I recently gave this talk at a Christian business entrepreneur networking meeting

Video transcript:

Jim Barthel

All right. Mike Saunders is going to be teaching on the power of a good name. I think many of you have known Mike. He’s spoken here several times. Mike runs a first-class marketing company, and I think he has a longer tag line than that. I know Mike because he’s helped our business in a great way with marketing and with insight. He’s a teacher. He’s an encourager. He’s an entrepreneur, and he’s a guy that has great ideas. I can tell you that not only does he have great ideas, but those ideas pay off. I can attest to that in our own business. We welcome Mike.

Mike:

Thank you Jim. As a matter of introduction, I don’t need to say anything more about myself. Jim covered that very well. Make sure that if any of you first time visitors have not filled out the paper or just get me some information on you and your email address, and I’ll add you to the email follow-up, so that you can make sure you hear about meetings, or like Jim mentioned, the questions of any enhancements or additional times. Also, on our website, www.kingdombusinessalliance.com you can register your business. There’s a little tab that says ‘directory’. Fill that out. Put your logo and your description and your website and then that will be a nice way for us. Because again, the word ‘alliance’, Kingdom Business Alliance, we want to align with each other. That’s one great way to do that.

You can also on the website, there’s a tab for media. Those of you that feel like you might miss writing down everything on these slides, don’t worry because I will post these slides up. Then as soon as Joyco gets the video rendered, I will get the video up there. You can scroll through the media tab and look through past messages and see who’s spoken and watch the entire message. Also, there’s a transcript of each one as well, so you can read them.

Interesting that we have one of our visitors here in branding, because here’s one thing that I feel just ties together with this name, is your brand, is you. We gather here today in the name of Jesus. We are in business, whether it’s as a business owner or if you’re an entrepreneur, or if you’re a professional. If you’re the VP of whatever, or project manager, we do things in the name of Jesus to reflect Christ. I feel like we as Christian business entrepreneurial professionals, don’t do enough to recognize that, and sometimes cannot reflect well enough back on the name of Christ. Maybe think about a shiny object that gets dull. You can’t reflect light back too well, or a mirror that’s really smudged. You can’t reflect light back too much.

If we have our name and our reputation and our brand positioned the right way, we can reflect Christ to the people that we are working with. I really feel like this too. One of the things that Jim mentioned is I’m a teacher. My digital marketing agency is Marketing Huddle. I work with business owners in that realm. I also, when I did my MBA, I got it in marketing, and I started teaching. I teach at three universities, and one class that I teach is called Strategic Branding. One thing through that class is, your brand is not the color of your logo, the shape of your font. Your brand is a lot of things put together. In this realm, looking at our first slide, is a good name.

Think of your name in the business realm as your brand, and how can we build our brand, our name, in such a way that we glorify Christ? What we’re going to cover here is the why and the how. Because really … Any musicians in here? Anyone play piano, any instrument? Do you know the term resolution? My wife is musician, and if you don’t end the song on the right chord, piano or guitar, it just irks them. She’s told the story that when she was in college that sometimes the professor would end it on the wrong chord and then you would literally have students running down front to hit that last one. “Okay. Good.” We want to have good, good congruency in our business as we build this name.

Where I was going with that is, I want to tell the why, why we need to have and build a good name, and then the how. We’re going to have some practical tips that you can leave here with, on some ways that you can do this in your business that you can do without having to go and do things that are really, really expensive, but things you can be doing right now in your business. Look at Proverbs 22:1 here. “A good name is more desirable than great riches. To be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” To me, I feel like we hear that verse a whole lot, and we just, “Okay. Yeah. We hear it.” Great riches … Why would something be worth more than great riches? I would say is, if someone handed you a bag of money that was a lot, that’s great riches, but what if someone said to you, “I will give you that same bag of money or half of that same bag of money for months on end, for years on end.” Which is better? The continuity of that.

