How To Be Like­able As A Company

As in­di­vid­u­als, we all want to be liked. No one wants to be un­pop­u­lar and if we ever find out that some­one does­n’t want to spend time with us it can be very hurtful.

As busi­nesses though this feel­ing is some­what muted - it’s eas­ier to stay face­less and name­less and we don’t tend to take it per­son­ally when our or­ga­ni­za­tion is­n’t popular.

While this might be good for pro­tect­ing our feel­ings though, it is im­por­tant to try and en­sure that our com­pa­nies are pop­u­lar lest it cause us to be­come com­pla­cent and indifferent.

If your com­pany is pop­u­lar then this will have a huge ef­fect on your sales and will help you to get more busi­ness and to ben­e­fit from greater cus­tomer and em­ployee loyalty.

Think about it: if you are choos­ing be­tween two prod­ucts and the only dif­fer­ence is the com­pany that pro­duced it, then you will prob­a­bly pick the prod­uct from the com­pany you like most.

So how do you win friends and in­flu­ence peo­ple in the world of com­mer­cial business?

Here are some of the best strategies…

Have a Sense of Humour

One of the sin­gle best ways to win over your cus­tomers and your gen­eral pub­lic is to show that you have a sense of hu­mour. This means pok­ing fun at your­self from time to time in your mar­ket­ing and in­vest­ing money oc­ca­sion­ally in pur­suits that are for fun more than for profit. Vir­gin is a com­pany that has the right idea here, of­ten us­ing witty and hu­mor­ous ad­ver­tis­ing that fea­tures Richard Bran­son in a promi­nent po­si­tion. Google also has the right idea and clearly rec­og­nizes how use­ful their April Fools pranks are for their PR.

Don’t be Petty

Petty busi­ness is bad busi­ness. If you send your cus­tomers the bill for every slight ex­pense you spend on them and fine them when they’re a day late with their pay­ments then of course you won’t win any favours. While you might think that this is a good way to keep your over­heads down, it’s ac­tu­ally a short sighted form of busi­ness as in the long run it will only re­sult in your com­pany los­ing customers.

It can never hurt you to be gen­er­ous and to con­sider spend­ing a lit­tle ex­tra cash on your cus­tomers as a nec­es­sary loss-leader. The same goes for em­ployee loyalty.

Be Hon­est

When it comes to im­prov­ing your busi­ness’ rep­u­ta­tion, hon­esty is cer­tainly the best pol­icy and any news is al­ways go­ing to be bet­ter com­ing from you. In other words, it’s bet­ter that you break bad news than refuse to re­veal cer­tain in­for­ma­tion - as if you do the lat­ter then you’ll find that the ru­mours are prob­a­bly worse than the re­al­ity. Prac­tice trans­parency and use tech­nol­ogy to achieve this where pos­si­ble  - a com­pany blog for in­stance might be a use­ful tool for keep­ing your fans and your cus­tomers up to date at all times.

Be­ing Good

Fi­nally you should find ways to do good wher­ever pos­si­ble. This can mean do­nat­ing to char­ity, or it can mean run­ning your busi­ness in a green and eco con­scious manner.