Are you turning away business without realizing it?

Take a few minutes sometime in the very near future to look at your business in the mirror. What is staring back at you? A highly successful firm? A just-scraping-by, one-person business? Think about how you look to clients and, more importantly, potential clients. Think less about the positive things and more about the negative things.

Then fix them.

If you don’t, business may walk up to your door—it may even reach for the doorbell—but it won’t want to come in.

How is your letterhead? Good? Great.

How about your business cards, brochures and website? Any room for improvement? How is your telephone approach? Your thank-you letters? Cast a critical gaze over all of it.

Let me tell you a short story that prompted this advice.

Because we write direct-response advertising, we are on all the right lists. And, as a result, we receive lots of mail about, well, mail.

Recently, I received a brochure—more of a booklet, really—that impressed me. “These people get it,” I remember thinking to myself. The company was selling a way for me to enjoy the cost benefits of mass mailing combined with the sales results of one-to-one marketing.

Off I went in search of the company’s website. Because one of the services it offers is graphic design, I expected a top-notch site. Instead, I saw a site that reminded me of the first—and only—website I ever designed. (Was it really well over decade ago?).

It was total and utter cheeseball.

To begin, the resolution of the logo was horrible. Worse, the overall design was amateurish, at best. The title page began “Our service offerings,” a title that was encased in a key-lined, baby-blue box. Pink gradated boxes down the left-hand side housed the links, one of which was to “variable imaging,” one of their prime offerings. (Huh?)

The same link featured tacky animated clip art showing three mechanical gears turning. (I still don’t get it.)

This was a prime example of how a poorly managed image can ruin potential business.

I would bet—not much, mind you—that this company can produce what it promises: cost-effective, one-to-one marketing that gets results. It proved that in the mail. When I visited the “store,” however, the confidence I had in this company—confidence that had me ready to buy—was shattered.

It’s a shame, really. Especially in light of the fact that the company doesn’t even know I’ve been turned off.

I know what you’re thinking. “Image is so shallow.” But whether we like it or not, the truth is, what people—or potential clients—see is what they believe to be the truth.
For some potential clients, your website or your business card may be the only salesperson they ever see.

What is that salesperson saying about you? That you make do with perforated cards from Staples? That you cut corners by doing the design—such as it is—yourself? Or that you care about presenting yourself in the best possible light—just like you’ll care about presenting them in the best possible light?
Even if the potential client doesn’t realize it, they may be judging you based on a piece of paper that is 3.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall.

I would suggest hiring the very best designer you can afford so when the business card speaks—or the website speaks, or the letterhead speaks, or the brochure speaks—it speaks with authority.