I feel like this verse is telling us that a good name is more desirable than great riches because that’s something that lives on. I’m going to look at this. “Your reputation precedes you. Make sure that you can control the story and make it positive!” How many times have you had someone say to you something very, very positive. “I heard all about you!” We know that our reputation precedes us, and sometimes that reputation is a misrepresentation. Think of an iceberg. You just see that tip, but then look at all the things underneath there that you didn’t know. Have you ever heard this before, “You don’t know what you don’t know?” When you do know that, it becomes that revelation. I feel that people in business, you don’t realize that there’s so much happening around you that people have heard of through word of mouth, through the grapevine, through online, through whatever the case is, about your business. We need to make sure we control that story, and make it positive. There are things that we can do for that.

Now the why. Why is it important? Christian entrepreneurs must be diligent and excellent. I could have probably put dozens of verses in here, one that comes to mind is the ant. The ant is so diligent, and gathering in the winter for the harvest. I wanted to just make this point of these two verses. Philippians 3:14, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” This is used a lot of times to talk about doing something worthy, and having these goals. Think about this, if I press toward the mark, what is the mark? It’s a point. It’s a point out there in the future. If I’m pressing toward that mark, it means that there’s a positive action going toward that mark.

Does that give the connotation that I’m just hanging out and waiting for God to drop something in my lap because I’m a Christian and God’s going to give me something, so I’m just hanging out? No. Pressing toward something … Pressing is an action. “Toward something” gives the connotation that you’re going toward something in that mark. The prize, the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus … We’ve covered in our January event that work is worship, and God has called us to work. In the Old Testament, Christ talks about work a lot, and the work of our hands and being diligent with that. This first verse sets this stage this stage at why we need to be diligent and excellent.

Look at I Corinthians 10:31, “Whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Eating and drinking, many of us have done a little bit of that here. That’s easy. Check. What else jumps at us in the verse? “Do all.” Obviously, does that mean some or when you feel like it? I’ve heard a teacher say this, “When you see ‘all’ in scripture, ‘all’ means all and that’s all ‘all’ means.” All. If we’re doing eating and drinking, that’s not some form of worship, but maybe it is if we’re doing it in the right why. Kaylee’s business with health coaching that can be a form of worship, helping people to get that aligned well in their lives. Look at this verse of doing all for the glory of God, and let’s relate that to our day-to-day business ministry, non-profit, for-profit. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a professional, we need to do everything for the glory of God, because we need to be that reflection so our name that precedes us, that reflects back to the name of Christ, because guess what?

We many times have groups come through our church, and we had one come through just this past weekend. I remembered the time they came a few years ago they did this little skit. It was basically these two college kids and they were talking about … One girl was talking about being a Christian and the other girl was just shocked. “I had no idea. I’ve been your roommate for four years. I had no idea.” How discouraging that is. What in our lives could be pinpointed that would condemn us to be a Christian, that would accuse us and convict us and say, “Yep you’re a Christian. Got you.” Hopefully a lot of things. When we have those things in our lives that are reflections back of Christ we need to be doing all of these.

Unfortunately, true or false, you hear five or ten good things about something, do you run out there and talk about it to people or when you hear one thing negative? That’s the thing that you run out and tell people about. Look at the news. How many people get really just a pit in your stomach when you watch the news or hear the news? Because it’s the sensationalism of the negative that picks up the news feeds. I would love to have some quadrillionaire start a news station that’s only positive, good things that encourage people. “Billy helped the little old lady across the street,” or “This person gave up their time and helped this person with a need.” That doesn’t make the news. It’s the negative. You could do ten, twenty, thirty good things and it could be gone in a flash with that one little lapse. We need to be on our toes because that name, remember, that name precedes us.

