Removing stakeholder barriers
Understanding and meeting the needs of your stakeholders can feel like a mammoth undertaking and a giant pain in the butt for any small business. Most businesses have at least three stakeholder groups, all with different communications needs. And when those needs aren’t met, you certainly hear about it! Life is easier when you’re on the front foot, feeding them the comms and intel they need, and you are free to get on with what you need to.
We’ve put together some simple ways you can help remove your stakeholder barriers. Whether they’re shareholders or employees, these tips can help you build positive, long term relationships with your stakeholders because we all want that ‘happily ever after’ don’t we?
Map your stakeholders
Not understanding who your stakeholders are is the most common issue for small businesses in New Zealand. Most focus on shareholders or customers without recognising the importance of stakeholders like your employees or suppliers.
We recommend putting some time aside to do a deep dive into your potential stakeholders. Think big picture - everyone your business encounters can be considered a stakeholder. Categorising them into internal and external is a good way to get the ball rolling. They might include:
stakeholders
Each group has their own set of wants and needs - knowing these and leading the way has a lot of benefit.
When you’ve got your list together, check out the free Bolstur Building a Stakeholder Map Workbook. It will help you figure out what to communicate, to who and when to do it. At the end of the workbook, you’ll be on track to giving the right people the right information at the right time.
Communicate consistently
Consistent communication can be a hard task when you’re a small business. Many promise things like monthly newsletters or quarterly reporting then find themselves scrambling to meet these deadlines whilst trying to just keep up with the day-to-day.
When planning your stakeholder communications, focus on consistency and relevance. You don’t need to communicate with each of your groups every week, it may only be once a year. But as long as it is consistent and relevant to their needs, you’ll have happy stakeholders.
Once you’ve got consistency sorted, you can allow yourself some flexibility too. If you have ad hoc exciting news to share like an award or a new team member starting, share it! It’s simple to prepare for this, many businesses simply create e-news or Facebook image templates so they’re ready to go.
Create face-to-face opportunities
With so many digital communication tools at our disposal, it is far too easy to ignore the all-important face-to-face relationship management. We get it, the one-on-one nature of it can be time-consuming and difficult to organise. However, stakeholders of small businesses can quickly feel neglected with a lack of personal, face-to-face communication so it’s important to factor it into your communications planning.
These face-to-face opportunities will vary from stakeholder to stakeholder but they don’t have to be huge events like conferences or AGMs. They can simply be group Skype calls, open invite check-in afternoons or even live stream Q&A’s with one of your team. Showing face is a simple way of building a deeper, trusted relationship with your stakeholders.
Ask their opinion about change
We’ve all been told ‘people hate change’ but what people actually hate is having change happen to them, not with them. When we change our products, services or business models, we forget that we’ve had time to go through an adjustment process as we decide what those changes are. When you don’t bring people along on the change journey, you remove their time to adjust.
It may add a little time to your change process but asking your stakeholder can produce more tailored, successful results. Best case scenario, you learn new things and create something amazing thanks to their input. Worst case, you don’t receive any new or relevant information but your stakeholder feels included and heard. Either way, you and your business walk away looking good.
So next time you’re looking at changing or adapting, factor some consultation time into your project plan. It will help your stakeholders, your project and your brand.
Employ good customer service staff
Everyone has experienced both ends of the customer service scale. When it’s good, it’s amazing and builds fantastic brand loyalty. When it’s bad, it’s terrible and can cause long-lasting effects across your business.
We understand it’s not always a simple barrier to breakdown but it’s an incredibly important one. No matter what industry you work in, having a positive and effective person in a customer service role can not only create fantastic brand experiences for your customers but tends to touch other stakeholder groups too.
Think about a cafe-hospo business. In one single day, the cafe manager might interact with employees, suppliers, creditors and shareholders as well as customers. When you think about it like this, it’s easy to see how the wrong person can have far-reaching effects on your business.
If you need help with hiring the right frontline staff, check out our Frontline Sales and Service Competency Cards. They help you focus on finding the right customer service person for your stakeholders.
At the end of the day, your stakeholders are the ones that keep the wheels of your business turning. It’s important to value them and make them feel valued. Hopefully, these five tips make stakeholder management feel less daunting but if you’re still not sure where to start, why not book an hour in your diary next week and have a look at that stakeholder map? You’ve got to start somewhere, right?
This business insight was kindly put together by one of our favourite hoomans, who also happens to have a depth of marketing skills from her time running social media teams, building digital communities, creating and managing killer campaigns for some iconic NZ brands, and being an overall good b***h at GBB too.
Check out her site, insta, twittering, and connect with Kelsie on LinkedIn.
As well as writing great content and sharing marketing know-how, she is also partial to a cheeky wine and some bougie sunnies.