How your business is perceived by prospects can have a significant impact on how successful you are. Your corporate image is the way you view yourself and how you are viewed by others. And, in some cases, what you perceive to be your corporate image is not in line with what others perceive it to be.
Your image is influenced by a number of factors including your financial performance, your business practices, the quality of your products and services, the type of customer service you provide, the kind of relationships you have with your employees and more.
It’s fairly obvious that a positive image helps attract new business as well as retain existing customers. It also has a side benefit of making your business more attractive to job seekers. A negative image can have a disastrous impact on your business.
It takes work and effort to ensure you have a positive corporate image. You first need to identify your core values and then make sure that everything you do aligns with those core values. You need to make sure that your business walks the talk; in other words what you do must match with what you say. Set your corporate values and stick with them no matter what. Sometimes that can be harder than you think but don’t settle for fast gains when what you really want is long-term relationships and ongoing commitments.
This does not mean you can never make a mistake. That is an unrealistic goal. Rather you will be measured and judged based on what you do to assume responsibility for a mistake and the corrective action you take following it.
Your corporate image is based not only on the big things you do, but also on all the little choices your company and its employees make every day. Maintaining your corporate image is not just the responsibility of members of the C-suite. In fact, the people on your staff who have day-to-day contact with your customers and prospects have more of an influence on your corporate image than do the head honchos.
Make sure every person in your organization understands the image you are portraying and realizes their actions reinforce your company’s image. The decisions they make should be based on how they will influence your corporate image and they should be trained to avoid making decisions that will negatively impact it.
Your corporate image is the way you want to be perceived, and the challenge is to make sure there is not a gap between your ideal and the actual image. When there is alignment between how you want to be perceived and how you actually are perceived, the stronger your reputation will become and the more likely customers and prospects are to trust you.
