Ep. 187 Brand Reputation – Creating or Killing Your Brand?

In the era of the internet, online reputation is EVERYTHING. Joe Pici provides key guidelines for building a good reputation for your brand on social media.

Podcast Transcript

Get ready for an unfair advantage over your competition. This is The Sales Edge podcast. Were globally recognized sales expert and trainer Joe Pici helps you sharpen your skills for booking more appointments and closing more deals. And now here’s your host, Joe Pici.

Joe Pici (JP):

Welcome back. This is Joe Pici of The Sales Edge and this is podcast number 187. Sales Edge is sponsored by Pici and Pici, which is a speaking, coaching, training, consulting firm and SellMoreVirtually.com. Sell more virtually is an online, 100% virtual training, coaching, every Thursday night I’m on live. We also have e-courses. We’ll get to that later and Pici and Pici is a speaking, coaching, training, consulting firm. And both those companies focus on helping their clients recapture lost revenue get in front of your target market and grow their business. And so we want to thank you for the growth. And today, let me just say in this episode, I’m going to help you take advantage of an aspect of business in sales that’s a gold mine in attracting and maintaining clients. Unfortunately, this is sometimes that is either taken for granted or overlooked by many companies. So you want to listen to the very end of this podcast to make sure you’re covering all your bases. And this is extremely and I call this really how your reputation affects your brand. And so much is said about branding. And a good friend of mine Kurt Murcadonte, which I believe is probably an elite status brand expert, always talks to me about the power of branding and what that can do. And we’ve always talked about reputation. So today we’re going to get into that.

You know, there are several fundamental truths about every business.
First: products or services are your lifeblood of every company.
Second: all businesses have a brand, whether they’re intentionally building it or not.
Third: brand reputation matters.

Why is reputation important to an organization? So let’s talk about what reputation is. Reputation is a culmination of how society including your clients, stakeholders, employees, and the generic public view your business. Or you as an individual. Because it’s fairly abstract, we tend to measure a company reputation on qualitative scale that ranges from good to bad, rather than with the numeric score. You know and since it’s based on opinion, there are many factors that influence your reputation, including statements, actions, associations, third-party commentary, social media, and especially your Google search. So we’re going to be talking about, you know, some of the things that you can do to enhance your reputation, which will have massive impact on your brand. Let’s talk about some fundamental guidelines, and then we’re going to move into your online reputation. The first and I believe very important, is always do what you say you’re going to do. You know, it sounds simple. It just sounds simple because you know, you say you’re going to do something and hopefully you do it. But I don’t know if it keeps that, I don’t know if people tend to commit to that. Yesterday did a full day training with a, with an organization here and we really drove home the fact of the importance.
You know from a from a standpoint of brand development, but also building your personal reputation of doing what you say you’re going to do because only then will you be viewed as reliable. And will you be viewed where people can actually trust you. And in the business world without trust we’re sunk. Trust in the very fiber by which people determine, are they going to do business with you? Will they continue to do business with you? And so let’s always, let’s just lock that down of one of our non-negotiables. I’m always going to do what I say I’m going to do. I’m always going to deliver what I promised on. You know, so much is said and I believe one of the biggest challenges in business today is the term situational ethics. And by that, I mean people tend to move the benchmarks, people tend to move the goalposts. They do things to suit themselves and so that they strike an agreement and whether it’s written or unwritten and they don’t fulfill it.
And these are the this is the one of the biggest ways you can destroy your reputation, which in turn will destroy your brand. Next, let’s go out of our way to help others reach their goals. You know, what’s most important in business is, how are we helping our clients meet their goals? You know in the business world, you’re paid for the value, the results, the benefits, in the solutions you bring your clients. So what are we doing to help our clients reach their goals consistently? And that’s a big factor. You know with me, I really don’t even want to take the contract unless we can clearly determine what are the goals and objectives that company, that individual, wants to hit. So we can measure along the way and make sure we’re doing that.

