Protect Your Reputation, it’s all you really have

When you run a com­pany, there are many things you con­trol such as pric­ing, qual­ity, what you choose to pro­duce, etc. Often though, the one thing com­pa­nies for­get to con­trol is their reputation.

There is the old say­ing, “The cus­tomer is always right”, but I don’t really believe that in all sense of the expres­sion. For instance, if you were to come to my design com­pany to help mar­ket your wid­get, your exper­tise is in wid­get mak­ing, not mar­ket­ing. My exper­tise is in mar­ket­ing. The rea­son you come to me, and pay me, is because I’m an expert and you are not. It’s my job to tell you when your ideas for mar­ket­ing the prod­uct are wrong.

On the other hand, what you think about my com­pany IS always right. You must trust me to BE the expert. If I fail to deliver, or do a a poor job, not only will you be upset, but you will tell oth­ers about it.

In the horse indus­try, if you have a great loca­tion, rea­son­able rates, and good facil­i­ties it won’t mat­ter one bit if you’ve got a rep­u­ta­tion for poor care. You are doomed to strug­gle attract­ing and main­tain­ing clients.

I once had a client who would always tap me for ideas on how to do things, then try and get them done some­where else for less money. I clearly remem­ber sev­eral sit­u­a­tions where this back­fired on them, and the per­son they hired to do the work messed up and caused end­less prob­lems. The ironic part was I was blamed for the mess because it was my idea, even though I wasn’t involved in the imple­men­ta­tion. Instead of get­ting mad and defend­ing myself how­ever, I helped them to resolve the issue, for no pay­ment, and get things work­ing exactly as I said they should. The rea­son I did this was to pro­tect my rep­u­ta­tion. It would cost my com­pany more to have some­one bad-mouth my ser­vices than the amount I’d lost fix­ing a prob­lem that wasn’t my fault. Only after the cus­tomer was sat­is­fied with the result, could I afford to lose them as a client.

Many busi­nesses believe that it’s more impor­tant for them to be right and often ignore the “prob­lem” clients. I believe it’s more impor­tant to pro­tect your rep­u­ta­tion. Peo­ple don’t need to like you, in fact it’s impos­si­ble for every­one to like you, but it shouldn’t be hard for peo­ple to respect you. Respect is earned, and eas­ily lost.

The loss of respect can be the silent killer of companies.

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