What’s Your Reputation Worth?
Your character is who you really are. Your reputation is who people think you are.
Reputations are peculiar things. Good ones make life easier; bad ones mean
that opportunities fade away and doors close.
Clearly, it pays to have a good reputation, just as it pays to have a
successful brand. In some cases,
people/businesses may have reputations that are totally undeserved.
“Reputation”, according to my old Concise Oxford English
Dictionary, means: "what is generally said
or believed about a person’s or thing’s character; state of being well reported
of, credit, distinction, respectability, good report". Whilst these may not be the best definitions,
they give an indication of the meanings of “reputation”.
The “halo effect” exaggerates both good and bad
reputations. The way that I think of the
halo effect is: seeing, hearing or understanding what you want to see, hear or
understand, believing what you want to believe (often on the say of others and despite any evidence to the contrary). Experts refer to it as “cognitive bias”
thanks to which your judgements of a person’s character can be influenced by
your overall impression of them. We’ve even evolved sayings to support these
misperceptions and misconceptions:
·
A leopard
doesn’t change its spots
·
The apple
doesn’t fall far from the tree
·
Like
father, like son
·
Birds of a
feather flock together
·
No smoke
without fire
Human brains like simple, easy-to-understand
explanations. We like to believe the
judgement of others, or that if the majority say that something is so, then it
is so. How many people believed that
that the sun revolved around the earth, or that the world was flat until the
likes of Galileo and Christopher Columbus proved them wrong? It takes little to give someone or something
a good or bad reputation or brand, but it takes the equivalent of a seismic
event to change that perception, even if all evidence is already to the
contrary.
So what might be the key steps to managing your reputation?
1.
Know what you want as a “reputation”.
2.
Have a clear Objective, Strategy and Tactics for
managing this.
3.
Bend every effort to manage your “story” (many
people pay PR agents to do this).
4.
Have a plan for when things go wrong and your reputation
is “on the line”.
Just as people will buy on the say-so of “trusted advisors”
(which could extend to comments from relatively unknown people on the internet
– Amazon for example), so they will avoid on the same basis. I’m now seeing requests from developers of
“Apps” for smartphones and tablets for people to contact them if they have
problems rather than posting unfavourable reviews in the iTunes store. They’re trying to manage their reputation in
the face of demanding (and at times, perhaps) ignorant buyers. The problem is, one person can now reach out
to millions through the internet.
Managing your “story” and the impact that the “halo effect”
may have on it is something we all have to deal with. If you’re lucky, you may produce an excellent
product which then attracts buyers to other products (Apple’s iPod, for
example). The same may be true in the
automotive industry and (in my own personal experience) when it comes to buying
books by the same author. Equally
though, if you produce something that isn’t successful, you’re likely to have a
harder time trying to sell your next product, even if it’s superior in every
way.
In conclusion, manage your reputation internally and
externally. Plan for problems. Make sure all your staff understand their
part.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy to offer solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Risk, Selling, Strategy
posted by William Martin @ 15:16
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