Recently at an offsite team activity, we were asked to evaluate what’s working and not working in our client relationships.
I immediately recalled the working relationship I have with one of my all-time favorite clients. As I reflected upon this relationship, I was overcome with a spirit of gratefulness for her collaboration and true partnership with us as an agency.
Partnership Matters
You see, at Masterworks we view ourselves as partners with our clients rather than vendors. And those clients that reciprocate this view represent our most strategic minded relationships. Those relationships are earmarked with mutual respect, trust and a vision for growth.
Clients usually don’t hire us to maintain the status quo. That’s why our culture of out-of-the-box thinking and data-driven decision-making is so important. When this culture is combined with a spirit of partnership, not only are we able to do the basic work well, but we’re able to work together to invest in new ideas and explore innovative ways of thinking.
Great Feedback = Better Collaboration
I was recently asked by a colleague, “Do you think clients view having to give feedback as a negative thing?” My honest answer was twofold:
- I think some do.
- I think our clients sometimes don’t, but we sometimes do.
In reality, feedback is a sign of true collaboration. At our offsite team meeting, we vowed to begin implementing a quarterly exercise to encourage even greater feedback from our clients. We’ve already adopted this exercise within the agency on a monthly basis.
Masterworks continues to assemble some of the best and brightest talent in the industry who have come from agencies and clients alike. Currently we have over 7 agencies represented among our staff. This has allowed for a host of shared learning opportunities about serving clients, best practices and new and innovative ways of doing things. If you are interested in becoming a client of Masterworks email me at hhenry@masterworks.agency.