Christian entrepreneurs must build and preserve a good name. Proverbs 22:1, again, “A good name is more desirable than great riches.” I went to Blue Letter Bible and I looked at the word ‘name.’ In the Hebrew lexicon, you can work on that pronunciation yourself. Look at the definitions next to that. “Renown, fame, famous, infamous, rapport.” Have you heard of a good rapport? Have you heard of a bad rapport? Well, a name can be a good rapport or a bad rapport. Proverbs 22:1 is saying, “a good name.” We need to focus on that building that good name. Look at fame and famous. That could be fame and famous just in your sphere. A lot of people feel like, “Well, I don’t have an international consulting business. I work in Arvada, Colorado.” You can be famous in that sphere of influence that you have so that when people think of you and hear of you, they go, “Yeah. I’ve heard of,” or, “I went to your website and I feel this connected because … ”

I would encourage each and every one of you … How about this, we were at a basketball game this past weekend and we saw the back of someone’s car and it’s like, “Hey they’ve got the Ichthus fish on their car. That must mean … ” I said, “They could have just bought it from someone and then … ” My wife goes, “Yeah, but, the husband and the wife, they both have it. That says something, right?” What on your website aligns you with the name of Christ? Could there be something? I would say that it could just even be a Bible verse. It could be a about me section that just mentions that you are a follower of Christ, that you strive to please, serve your customers in the best possible way so that … I would encourage you that that could be something that you could to do to build that name.

Let’s look at Strong’s definition of name. “A mark or memorial of individuality by implication, honor, authority, character.” Individuality, think of that as your competitive advantage. I’ll say this, pay attention because I’m going to give away a copy of my latest book. It’s teaching you how to communicate your competitive advantage to your target audience using strategic alliances, all with the R4 framework, which is reputation, resell, reach, and referral. One of the points in here that’s reputation, is this name. Think of the competitive advantage can be that name. You know that people come to you and go to one of your competitors to analyze who they should choose. What if they choose you because they see and hear and feel that that name and that ethos that your company has is so powerful and it aligns with them?

Building that name with that memorial, that mark, mark of individuality. Strong’s just talking about mark of individuality. We think of it in the business world as competitive advantage, or what sets us apart. Call it what you want, but you know as well as I do, that you guys have chosen a restaurant before based on the star reviews. Has anyone not gone to a place because when you looked at the star reviews; there was a couple negative and you were like, “Ergh.” How about this, have you ever looked online and seen some businesses reputation and it was all good? I mean, glowingly crazy good? Some would say that that could be not as wonderful as you think it might be, because sometimes you need sprinkled in there a little bit of a … Not horrible, but just a little bit of a balance. Having one or two negative things but overwhelming with good things … You can’t please everybody at every time. We know that.

How about this, have you ever seen some business that has zero, just crickets? That’s a bad thing. That gets back to the slide I was talking about. We need to build and maintain our good name. Think of the name here in Proverbs 22:1, “a good name is more desirable than great riches,” and think of it as this good rapport as a mark of individuality. Look at that word on the last line there, “authority and character.” Who would you want to go to for this surgery that you need? Someone that is just a doctor or surgeon, or someone that is board certified and published this many papers and books and is honored by, and is an authority in their field of thumb surgery?

That came be me because last night at church my mother-in-law was taking about her thumb. There’s this one doctor that’s doing a seminar on thumb issues, and I was like, “Boy, that is specialized.” That might be a little too specialized for some businesses, but guess what? Who would you rather go to, someone that does it all to everybody or someone that’s a specialist? Think of this authority. Your names can build that authority.

Once you’ve done all this work to build and maintain your name, your brand, your authority, for reflecting Christ, possibly … As I was putting this talk together over the last couple weeks specifically, but I’ve been working on it for a couple months, the thought came to my mind that we could become prideful in our good name. We can say, “Check this out.” I will tell you this, have you ever had someone send you in a good feedback or review or letter of testimonial, and you read it and you felt really good. Then you kept it and you read it again. Then maybe you’re reading it because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Could it be possible that by doing some of these things in our business and getting that good name, we could get a little bit of diversion off of the name of Christ, who we’re here to serve, and feel like, “We are good?”

