If you want to attract clients to your new business, first, you need to establish a reputation for yourself. You need to prove that you’re someone that can be trusted to complete deals, and you need to showcase the fact that you’re true to your word.
Building both yours and your business’s standing is not going to be easy, and it’s certainly not going to happen overnight. It will be worth it, however, when your reputation alone is drawing custom and turning over profit for you.
Here’s what you can do to build your reputation as a new business owner.
Pay all of your debts.
You don’t want to be known as that business owner that never settles their debts or pays up on time. With this kind of reputation, clients will be too scared to enter into deals with you in fear that you will leave them on high and dry. In order to avoid garnering such a disparaging reputation, you need to resolve to pay all of your debts by the deadlines imposed on you to do so.
Fear not, as there are always ways to stay on top of the money that you owe, even when you don’t have any money to fall back on at the time. If a customer owes you cash, for example, you could always get a factoring company involved to chase down the rogue invoice and get you what is rightfully yours. Or, if you have a deadline looming but no potential income to cover it, you can always opt for a quick cash injection. The best online payday loan companies offer you the chance to borrow money to cover your expenses and then pay back the borrowed amount at a time that suits you. The point is, there’s always help out there, so there’s no excuse for you not to pay your debts and ruin your reputation as a result.
Always go above and beyond.
If you promise to save a customer 10% on their renewal quote, do your best to save them 15% instead. When a client asks for a reference from you, go that extra mile and offer them three. If you promise to follow up on a query within 24 hours, get your response sent over within 12. Going above and beyond in this instance, even if it is only a small gesture that you can afford to offer, will make it appear like you are working harder than your competitors to provide the best possible service on offer in your market. With this kind of hard-working reputation, your business will no doubt find itself drawing more and more custom going forward, clawing itself to the forefront of its industry.
Be professional with everything that you do.
From the emails that you send to the coffee that you offer your clients, make sure you are professional with everything that you do. Even the tiniest of slip-ups in this instance can cause serious damage to your reputation, so you have to remain focused on professionalism at all conceivable points.
In order to run your business like a true pro and ultimately build a professional reputation for yourself, you should:
- Get a public relations team in place
- Remember, the customer is always right
- Keep your personal and professional lives wholly separate
- Set romantic boundaries within your workplace, and make sure to adhere to them yourself
- Always dress to impress
- First impressions are critical, so always strive to make a good one
- Respect your workforce to ensure they do not make disparaging comments about you
- Never commit to anything without considering the repercussions
Care for the interests of others.
If you only ever care for yourself in the world of business, you’ll quickly be deemed selfish. To combat this particular reputation plight, you need to care for the interests of others just as much as you care for your own.
You can do this in a number of different ways on a number of different levels. Should a local student want help breaking into your industry, for example, you could either offer to give them tips, offer them an internship position in your office, or actually fund their education. Again, it all depends on what you can afford to offer. No matter what your relative circumstances dictate what you can and cannot do, however, the essence of what you try to do should remain the same: help other people at all costs.
When caring for the interests of others, don’t forget your employees! Not only will investing in them improve them as workers, but it will also make you look like an employer that values their staff members.
Go green.
Forget your reputation for the time being; going green and embracing eco-friendliness is something that you should be doing regardless of your goals as a businessperson, as planet earth needs all the help it can get at this point.
Aside from playing your part in reducing the earth’s carbon footprint, taking this kind of venture would no doubt do wonders for your standing in the world of business. It will show you to be conscious of and willing to tackle climate change and global warming, and everybody respects businesses who adopt that kind of mantra.
Don’t know where to begin when it comes to going green? Take these simple steps, and you’ll be sure to get your eco-friendly endeavor off to the best start possible:
- Make eco-friendliness a part of your business’s culture
- Swap to LED lighting
- Install a water filtration system
- Only ever enter into deals with green vendors
- Recycle and re-use as much as you can
- Make use of green cleaning products
If you’re to stand a chance of succeeding in the world of business, you need to build a good reputation for yourself right away. You need to prove to customers that you can be trusted to provide them with a service befitting of the fee that they pay you. You need to prove to clients that you aren’t going to leave them high and dry when things get tough, and you need to prove to potential employees that yours is a company they can commit themselves and their careers too.
Be sure, then, to put the above advice into practice and build that rep of yours!
