You, Your Team, Your Clients: The Stakeholder Communication Strategy No One Taught You

✍️ Opinions

Sanvi Barjatya

25 Apr 2025 — 5 min read

Ayush Nambiar, Director at Flags Communications, Communication Strategy No One Taught You

This article has been contributed by Ayush Nambiar, Director at Flags Communications.

Stakeholder communication isn't a department. It’s not a line item in a strategy deck. It’s not limited to investor updates, quarterly reviews, or client feedback sessions. It is the lifeblood of business growth, and it begins with the most overlooked stakeholder of them all: the person staring back at you in the mirror.

Start with the Most Overlooked Stakeholder – Yourself

For any founder, the first and most important stakeholder is the self. Not your co-founder, not your customer, not your investor. It’s you. It’s how you present yourself to the world, your clarity, your discipline, your sense of hygiene, your aura. It’s in your walk, your tone, your choice of words, and your choice of clothes. You don’t need a branding agency to get this right. This is free. And more importantly, it’s a choice that you make every day.

We underestimate how much communication is non-verbal. People don’t listen to your vision; they observe your conviction. They notice whether you respect time, whether you command a room without raising your voice, and whether you exude calm or chaos. This is where real communication begins, not in a campaign plan or investor pitch, but in your presence. And if you’re not taking yourself seriously, no one else will.

Build Alignment with Your Immediate Circle

Once you’ve got the mirror in check, the next stakeholder is your immediate circle: your team, your vendors, your execution partners. These aren’t just resources. These are the people who convert your imagination into reality. They take your slides and turn them into screens, your strategy into systems, your vision into velocity. And if they don’t feel aligned, your growth will always be capped.

Too many businesses treat teams as tools, employees hired to do a job. But high-performing businesses understand one truth: people don’t work hard for paychecks, they work hard for purpose. The more your people believe they’re building something with you and not for you, the more invested they become. That’s stakeholder communication in its truest form. Not memos and Monday meetings, but storytelling, vision casting, involving them in decision-making, creating feedback loops, asking what they want from their career and figuring out how the company can help get them there.

The vendors, too, are often forgotten; they are an extension of your ecosystem. Your agency partners, freelancers, and consultants need to feel ownership, not obligation. They must sense that when your brand grows, they grow. Communicate that, and they’ll fight for you. Miss that, and they’ll work with one eye on the next client.

Rethink the Customer Relationship

The third stakeholder is your customer. And this is where businesses, especially startups, often miss the plot. There’s a transactional attitude that’s become far too common: "Customer aaya, paisa liya, kaam ho gaya." That mindset kills growth. Because clients aren’t just payers, they are amplifiers. Every interaction with them is a marketing moment. From how your sales rep speaks to them on the first call to how your backend team follows up after delivery, every step communicates what your brand is.

Most people believe that marketing ends once the sales funnel is complete. That after you’ve converted the lead, the rest is just execution. But the smartest businesses understand that marketing continues long after the invoice is raised. The experience you offer while executing the work is the brand story. In fact, it’s often more powerful than the ads you run. Why? Because when a system fails, it is relationships that create recovery. A late delivery, a missed deadline, a tech glitch, if communicated honestly, humanely, and proactively, it won’t just be forgiven, it’ll be remembered.

Your best marketing team isn’t sitting in the marketing department. It’s scattered across your company; whoever interacts with your client represents you. Every email from your team, every text, every voice note, it’s all communication. It either strengthens the brand or weakens it.

Move Beyond Numbers with Investors and Strategic Partners

And finally, the traditional stakeholder group, your investors, shareholders, and strategic partners. The mistake businesses often make here is over-indexing on numbers and under-indexing on narrative. Stakeholders at this level want to know more than how you're doing. They want to know why you're doing it, where you're going, and what you believe in. And they want to feel like they’re part of it.

Founders often flood investors with data charts, growth reports, graphs. But numbers without context are just noise. What they crave is clarity. Are you in control of your business? Do you know what’s around the corner? Are you adaptable without being erratic? Do you communicate your wins with humility and your losses with responsibility? That’s how trust is built. That’s how belief is sustained.

There’s another nuance here that most don’t talk about. When you're building a business, things don’t always go as planned. Revenue projections dip. Clients churn. Tech stacks collapse. And during those times, the systems you’ve installed don’t save you, Your Relationships Do. If you’ve communicated with consistency, transparency, and calm, your stakeholders will hold the line with you. If you’ve ghosted them when things were good, they’ll ghost you when things go bad.

Master the Timing and Listening

Stakeholder communication is also about timing. When do you inform? When do you consult? When do you step back and let them speak? It’s not just about talking, it’s about listening. People don’t trust those who speak well. They trust those who listen well.

Undercommit, Overdeliver

One of the greatest principles in business is: “undercommit and overdeliver”. Not because it’s a clever tactic. But because it’s the most direct way to build satisfaction. When you say less and do more, people begin to trust you. When you’re conservative with promises but aggressive with delivery, people notice. And they remember.

In the End, It's About Belief and Belonging

So what does it all come down to? It comes down to how you show up, how you make people feel, and how you stay visible even when things are going wrong. How you remain consultative, not transactional. How you prioritise relationships over rigidity.

Stakeholder communication isn’t about always having the answers. It’s about having the courage to keep people in the loop while you figure them out. It’s about managing expectations without compromising on ambition. And it’s about leaving people feeling better, clearer, and more confident after every single interaction with you or your brand.

Growth doesn’t happen because your marketing strategy was brilliant or your sales funnel was automated. It happens when the people around your business, your team, your vendors, your clients, your investors, start believing in what you’re building and start feeling like they’re a part of it.

And that starts long before the first email is sent. It starts the moment you look into the mirror.