This post is directed towards people who are launching products, offering services or simply providing their own event management services. If you’re running your own firm, you can focus entirely on getting business instead of pleasing supervisors. This usually equates to getting customers and making sure they are happy. The issue is that it isn’t always as simple and easy as it seems. Unless you are in a very specific niche, chances are you’ll have competitive sharks swimming in the water as well. Those businesses that thrive on reputation based sales become very competitive.
The good thing about today’s time is that you can channelize multiple forces to carve a stronger foothold on the market to make sure that you can get as much business as possible. Here are some quick tips to get you started:
Drive competition away
The best and surest way to earn reputation is to find what sets you apart from competition. What value does your product or service offer which is different and can be highlighted? Don’t restrict yourself – be creative.
Quality and consistency
Secondly, focus on ensuring quality and consistency in your services. I’d say, set high standards and consistently meet them. Your work has to be good, your services have to speak for themselves, your web presence has to be top-notch, how quickly and well you handle customer queries has to be right on. Don’t compromise on quality and wonder why your business is not where it potentially can be.
Endorsements
When you know your competitive edge and have provided high quality services, make sure you request for feedback and reviews from your customers. This is extremely important in building credibility in business. People trust what others have to say, especially if those “others” are people they look up to. So, if suppose, Micheal Arrington says something good about a new startup, people will check them out.
If your product or service isn’t something people can find and write about themselves, at least you can request testimonials from your existing customers. You have invest time in building your reputation, it doesn’t just happen by itself.
Get more visibility – Create a following
All of that effort can go to waste if people don’t know about you. Once you have all of the other pieces together, you spread the word. Start a community and build a following instead of just marketing your services. Like anything else, you need to build credibility first. You can use different tools like blogs, microblogs (e.g. twitter) and social pages (e.g. facebook) to build a community of likeminded people (or potential customers). This will definitely get you more visibility and will help in building your reputation.