I wanted to do a quick word search on ‘prideful.’ The Hebrew lexicon says, “haughtiness, arrogancy, highness, swelling.” How about, “He just swelled up with pride?” Right? We’ve heard that before. We need to keep thing in balance. Think of that seesaw. If we’re pushing down on one side, it’s going to pop up on another. We should keep things at balance so much that we’re not thinking we’ve done this, because what can we do aside from the power of Christ in our life. Could we even get out of bed and walk into here this morning? No. Could we make the impact in our businesses that we make? No. I wanted to make this point right here, and help us to realize, we should not be prideful in the fact that we may have a good name, a good reputation that precedes us.

Psalms 36:11 says, “Let not the foot of pride come against me, and let not the hand of the wicked remove me.” I always like to, when I see verses that have an action. There’s a lot in the Psalms that says, “God, teach me your ways.” That’s not just God pushing a button and planting in my mind. It’s teaching me. That’s God’s action toward me. In fact, GATM, God’s action toward me, I remember there was a time I did this study where every time in a few chapters of Psalms I would just put ‘GATM,’ God’s action toward me. How about, does it encourage your heart to see verses that say, “God thinks many thoughts toward us. The Holy Spirit prays on our behalf when we don’t know what to pray.” That’s God’s action toward us.

God’s not this inanimate object that we just push a button and say, “Yes, I’ll take two of these. Thank you.” The cosmic bell hop concept. I love this, “Let not the foot of pride come against me,” because if we let pride creep in, that’s coming against us. That’s something that is an action toward us that we want to avoid. Proverbs 11:2, “When pride cometh, then cometh shame; but with the lowly is wisdom.” There’s a lot of speakers, Tony Robbins speaks of this where we are motivated to go away from fear. Many times we’re more motivated to be away from fear than to go toward something. Think of it like this, would you be more motivated to avoid financial ruin, or to gain a hundred dollars a month in returns in the market? You’re going to be motivated against ruin. “When pride cometh, then cometh shame.” We don’t want shame, and if we have that name that is a negative name, then that comes with it some shame. That should encourage us to not have that happen because we’re that reflection of God’s name.

Proverbs 13:10, “Only by pride cometh contention; but with the well advised is wisdom.” We know this next one. Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” We know that one, and it’s almost like when someone’s out there being so excited about something, “Look at me! Look at me!” It’s almost like we’re going, “Get ready here it comes,” and then, trip. We need to recognize that in our own life and in all of these things, make sure that our motives are pure. Why would we want to be building this good name, this good reputation for our businesses, for ourselves?

I’m sure there’s someone in here that’s an employee, not an entrepreneur business owner. I went to a seminar years and years ago called The Brand of You. We’ve got some financial advisors in here. I’m sure that there’s some financial advisors or realtors, that you could work for a couple different companies in your career, you still do the same thing. You do financial advising. You sell real estate. Really, it is the brand of you that you’re building, and you just happen to be hanging your hat on this shingle and running it through this business. How can we build that name without becoming prideful? Because look at some of these cautions that scripture gives us.

Look at I Timothy 3:6, “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil.” What is that connection? Someone that’s lifted up in pride, or, look at the top definition, swelling? Someone that is arrogant and swelling up with pride is a novice. In business we don’t want to be considered a novice, because we want to be considered an expert in what we do. Let’s look at a couple verses up. “With the well advised is wisdom.” We don’t want to be a novice. We want to be well advised.

The next thought is Christian entrepreneurs must model Christ and serve. Philippians 2:7, “But made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men.” How many times have you felt like some sales person that you’re dealing with is just being really pushy? In the cliché, “What’s it going to take to get you into this vehicle,” I had that said to me, and I thought that was just some cliché from the Dark Ages. I had a sales person tell me that a few years ago when we bought our van. “What’s it going to take to get you into this vehicle today?” Knowing sales and business, it really irked me, but we want to make sure that we serve first. If you like reading books, here’s a really good one. It’s called The Go Giver, by Bob Burg, and it basically it’s a quick fictional story. It’s a quick read. You’d read it in about two days. Talking about how people that give really elevate themselves because your competitors are not giving. They’re not serving first. They’re not educating.

