One of my senior cats had to go in for a dental cleaning last week. As any normal pet owner, I’m always a little anxious with the idea of putting my family member under anesthesia, but we had found a tooth that needed to come out during his annual wellness exam. One tooth turned to four after the x-ray, and my little guy did very well. However, I certainly wouldn’t have trusted just any veterinarian to do it. It took awhile of searching before I found a practice that I’m extremely comfortable with and that’s for one main reason: transparency. They include me in every single step of the process by performing most of the wellness exam in front of me (if I so choose) instead of my pet disappearing to the back room where most pet parents are not allowed. They also send me immediate photos after surgery letting me know my cat is doing well and how much he enjoyed his food after 10 hours of not eating.
The practice I attend has built in the “full transparency commitment”, which in turn builds more trust and forms a partnership that strives to achieve the same goals. The full transparency commitment is the act of sharing information that otherwise wouldn’t be provided and has no other motive than to grow trust in a partnership to better achieve an overall goal. I want my practice to be successful so my pets continue to have a veterinarian that takes care of them and puts their health first. This means I recommend them to everyone I know and I continue to support them through social media and word-of-mouth. In turn, I feel like we truly have a partnership and isn’t that what every practice strives for? Isn’t that what every business strives for?
The “full transparency commitment” can be used outside of the pet owner-practice relationship and can apply to business relationships as well. In fact, it SHOULD apply to important business relationships. For example, are you working with a marketing technology company that is helping you towards some of your practice’s overall business goals? You need to find a team who believes in the full transparency commitment. This means that they provide you a reason behind why numbers are they way they are, they disclose performance of marketing campaigns, compliance based on reminder solutions and are working towards your same goals.
How can you tell if your business partner follows the full transparency commitment? They provide you easy access to the results and performance of your relationship. They may believe in it so strongly that they build it into their pricing structure. They may not know they are following the full transparency commitment, but they are performing it by providing you the tools to assess the value of the partnership.
If you feel like you’re not working with someone who is transparent with what they do, how they do it and your results, then it may be time to shop for another business partner. Don’t settle for someone who isn’t disclosing the full performance of their technology. It’s completely okay to ask questions and request to see results. In fact, that’s what you should be doing all along. That’s what makes a partnership a successful one.
