Now is the time to really think about which attitude of your company is presented to your customers. There are two attitudes that develop in every business or organization and are passed around by all of the employees. While some organizations are consistently exuding a positive outlook and attitude, others are consistently sharing their negative emotions and frustrations, while still others have a mixed bag. The biggest problem with this is that even though companies can still survive on negative and mixed attitudes, they are sharing them with their customers and inevitably will effect and destroy their business if not caught and corrected in time.

The companies that are positive in all areas of their business can usually attribute it to a very positive leader at the helm, driving constant and consistent preaching on how to get things done in positive ways, how to deal with difficult situations and challenges with a positive outcome in sight and how to share the positive attitude with others - namely the rest of the team and, most importantly, their customers. Other efforts they might employ are team meetings and rallies to get everyone focused and excited about who they are as a company and how their individual roles are important. Creating and maintaining this positive attitude on a consistent basis takes proactive efforts from all levels of leadership and is hard work, but very much worth the effort.

The other side of the coin is where businesses get lazy, bored, complacent, out of focus and even angry internally and it usually begins with an individual or small group of discontents that are unhappy no matter where they are. The reason they're allowed to continue this behavior and spread it throughout the company is because the leaders are focused on something else or also have negative attitudes. When this negativity gets out to the customers, and it will, customers will begin to drop off and share their views with others. The negative disease will spread until the source is removed or a major change in the organization takes place and then have to repair all of the soured relationships with your customers - if it's not too late.

Most companies lie somewhere in the middle where the Sales team may be very upbeat and positive, since they're not exposed to the negative internal attitudes on a daily basis, while the Service department or Shipping group may have very negative views and issues to share with their "friends" (customers) whom they come in contact with on a daily basis and are more than willing to share their feelings when they reach their limits. This mixture leads to a slow decay, which may not be noticed until it's too late or too costly to fix. The effects will deteriorate your customer base and sales while you struggle to figure out what's causing your declining profits.

The question you must ask yourself today is which attitude or personality do your customers, and suppliers, get to see - the positive attitude or the negative attitude? If you know which one you have in your organization, then you're probably already working on it, but if you don't then you should ask your customers and suppliers which one they see. The positive attitude is the only one that will continue to drive rising profits and a growing customer base and must be driven from the very top and embodied by all.