Am on vacation this week in the Berkshires and we went to the outlet shops in Lee, Massachusetts to buy a few things for my son who is on his way to Santiago, Chile to work with entrepreneurs through non-profit Endeavor Global. We wandered into J.Crew and three women at the counter were telling a fourth salesperson why she should stay working at J.Crew. I did not know the background behind their conversation but I decided to chime in. They all seemed nice enough. I mentioned that J.Crew had an excellent reputation not only for its fashionable cool and casual clothes but also because of the smashing turnaround strategy devised by their CEO Mickey Drexler. The woman who I suspected was the manager responded by saying how terrific and approachable Drexler was. She told me this story of how Drexler sometimes gets on an all-office loud speaker and asks salespeople how much they would pay for a particular item. She said that he is always asking employees for their opinions and actually listens to their advice. She made Drexler sound like fun and J.Crew as a good place to work. All within minutes. It was clear from this brief conversation that Drexler was on “hello, how are ya?” terms with his employees. As I left the store, I thought that I should post this on my blog and pass along some advice to companies looking to fuel a good reputation. Get your employees to spread positive word of mouth and add a story line as well. Let your employees create their own content (Drexler using the loud speaker) for customers (Of which I am happily one. So is my whole family in fact. ). Good reputations often get built employee-by-employee, advocate-by-advocate.