Here is Christ in this saying about Christ, “Christ made himself of no reputation.” We can get into a long theological discussion about, wow. The king of all kings that spoke the universe into being came down and what? Was in the Taj Mahal and had ten servants? No. Born in a stable, was lowly. If Christ made himself of no reputation and took on him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, number one, we know that he can relate to what we’re going through in life, business, and everything. Again, the Hebrew lexicon here for reputation: “precious, costly, excellent.” Costly, do we appreciate things that we get really easily? Typically not.

Think of the “trust fund babies.” Maybe you guys have known someone that way, that … I had one. A friend of mine in high school that wasn’t a trust fund baby, but his parents were just loaded. Everything he had … his sixteenth birthday, got his driver’s license. Guess what he pulled up to school in? A new Porsche. Come on. Where do you go from there? I had a ’67 Dodge Swinger, so my next car, anything would have been better than that. Where do you go from a Porsche? Did he appreciate that? He’d say that he did, but probably not. If you started a new business and immediately, success. You wouldn’t appreciate it as much as … I bet if we went back around the table and had everyone tell of their struggle and their trials and tribulations and twenty years in business, what have you learned? What have we come through? Man, we appreciate this.

When that phone call comes in asking for a quote on our service, or, “Can you give me some advice?” We appreciate that. We don’t treat it like, “Oh good gracious another call. Yup we do this.” We appreciate it because it’s a reflection of what we have worked so hard for. Precious, costly, excellent, for reputation. If we as entrepreneurs need to be building that reputation, which can be costly, which should be excellent, how could we do that? Number one: Model and serve Christ and use His example.

Now let’s move to landing the plane and how can we do this? We’ve laid a foundation of why we need to have a good name and build that good reputation, that good name in the community. How can we implement reputation marketing in your business? Number one: ethics, integrity, trust, customer service. I want to have that thought to make this one point. If you did a whole lot of work to get someone to your website, and the website looked like Craigslist … This is a common example because people go, “It doesn’t matter how great your website looks. Go to Craigslist. They make a kadrillion dollars a year, and look at how just … That’s not a good sight.” In our business, if we did a lot of work to get people to our website and it was really run down and horrible, that wouldn’t do much. Or if we got someone to be in front of us where we can do a sales presentation and we did a horrible job, that wouldn’t do much.

Guess what the foundation needs to be once we’ve gotten in … The most important foundation is what we just talked about, doing it for the right reasons, not being prideful, being a reflection of Christ. Ethics and integrity. Are there decisions that you have made or maybe even are getting ready to make in your business, that might cost you a buck or two, but you know it’s the right thing? Are there situations that you could take the high road on regarding ethics and integrity, that maybe you’re not even going, “And look at me. I’m doing this. Ashes on my head, I’m doing these thing because I am … ” That’s doing it for the wrong reasons.

There are some things that you can do … You know how in scripture says when we pray we need to go in a closet and pray because then God will hear us? God hears us anywhere, but the point is it’s our heart, our heart attitude. We don’t want to be like the Pharisees beating our chest and going, “Oh Lord, look at me. I’m praying.” If we can do our business with ethics and integrity that engenders trust. As business owners in here, do you know one of the worst, highest volatile opportunities in our businesses with is customer service.

Randy runs an automotive shop. What if the person at his front desk was horrible? I will say, they’re not, because I go there and his guys are wonderful. What if I saw a great ad, went to the website, saw a great website, took my vehicle in, and they called back really quickly, fixed it? I went to go pick it up and their front desk person was the worst? That might not make me run and never come back, but it might make me go, “Okay. Well next time I’ll try someone else.” This ethics, integrity, trust, and customer service … I’ll throw something else out. I’m not wanting to pick on Randy, but this just came to my mind. When I went in a couple times ago, the guy was talking about my tires, and he goes, “You need some tires. We sell them, but you don’t need them just yet. Really keep it in mind.”

