You may feel that most of your business comes from long standing relationships which don’t require the kind of attention recommended here.

You wouldn’t be alone; many businesses are based on long-term relationships with their customers.

Think about your vendors. Why are they your vendors? Can you think of some who have been your vendors for so long that you don’t remember why you started with them?

Or, are there vendors who still have your business simply because no one has come along and made enough of a case to justify your going through the trouble to make a change?

Most of you will be able to identify companies in both categories.

The contention here is that the bonds between you and these companies might easily fracture under the right circumstances.

Like wood where dry rot has set in, it might look substantial until stressed; there may not be the strength there that your vendors are counting on. Now think about those to whom you have been selling for a long time.

How much dry rot has set in?

Many businesses that were successful for generations disappeared when Wal-Mart came to town.

The effort that you put into tending your brand and nurturing the ties between yourself and your customers prevents that type of dry rot from setting in.

If you do it well you may never recognize how vulnerable you’ve become. That is a good thing.

In the on-line world a sticky website is one that holds your interest and captures your attention for a sustained period of time.

In the world of bricks and mortar, thriving businesses create sticky relationships that hold customers’ interests and sustain a familiar loyalty.

Human nature gives us a tendency to take what we have for granted--- you know, “The grass is always greener….”

The consequence is that many people, sales forces, and even companies as a whole, spend their best energies chasing new customers, while giving only a passing effort to treating continuing customers as special.

Listen in sales meetings and you will often hear disparaging talk about particular customers. Yes, there are some who can be vexing.

You may hear an expectation that customers should make the sales rep’s life a little easier. Of course, this doesn’t happen in every company, or with every employee. Still, it is much more common than it should be.

Remember, if you tolerate it, you validate itt, and allowing your people to maintain these sorts of attitudes towards your customers implies your consent and support of their attitudes.

Leadership is about nurturing the attitudes you want your people to demonstrate.

If you nurture negative or disparaging attitudes among your people, do not be surprised when your customers feel poorly treated and undervalued.

If you believe in the value of caring for your customers, then you should nurture attitudes that demonstrate that value.

Most companies know that it is cheaper to keep a customer than to attract a customer. However, this knowledge doesn’t permeate the way they work day-to-day. That takes a deliberate, sustained effort.

If you want to hold your customers’ interest and capture their attention over time, then attaining stickiness has to become a goal that is pursued by everyone in your company, and your leadership must reflect the sorts of values that will support this effort. The specifics of doing so are discussed in the rest of this section.

The Bigelow Apothecaries Story: This profile portrays a company that is resourcefully working the ideas discussed in the section on brand promise. There are clear indications of how they are focused on gathering intelligence ,delivering on their brand promises, out-thinking their competition, and the extraordinary execution of their game plan. They have been diligent in what they do and clever in how they do it. They are living proof that your company could find its way to the same level of success by using these ideas.

Can You Have A Bad Customer?

In a word, “Yes!” There are bad customers. Most companies can name a handful.

Customers who want what you offer but don’t want to keep their end of the value proposition may be better served shopping elsewhere.

Other customers have such unusual requirements for doing business that they take you away from the systems and processes that provide the value sought by the great majority of your customers. These customers may not be worth the effort.

Sometimes, one customer can become such a big part of your business, they dominate the way you work, limit your options and drive the value proposition far out of balance for you.

There are even the occasional unscrupulous customers who try to cheat, defraud and otherwise “beat the system.” Each of these cases needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Unhappy customers can teach you to be better at what you do.

Customers who want to renegotiate the value proposition may be leading you into the future. Some aren’t.

Stated directly, keeping every customer happy may not be in your best interests.

The critical thing is to understand your business proposition well enough to be able to determine which customers ideas make sense for you, and which will lead you too far astray from what you do well.

This section and section 7 provide the information you need to be prepared to make these sorts of distinctions.

Tending Your Brand:

Tending your brand is fully discussed below.

Suffice it to say that seizing the initiative in building your brand requires a focused, coordinated effort day-in and day-out.

Start with the premise that your brand is your identity. Then, operate with the integrity that gives your identity an enduring value in the marketplace.

Your Brand Is Your Identity:

Your brand is the identity of your enterprise; how you’re known, what people believe that you’re about.

Ideally, your brand defines the value proposition you offer to your customers. When consumers use your product or service, it’s your identity that becomes linked with their experience, if only subliminally.

An attachment can be formed that leads that customer to return to you, over and over again.

At the same time, a poorly tended brand can limit the value of an otherwise effective product or service.

For family businesses or privately held companies, the value proposition is more complicated than usual, for it intimately reflects the essence of how the family is seen by the world.

There’s an emotionally complex situation that emerges from these factors.

For most family businesses, brand issues are intimately tied to the “good name” of the family, not just to that of the company.

The egos of the family members in key stakeholder positions are usually intimately intertwined with the enterprise.

In addition to all the other dynamics associated with tending the corporate identity, family dynamics can further interfere with the actions necessary for building brand equity in the marketplace.

As a result, you have family members, professional managers, the company workforce, strategic allies, and other stakeholders all involved in a complicated exercise of decision-making and prioritizing, each from their own perspectives, within the constant motion of the business environment.

The better you are at bringing effective, coordinated performance out of this chaos, the more likely you are to experience the success you’re pursuing.

By adopting a thoughtful, considered and deliberate approach, you can manage your reputation and increase the worth of your brand.

Creating a strong corporate brand identity provides a vehicle for businesses to craft solutions that address the totality of their business challenges, both day-to-day and strategic. That’s easier said than done.

Often, when we are confronted by a situation that’s quite complex, we err in trying to solve it by addressing the parts of the problem with which we are confident, while ignoring or minimizing the elements that we don’t want to face, and then trying to make a partial solution be sufficient.

While there are many strategies for family or privately held enterprises to use in competing in today’s business environment, there is only one real posture that leads to breakthrough results.