I was reminded recently, by a past employee of my marketing agency, of our mantra for client meetings.  This was something I tried to instill in all of my team to keep in mind whenever we were speaking with a client.

The timing of my former employee’s reminder was particularly apropos as I was in the midst of experiencing what would become one of my most embarrassing moments.  I won’t go into the details of the situation in which he reminded me, as I don’t want to relive the emotions I was experiencing at the time, but his exhortation did bring back a flood of great marketing memories.

MacLean Group was a full-service marketing agency.  We provided market research, strategic planning, and a complete range of creative services including branding, advertising, PR, communications, events, promotions, new media, and any other creative component included in a marketing plan.

Ultimately though, our clients engaged us to help them grow; to help them become better.  They chose to partner with us to equip and empower them to accomplish their goals.  In light of this, our goal was to help them accomplish theirs.

There were two key ingredients we were committed to provide to our customers.  Two things we communicated and executed.  Sure, we had our client facing value proposition.  We said we were the 4 P’s or marketing: Passionate, Precise, Professional and Phun.

However, part of our secret sauce was an internal mantra we reminded ourselves about continually.  Every client meeting, every client conversation we entered into with these 2 values front and center in our minds:

Vision and Confidence.

We were committed to bringing vision and confidence to our clients every time we touched them.  Why and what did that look like?  Well, let’s look at each of these separately…

I believe that vision is absolutely critical to move forward.  I think that every company hires a vendor to help them move forward – to help them be better.  If as a vendor you are not contributing to the growth of your client then why are you in business?  And, if you cannot see how you are going to help your customer grow, then what value are you bringing?

Vision has 2 key components: envisioning the customer in regard to where they can go and what they can achieve, but also envisioning them how you are going to help them get there.  I believed that as a vendor we needed to be able to envision our customers in regard to what they can accomplish and how we will help them do that.

Wouldn’t everyone want to work with a vendor who had big vision for what they could achieve and become?  And wouldn’t everyone want to work with a vendor who was able to clearly and compellingly communicate how they were going to help make that happen?

I think “Yes!”

We also need to understand that confidence breeds confidence.  As a vendor you want your customer to be confident you can do the job.  You want them to put their confidence in you.  But, you have to win their confidence.

In order to win a customer’s confidence, or a potential customer’s confidence, you have to instill confidence in them.  You have to be able to prove to them you are able to do what you say you can do, have a proven track record of results, and that they can expect similar results as the other customers whose stories you have shared with them.

You have to be trustworthy.

One key strategy for building confidence in a potential customer is to “let others speak well of you” – testimonials.  Let your current customers speak on your behalf.  And, tell stories of current and past customer projects that have been successful.  Anecdotes and testimonials are critically important.

How do you build confidence with current customers?  Say what you will do, then do what you said.  Do what you need to do to deliver the results you have promised.

Are you intentional about what you and your team communicate?  Are you even aware of the message you are communicating to your customers and potential customers?

Vision and confidence – how are you going to bring it?