TRUST AND FINANCIAL STABILITY. How can they be achieved?

During its operation, a company encounters numerous troubling problems alongside its business successes, overcoming one obstacle after another. Product development, procurement, sales and succeeding in the market confront management with new challenges, while competitors are likewise striving for their own business success and attempting to gain or retain an advantage. The most important objective is financial stability and sound management of resources.

If we had to express in one word what enables successful operation and creates stability, the answer would naturally be: money.
The second word might be management—or rather marketing—which defines the strategy that prevents resources and revenue from drying up and creates the opportunity to progress towards success.

Although the professional literature does not support this division, let us divide operations into direct and indirect factors for the purposes of this example, remembering that both groups are important and necessary.
Direct factors can include the following:

A marketable product and a viable service
We will not even assume the opposite here. Instead, we mean that it matters whether what we produce is sought by broad sections of the population or serves the needs of a limited target group. Either can be highly profitable, but the most important point is that the company receives continuing orders: production or service provision must not stop, and the activity must remain in demand.

Advertising and promotion
Whatever we undertake, we must create demand for it and then serve that demand. This requires a continuous media presence, some of which assumes paid exposure. To use a cliché, the ideal situation is for our company to be “everywhere”, so that the target audience encounters us on every important platform.
A constant, continuous presence soon directs traffic towards us, generates enquiries and therefore creates revenue. It also strengthens the brand and company image and, not incidentally, increases the likelihood of recommendations.

The complete communication process requires offline and online channels together.
Alongside traditional promotional and marketing printed materials, offline publications that support sales also play a significant role, because tangibility still has persuasive power in business. We probably do not need to emphasise the role of the most fundamental products, from business cards and corporate folders to striking and convincing corporate brochures.

Looking at the online channel, its social-media segment is fashionable and genuinely effective. Almost every member of our target group uses social platforms and reads blogs and articles that are relevant and interesting to them. Content creation—from imaginative, educational daily posts to longer articles—is therefore a rewarding activity that has now almost become a profession in itself. It either requires a full-time specialist or a contractor or agency that also provides this service.

Successful content marketing assumes constructive cooperation and requires an imaginative, creative partner who is also capable in copywriting. Our printing business, for example, would not have been successful without either, and as a result we have also acquired convincing and effective online and content-marketing expertise, which we naturally offer to customers as part of our services.

Expected quality and genuine value
Minimising customer complaints is an essential consideration. To achieve this, we must provide the expected quality—or something even better. The customer or buyer has a fundamental interest in this, because they too want to derive some advantage from their purchase or order. Whether that advantage is financial or emotional makes no difference. The essential point is that they will experience cooperation with us positively only if we manufacture or provide the best result available to them.

The direct and perhaps most important factors could certainly be listed further, but let us now continue with the indirect ones.

Clear and professional communication
It is particularly important for every colleague in the company to know the correct answers to customers' questions. If providing information requires knowledge outside the employee's field of activity, they must know how and where to obtain it.
Customers can immediately see and appreciate the company's internal synergy when we work with prepared and helpful colleagues. The commitment of buyers and customers depends greatly on the communication skills and helpfulness of the staff. Empathy and the emotions expressed are just as much part of communication as the words spoken.
Beyond communication skills, great emphasis must be placed on teaching and sharing the information essential to our professional field. Every colleague then becomes confident and experienced and provides customers with reliable information, contributing to a favourable view of the company and to successful sales and case management.

A constructive outlook
Buyers and customers sometimes find it difficult to express their requirements and have a different picture of the process in their minds. That may not be a problem, since everyone considers their own case unique. During service, we must try not to damage that picture. It may change, because patient guidance or helpful service is highly valued from the customer's point of view, and this is the first step towards genuine cooperation.
This attitude pays off and turns an interested person into a customer or buyer.

At the same time, the company's employees must learn to represent the company's interests without harming the customer's interests. If that is not possible—for example, because the business is not prepared to meet the requirement in full—it is worth suggesting an alternative and identifying a workable solution. Even if we lose the immediate business, we never know when the person may return as a customer or recommend our willingness to cooperate within their social circle.

Fair conduct and accepting responsibility
As the saying goes, anyone who works makes mistakes. The more tasks there are, the more likely an occasional complaint becomes. There is probably no company in the world where this is not the case.
A production problem, failed communication, an incorrect quotation or a damaged product: there are numerous sources of conflict, and resolving them as quickly as possible is in everyone's interest.

If our company is responsible, we must clearly accept that responsibility. This carries two messages:
1. The customer or buyer sees that the matter is genuinely receiving attention and that a solution is being sought. This is reassuring and may completely turn the momentary panic in our favour.
2. It also demonstrates fair conduct and provides an example for colleagues within the company, building unity.
In the long term this provides indisputable advantages, particularly in a world where buyers and customers can see other people's opinions and ratings of our company on social platforms and can publish their own.

Accurate fulfilment by the deadline
Whether a web shop or a printing company in Budapest like the publisher of this article, delivery, dispatch and collection deadlines must be taken seriously. Customers and buyers have an objective for the product, and it may well be tied to a deadline, such as a conference or another event that cannot be postponed.
Failing to meet the promised completion time can cause not only financial loss but also loss of prestige. Who wants to work again with a company that has damaged—or, in the worst case, defeated—particular interests or opportunities? The same is true of intellectual services, such as graphic designers and social-media managers.
Our commitment must therefore be strictly achievable, and we must require the same of every colleague in the company.

Added value
This final point in the article is strongly connected with the marketing concept. In reality, it is present in everything described above, because a friendly smile or a helpful suggestion carries value just as a small gift, coupon, voucher or brief thank-you letter enclosed with the actual goods or service does.
Measuring customer satisfaction can also carry value by showing our partner that their observations genuinely matter to us and that we are acting so their next order will satisfy them even more completely.

What happens if, as a result of the above, our customer or buyer becomes committed, returns or recommends us?
Increased turnover and increased profit equal financial stability and business reliability. These, in turn, clearly produce sustainable operation and development.

In May this year, Server Line Kft. Print & Design received a certificate from Dun & Bradstreet, the international provider of business information and ratings, placing the company among the most financially stable and commercially reliable businesses.
It is not possible to apply or submit an entry for the rating, so this is a genuinely positive distinction for us.

The recognition of the company's stability by an independent international expert communicates that the company is on the right path in its development. To partners and suppliers, it confirms predictability and creditworthiness and guarantees reassuring, fair cooperation.

But what does the rating communicate to existing customers and future clients?

This is perhaps the most important message of all: when cooperating with Server Line Kft., they can be confident that we are committed to fulfilling the ordered product or service on time and at the required quality. If that were not the case, orders would disappear, revenue would dry up and liquidity problems would make procurement and viable operation impossible.

In one sentence: the certificate indicates sound business policy and highly reliable, fair cooperation.