It’s only natural for a company to want to discuss every positive aspect of their service, product, or themselves, but when do you get to see them talk about the negative aspects?

Yesterday Darren Rowse talked about what he saw as the postives for the new 9rules Network. It’s always great to see others discussing the positives about your company, but being a skeptic, I knew that there would be more than a couple of people reading that entry wondering what the negatives were.

I thought about what the negatives would be for joining the network way before I presented the idea to Mike and Matthew, so I already had an idea. Instead of keeping them to myself I wrote about them before anyone else could. From a company perspective is this a good thing to do? I would like to think so because it allows your customers see that you are honest, but more importantly it shows that you have an understanding of your company’s shortcomings.

Too many companies think they are doing everything right and fail to see what may be holding them back from gaining more marketshare. Having an understanding of what isn’t right with your company goes a long way to showing what you can improve upon, or at the very least you can make the negatives seem minute in comparison to what is wonderful about your company.

Probably the biggest plus when discussing the negatives before anyone else can, is that you now control the conversation on your site. If someone else starts to discuss the negatives of your company, word can spread fast and instead of trying to manage a conversation on one site, you are left managing 10 or 100 different conversations.

No company is perfect and your customers understand that. Admitting your faults makes you more human and that goes a long way in building the trust between your company and your customers.