A big part of building any successful relationship is trust. It takes a long time to build and it’s easily lost.
For agencies one of the first steps to gaining a clients trust is to present their existing portfolio of work.
A good portfolio can quickly establish:
- The type of client you work with
- The type of work you have done
- Solutions and technologies you employ
- Success and awards
In a nutshell a good portfolio can say more about your business than anything else.
Shameless plug
Here at Untitled1 we work with some of the UK’s leading agencies on some of their key client accounts. We have delivered hundreds of successful digital projects which have gained the agencies glowing testimonials and awards but you won’t find any on our site.
The problem is we are often bound by non disclosure agreements or NDA’s which states that we cannot tell you or any potential clients about these projects. Of course you could always show potential clients existing work face-to-face and make them promise not to tell but our business is built on integrity and this just isn’t an option for us. Not only that but ‘loose lips sink ships’.
This isn’t just our problem it’s an issue for any company involved with this kind of Outsourcing.
So what’s the solution?
The short answer is we have to work harder. To even convince the agency to consider us for a project we have learnt that the best way to gain their trust is to offer some of our services up front, sometimes for their clients but often for themselves.
This approach allows us to do two things; demonstrate our skills but more importantly open up communication with the agency.
This method is mutually beneficial – the agency gets great thinking, ideas and knowledge for free and we get a chance to demonstrate our expertise which hopefully will stand us in good stead for future projects.
This method is by no means perfect and I would be interested to hear from agencies on what would make them consider outsourcing digital projects where a portfolio was not available.
Tags: Outsourcing
