Your most valuable asset- you business reputation
The reputation of your business is the most potent aspect regarding the long term success of your marketing efforts. Your reputation is recreated each day with everyone your business interacts with. In fact, you have not one business reputation, but many reputations which are created in the minds of customers with whom you interact in the daily functioning of your business movements. Of equal importance to comprehend that you have a reputation with people who have never done business with you but heard tell of you from others.
Joan Jett wrote a song from days gone by that is called ‘Bad Reputation.’ Joan was a great musician of her age, but she also had a talent for marketing. She styled herself as the bad girl of the rock world, and the song ‘Bad Reputation’ was wildly popular. In the ever rebel-dominated world of alternative rock, a woman happy with her bad reputation was quite popular. She likely fibbed a little when singing ‘I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation’ as she obviously thought a great deal about her bad reputation, it was one of her best marketing advantages! She rode that image to glory.
Sadly for most of us, a bad reputation does not prove to be a useful marketing goal to grow our business. The few contradictions to this rule other than musicians might be trial lawyers, repo men, or bail bondsmen who are, in a way, respected for their aggressiveness and sometimes abrasive personalities. For the rest of us it just doesn’t work like that.
You need to be very aware that everything you do, and everything your employees do, in relation to your business gives shape to your reputation. Business has no Mulligans. You can strive to remedy situations that might have put your business reputation in a bad light. Actually, repairing difficulties properly can be a real opportunity. However, you can never undo the memories of the events that caused someone to think badly of your business.
Each time you interact with people in your business has one of three endings with your reputation at the core. Of these endings, two that are not good, the other one is excellent!
The first one is an experience you have with a customer, or potential customer, in which you don’t do anything really wrong, but you also don’t distinguish yourself from rivals. This may not be the worst outcome, but it isn’t far from it. You’ve succeeded in being only, at best, typical in the customer’s opinion. The customer will probably forget you, but if they do remember they’ll consider you as someone who was average last time.
Ending number two occurs when you, or your employee, has screwed up something badly enough to make sure the patron will probably never forgive you. It can get no worse for your business. Besides losing a patron, you have made certain you have also lost anyone who happens to talk with that person about your business. It’s like a domino effect. If you as a business owner have knowingly permitted this to happen, then you have no right to complain about the negative impact it will have. However, a great many times the business owner knows nothing of what has happened if the problem was the employee’s mistake, or not during their personal interactions with the customer. You can’t assume that disgruntled clients will let you know what happened. Typically they simply never return and you have no way to correct it. If you uncover the problem, but don’t address it, then again you deserve the unfortunate reputation it makes. However, if you take the opportunity to go to every length to right the problem, you will have employed a fantastic opportunity in business – to demonstrate to a patron that you care about their loyalty and will go the extra mile to demonstrate interest.
The third result is what all business owners should seek in each and every interaction with clients. Your goal is win over the clients, and potential clients, that in addition to furnishing high-quality services or materials, you have a concern for how those products or services provide for a customer’s desires. It all focuses on building a lasting bond with your clients so that they know you can competently, equitably, and faithfully fulfill their needs. When successful in this goal you can trust that you’ve cultivated a loyal customer who’s value far surpasses any purchase they may make today.
Aiding in the creation customers of this loyalty is our goal. Hopefully if you have an interest developing your business based upon our tactics you will give thought to subscribing to our services.
Visit BizRave Inc. for more articles and information about customer relationship based markerting to grow the business of your dreams.
- Eric Menzies
:: Feb.21.2010 :: Health :: No Comments »
