were pretty good assessments of who I was. But even based on that and the data, I will do your test and we will have a conversation because I’m curious and I’m also a very curious person. I think curiosity can carry you like yourself into all kinds of places because in effect, it’s not what the networking that you did with them, but the way you did it with them. I have a hunch it wasn’t just another presentation training, that it was for them, tailored in a way that helped them think about whether they were going to be, certain connected, contributing growth. Because you could do the wrong training as easily. You could do just any old training.
Chantal Cornelius: Yeah, I already knew which their strategy was.
So when we were doing the training, I explained the strategies to them and said, which do you think it is? And they all pretty much got it right. What was lovely is that then means that when they’re out networking and promoting the business, they can use the correct language, their certainty, same as me. And it means that they can go out and not use fluffy flouncy language. It’s just very straight talking. And because they’re all scientists, they’re all research consultants, they all went, oh, oh, that’s much easier. You know, they were thinking they were going to have to be very elaborate with their language, like, no, just keep it simple.
Andi Simon: That for a little bit more. because language, it’s a wonderful slide I have from Guy who’s the head of the Pentagon who said what you heard wasn’t really what I said, and what you think I meant wasn’t really what I meant. But you now know for certain that what I said was what you think I said. Words have no meaning out of context. You know, anthropology 101, I heard the professor say something profound stuck with me all these years. And that is data out of context has no meaning. Well, words out of context have no meaning either. And so to your point, it isn’t inconsequential both what you say and how you say it. And because we read the face of the person presenting and simple cells far more than complicated, you don’t want the listener to feel incompetent or unable to understand what it is even if you’re so smart. It’s not about you, it’s about them. And for a listener is what did you really hear as opposed to what you think you heard? So all of this requires and I like your strategies because it streamlines what are the key triggers that are going to get that customer to be happy?
Chantal Cornelius: And you’re absolutely right. So if I was in a sales conversation with a potential client and I’m thinking of a strategy, that means I have to be certain and confident. Whereas if I’m sitting there hunched over going, oh, well, maybe you could maybe talk about this, or I was fiddling with my earrings, or I wasn’t wearing clothes that fit, or I wasn’t wearing one of my favorite stripy tops that I love, I love wearing clothes that make me feel confident, then I’m going to come across as lacking confidence, and confidence is a huge part of certainty. I also, whenever I speak on stage, I have a bit of a uniform. I wear a short dress and a pair of knee length boots. And apart from when it’s really hot, when I go to places like Portugal or I was in Denver recently and it was too hot there. But I’m known for that, and that’s part of my certainty. And I’ve even had people say, you will be wearing the dress and boots, won’t you? So it’s about living the strategy. Now I’m not saying that everybody certainly has to wear dress and boots, but certainty is particularly around consistency. Whereas growth, you know, I’ve got clients for whom growth is actually significant. Significance is all about helping clients to make a bigger impact. And one of my clients, Susan, used to be an opera singer, and she spoke recently at an event and she makes all her own dresses and they’re beautiful. And she came on stage wearing this amazing dress and silver sparkly trainers sneakers. And because she’s comfortable in them and she bounces around on the stage a lot, but she makes this amazing impact and that’s what people are paying her for. So there is a big connection. Yeah, it’s not just what we say, it’s how we say it, how we look. And I think once you can, when you can really live the strategy of whichever one you go for, particularly in business, you live and breathe it. And people without understanding why I go, I want some of that. I want to work with you. I don’t know why, but I want it.
Andi Simon: And I have a hunch that as you work with them, they begin to say, and now I know why. And that takes you from a feeling to the brain affirming. That was a good choice. And they stick around because that choice was not only good, but that’s a good part of our whole business. This has been such fun. But we do have to say goodbye. I mean, Chantal, how about one, two or three things you want the listener or the audience, the viewers not to forget because they remember the end even better than the beginning.
Chantal Cornelius: Okay, I would love you all to remember that people buy from people because of the emotion, and it’s about building up an emotional connection. It’s not about how you, dear listener, how you want to feel. It’s about how your customers, how your audience, how they want to feel. And when you get that, that’s the really key bit. And remember to go to my website and take the test, because it’s there and it’s free for anyone, anyone who wants it.
If you take the test on my website, I run the numbers through some software and I’ll send you a report that shows you which is your stand out strategy.
Andi Simon: I’m going to do that. Where is Apple Tree marketing?
Chantal Cornelius: Is it is appletreeUK.Com.
Andi Simon: Yeah.
Chantal Cornelius: Now take the test.
Andi Simon: And we can also find out more about what you’re doing. This has been such an absolute pleasure. I always love my podcast guests because they expand both my own view of the world, as well as those of my listeners in my audience. So I want to thank my audience for continuing to come. There’s something in our strategy, whether it’s consistency or significance, that brings in an audience of people. But even you were brought to me by someone who places people in podcasts and said, this is a good fit in usually, you know. Thank you. This is a good fit and it works really well. So I’m enjoying it. My books are available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and booksellers everywhere. On the Brink is about how anthropology can help your business grow by helping you see things through a fresh lens. Rethink Smashing the Myths of Women and Business will confirm with you why women are smashing the myths that are used to hold them back and become whatever it is they think they can. And then our new book, Women Mean Business, written with Robin Spicer and Eddie Frazier are all about 102 women who gave us their wisdom so that you could be more wise. And one of my favorite quotes in there is as we rise, we lift others with us. And that’s the whole point of our podcast. So I’m going to say goodbye. Remember, take your observations, turn them into innovations, and have a great day and a great life and let us know how you’re doing. Info@SimonAssociates.net gets right to us and we enjoy responding to your emails. Goodbye now
