What Clients Should and Shouldn’t Know About Your Business Credit Cards

When you operate a small business, you have to take care to present an image of yourself and your business that is conducive to positive and profitable relationships with all of your clients. One of the ways that you can do this (but which most business people aren’t aware of) is to pay careful attention to what your clients know about your business credit cards. You may be thinking that they shouldn’t know anything at all about your business credit cards but that’s not true; they should know limited information that can be useful to improving your business relationship with them.

One of the most important things that clients should know about your business credit cards is simply that you have them. Of course, you don’t need to go flashing the credit cards around but if you’re in a position where you have to pay for something in front of a client (a shared lunch, for example) then you should take care to use your business credit cards instead of either cash or personal credit cards. The reason for this is that it reflects positively on your professionalism that you have and use credit cards specifically designed for the business.

Another important thing that clients should be aware of is the way that you use business credit cards to improve the lives of others. For example, many businesses opt to get a green credit card or a charity rewards cards. These are credit cards that give back to a non-profit organization every time that you spend money on the card. These are things that clients are going to appreciate because they show your commitment to the world around you. Ultimately this is a benefit to you. If you use one of these types of business credit cards (and you should) it is completely appropriate to mention it as a giving-back feature of the business whenever you write about that topic in newsletters or email announcements. This is also something that you can mention on a page of your website which discusses your contributions to various causes. These types of feel-good things are great for business and using the business credit card to enhance this image is an easy way to boost your clients’ loyalty.

Of course, there are definitely things about your business credit card that your clients shouldn’t know. They shouldn’t know how many credit cards you have or what your outstanding debt is on those credit cards. Basically, your clients have no business knowing the details of your finances whether those details are positive or negative. It is bad form to share this information and it can lead to various kinds of trouble for you. When you are working to build up the image that you have in the eyes of clients and potential clients, you want to pay attention to your use of credit cards around them and make sure that you reveal certain useful information about the use of those credit cards without going so far as to reveal the financial details of your business.