Here’s another one number three. Is make other people look good. You know, we’re in a me society and I think we need to be in you society. I think we need to do everything we can to ultimately lift other people up. Let them shine, let them take the credit, help them grow. Because I think the how we can measure our self, is we how we become impact players, catalyst for helping other people get better. And I think that that’s when you see, when you see someone step on an athletic field and everything rises, they make they make average people look great. I think we need to do that in business. We need to be less concerned about how I look and more concerned about how they look. Now, here’s number four. Let’s go beyond expectations.

Whatever we agree, let’s exceed the expectations. Whatever we promised, let’s go above and beyond the call of duty. We always need to go beyond what they expect. You know, I think we need to over-deliver and under-promise rather than over promise and under deliver. And these are things that you can measure, you know. I don’t nickel-and-dime my clients, you know. I when I go in and do a corporate training and I let’s say I’m going in and I’m doing a one or two, two or three day event, I go into day before but, I get there early. And I spend time with my client and and I’m not nickel and diming them. I’m spending time with them so I can better deliver and exceed their expectation. And I think that’s a way that you grow your reputation and, which in turn will grow your brand. So let’s exceed expectations.

I think another things we need to look the part. We need to look professional. We need to I mean, whatever your industry calls for. Whatever you’re supposed to look like. We need to look like that. I think the, I think the days of allowing people to be always casual in an office when people come to your office and even in the covid era when people have have learned to dress down because you’re spending so much time at home. You know, I know that when people dress for the part, they tend to operate at a higher standard. And you just never know, you know. There’s I know that there was a study done many years ago on dress-down Fridays and they clearly determined that work productivity went down. And when we’re out in public when we go out, you know, I don’t leave the house that I don’t shave and comb my hair and I don’t put my logo on. Because you just never know. We want to look the part. We are our brand, you know, we’ll go out and we’ll wear shirts of athletic teams that have nothing to do with our brand. And so we want to consider these things. Here’s another thing of growing great reputation, is consistency. Can our clients count that they’re going to get the best of us every time? Are we consistent? Know so a big one here is, having integrity. And you know, and that goes without saying, I think integrity is one of them one of the pillars of building personal reputation. Which is going to impact your brand.
Do your clients, do the people in your office, see you as a person of integrity? And integrity is when everything lines up. Whatever comes out of your mouth is what your actions are. You have a very clear concise way you do things and that’s what creates continuity and integrity. So, you know, I think another thing that can grow reputation is, we have to learn to be likeable. And that’s something I have to work on.

So now we’re going to move into online. We’re going to talk about some of the things that you can do to improve your reputation in your online brand. You know, what is a, why is branding, why is reputation so important? You know in the era of the internet online reputation is everything. Think about your marketing strategy for just a second. You know, your paid team sometimes buys ads on numerous mediums from broadcast, to print, to digital. You invest in public relations, you get top-tier brand mentions. Your PR team sends out hundreds of press releases. To drum up fevered pitch-of-interest so to speak. You know, you’re doing podcasts or so many things you’re doing. All those efforts ultimately drive consumers to the internet. Whether it’s LinkedIn, it’s Google, you’re driving all those people and they’re going to be checking you out on the internet. And that’s become so important in the 21st century. You know, they’re going to they’re going to make an opinion of you based on what they view, what they read about. So it’s you know, it’s positive you want to have a positive message. You want your brand messaging to be clear. You want your marketing efforts to be extremely amplified on the internet. And so if your Google results are negative, people may not even reach out to you. If you have positive Google reviews, then you got a shot of being contacted by people. And that’s so important. You know, it’s we spend a lot of our time without bound, but I will tell you people check us out. They go to our LinkedIn, they go to Google, they go around and there is looking to find things about us. So your online reputation affects your offline brand perception. Let me say that again. Your online reputation affects your offline brand reputation. And so that’s so important, you know, and we’re going to talk about a few things here on how you can improve that. Well let me get into a you know, it’s easy to dismiss what happens online as unimportant to day-to-day operations of business. But your online company reputation has a great deal of influence over your offline.
So, why is reputation important? 50% of consumers will will question a brand’s competency if they have negative reviews. 95% of consumers browse online reviews before they commit to a purchase. 69% of job seekers will not take a job with the company with a bad reputation. 54% of executives believe reducing unfavorable search results will drive revenue. You know, so we know that online reputation is important because it impacts behaviors like hiring and sales.