I bet you that if he was really pushing, he could have sold me some tires, but he was just bringing that to my attention to make sure that I was taken care of, because he knows that I’ve got a wife and four kids that ride in our minivan. When we have this focus, and we’ve got the first phase down of doing our business for the right way, the right reason, to glorify Christ, then we have to focus on ethics, integrity, trust, and customer service, because you know what? We could spend probably three days on those three bullet points right there, but we’ll just leave it at that, just to say that these are critical.

Look at this next statement down here. “You’re one customer away from a bad reputation.” That’s kind of scary right? Because, unfortunately, what’s the statistic? People will tell one person that they had a good experience with you, but ten or eleven if they didn’t. You’re one person away from having a bad reputation. Not ruining your business, not going down the tubes, but just that mark. It’s almost like you need ten to one. Let’s use that as an example. You need ten good to one bad, because that sticks to their mind. If you saw ten good reviews on a restaurant and you saw one that was like, “The food just was horrible.” You might easily pass on that. You’re one customer away from a bad reputation.

Look at this last statement. “Harness the power of ‘pocket publishing.’” Any thoughts on what that would be? How do you publish out of your pocket? Here’s my pocket. What do I have? Hey, I can publish what I want, when I want, momentarily, because we have the power of going to Facebook, going to Twitter, going to whatever network and platform that we have, and publishing our thoughts. We can go to the Yelps and the Googles and go, “I didn’t like … ” and “This person … ” You know what? Someone can say something about your business, and you could see that. You can go, “But there’s a story behind that.” I had a client once that I pointed a couple bad reviews out to, and they’re like, “Let me tell you the story.” I’m said, “You know what? I don’t need to know, because I know you. I know your character, and I know … ”
He felt compelled to tell me the story, so that’s great. It made sense. It was like, “Yeah. Why would that guy say that?” We and they have the power to say whatever we want by having that quick. The motivation there is, we need to have our ethics and integrity, our trust and customer service dialed in so well that we reduce that as much as possible. If and when it happens, we need to be aware of when it happens so that we can deal with it. Sometimes I’ve made the statement before, and I know people have experienced this, when I got out of college I worked for a rental car company, and you would have a lot of opportunity at the counter to have customer service interactions.

I can tell you that there was an issue, that if you fixed it right then and there, they thought you just were the best thing in the world. I know that there’s other situations that we can think of. It made me say this a couple time, “It’s almost like you want to manufacture something just negative, so that you can fix it.” It’s like you want to break something so that you can be the hero to fix it, so that they feel like, “Oh. You’re awesome.” That goes back to ethics and integrity and that’s the wrong thing to do, but the point is, sometimes you’re going to have a time where you didn’t do as well as you could have. Be aware, and fix it.

Here’s just a quick quote, and we’re now into the how. We talked about the why. Now here’s some tips on things that you can do in your business to now put these into action. Just a university study about Yelp and how it improves restaurants. I don’t think anyone here owns a restaurant, but it applies to anything. A good reputation and good online reviews, really, really help out your business. If anyone would like to see this study, I’ve got it in PDF and I can email it to you. It’s just talking about positive Yelp ratings can boost a restaurant’s nightly reservations by nineteen percent a year.

Have you ever had someone that says, “I get all my business by referral.” Good, but there was a study done, and if you notice at the bottom there’s three hundred and fifty-seven people that were asked this question. “After being referred a business, what do you do next?” Eighty seven percent said, “Go online and Google them.” They’re going to Google your name. They’re going to Google your name of your company. They’re not going to Google key words, and best blah blah blah at whatever you. They’re going to Google, because many times we do business by referral or word of mouth, but the digital, electronic age that we’re in comes into play.

If 87 percent of the people that hear your name are going to go Google you, what do they see? Guess what? What they see before they even come in to see you or meet with you, that’s where the reputation precedes you. Here’s seven steps to getting some reviews for your business, good reviews. Remember, keep in mind the scripture references. Keep in mind the definitions, the reputation, the honor, the integrity.

