Can what people say about you make a difference in the amount of money you get
for your business when you exit? You bet it can.
Your brand reputation has a huge impact on your business valuation.
We're going to tell you today how you can maximize the value of your business
through enhancing your brand reputation.
You've got to join us for this episode of the Inside BSS Show. Hey,
now I'm Dave Lorenzo. I'm the godfather of growth,
and I'm here with my partner Nicki G. Hey, Nico. Nicola, how are you today?
Hi, Dave. I am great. How are you?
I am absolutely fantastic. So Nicola,
we're talking about brand reputation and how brand reputation
impacts the value of your business,
whether you are looking to borrow money or you're looking to exit,
and we're going to give people five things they can focus on to enhance their
brand reputation. This isn't an all inclusive list,
but it's a great place to start. So why don't you kick us off with number one?
Absolutely. So what people are saying about your business certainly matters.
Think about customers,
think about employees that will have an impact on your business,
especially if they're saying things that are negative about it.
So let me start off with number one for us, which is online reviews.
It is very important for you to pay attention to those online reviews.
There is a lot of good information in them.
You want to make sure that you've got someone from the company who is going to
be responsible for identifying everywhere you may have online reviews,
and also taking time to review the comments.
You should be looking out for negative comments that you need to respond to.
Positive comments are great, but don't ignore the negative ones.
It's really important to take a look at those,
hear what customers or employees may be saying. Employees, for example,
could be posting on Glassdoor. Your customers may be leaving reviews on Google
or yo,
you want to make sure that you identify the sources and listen to those and
where they're negative, take the time to address them. But be careful.
Do not respond in a way that's negative.
Never attack someone even if it is an unfair criticism of
something about the company.
You want to let people see that you care about the comments that you're
receiving and you're able to address them in a way that is more objective,
acknowledge the way the person felt and respond in a way that is objective and
paints the company in a good light.
That will be what's left after the end of that criticism.
And if it's something that wasn't good about the company,
this is your chance to overcome that and make sure that you leave a positive
note there about the company. And what people will remember is, look,
this company cared enough to respond and to put a statement there that shows
that this is a company that is concerned about its brand new reputation,
concerned about its customers, concerned about its employees.
A great way to respond to a negative comment or criticism about your
company and an online review is to say, I'm sorry that that happened.
That is not indicative of the way that we conduct business at this company.
And please provide us with your contact information so that we may reach out to
you. And after that,
be sure to reach out to that person to make sure that you can work through what
the comment was so they're not left with a negative impression.
What do you think, Dave?
I love it. Yeah, that's fantastic. You always want to respond.
Every negative comment, whether you like it or not,
you always want to respond in exactly the way Nicola outlined.
And here's the reason why. Yes,
you are responding to try and reach out to that client,
to that customer and make things right for them,
but you're also responding to everyone else who's looking and reading the
comment. Even if people read the comment three years later, you want to say,
I'm really sorry that happened to you.
This is not indicative of the way we do business at this company.
Send us your contact information so that we can discuss this further and see
what we can do to make it right. When people read that,
they're like, well, everybody has a bad day. Maybe this happened.
They serve thousands of customers,
they're bound to have one or two that have a bad experience. At least the
company is trying to fix it.
That's what people who read those comments are going to think when they see 'em.
If you don't respond or you respond negatively or you respond defensively or if
you attack the person that wrote the comment,
you're displaying to the entire world that you don't know how to
handle when things go wrong in your business. People expect things to go wrong.
People are okay with companies getting a few negative reviews here and there,
and they look at the responses to gauge whether the company handles those things
fairly and effectively. Hey, Nicki G,
did you know you can also get our show as an audio podcast?
Of course, I know you can get the show as an audio podcast. I'm on it,
but does our audience.
I don't know. So those of you who are watching on YouTube,
you can find us wherever you get your podcast.
Just search up the Inside bss show with the Godfather and Nicki G and
you'll find us right there.
Click the follow button so that you never miss a show. Now,
there's a couple of reasons why you're going to want to do that. Nicki G,
tell 'em what the first reason is.
You get to ask us questions that is exclusive to our podcast
listeners.
Yeah, we only answer listener questions on the audio version of the podcast.
We don't do it on video,
so if you want to hear what everyone's thinking or if you want to ask us a
question, you got to download the audio podcast. The second reason,
and my favorite reason is because you can take us with you.
You can have a little Nicki g in your pocket while you're working out in the
gym, washing the dishes or walking the dog.
I love me some Nicki g in my pocket when I'm walking the dogs.
I don't know about you Nicola, but that's one of my favorite things to do.
Absolutely. Take us with you.
After you watch this episode here on YouTube.
Go to wherever you get your podcast,
click the follow button so we can go with you on your journey and you can ask us
questions. We will see you or more like hear you there.
The second element of brand reputation,
the second thing we like to do to help business owners enhance their brand
reputation is encourage them to get testimonials.
