Take the Obama message of honesty and integrity and apply to your business

As with many other people world wide and not just in the USA, I sat glued to my computer watching the inauguration as broadcast by the BBC. It was a great show and Barrack Obama’s speech was spot on for this important moment.

One of the important issues he spoke about was of restoring honesty and integrity into government and in this way in the lives of his people. He is also hoping to re-introduce these concepts into his foreign policy with a view to re-instating the USA as a good world power. One that is not universally hated.

For every person there was a message here. But I want to take it a step further. This is a message of relevance to small business people too. What has knocked the global economy for a loop has been greed, dishonesty and a total disregard for people. Profit has been everything.

The knock on effect will be people’s total suspicion of big brands and big companies. People will wonder whether they are being told about products because the company wants to make sales to generate huge profits or whether in fact it is a good product made by an ethical business.  Every message sent out will be considered suspect.

This is a huge opportunity for small businesses. Make honesty and integrity your cornerstones for doing business. Ensure that it permeates everything you do. It must guide you in how you correspond with clients, how you talk to them over the phone, how you describe your products in your marketing material and how you deliver on your promise.

Every part of your business needs to be benchmarked against these principles. Is my marketing material honest. Am I charging an honest amount for the work I am delivering. Is it value for money? Will the client benefit in the best possible way.

This will provide you with a huge competitive advantage. It won’t cost you anything more. It will make you feel good when doing business and it will ensure further business due to happy customer referrals.

As an example, I received a call a day ago from a company trying to sell me a service. It took me the best part of the conversation to work out that this person was not calling from the Royal Mail, but was trying to sell me some kind of franking machine to reduce my costs of postage.

This sales person mislead me in the early parts of the call so that she could get a chance to tell me about her product. The tactic worked. I listened. And for a fair amount of time. I even provided my e-mail address to receive further details. But did she get a sale? Never.

This kind of subterfuge is not a good way to establish a business relationship with a potential client. Sure there were no outright lies. I could offer maybe a neutral score on the honesty side, but a definite negative rating on the integrity side. Since listing the details of Marketing Fundi in the local yellow pages, I have received a number of sales calls. So far none of them have been pleasant. Is this how people do business now?

Distinguish yourself from the baying hounds and offer your service or product with honesty and integrity. You probably won’t make the indecent profits that will allow you to move into expensive offices within a year of opening your doors. But then isn’t it just so much better to have an honest business that is appreciated by your clients and looked up to by people?

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