Our Key Competitive Difference — Trusted Stewardship

Sherpa! recently began a redesign of its website, which we are chronicling in our blog. Our first step in this process was to complete a Project Brief — a 30 page document that serves as the project's strategic starting point.

A key question in the document is where we ask clients what sets them apart both online and offline. In other words, what is their competitive difference?

We've distilled our key competitive difference down to the following: Trusted Stewardship.

From search engine optimization to web design to mobile development, our clients truly rely on us to help guide them through this new digital frontier, a landscape shifting quickly and with little room for error. What we can and will accomplish together can only be done with mutual trust, transparency, and candidness.

From this key competitive difference, we asked ourselves what we actively do everyday to instill this trust. These became our Four Pillars of Trusted Stewardship:

• Passionate Craftsmen: We are each passionate about and experienced in our individual crafts, which is visible in all our meetings, written communications, and deliverables. As a Results Only Workplace Environment (ROWE), this pillar helps us develop our own Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
• Essential Expertise: By weathering 13+ years across hundreds of software development and Internet marketing projects, our senior-level team understands what is essential for success. Our experience reveals that it's usually the people and rarely the tool or technology.
• Flexible Collaboration: We lighten the load, not burden with process. We check in after every project asking clients what went right, what went wrong, and what we can improve upon. We remain vigilant that we work the way a client prefers, keeping our focus on realizing the goals before us.
• Agile Approach: We are nimble, able to respond quickly to uncertainties. Here, often technology and tools play a large role in helping us connect across the globe and quickly adapt our systems. This might mean having team members calling in to our weekly Team meeting all from 5 different locations, one of which is halfway across the globe under an umbrella in the rain via a cafe's Wi-Fi signal (true story).

What's your key competitive difference?