Your business reputation is made daily

The reputation of your business is the biggest determining factor in the long term success of any and all of your marketing efforts. You recreate your reputation each day with every customer who encounters your business. However, you are not limited to one business reputation, but many reputations that are given birth in the minds of everyone who deals with you in the course of your business activities. Of equal importance to understand that you have a reputation among people who have had no contact with you but have grown aware of you from others.

Joan Jett wrote a song from days past that is called "Bad Reputation." Joan was a popular rocker of her time, but she also had good marketing sense. She made herself as the bad girl of the rock world, and the song "Bad Reputation" proved a hit. In the ever nonconformist scene of alternative rock, a woman proud to flaunt her bad reputation was very novel. She probably bent the truth a little with the words "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation" as she likely cared much about her bad reputation, it was what made her marketable! She used that image to gain immortality.

Unfortunately for most of us, a bad reputation does not stand as a desirable marketing tool to grow our business. The only exceptions outside of musicians might be trial lawyers, repo men, or bail bondsmen who make it a point to be recognized for their aggressiveness and sometimes abrasive personalities. For the rest of the world it just doesn't work.

You must understand that each of your deeds, and everything your workers do, for your business adds to your reputation. Business has no Mulligans. You can attempt to fix issues that might have contributed negatively to your business reputation. In fact, correcting issues appropriately can prove to be the silver lining. 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 results in relation to your reputation. Of these results, there are two that are not good, the other one is terrific! Experience number one is one you have with a client, or potential client, in that while you don't embarrass your business or company, but you also don't set yourself apart from rivals. This may not be the worst outcome, but it isn't far from it. At best, you've managed to be listed as average 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 is when you, or your employee, has made such a huge mistake so as to insure the patron feels a burning anger toward you. The worst has just happened for your business. Not only have you lost a patron, you have left no doubt that you have lost anyone who listens to that customer when they talk about you. There is no way to calculate the full damage that will occur. If you as a business owner are aware that you have allowed this to occur, then you have no right to complain about the negative impact it will have. But nine times out of ten the business owner is completely unaware of what has transpired if one of the employees caused the problem, or not in their own interactions with the customer.

Don't believe that angered people will make time to announce what transpired. Often they just never set foot again in your business and no opportunity exists to fix it. If you do become aware of the problem, and then fail to make it right, then again you deserve the unfortunate reputation it fuels. However, if you take the time to go try to fix the issue, you will have used a fantastic opportunity in business to demonstrate to a patron that you value their loyalty and will always do your best to demonstrate interest.

The third result is sought by every savvy business owner in each interaction with others. Your goal is make the customers, and potential customers, believe that in addition to furnishing high-class services or materials, you care deeply about how those products or services fill a need of the customer. It all focuses on building a lasting bond with your customers so that they know you will always focus on filling their needs. When successful in this goal you have grown a loyal customer who's value dwarfs any purchase they make. Yours has become a business built on relationships !