Relationships Matter, but not in Isolation
As Ideba celebrates its ninth birthday, I thought it would be good to look back at three ingredients that have driven our success to date.
Since inception we’ve seen a lot of changes within our client base – M&A activity, new offerings, staff reductions, shift in business models, and more. We’ve experienced many clients move from Company A to Company B, and have been fortunate enough to continue many long-term relationships, with an average client tenure that actually pre-dates the company. You may ask how?
Reality is that while we focus extensively on building relationships and delivering quality client service, our ability to deliver high quality work is the secret to our ongoing success.
While I believe that quality relationships and high-quality work are essential in today’s business climate, the other critical ingredient is trust. At a recent business networking event for students, I was asked what one piece of advice I would give to a new professional coming into the workforce. My answer was a fundamental that has worked for me in business for the past 30 years, as an employee and as an employer: “Every action you take in business (or life) either builds trust or erodes trust”.
That applies to the store clerk personally walking a customer to an item in the grocery store rather than pointing them to an aisle number; to a customer service agent taking ownership of a problem, rather than passing the customer off to a colleague because they don’t know the answer; to handing a client a credit when you have not used all of the hours allotted for a project for which they have prepaid. Simply put, “do the right thing, and good things will happen.”
I hope that in the next nine years, we can add to these three ingredients in our efforts to be a better service provider to our clients; and to help raise the bar for our partners, our clients and our team.
If you have any similar principals that you believe are helping to fuel a successful organization, please do send me a note at davids@idebamarketing.com I’d love to hear from you.
—David Sly, President
