What's the state of your relationships with your organization's key constituent groups?  Here's how to find out. 

The only thing that communication people like me do is to build relationships between our clients or employers and their constituent groups — like shareholders, customers, employees, government officials and media.  Many metrics that organizations use to measure the success of their communication investments are merely incomplete approximations of the result that they really want: relationships of trust, respect and mutual understanding.  Most organizations fail to measure the quality of the relationships they have with key internal and external constituent groups, whose expectations must be met to win their support for the goals and objectives of the organization — goals like selling products and services or winning support for public policies that will benefit the organization.  While measures of media impressions, website hits, or even sales and stock prices are useful, they are only indicators of the quality of the underlying relationships.  While you can infer what certain behaviors say about the attractiveness of your product offering or your customers’ loyalty, the only reliable way to check-up on the state of a relationship is to measure the state of the relationship, not its markers.  Many communicators are familiar with a term and process known as a Communications Audit and may think that’s what I’m talking about here.  It’s not.  An audit is an inventory of communication tools and channels, which, at best, are only sometimes compared to best practices.  In either case, the result doesn’t produce a measurement of relationship quality.  A Relationship Check-Up does.  This process of listening to key constituents allows organizations to compare their performance on various measures against their constituents’ expectations for the organization’s performance.  It’s a simple, intuitive idea: find out what it takes to have a successful relationship with someone and then deliver it.  To learn more, download my publication, How To Plan and Manage a Relationship Checkup from my online store for $9.99.  Or, if you’d like to receive a copy free (and who doesn’t like free?), write me at DavidKirk@thePRguy.com or call me at 610.422.0048 and I’ll be happy to send you a copy.

What it is.

A Relationship Check-Up© is a method for assessing the state of an organization's relationships with key internal and external constituent groups, whose expectations must be met to win their support for the goals and objectives of the organization.

How it's done.

Purchase your copy of the 20-page, color booklet How to Plan and Manage a Relationship Check-Up© at my online store.

Why should you care about your relationships with community opinion leaders?

Purchase your copy of the 37-page, color booklet Building Relationships with Community Opinion Leaders: Who, Why and How at my online store.
 

What's the state of your relationships with your organization's key constituent groups? Here's how to find out.

A Relationship Check-Up™ is a method for assessing the state of an organization's relationships with key internal and external constituent groups, whose expectations must be met to win their support for the goals and objectives of the organization. It employs a proprietary combination of methodologies , depending on the specific circumstances of a given Check-Up. To discuss conducting a Check-Up for your organization, please contact me. For a more detailed look at the makings of a Check-Up, purchase your copy of the 20-page, color booklet How to Plan and Manage a Relationship Check-Up™ at my online store.

Clients Discuss the Value of the Relationship Check-Up

"This independent Check-Up assessment provided me with specific evidence to help win the support of our employees and our trustees for changes we could make to help us further our mission. This information also helped us formalize our strategies to affect community opinion."

Marion McGowan
(Formerly) Chief Executive Officer
Brandywine Hospital "My organization has benefited greatly from the two engagements David Kirk has performed on our behalf. His thoughtful approach to assessing community perceptions and then creating action plans that work have helped us to incorporate community concerns as a fundamental piece of our organizational culture."

Dennis J. Dooley,
Vice President
Planning and Development
Capitol Health System "David Kirk's perceptive and objective reports on the community's perception of Lancaster Health Alliance have been key ingredients in our overall community relations activities. David can connect with a diverse array of community leaders, learn their concerns and praises and provide those viewpoints with recommendations for improvements in a format that is understood at all levels of our organization"

John Lines
Director
Community Relations
Lancaster General Health "David Kirk has been integrally involved in developing the strategies in our public accountability communication program. He has demonstrated a unique ability to organize and move the program forward."

Michael A. Suchanick
Chief Operating Officer
The Hospital&Healthsystems