Raising business awareness and the dangers...

Quite an odd-ball but I thought I'd share with the world my experiences and hopefully give an insight into the potential dangers of brand awareness if not done to it's best ability. We recently advertised our business via the Barclays website as part of a competition, this competition only allowed us to use 150 words as a business description and that's where our story begins.

I was emailed today, entirely out of the blue, from a person i've never met, a person i've never heard of in fact. This person was abrupt and very dismissive of our business and our new concept, which seemed to shock me.

His email without referring directly to exact words, stated that he was unhappy at the fact that we were trying to steal or strip the customer / supplier relations and he was hopeful that this wouldnt work.

Understandably; I replied within minutes thanking him for his comments however advising him that his perception was completely wrong. I sent something similar to the below, which explains a little more in depth what we were trying to say.


"We aren't trying to remove the supplier and customer relationship at all, we are simply giving people more options and taking away the hassle. We aren't going to be man in the middle, imagine you wanted a new IT supplier for example but you wanted one with X accreditations, X years in the trade and within 5 miles, this would be our criteria, we would source it and then pass the supplier straight through to you. They're not going to be any cheaper, just that the process gets you what you want while you sit back and wait.

The idea is that we give suppliers a small form to fill in so we know what criteria to match you with, some of it basic info and some, more trade/sector based information. Then we log the details into our supplier database and match you up with any new enquiries or leads that require what you can offer. The way we make our money is by invoicing the supplier a 5% introductory commission, this way the customer gets the service free, the supplier gets additional work that they wouldn't have had without our input and we get a small proportion."

Just 15 minutes later, I got another email, thanking me for my reply and asking us to meet with  him so we could discuss his business using us for his distribution, thus raising an opportunity.

It is only now that you can begin to appreciate how important brand management is and how first impressions can truly make all of the difference. The difference between 123 words on our Barclays advert and 198 words on my email, meant the difference between somebody actually wanting our business to fail and somebody wanting to use us to reach wider markets!

So to summarise, my advice is this, never underestimate how powerful the slightest portion of text can be and always stay optimistic. In the darkest hour, an opportunity can be right around the corner...