The value of a business increasingly lurks

not in physical and financial assets that

are on the balance sheet, but in intangibles.

—The Economist, June 12, 1999

The reputation of your business is what precedes it in the marketplace, be you service or product. Building a reputation based on customer centric service, standing by your brand promise and placing an emphasis on happy customers sows dividends in the short and long term. Businesses and organizations must manage their reputation by communicating with their clients and customers and management must embody honesty, fairness, responsiveness and consistency in dealing, conducting business in a manner that ensures long-term success. People are loyal to companies they feel good about.

How you deal with employees and customers creates the reputation you develop.They are key to the success of every business. Many companies fail to understand the importance of developing and maintaining a consistent reputation as trusted, reliable and treats everyone fairly. The culture of the organization informs the perceptions of the public at large and learning how to assess what kind of reputation your organization has improve upon your approach each employee, customer and client, each of whom has an influential ability to impact the reputation for better or worse.

If the reputation of an organization is tarnished, it is a lengthy and expensive job to shift negative perceptions that have been created by the key constituencies. Management must strive to communicate clearly to employees a culture where they expect them to treat each other and everyone they come in contact with while representing the company in a manner that is consistent with the brand values. When employees deviate, it is important to re inforce those expectations and that behaving in a manner inconsistent with the culture is unacceptable as the values and perspectives build the reputation perception.