Number one, you want to create a create list. Number two, you want to write and request a review email. This where, if you want to just download these slides later you can, because I’m just going to go through some things like this. In the email, guess what we need to have? An intro, and look what we need to have in the intro: appreciation. “Thank you for being my customer. Thank you for buying my widget,” or “coming in for my service.” “Could I ask you your help?” There’s some psychological marketing type things that you could be doing, like using words like “Hey, could I ask you a favor?” “Hey, could I get your help?”

People want to help other people, so when you ask for help, many times if it’s nice and succinct, they’re going to give it to you. “I would like to ask you for a quick favor. Could you give us your feedback on the experience you had with us?” The close is you’re talking about your commitment. “As you know, we’re committed to the best possible service in whatever, and we sure appreciate you again because … ” The PS is, “Thank you again for your business, and here’s the link. Could you please give us some feedback?”

Guess what happens then? You want to create a feedback page. Can anyone tell me why in that email that you want to ask for a favor, yes, and you want to put a link to a feedback page, rather than going right to Yelp? I want that nineteen percent boost. I need to get that. Why would you want to send them to a feedback page, not Google or Yelp?
Mike: The most important thing is this: True or false, everyone we serve loves us. We never do anything wrong. No. What if you sent people right to Google or Yelp, and someone just rubbed them the wrong way for whatever reason. “I like people that part their hair on the left not the right. So I’m going to get my bad review.” All of a sudden, that states something off and not related stains … “He didn’t deliver my product at 12:01 when he said it would be 12 o’clock, and now I’m upset.” You never want to send people right to your online review sites, because who knows what they’re going to say.

If they say something negative, it’s out there, and it’s done. Creating a little feedback page like this … “Hey, what’s your name, your email, and please rate your experience and please share us.” Awesome. That’s simple. Look at how simple that is. Guess how you can do that? Survey Money is an easy way to do it. Google Docs is an easy way to do it. Survey Gizmo … I’ve got a platform that I use that automates all of this. You can do these things on your own, but I wanted to make sure that you realize when you now have set the foundation of why we need to create a good name, now how we do it is just some simple things like, “I can write and email like that. That’s two paragraphs. I can ask people to give me their feedback.” Because actually, to Randy’s point, you want to share it with your staff, and when you get feedback in, good or bad, how many people in here have employees? Most. Many. Share it with them, and share the good as well as the bad.

Do you realize … Here’s another good book. It’s called Whale Done. It’s a fictional story. I like those fictional stories that make a really good business principle. It’s about this business consultant that goes down to Sea World and he was looking at the Shamus. “Wow they’re doing all this stuff.” He says to the trainer afterwards, “How do you train those things? You just zap them with a stick?” He goes, “No. We just reward them when they do something that we want them to do. We reward good behavior to encourage more good behavior.”

Isn’t that how we are? Don’t you find yourself, when someone says, “Wow I really liked how you did that,” you’re like, “Oh, I want to do it again.” You’re like a little puppy panting going, “Oh, more, more, more.” If you had someone that gives you negative motivation, it really doesn’t work. When you have those reviews that come in, feedback that comes in, good, share them with the staff. Bad, share them with the staff. Maybe in private, if it’s that kind of a thing, but you do want to use that.

Now, how about this? When someone does fill out that feedback on one of your pages, guess what you want to do? You haven’t gotten into Google or Yelp. You’re kind of baby stepping them. You want to write a response email. “Hey, thank you for your feedback.” You want to take what they said and paste it right in the email. “Hey, we really appreciate how you said … ” If it was good or bad, you want to put that in there. You want to say, “Would you do me a favor?” On the good reviews, on the good feedback, you want to say, “Would you do me a favor? We’ve got a little contest going on here in the office. We’d love to get some more reviews like this online. Here’s a link to our Google and Yelp page. Would you please post this online? We’d really appreciate it.”

Now that you know that it’s not bad, now you want to send them there. Then close, “Hey, we’re committed to … ” and then PS, “Hey I really appreciate … Here’s the link again. Thank you so much.” Very simple. How about this? What if someone does give you that negative review? You want to email them back and go, “Hey, thank you. We’re so sorry we couldn’t give you the five-star service that you deserve. Here’s what you said. We really appreciate this feedback. Here’s our commitment. We’re going to share this internally with our staff so that we can never make this mistake again. Could you please look at this?” PS, … or no. Look at the body. Ask to expound on the issue.

