How Your Brand Values Strengthen Your Business.

How fast do you return a telephone call or an email from a potential lead?

I ask myself this every time a lead remarks to me, how quickly I responded. I wonder if perhaps most businesses do NOT return contacts as fast as they could. I try to respond the moment I get a contact. Even if I am busy, I at least try to respond and inform them that I will return their call when I have time enough to respond properly.

Yesterday I left a message with a store, asking them to give me their store hours. The message said that they would get back to me. It’s been more than 24 hours and nothing. How many businesses do this – make a promise and then fail to act on it. What is the message their brand is saying to me? I believe it’s telling me that I am not important to them. Maybe the next time they complain about how slow business is they could also talk about how they failed to get back to leads who called to inquire about something and they chose to ignore them. Nobody is going to beg your brand to do business with them.

Most small businesses that I speak with, have service as one of their brand values. When a business leaves their customers on hold for extended periods of time, or they fail to return their calls and inquiries, then service is not something that their company takes very seriously. Service when it suits them would be more appropriate. Your simply can’t compromise your brand values if you hope to grow your business based on consistent delivery of quality. The marketplace thrives on authenticity in their brands. Paying lip service looks good on the surface, but when your offer is tested in the marketplace, you will be quickly found out, and your market share will diminish.

A great example of this in today’s marketplace is Toyota. After spending years bragging about their quality, they got greedy and failed to live up to their brand value regarding quality. Now their brand is suffering in the marketplace with lower sales and a renewed confidence in American models. Their arrogance cost them huge, and it will take years to regain their polish. Now I’ll bet those short cuts on quality, don’t look like such a great idea in their boardrooms anymore. They grew so comfortable with their quality reputation that they obviously felt that the brand would carry the day no matter if it were authentic or not.

Don’t make this mistake. Brand Values are essential to your growth and prosperity.