Letters of recommendation,
whether the testimonials are on video or they're just little things
people have written down,
they make such a big impact because few people collect and
post testimonials on their website.
Few people share the letters of recommendation they receive.
Now you're thinking to yourself, Dave, I've got a $30 million business.
I actually had a C E O say this to me, Dave. I got a $30 million business.
I don't have time to collect testimonials and they're not going to have an
impact. My customers are so sophisticated, they're not looking at testimonials.
And I said to him, Hey, Mr. Jones, I'm changing his name,
obviously Mr. Jones. Here's what I want you to do.
I want you to get a couple of testimonials from your clients and I want you to
show them to other clients and ask them what they think and ask them if they
look at testimonials or reviews before they make purchases. You know what?
The more sophisticated the purchase process,
the more impactful testimonials or letters of recommendation are
because it is more of a rational decision-making process than an emotional
decision making process. So anytime you have a sophisticated process,
recommendations and testimonials are always going to make sense.
I'll tell you a story. When I was at Gallup,
we worked in the retail space and we did a lot of business.
My team did a lot of business in the retail space. We were going after a top
women's wear retailer.
And the way that I closed the deal was walking into the pitch with their
top competitors chief human resource officer.
The person who was the chief human resource officer from their competitor opened
my pitch to that company and she said,
I would not be the chief human resource officer of,
and she said the name of her company today,
if I didn't work with Dave Lorenzo and his team at Gallup,
here are the five things they've done to personally help me advance my career.
And if you have any sense in your head, she's a very, very direct person.
If you have any sense in your head,
you will hire these people now while you can still get them,
before they are too busy to work with you. And that's how she closed her time.
She did a whole presentation,
15 minutes on the value we provided to her personally and to her company.
That testimonial closed a $5 million deal for me
in a very sophisticated long sales cycle process.
So if you don't think testimonials or letters of recommendation can make a
difference, they absolutely can. When you are looking to sell your business,
whether it's five years down the road or tomorrow,
you're going to have a portfolio of letters of recommendation and testimonials
from people who are luminaries in your industry,
people who are pillars of the community,
people who are top notch buyers of services that you
provide,
and you're going to share those with prospective buyers or with brokers or with
investment bankers, private equity funds,
the people who are managing those deals.
They actually look at these letters of recommendation to see the people and the
companies that are recommending you as part of their due diligence process.
So the best time to collect testimonials. Nicole loves it when I say this.
The best time to collect testimonials was the day you started your business.
The second best time, Nicki G, what's the second best time? The.
Second best time is today.
Absolutely. We've been doing this together a while, haven't we? Nicki G,
tell 'em what number three is.
So hold on. So let me pick up on that for just a minute. So on testimonials,
they're a powerful resource for your business.
Do not underestimate the power of them.
You can say all the great things about your business,
but it will not come across as powerful as someone else saying them.
I've seen these used so effectively from an existing client to
go win new business because it's like having a completely objective source.
Say, this company is great.
It has a different impact from a psychological standpoint on the person who's
receiving it. And then also, think about this. In your exit strategy,
you have a portfolio of testimonials from objective
viewpoints saying this company is excellent. It really,
really will help your brand reputation today. And in the long.
Run, you can't beat it. You can't beat it. Tell 'em what number three is.
Point number three is the quantitative measurement of your brand reputation.
Dave, tell everyone what that means.
So Nicola, this is where I lived and breathed for six whole years of my life.
You can actually measure the impact that your brand has on the people that you
work with using something called Net Promoter Score.
It's a one question survey that is really easy to put out in the field.
You can do it with SurveyMonkey or you can hire a company like Qualtrics or JD
Power or Gallup to do it for you.
And the net promoter score question is how likely are you to recommend and then
insert the name of the business there. How likely are you to recommend X, Y,
Z company? And it's a five point scale, it's a Likert scale,
it's a five point scale, and five means you would absolutely recommend it.
One means you would never, ever recommend it.
And somewhere in between means somewhere in between.
This is a quantitative measurement of the power of your brand because if you
are not willing to recommend the brand to somebody else,
you probably don't think very highly of it. Now you can do additional
work to look at the different elements of the brand. So for example,
in the hospitality industry,
we measured the elements that impact the person's first impression.
So we took every step of the first five minutes of someone's stay.
Were you greeted when you pulled up in front of the hotel?
Did someone hold the door open for you?
Did the desk clerk say hello to you when you were approaching the front desk?
Did the desk clerk thank you for staying at the hotel when he or she handed you
the key?
Did the desk clerk fill you in on all the features of the hotel?
All of these things can be measured as elements that are
drivers of brand value, but you only need to do that one question,
that net promoter score question. Why would you want to do that?
If you think you're providing outstanding service to your clients,
to your customers, you want to do that survey at least once a year,
maybe once a month,
depending on how frequently you have the budget to do it. And here's the
reason why.
