These days, news headlines are filled with uncertainty; across industries, leaders are preparing for a broad-based market slowdown. In a softer demand market, companies often see new customer acquisition decelerate faster than spend from existing customers ¹. There is no better time than now to embrace your existing customers. Transforming your customer relationships – moving from “vendor” to “partner” – can help create a customer intimacy that differentiates you from your competition and supports both retention and expansion efforts.

The concept of partner versus vendor is not a novel one (here’s an article that summarizes well the difference between the two). Yet, in our experience, few customers truly view their vendor’s sales team in this light. Make no mistake: partnership must be earned. In our experience, the following four strategies can help a team build trust and accountability with customers.

When sales organizations face headwinds, a common response is to mandate price increases, drive early renewals and get tougher on collections. While these tactics have merit, executing these without customer intimacy will often be met with strong resistance from customers. This erodes trust over time and customers will come to view these teams merely as vendors that can be easily replaced. Instead, by adapting to your customers’ changes, aligning to shared outcomes and successes, empathizing during hard times and providing timely and mutually beneficial opportunities, you can increase customer intimacy and create enduring, long-time customers.