Trust, Transparency, Communication & Profitability: The Foundations of A Sustainable Business

However, these elements aren’t just for operating the business, they ensure that both parties are set up for success in an agency-client or business-agency relationship. You might’ve found an excellent full-service agency to work with, but being able to work with them well is paramount. That successful relationship between the agency and client is dependent on these four building blocks:

Communication

Clear communication principles are important in business operations, but so are agency and client relationships. Communication is how people work together, and when clear communication is missing, that starts to show up in the work and the value you’re offering your customers. Or, the work just doesn’t get done, and that is truly a hurdle in becoming a profitable business. That said, communication is a two-way street. There’s no right or wrong way to have good communication principles in place — they just need to be there. There needs to be a clear channel of communication between businesses and agencies. And achieving that might mean hiring an agency that only has the same communication style as you. But there is at least one more element that supports communication. Transparency.

Transparency

Communication and transparency truly go hand in hand. You can have great communication guidelines and principles in place, but that needs to include provisions for transparency as well. For example, if you’re worried to speak up in an agency-client relationship about a problem that’s arisen, that’s a serious breakdown in communication and transparency. It hurts the employees, management, harms the agency-client relationship, and kills productivity. It ultimately affects your product and the ability to be a sustainable and profitable business. With complete transparency, businesses and startups keep the line of communication open so that work can be completed with anyone — including agencies — without hurdles.

Trust

Trust is another element of a sustainable agency-client relationship, but trust cannot be bought — as our parents always told us, it’s something that has to be earned. And in a healthy business, that’s earned through the communication and transparency that we just detailed. Ultimately, trust is genuinely a metric that helps you determine just how well you’re doing at communication and transparency. If your team doesn’t trust you, or you’re having trust problems with your agency, it might be that you don’t need to look at trust in of itself, but the foundations of trust — clear communication and transparency.

Profitability

And finally, there is no business without profitability. As we all know, money is what pays the bills, and if it’s paying the bills, the business is probably closing down. Profitability is absolutely the foundation of any sustainable business, and your agency should be aiming for that every step of the way. It’s the boundary line of all three elements that we mentioned above; however, profitability happens through more than just communication, transparency, and trust. You need to also be offering a rock-solid product or service that you, your business, and your agency truly believe in. If you and your agency don’t believe in your business and its services, you can have all of the above, but you won’t be keeping your business profitable.

With these four elements, you’ll have a rock-solid team and profitable business that can face any hurdle that comes your way.