Phil McCutchen Marketing Manager, VCG, Inc.

In light of recent corporate scandals, from Enron and Global Crossing to those of once trustworthy mutual funds, is it any wonder that more people are asking, "Can I trust this company enough to do business with them?" But trust issue isn't just relative to buyers of your products and services, its vitally important to employees as well. Impacting their retention and performance in very real ways.

According to a survey of 1,200 workers by global consulting firm Watson Wyatt, forty-four percent of American workers say top managers and executives are sometimes dishonest, and 40 percent say same of co-workers. Meanwhile, 51 percent of workers say companies too often 'spin' truth when talking to them, according to a separate survey of 1,000 Americans by Towers Perrin, another global consulting firm.

The lack of trust contributes to weaker ties between workers and companies for which they work, which in turn has a significant impact on corporate profitability. How much, you ask? Well, three-year total return to shareholders is almost three times lower at companies with low trust levels than at companies with high trust levels, according to Watson Wyatt's WorkUSA 2002 survey.

When you add loss of employee trust to unethical business practices to bursting of 'dot-com' bubble and recession of past few years, response is natural. Shell-shocked consumers and business-buyers alike are taking a measured look at a companies' reputation before making a purchase or investment. That's where RQ comes in.

What is RQ?

RQ is a new term, for 'Reputation Quotient'. The term RQ was coined by Dr. Charles Fombrun, Professor Emeritus of Stern School at NYU and founder of Reputation Institute (www.reputationinstitute.com). Dr. Fombrun has done extensive research with companies around world to understand roles that their reputations play in their success.

He has learned that most successful companies, and those that can endure great challenges, all have one thing in common: Strong reputations, or high RQ.

According to Christopher Foss of Reputation Institute, "It's common knowledge that a good 50 percent of most companies' market value is made up of what accountants call intangible assets that are not on balance sheet. Assets like knowledge capital, like brand itself, relationships with vendors. And reputation is one of those intangible assets. But if you view reputation as a magnet that has ability to attract resources that are crucial to bottom line, degree to which you have a strong reputation or don't is going to definitely affect your ability to attract resources and to do well financially."

The four principals of your company RQ

The research conducted by Dr. Fombrun indicates that there are four key principals of reputation quotient:

If you are like most people, each time you come across a new marketing idea you add it to your existing approach. You never think to weed out approaches which haven’t yielded any fruit yet. You just keep adding more. Time for that to change!

Marketing strategies and actions tend to accumulate. They hang around and continue to siphon off time from your day (even when they may not be working as well as you'd like). We get into habits of actions. Seldom do we take time in our busy schedule to really assess how we are spending our time.

To improve your marketing, you'll need to clean out some old ways of working. Start to make this a habit. Every week, at a minimum, schedule time in your busy day for a marketing tune-up. Ask yourself following questions during that tune-up:

1)What’s working in my current marketing efforts? 2)What’s not working at all? 3)What’s not working as well as it should and how can I improve it?

What’s Working?

These showed be hard to find. They are all marketing actions you are taking which are successfully getting your name in print, driving traffic to your website or blog, making phone ring, and selling product.