Put a little link in there to a separate page where they can type in … Because they probably put two or three sentences, but if you put a link in there that says, “Could you please go into more detail? What could we have done to have prevented this?” They have now had, if they click on that, they’ve had two opportunities now to give you some really vent, to really vent and give you the feedback that they are feeling. Not a hundred percent chance, but a good high percentage chance that they’re probably not going to go and also go online and rip into you on Google or Yelp, because they did it on your feedback page, and you asked them for this here.

Secondly, you’re taking ownership. How many times have we seen people, politicians or whoever, that you say, “Well you know what … ” or an employee, and they make excuses. “Yeah, but I didn’t … ” “You didn’t give me the support that … ” How about the person in it goes, “You’re right. I was wrong,” and they take ownership and they say, “It will never happen again.” If and when this happens in our business, we need to take ownership of that.

How about this? The next step is you need to deliver the emails. You really should not be doing this through your company email, because you need to have some automation set up. Here’s some choices. There’s some servers out there, Constant Contact, MailChimp, iContact, Get Response, these are things that you can load in and have all of these already pre-programmed in so you don’t have to have them coming at you in your regular work email. Have some of these templates built up. It really is a simple way to do that.

How about this? Like what Randy said, what if someone goes to your feedback page, puts some good feedback in, but never goes online to post it? You wish they would, and hopefully you can send them a reminder or two, but some people are just busy. If you can take that feedback, and if you notice on the lower right, if you can create a little graphic, and maybe put your picture or your logo in the bottom, put your phone number and, “Hey we … ” You know what? This is not, “Rah rah look at me.” This is a humble brag. “We sure appreciate this great feedback we got from one of our customers. Look what they said.” You can choose to put their name or “Tom S.” You can truncate it to where it’s not someone’s full name.

You can put their review in there. Put you branding and logo, and then now take that and put that out on your social media, put it on your website. Because, haven’t you ever gone to someone’s website and looked at the testimonials, and it goes further and further and further? At some point you go, “I’ve read enough. That’s plenty.” You can market these things on websites, social media. Look at presentation and sales media. Anyone in here every do a presentation, Power Point? Put some of these things in there.

What we’re talking about here is called social proof. Psychologists have talked about this for years and years and years, how powerful this is, is to get social proof for your business. If Tom, Dick, or Harry like your service, and you liked Tom, Dick, or Harry, you might like the service as well. I’ll just close with this last slide or two here and give an example. It’s nice when you can have metrics to see what works, and if you can see that you sent out this many emails, and this many people opened it up, and this many people clicked on feedback, and this many people went online, that’s nice because then you can continue that process and see what happens.

I have a client, once they use this software that I have for this, and he’s up in Broomfield. All of a sudden his clients started giving these rave reviews. They started going online. Now, all of a sudden, if you know anything about Google, Google likes to serve up people that have good reviews and good reputations. Now he’s visible there, and it’s just really, really super. To be able to have something like that in your business, for the right reasons, right? Let me just see here.

Final slide. Here’s the final thought: “As a Christian entrepreneur we must build and promote our good name to the glory of the Lord!” Let’s keep this in mind, and if I had the ability to do a split screen and bring all those verses next to this final statement, why would we want to build a good name, have a good name? Sure, there’s metrics and numbers and customers and all these things that we need. We need to have that, but we need to do it because it’s our duty to glorify the Lord, to reflect back the character of Christ, to have the mind of Christ in our business, and to not do it just for the sake of being prideful and “Look at me.”

There’s nothing wrong with having and enjoying the fruits of our labor. The Lord teaches that in scripture, but I feel like this final statement of, “As a Christian entrepreneur we must build and promote” a good name for one reason, to glorify the Lord. It really, then, is in gratitude for what the Lord has blessed us in our business.