You’ve got your company values written down and everyone’s been made aware of them, hopefully even excited and motivated by them. What’s next?

Well, you can use those values to maintain or grow some kind of company culture and keep this internal – it should certainly make the place a nice place to work. But how about going that little bit further and telling your clients about your values so they feel part of that culture too?

Supplier and client working as a team is a sure-fire way to improve communication and deliver awesome projects. Another step could be working with clients that match your values too, thus developing relationships built on shared beliefs.

So you start telling clients and prospects about your values as part of your marketing activities. Brilliant, but so what? What are you actually trying to achieve?

Promoting values externally is a great marketing tool but more importantly it allows both sides to generate understanding. Finding out more about how each other works and what makes each other tick means a greater level of trust can be built which is arguably of great worth.

In an ideal world clients should be an extension of the supplier’s team and should certainly be made to feel as such. Furthermore, having similar value beliefs may also mean both sides enjoy working with each other more which should lead to producing work that everyone is proud of.

But there’s a bigger picture here and aside from everyone getting along and playing nicely it all comes down to big fat juicy company goals such as generating new business and client retention. Values should be a promise of what you believe in, what you represent and what you’re like to work with.

Prospects see this and may buy into it (as long as your product/service is attractive enough too). Most businesses will also have client retention high up in their list of company goals and for good reason. It’s obviously cheaper to keep clients than go out looking for new business but it’s great to shout about how much clients love working with you too.

And if you’re lucky enough to find people you enjoy working with then be sure to hang on to them and grow together. Being transparent about values and living by them is a giant leap to achieving this.