Your business reputation

Your businesss reputation is the biggest determining factor in the long term success of the entirety of your companys efforts. Your reputation is remade every day with each customer who encounters your business. However, you dont have just one business reputation, but many reputations that arise in the minds of customers who interact with you in the course of your business movements. Of equal importance to understand that you have a reputation with those who have no experience with your business but learned of you from others.

A tune from Joan Jett from the old days is called Bad Reputation. Joan was a great musician of her time, but she also had a skill for marketing. She styled herself as the bad girl of rock, and the song Bad Reputation was a great success. In the ever nonconformist scene of alternative rock, a woman happy with her bad reputation was very novel. She probably bent the truth a little when singing I dont give a damn about my bad reputation as she obviously thought a lot about her bad reputation, it was her marketing strength! She used that image to gain immortality.

Sadly for many of us, a unacceptable reputation does not stand as a desirable marketing tool to develop our business. The few contradictions to this rule other than musicians might be trial lawyers, repo men, or bail bondsmen who are known and valued for their fierceness and underworld savvy. For the average person it just doesnt work like that.

You must understand that all of your actions, and everything your workers do, regarding your business adds to your reputation. There are no Mulligans in business. You can work to make things right that might have make your business reputation falter. Actually, remedying problems appropriately can be an opportunity in disguise. However, you can never undo the memories of the events that caused someone to regard your business negatively.

Each encounter with people in your business has one of three endings with your reputation at the core. Two of these endings are not desirable, the other one is wonderful!

The first one is an experience you have with a client, or potential client, in that while you dont fail horribly, but you also dont stand out from rivals. This may not seem like the most harmful result, but it isnt far from it. Youve succeeded in being only, at best, 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.

Result number two takes place when you, or your worker, has screwed up something badly enough to make sure the customer will probably never forgive you. The worst has just happened for your business. Not only have you lost a customer, you have made certain you have also lost anyone who happens to talk with that person about your business. The negative potential is exponential. If you as a business owner are aware that you have allowed this to transpire, then you deserve the evil to come. However, a great many times the business owner is unaware of what has transpired if the problem was the employees mistake, or out of their own interactions with the customer. You cant assume that disgruntled people will take the time to announce what transpired. Typically they just never set foot again in your business and no opportunity exists to fix it. If you discover the problem, but neglect to fix it, then again you have every right to the bad reputation it creates. However, if you take the time to go try to fix the situation, you will have used found an opportunity in business to show a customer that you care about their loyalty and will always do your best to display interest.

The third outcome is what every business owner should strive for in each interaction with people. Your goal is make the customers, and potential customers, believe that not only do you provide first rate products or services, but that you are committed to how those products or services provide for a customers desires. It is about establishing a trusting relationship with your patrons so that they know you can competently, equitably, and faithfully fulfill their needs. When you achieve this goal you can trust that youve formed a loyal customer whos value surpasses any purchase they make.

Aiding you in learning the secrets of creating customers of this loyalty is the focus of the services we provide. Hopefully if you are concerned about growing your business through using this strategy you will give thought to signing up for our services.

Article Source: http://www.christiannotepad.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.