Your businesss reputation is the biggest determining factor in the long term success of the entirety of your business efforts. Your reputation is remade each day with every customer your business meets. Really you are not limited to one business reputation, but many reputations which are created in the minds of people who deal with you in the daily functioning of your business activities. It is just as critical to comprehend that you have a reputation with those who have no experience with your business but heard tell of you from others.
You may know Joan Jetts tune from days gone by called Bad Reputation. Joan was a great rocker of her time, but she was also a cunning marketing person. She positioned herself as the bad girl of the rock world, and the song Bad Reputation was a huge hit. In the ever rebellious world of alternative rock, a woman proud of her bad reputation was in demand. She likely bent the truth a little in the song when she sang I dont give a damn about my bad reputation as she in fact cared much about her bad reputation, it was one of her best marketing advantages! She used that image to gain immortality.
Sadly for the majority of us, a unacceptable reputation is not a viable marketing goal to grow our business. The only exceptions outside of musicians might be trial lawyers, repo men, or bail bondsmen who are, in a way, respected for their fierceness and underworld savvy. For the rest of us it just doesnt work like that.
You must remember that every action, and everything your employees do, in relation to your business contributes to your reputation. There are no Mulligans in business. You can work to make things right that might have contributed negatively to your business reputation. In fact, fixing problems properly can be a real opportunity. However, you will never change peoples memory of what caused someone to regard your business negatively.
Each time you interact with people in your business has one of three outcomes with your reputation at the core. Of these outcomes, two that are not desirable, the other one is great!
The first one is an experience you have with a customer, or potential customer, in that while you dont do anything really wrong, but you also dont distinguish yourself from the other companies. You may not think this is the worst outcome, but it comes close. At best, you will be considered ordinary in the mind of a customer. You will likely be either forgotten in the future, or thought of as someone that did OK last time.
Ending number two takes place when you, or your worker, has committed a big enough error to make certain the patron feels a burning anger toward you. This is the worst case scenario for your business. Besides losing a patron, you have made certain you have lost those who learn of your business through that client. The negative potential is exponential. If you as a business owner have knowingly allowed this to happen, then you have no right to complain about the negative impact it will have. However, often the business owner knows nothing of what has happened if the issue happened when only an employee was present, or out of their personal interactions with the customer. Dont believe that disgruntled people will make the effort to announce what happened. Often they simply never return and you have no way to remedy it. If you learn of the problem, but dont correct it, then again you have earned the negative reputation it makes. However, if you take the effort to go correct the situation, you will have employed one the greatest opportunities in business to reassure a patron that you care about their loyalty and will go the extra mile to show concern.
The third ending is what all business owners should seek in every interaction with customers. You strive to win over the clients, and potential clients, that in addition to furnishing high-quality services or materials, you are committed to how services or materials fill a need of the customer. It is about establishing a trusting relationship with your clients so that they know you will never fail to meet their needs. If you accomplish this goal you can trust that youve formed a loyal customer whos value dwarfs any purchase they may make today.
Helping you learn to create devoted clients is the focus of our business. Hopefully if you possess a strong desire to hear the tricks of developing your business based upon our tactics you will think about registering for our services.
Article Source: http://www.artsymmetry.com
BizRave Inc. provides marketing consulting and internet marketing services for small businesses. Please visit BizRave.com for more information and articles on customer relationship based marketing.
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