Key Stakeholders Can Make or Break Your Business – How to Ensure You’re Not Working With the Wrong People

Ever struggled to hire someone, find new suppliers, or select your clients? That’s what happens when you don’t know your ideal key stakeholders.

How often do business owners blame themselves when they’re not turning a big enough profit or can’t sustain growth? 

It happens more often than you think.

That said, a business never relies on a single individual. The truth is that your organization depends on all of its key stakeholders. They’re individuals within your team, partners, clients, and everyone else who directly impacts your financial performance. 

When you’re not aligned with your key stakeholders, your business can’t grow. Everyone needs to be on the same page, have the same energy, and work towards achieving the same goals.

One of the most crucial tasks you have as a business owner, therefore, is to figure out how well you align with your key stakeholders. Any miscommunication or signs of pulling in different directions could be the reasons why your company isn’t as successful as you want it to be.

This article will shed light on how you can ensure you have the right stakeholders in your business.

Identifying Your Key Stakeholders Inside the Business

If you have a small team, you can probably list all of your individual team members. But what if you have a larger organization? How do you single out key stakeholders?

You can start by defining key team leaders, managers, VPs, and other vital roles inside your organization. 

The idea is to find the individuals who resonate with you and your vision the most. Perhaps you even have similar values that are aligned. 

Those are your key stakeholders. They’re people close to you who help drive the company’s performance.

If you think about it, those individuals work with other team members. And in doing so, they’ll share their values along the way. It’s how every organization functions after all. Values and culture get passed down the leadership ladder.

This is why defining and understanding who your stakeholders are is crucial to your company’s performance.

You must know what’s meaningful to them to understand what they’re passing along to the rest of the team. Is it excitement, energy, and a drive to achieve amazing results? Or are your key stakeholders real downers that suck the energy out of everyone and drive the overall business and financial performance down?

Knowing these things will allow you to restructure various departments, make more informed hiring decisions, and delegate essential tasks to the individuals best-suited to handle them.

Understanding Your Top Clients

Everyone may have a different definition of top clients or ideal clients. But in the context of identifying key stakeholders to drive better business performance, you have to be very specific.

So, who exactly are your top clients?

They’re your clients that you would do anything for while they’re working with you. And you would also do anything to keep them if they ever decided to leave.

These individuals or businesses fill you with excitement when you work with them. After all, every experience is enjoyable.

You know that these clients always pay on time and don’t miss meetings. Most importantly, these clients respect you enough to always deliver what they’re supposed to within the agreement of your relationship.

Now, when you look at your top clients, you won’t need a long list. Identifying your top 10 should suffice.

Then, dissect those clients to create a clear profile of who they are and what they want. Don’t be afraid to get their input, too, if you need further clarification.

Make sure that every one of those clients is aligned with your values and your company’s values. Otherwise, you risk wasting precious time on relationships that won’t drive higher profits into your business.

Knowing Your Collaborators

Your internal team and clients or customers aren’t the only key stakeholders in your organization. There are other parties that contribute to your business success and financial performance.

If you’re just starting out, you may not have many collaborators. But as you grow your business, you’ll find the need to work with more of them.

So, how do you identify who they are?

Look at the businesses and individuals who care about your relationship. Identify who brings the most value to the table.

If you’re not sure who your collaborators are, we can give you some examples. 

In our case, we have various types of partners, from media partners to community partners and developers. They are all instrumental in the growth of our business.

Your business partners can also be key stakeholders in your business. So, it’s important to figure out the qualities of a good partner from your perspective.

Even anyone who isn’t a team member or client but still contributes to your financial performance is a potential collaborator or key stakeholder.

Getting an External Perspective

Once you identify key stakeholders that drive growth and success in your business, you’ll want to get some external perspective on how they see you.

Know that it’s never enough to look at values or purpose only from the prism of your beliefs. So, ask your clients, leadership team, and collaborators what makes them invested in your relationship. 

How can you do this?

All it takes is asking for feedback. Whether you’re making a call or sending them a message with a predetermined template – simply ask your key stakeholders what they value in your relationship or what makes your organization stand out.

You need to know what they value and what keeps them from leaving. That’s the only way to discover the most critical values your organization has in relation to your key stakeholders.

Once you know those values, you can double down on them and continue nurturing those relationships. Also, you can get rid of people who don’t align with you and make room for others.

Start Working With the Right People

Information is king whether you’re talking numbers, financial metrics, KPIs, even values and team culture.

The more you know about the people who directly impact your business, the better you choose your key stakeholders. You’ll be able to form stronger relationships and avoid wasting time on partnerships, clients, or team members that aren’t motivated enough to join you on your journey.

If you want better financial performance, start working with people who can push you to new heights instead of those who will only drag you down.

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