Is Your Brand Robbing the Emotional Bank Accounts of Consumers?

I was just reflecting on Stephen Covey's mega-hit book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

It's empowered and inspired leaders, managers, teams — and everyone else — for over 30 years.

I have a copy myself!

Today, I want to talk about what he calls Emotional Bank Accounts in the book... and relate that to what brands might learn from it.

"An Emotional Bank Account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that's been built up in a relationship. It's the feeling of safeness you have with another human being.?

If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to.

But if I have a habit of showing discourtesy, disrespect, cutting you off, overreacting, ignoring you, becoming arbitrary, betraying your trust, threatening you, or playing little tin god in your life, eventually my Emotional Bank Account is overdrawn. The trust level gets very low."

This short video demonstrates the concept in a sales environment.

Relationships with any human being, whether in our personal or professional lives, is a constant give & take.

We can make a LOT of 'deposits,' by being kind, supportive, truthful, positive and helpful.

And we earn trust.

And we want huge reserves in case we have to make a 'withdrawal' once in a while. We might...

• Forget someone's birthday
• Say an unkind word
• Break a promise

But we won't be overdrawn, if we've built a healthy Emotional Bank Account!

And now to Brands...

I feel that Brands have the same choices when it comes to their customers and prospective customers' Emotional Bank Accounts.

As marketers, we can cherish the people, who trust us and keep us in business.

Or we can lose their trust, by neglecting or taking advantage of them.

In Conclusion...

I really like the Emotional Bank Account metaphor.

I find it to be a very good reminder of how tenuous trust is in all of my relationships.

In fact, it served an 'aha' moment for one of my personal relationships...

I realize that this person has severely overdrawn on my Emotional Bank Account!

But you can ADD to my Emotional Bank Account right here, by sharing your thoughts, reposting to your network... and subscrbing.

I'll be forever in your debt! (OK, at least til next week's article.)

Until next time...