The truth about customer intimacy

Customer intimacy sounds so much cooler than customer awareness. No company is going to say that they’re not interested in achieving customer intimacy. It’s pretty easy to convince the executives that customer intimacy is something you just have to have. But then you have a problem. How do you get it?

Customer intimacy is about trust and sharing. You have to earn trust and be willing to share before you are even a candidate for achieving customer intimacy. And some customers are reluctant to trust and do little sharing, let alone anything more… intimate. Do you really think your customer wants to be intimate with you, just because you want it?

What is required for customer intimacy?

So for starters, don’t expect to get intimate with your customer on a first date. Just because the customer agreed to a meeting, doesn't mean you've got customer intimacy. If you don’t arrive looking for a long-term relationship, you’re probably not going to get past their public persona. Showing up looking for a contract and asking for a chance won't cut it. You have to do more than just say you’re looking for a long-term relationship. You have to walk the talk. You have to invest. You have to earn trust and share, and do it consistently over time, before you can expect the customer to consider you worthy.

In some ways it is a courtship. a period where you prove yourself worthy of the customer. So how do you prove that? For starters, it takes more than just claiming to have a compliant, useful, or even beneficial product or service. It requires long-term relevance to be worthy of the commitment. It requires the delivery of value worthy of the investment the customer will make.  Proving yourself worthy to the customer requires establishing trust that the risks won't become issues. Above all it requires you to demonstrate that you give value rather than simply take it, and do so during the courtship period. Instead of pleasing talk and promises, it requires trustworthy behavior over enough time for confidence to take root.

How NOT to achieve customer intimacy

A big part of achieving customer intimacy is avoiding the things that will destroy it and letting time do its magic. If at the first meeting you say "here I am" and "here's what I'm capable of," why would anyone care? If you show up and do nothing but talk about yourself, you’re going to look like a taker and not a giver. If you, and your written collateral, do a lot of bragging and are full of unsubstantiated claims, you’re not going to look credible. If you ask for information from the customer but don’t provide anything of value to them, such as information that could help them pursue their goals, you’re going to sound like just another vendor trying to close a deal and not at all like a potential asset and long-term partner. 

Once you start forming a relationship with the customer, you need to step up your game and not rest on your laurels. If you do some work with them and your performance is perfectly normal and sufficiently adequate, you can expect to get treated just like everyone else. It doesn’t mean you're worthy just because they didn’t complain about anything. You can expect the customer to keep looking for someone else because, let’s face it, you’re boring—merely okay if they haven't found someone better. And if you do have customer satisfaction problems, you can forget about anything intimate.

How to be worthy of customer intimacy

Once you make contact, you need to demonstrate how exceptional you are. Note the word “demonstrate.” It is far more noteworthy than all those claims in your brochures and proposals. Demonstrating in this context is synonymous with proof. Exceptional claims require exceptional proof.

All relationships start with an introduction. If you have to, you can introduce yourself. But it helps if you are a familiar face and have a good reputation. How you make contact matters as well. There are many ways to stay in front of the customer and prove that you have shared interests:

1. Associations
2. Networking
3. Subcontracting
4. Events
5. Trade shows
6. Webinars
7. Online contacts like email and LinkedIn
8. Capability briefings (better after an introduction than a first contact)

When you are familiar, the customer is far more likely to say "yes" when you ask for a meeting so you can get to know each other a little better.  That meeting is where you start to form you reputation with the customer. Building your reputation is supported by your:

1. Qualifications
2. Awards
3. Experience
4. Friends in common
5. Association participation and sponsorships
6. Publications
7. Website
8. Social media presence
9. Press

Just make sure that you focus on the customer more than you focus on yourself. You should do more listening than talking. Even if you've been invited to a capabilities briefing, consider wrapping all the details about your company with questions about the relevance to the customer. You should be exploring compatibility and not looking for an opportunity to brag.

Everything on the lists above helps to lay an important foundation before intimacy even has a chance to occur.

Each contact is an opportunity to demonstrate that you’re not the kind of vendor who's only interested in one thing by delivering value to the customer. Remember, it's not about you. It's about the customer. Put everything into a context that matters to them. Try helping them to understand:

1. The issues
2. The alternatives
3. What they need to do to achieve their goals

Giving them the information they need to make future decisions is a great way of delivering value. You can provide information by email, website, or in white papers. You can bring in subject matter specialists or executives to demonstrate interest and responsiveness. The key is to be helpful and to demonstrate that you're willing to invest effort into giving attention to the customer. You're not just trying to get their attention.

Remember, do not expect intimacy on a first date. Your first meeting with the customer must result in follow-up meetings to get to that stage. If you think you’ve achieved something because you got a meeting, wait until you see if you can get another. If you walk out of your meeting without an agreement to meet again or at least follow up, you may not have made much of an impression. Try showing enthusiasm for what you can accomplish together and see if they return it.

Keep in mind that most customers are being courted by multiple companies that seek to influence their decision-making process. It can work against you if you only contact one person at the customer. If you know one person at the customer and never reach out to anyone else, you’re not really showing much interest in the customer as an organization. You're also likely to get that person's perspective instead of a full picture. To have an accurate view of the customer, you need to have relationships at the:

1. Program or operations level
2. Procurement or contracting level
3. Executive level
4. Stakeholder level

You should reach out to all stakeholders involved in or impacted by your goals, as well as the decision makers or proposal evaluators themselves once you learn who they might be. 

Timing matters. If you show up after they’ve written the RFP, then they have already made a commitment and you should not expect to have much influence over it, no matter what you think your relationship with them is. If you show up after they’ve decided their acquisition strategy, don’t expect to be able to get them to change to the contract vehicle you prefer.

We all desperately want the kind of customer relationships where they call on us for advice and where we work together to imagine the future and solve challenges as if we were one and the same organization. What a precious but rare thing that is. It doesn’t happen like magic in a storybook. It happens because:

1. You were there for them when they needed it
2. You did things for them they couldn’t do themselves
3. You solved problems they didn’t even know they had before they even realized it
4. You made their jobs easier and never were a burden
5. You were easier to work with than their own staff
6. You were more than just talk
7. You were thorough and reliable
8. Everything you said was credible and they trusted you
9. They came to depend on you
10. And you delivered

Maybe it’s so rare because most vendors aspire to be like this but rarely follow through.

Doing all the right things is what separates you from all the other vendors. It is what makes customer intimacy bloom.

So how do you know whether you've achieved customer intimacy?

Does the customer come to you? Or do they wait for you to come to them? Do they ask you for help? Better yet, do they ask you for advice? If you are of real value in their eyes (in spite of whatever you claim) they will seek out that value. They won't wait for it.

The other way you can tell is what they share with you. A major part of winning proposals is having an information advantage. If all you have is the same information as everybody else bidding, you do not have an information advantage. When the customer shares their preferences, perspectives, concerns, and things that matter to them in a way that gives you an information advantage, you have a real relationship. You can even quantify the fact of its existence. But they've only shared like that because they want you to do something about it. They want value. Now it's your turn to share.