When dealing with professional relationships, being honest is always best. Why?
- It helps attracts the right buyers, employees, and partners.
- It builds trust through transparency.
- It doesn’t let you hide behind marketing-speak messaging.
- It showcases the things you do best.
What I mean by being honest is being clear about what you do, who you do it for, and why you do it. Crystal clear, all the time. You can’t be everything to everyone, so you need to decide who you help the most, the best, and the fastest, and then always be transparent with your customers, employees, and partners.
I hope no one is straight-up lying to people in their marketing or internal communication, but we often see people trying to cut corners. As stated in the book, Inbound Organization, be “honest — sincere, passionate, real, authentic, open, sharing, and understanding that the buyer is in control.”
Honest transparency will be a result of your organization’s culture, starting with leadership. Trust is the foundation of a relationship, and honesty is the first requirement for trust. Is your culture transparent with information, or do your senior people hoard it and keep everyone in the dark? My experience tells me that companies that withhold information from their people are also very likely to withhold valuable information and expertise from buyers.
Transparency internally leads to transparency externally.
Build trust internally to show that you are worthy of it from your customers. If your employees are trusted, they will show that part of your culture to your prospects and customers. Remember, your culture is your brand because it is what customers see. If employees fear transparency, then they will fear being open, honest, candid, and human with your prospects and customers. They will become closed off, reliant on scripted answers, and find comfort in spouting the company line. Buyers can smell this attitude a mile away and will instead run to your competition — which, as you know, they can now find at the click of a button.
Honest communication starts with transparency internally, and extends to every relationship that your company has with employees, partners, prospects, and customers.
Internal First
Radical transparency means that you trust your employees to be smart enough to make up their own minds. Far less information needs to be kept secret than most industrial executives realize. Don’t be lazy or paranoid — share information and background thinking early and often with your employees and partners. Explain why leadership is making certain decisions. Give people the context they need to be able to make up their own minds about the direction and health of your business.
“Transparency without context is chaos.”
— JD Sherman, HubSpot COO
Transparency builds accountability. If critical information is shared, accountability becomes a more natural part of the culture. Do you want your team to be more accountable for results? A great first step in that direction is to start with yourself. Are you being radically transparent?
“An inbound organization provides autonomy to employees with guardrails and makes it safe to share information rather than hoarding information,” says JD Sherman, HubSpot COO.
External Next
“Consumers can handle the truth, and the information they do want to know they want delivered in a clear, forthright, trustworthy, and easy-to-find way that conveys some sense of vulnerability and openness. This is a crucial area because I think honest clarity is the currency of trust in the digital age.”
— Food Marketing Institute President and CEO Leslie G. Sarasin
Honest communication internally is quickly reflected externally.
Just this week, one of our clients, a large manufacturer located in the Midwest, found themselves dealing with a very vocal and unhappy customer that chose to air their issues on Facebook. Our client delivered a poor experience for this customer, and the customer was justifiably angry. As soon as the VP of marketing found out about the issue, he responded late in the evening and promised to have the appropriate people fix the issues as soon as possible the next day. He acknowledged in public that they fell short of expectations and made sure the team did everything it could to fix the issue as soon as possible.
We have seen others industrial executives respond much differently, with the first question being “How do we get rid of that negative post?” Do you think you can hide your culture, attitudes, and processes from the world? In the age of the empowered buyer, manufacturing companies should expect more radical transparency from customers, and you can be sure they will expect it from you.
Be honest. It is the only policy that makes sense in an increasingly connected, digitally empowered world.