Growth, Focus and Customer Trust. These three topics are always top-of-mind for the leadership of every ambitious company with which I’ve worked. In the past 30+ years, I’ve had the privilege of guiding dozens of such companies through treacherous waters on the path to growth, and I’ve learned exactly how these three challenging — sometimes elusive — goals are inextricably intertwined.

Customer Trust is the foundation on which you build the ability to focus your teams and which then allows you to accelerate growth. But trust is often misunderstood to be as simple as positive feedback from your customer. Developing trust requires more than having your customer tell you, in effect, that they like you. For a customer to trust you, they must have confidence that you will make and fulfill promises to them that are meaningful and, when fulfilled, will turn them into heroes to their leadership or customers.

Relying on expanding programs, such as blasting more emails,  or simple metrics, such as customer surveys, is valuable when you understand why your customers and prospects respond as they do and how to focus your efforts to increase the response. But every single program and every single metric will be much more meaningful and effective when you and your team know exactly what promises you can make — and keep — to address your customers’ and prospects’ concerns and aspirations.

Building the capability to understand what turns a customer into a hero and why they would want to trust you is the difference between intentional, accelerated growth and just getting lucky.

Fulfilling your promises to your customer means that when your customer uses your product, it must perform the way your customer expects it to (note that your customer’s expectations can be quite different from yours!). But fulfilling your promises also means that your customer can see their business in the future of your product. In other words, you should make it easy for your customer to write you into their story.

In our business lives, we hear a lot about the importance of execution. Execution is certainly important, but to be executing well, your people must be delivering in the way your customer expects and helping your customer be successful in the ways you promised you would.

My mission is to guide, support and direct you and your team to understand your customers and deepen trust, create operational focus and avoid the Chasms of Failure ™ along the way to help you achieve your customer and growth goals. You know who your customers are and what they face every day. I know how to translate that into a relationship that will build trust, create mutual value and allow you to build your company into a market leader.