So many potential clients, customers, stakeholders, employees, read what people say about you, your brand. And that all comes from the core of reputation. A CEOs reputation, the owner of a company’s reputation, is because it impacts the entire company. You know, when we see how something at the CEO level, the owner level, can have such a negative effect on the entire reputation in brand, we’ve seen companies crumble. We’ve seen clients lose market share. And so because CEOs are the face of the company or the owners to face the company, personal statements have consequences when they leave their company. So we’ve got to be really careful. So your reputation is also what comes out of your mouth and that’s so important. You know, Google gives, you know, a client and LinkedIn gives a client instant access to limitless information. Which allows them to choose between you and your competitor.

They can do research now that there were never able to do before. So many times before you’ve even picked up the phone, before they’ve done a search and they know more about you than you could have ever told them years ago. So you want to make sure you’re executing a reputation management and program. You know, by now you have figured out that your company reputation is one of the most important assets you have. And there are so many reputation management programs out there. We don’t sell them. We certainly want to use them because, that allows you to make sure the truth is going out about you. And and if it’s not you can do something about it.

The truth is at the end of the day, you need more than a handful of positive reviews if you want to shape your reputation and your brand. You need a comprehensive reputation marketing strategy that prioritizes your brand’s online presence. So once again, we don’t sell it, we don’t do it, but we certainly use it. Because like for example, one of them we use is brand yourself. You know, and you want to look into that. You want to make sure your LinkedIn profile is fully in done because, you can literally move everything from that over to your your brand yourself. It’s important the truth is out there about you. It’s important that you’re managing things. You know, sometimes people just go. Well, it doesn’t matter what they say about me. Well, it really does. You know, and that’s why yesterday when I was meeting with this client, I was saying what comes out of your mouth, how we treat people, online and offline, can be an asset or a liability. I think we have to be careful and this is one of the reasons why I stay away from controversial topics. Because you just can’t win that war. You’re going to offend someone. Now, I’m not telling you to do that. I’m saying from my vantage point, I want to keep the main thing the main thing. So I want to share something with you that is very important. It’s going to be very helpful for you as you’re developing your business. The Sell More Virtually front-end web site is now up. That’s SellMoreVirtually.com. Tremendous amount of content on there. But we just launched two E-courses you may be interested in.
One is LinkedIn simplified. This is endless quality leads. How to add wow factor to profile. This is about an eleven module course that you can access. You’ll you go in to SellMoreVirtually.com, you’ll go into store. It’ll be there.
The second one is. How do we exceed effective virtual sales meetings with clients. You know how to have great ones. How to execute those virtual meetings. This is a proven process. This is something we have perfected over many many years. It’s going to help you close more business. This going to help you shorten the sales cycle. Because virtual selling takes more time. And so we’re excited about that.
Yeah, you know you’re on our podcast. If this is an asset to you, can you like it, can you share it? But please visit the sell more virtually website. I think you’ll find great value. There’s also links, and there’s downloads, and there’s a complete system on there. So take a visit at the SellMoreVirtually.com website. This has been Joe Pici of The Sales Edge. Have a great day, and we will see you at our next podcast.

Voice over:

Thanks for listening. New episodes will air each Tuesday and Thursday. So make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and give us a five star review. The Sales Edge is sponsored by Pici and Pici Incorporated. A firm which provides training, consulting, and keynote presentations. Empowering corporations and individuals to attract and retain quality clients for higher revenues and growth. Make more money and sales. Speak with Joe in person by calling 407-947-2590 or by visiting www.piciandpici.com