What Do They Really Think About You?

As we ended last week, we led another team through one of our Bootcamps. As part of our process, we invite customers and external partners to participate in our Discovery Experience, where they get to weigh in on how they see the brand from the outside. Then, as we facilitate conversations throughout the day, we share with the team how their customers and partners really see them.

Having brought this outside input to a wide range of clients now, across all industries you can imagine, two takeaways always come from this exercise…

First, “I’m so glad they see us the same as we see ourselves and recognize the same strengths we see. That alignment affirms everything we’re trying to create here.”

Second, “When we asked them to share a weakness we have, we kind of knew they were going to say what they did. It’s not shocking – just a reminder of an area where we have some work to do.”

Both of these realizations are equally important and, as a brand, are massively valuable to building something you can be proud of down the road. Unfortunately, investing the time and energy into asking the people who know you best what they really think of you is often overlooked. Whether we’re intentionally skipping it because we’re afraid of what people will say, or it’s something on the perpetual “we’ll do later” list, it just isn’t getting done.

The result? Instead of receiving the feedback and data you need to grow and improve, we’re running our businesses in a bubble. We never really know what customers or clients think of us as a brand. Instead, we’re guessing how they feel. Worse, we’re hoping they’re satisfied and happy with us.

Why share this? Guessing and hoping are not strategies for success. Instead, asking and hearing, opening up space for the feedback to come in is where growth begins.

Call-to-Action

Create a plan to ask for some feedback. Develop a strategy on your own, or reach out and ask us how we go about it in our Discovery Experience. Even if our way isn’t the best fit for you, we’d love to have a conversation about why this matters and help you envision your own plan for understanding how customers and clients see you.

It’s time to quit guessing, ask them for their insights, and learn from what you hear.