Building trust is fundamental to succeeding in business. To achieve longevity in the industry and continue to sustainably grow your business, you must position yourself as someone trustworthy – someone who honours commitments.
Honouring a commitment means fulfilling the promises or obligations you make to others. This involves doing what you said you would do, meeting defined deadlines, and delivering on mutually set expectations. Whether it means agreeing to meet someone for a lunch meeting, submitting a required report before the given deadline, or calling someone for a follow-up, once you agree on something, you should be able to stand by it and keep your word. Otherwise, not keeping your commitment can eventually hurt your reputation and break the trust others have in you.
In this article, we discuss 3 reasons why honouring commitments is vital to the success and growth of your business. You’ll also hear from one of our team members about how they implement this in their role as a Senior Financial Planning Assistant.
3 Reasons Why Honouring Commitments is Vital to Your Business
1) Building trust with clients
When a client trusts your business, it is easier for them to avail your services, retain their patronage, and promote your business to colleagues. This makes it easier for you to build a strong and reputable mark in the industry.
When commitments are consistently honoured, clients feel secure in the advice and services provided.
2) Establishing professional integrity
Aside from trust, it’s also crucial to establish integrity, especially in the financial services industry where clients rely on the expertise and honesty of their advisers to make informed decisions.
Professional integrity is the adherence to the moral and ethical principles in a professional setting, which involves being honest, transparent, and consistent in upholding standards of conduct. From a business’ perspective, it’s easier to market and promote an honest and transparent business. Similarly, from a customers’ perspective, it’s easier to trust and patronise genuine and truthful organisations compared to those who have a questionable track record.
3) Fostering long-term partnerships
To endure and thrive in the financial services industry, it is important to build lasting relationships with the people you engage with, especially your clients and partners.
A business can instill positive relationship-building skills across all levels of the organisation by fostering a culture of honesty and open communication, such as setting and meeting client deadlines, managing projects systematically, establishing strategic partnerships, and the like.
Businesses who consistently deliver on their promises are more likely to enjoy sustained success and growth.
Honouring Commitment at Work: An Anecdote
At VBP, we deeply value the relationships and partnerships we’ve built with our team members, clients and partners over the past decade, and we strive to maintain and nurture these connections, as they are integral to why we do what we do.
The practice of honouring commitments is not only reflected among the executive or leadership teams but practiced across all levels of the organisation, especially those in the frontline working with clients every day. It’s in these daily interactions that the essence of commitment shines.
Let’s take for example one of our Senior Financial Planners, Merry Grace Cejudo, who shares her experiences of staying true to her obligations and the impact it has on her and her client relationships.
“At the start of this year, I committed myself to set a mini goal every day wherein I have a specific to-do list that really needs to be done on that specific day and just within my capacity”.
“In our daily client huddles, we take turns in sharing our individual commitments for the day. When it comes to my turn to share, I make it a point to highlight the tasks that I think I can accomplish for a day to set expectations for my line manager and for my clients”.
For Grace, being committed means giving value not just to her job but also to the people she collaborates with. Setting a timeframe and ensuring that she accomplishes a certain task gives clients a good impression of the team members and the business as a whole.
In life, not all things go as planned no matter how we try to make it. Some tasks may encounter challenges or may seem too complex to do, needing more time to accomplish. Instead of waiting for the clients to reach out, Grace is proactive in informing and updating them of the status of her tasks.
Embracing the VBP Fundamentals
Everything starts with the smallest steps. Slowly embrace the VBP Fundamentals within your organisation by highlighting one principle every week. This step fuels growth and success within your team.
As we embrace the VBP Fundamentals, both individually and collectively, we not only elevate ourselves but also inspire those around us forging a path toward success, fulfillment, and meaningful impact.
We encourage you to begin highlighting one fundamental every week. By consistently integrating these principles into your team’s ethos, you not only cultivate a culture rooted in excellence and integrity but also strengthen the bonds that unite your global teams, propelling them toward collective success and unparalleled achievement.
