For more than 25 years, I worked at large corporations, the last two in IT. Great titles, solid budgets, good results. And yet there came a moment when I thought: I can no longer reconcile this with my values.
Not because the companies were bad. Not because my colleagues were failing. But because the system I was part of was not sustainable. Not for customers, not in the long term, and ultimately not for me.
Talking about customers, not with customers
In large, publicly listed companies, everything revolves around the quarter. The month, even. Everything for the share price, everything to keep shareholders satisfied. Meetings discuss customers without anyone sitting at the table with those customers. You fill in spreadsheets about revenue forecasts, but do not have conversations about what customers actually need.
That was the world I operated in. For years. And I was good at it.
The result? I sold solutions I was not sure fit. By the time a customer realized it was not delivering what they had hoped for, I was already working on the next deal. Internally, no one was interested in how the results came about, only that they came about.
We talked too much about the customer, but too little with the customer. At some point, I no longer wanted to take responsibility for that.
The wake-up call
In 2016, I moved to my last corporate employer. That is where I met Martijn. Just over a year later, he conducted customer research at one of our largest accounts: a university of applied sciences in the north of the country. We had provided IT services there for years. Our operations manager was a regular there, and customer satisfaction scores were excellent. There seemed to be nothing wrong.
Until Martijn spoke with the CIO. Not about day-to-day operations, but about expectations and the future of the relationship.
The CIO said: “I am very satisfied. If you have the lowest price again next time, I will consider renewing the contract.”
The lowest price again.
That sentence stayed with me. What was the CIO actually saying? That we delivered perfectly well operationally, but that we were interchangeable to him. He saw no reason to stay with us unless we were the cheapest. We had relationships with Operations, but not with the people deciding the future of the contract.
Why I did not see it coming
It is easy to talk in hindsight. But I did not see it coming. Why not? Because everything indicated that things were going well. Customer satisfaction scores were high. Operations people were positive. There were no complaints.
But customer satisfaction is not the same as customer retention. Satisfied customers can still leave. They leave when they see no future in the relationship. When you do not ask about their goals, challenges and expectations. When you focus only on solving operational problems instead of creating value.
We had had every conversation except the ones that mattered.
Organize for success
And then it clicked: you organize for success, or you correct afterwards. At my previous employers, I had mainly corrected. The problem was not individual people; it was how the organization was set up. Account managers were judged on new deals, not on retaining existing customers. There was no structure for discussing expectations. No process for maintaining relationships at the right level.
I knew I wanted something different. No more working with plans that disappear into a drawer and processes that exist only on paper. I wanted to sit at the table with customers. Understand what they need. And help organizations manage customer relationships properly and structurally, from conversations with decision-makers about their expectations to building a network at every level within the customer organization.
The step
In 2018, I left the corporate world and started working with Martijn. The first years were not easy. My wife became ill and died in 2022. I had to reinvent myself, both personally and professionally.
What drives me now? I want to help commercial teams have the right conversations. To understand what their customers expect. To organize for success instead of correcting afterwards.
We say it so often: it is not so much about what you deliver, but whether it matches what the customer expected. If you fail to meet that expectation, you become interchangeable. Then it is all about price.
Would you continue doing business with a partner who repeatedly fails to meet your expectations?
Exactly.
To challenge you
What are the three most important expectations of your most important customer? And how do you measure whether you are meeting them?
Difficult to answer? On 3 March, Martijn and I are hosting a webinar about where to start when you know something needs to change. In 45 minutes, you will learn how to build consensus around the problem and support for the solution. Sign up via this link.
Want to talk further now? Call me on 06 52 64 98 34. I will help you find the right answer.
Kind regards,
Joost Meijlink Partner Tenacity
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