If your scores are high and they're done by an independent research
outfit like a Gallup or a JD Power or a Qualtrics,
that proves to the person who may buy your business in the future that you have
a really high brand reputation. However, the problem comes in,
if you're doing the surveys and the scores are bad,
that could dinging your reputation. Now,
if the scores are bad and you have the opportunity to improve them and you bring
in a consultant like I used to do to help you improve those scores,
and you can demonstrate an improvement over time,
that will help you enhance the reputation of your brand.
So if you can afford it, surveying your clients,
surveying your customers with at least that one net promoter score question can
absolutely help enhance your brand reputation and increase the value of
your business at the time of a sale. Nicki G,
if you've got something to add about quantitative brand analysis,
please jump in here.
No, I love data. I can't resist.
So I work with a lot of data and the best way to support your position on brand
reputation is to have that raw data that is actual proof that
you have a great reputation in the marketplace.
So I love that when you start layering that with some of the other things we've
spoken about, customer feedback,
the actual surveys that demonstrate the data behind those responses,
it's really going to help make that brand powerful and solidify it for
those who are going to be looking at it later on when it's time to exit.
Alright,
Nicki G number four is having a PR strategy for when
things go wrong.
Manage your brand reputation with a PR strategy for when things go wrong.
You're a lawyer, you deal with things that go wrong all the time.
What should you do from a PR perspective and why is it important to have a
process in place for when things go wrong?
Yes, I do deal with this often,
and it is very important to have a process in place because it can
impact your brand reputation. So first,
you want to make sure that you are as transparent as you can be about the
issue. When something goes wrong, do not try to hide from it.
If you try to hide from it, then it is going to come through in your message,
especially if it's to the public.
So be thoughtful about being transparent as much as you can to the extent you
are not creating exposure for the company.
So always remember that you want to make sure you're not what you are saying
cannot create more problems for you.
Always good to be talking to a lawyer that you have who can work through a PR
crisis with you in addition to a PR firm if you are large enough that you need
that extra help, it's always good to do that,
especially if this is a major issue for the company. You also want to make
sure that if you're wrong, just own it.
Do not try to hide from it.
We've seen a lot of examples in the last few years,
especially where there were these major marketing campaigns by companies that
really fell flat and they had to make a decision.
I remember specifically there were ones in the areas of diversity, equity,
inclusion, the message, it fell flat.
They got the complete wrong message out to the public and they had to make a
call. Do we just own this and say, you know what, we were wrong. We own that.
This is not who we are as a company and we are going to move forward from that.
Or do you try to massage the message and go a different route with
it? That doesn't go well,
and we've seen that because then the company had to keep coming back,
making statements.
You don't want to be in a position where you have to keep correcting what you've
said, do the right thing from the get go,
provide a transparent message, be clear about it, own it,
and make sure that you're able to focus on how can I move forward in the
public's eye internally of the organization if I have done damage there too by
what has happened.
Oh, it's a great job. I think you said it exactly perfectly.
Even if you can't afford a public relations agency all the time,
full-time, if there's a crisis,
bring in a crisis PR professional because the way you
communicate and how early you communicate could make all the difference in the
world. We could do a whole show on this,
but we need to move on to point number five and point number five is if you
really want to manage your brand reputation and put yourself in the best
position for a sale,
you need to make sure you are taking a high profile in your
industry and your brand has a high profile in your industry and you receive
some sort of industry specific recognition. Now, Nicola,
I'm not talking about super lawyers that scam Lama dinging Don.
I hate that stupid thing. No,
I'm talking about you being the president of the International Society of Widget
Manufacturers or you being voted person of the year
for the International Society of Crankshaft Providers. That type of
recognition is incredibly valuable because it highlights you and
your brands to the people who could potentially purchase your
company. So how do you get this type of recognition?
How do you make sure you're promoting your brand to these people?
Join industry associations,
give back to your industry and as quickly as you can get on a committee
and ascend up through the ranks of that industry association until you
reach at least a director level where you're exposed to the
best of the industry.
Because if you want options for selling your business down the
road,
those are going to be people who are going to provide you with some really good
options.
You may even want to do strategic alliance partnerships with them to get ready
for that in the future. The way to do it is to get that industry recognition,
get it as soon as you can and maintain it over time. Nicki G, your thoughts?
Yes, people need to know who you are,
especially folks who can be strategic partners for you or even competitors.
They can benefit you a lot when it comes time to exit because they know who you
are. They likely want to purchase your company.
So be thoughtful about making sure that you're making those relationships even
with competitors.
They know who you are and that's going to help benefit you in the long run,
especially when it's time to consider your exit.
I love it. This is the Inside BSS show. My name is Dave Lorenzo.
I'm the godfather of growth, and you are. Who are you? You are.
I am Nicki G.
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