Sep 17, 2026
How to work with customers and partners:
- 90% of what makes business relationships is credibility. Get that right and you won't have to do much else
- thus your job is to increase credibility w/ the counterparty
- that is easy: (1) find positive sum outcomes, (2) do what you promised, (3) don't promise what you can't do. Try and do this a lot so the relationship survives inevitable zero sum situations. That's all
Positive sum:
- they come to you panicked. They need you to ship X in four weeks because their big customer is threatening to churn due to some limitation in their product. But to fix their product they need X and they need it _now_
- building X would blow up your architecture, you can't do it. And you certainly can't do it in four weeks, it would take six months, plus your team is already stretched very thin
- so you tell them look, there is no way. But let's backtrack. What does _your_ customer want, why are they mad? And why do you need X to fix it?
- you have to spend time to understand the whole thing. How their product works, how their customer uses it, how their architecture relies on your product, why they think they need X to fix the problem. And so on
- 9 times out of 10 you'll discover they don't need X at all. You can easily imagine much better ways of doing it
- so you brainstorm together. What if we did it this way? How about this other way? Would that work?
- usually they'll pause, maybe ask some questions. And then they'll get excited. Yes, this other way Y could work! Can you get it to us in four weeks?
- well no, you still can't, your team is still stretched thin. But at least Y is doable. And if you rearrange the roadmap a little maybe you can do it in six weeks. Would that work?
- errr that's hard. But fine, they can keep their angry customer off the ledge for extra two weeks. Thanks for helping solve this!!
This kind of thing ^^ happens all the time. They’re happy with you, you solved their problem. Their customer is happy. You probably saved someone a job and you had to stretch only a little. Your credibility went up. Win/win/win.
But it doesn’t always play out that way:
- sales promised 99.999% reliability but your service is crashing all the time. _Their_ customers are yelling at them, they're yelling at your leadership team, everyone is getting nervous
- you’re supposed to be selling a scalable industrial whatever, but they have no idea behind the scenes it’s just a couple of kids doing their best to keep the thing from exploding with duct tape and superglue
- you have a meeting with the customer in two hours. Your credibility is below sea level. And you know there is no way to get them the scalable industrial thing they paid for
First few times for these are really scary for people. But actually they go alright:
- when you show up they’ll want to vent their frustration and disappointment
- acknowledge that you screwed up. Apologize, then let them vent
- they’ll keep talking for a while. Keep telling them you hear them. Yes the situation was painful, and you take responsibility for it
- eventually you’ll detect a pause. That’s your cue venting is over and they now expect solutions
- lay out a plan. Come prepared! Typically “here’s a concrete list of changes we’ll make in the short term to ensure this particular failure mode doesn’t occur again. Here’s a concrete list of changes we’ll make in medium and long term to improve quality of service overall.”
- if the plan is good you’ll feel them relax. They’ll say ok, maybe scold you one last time, you’ll exchange pleasantries, and the meeting will be done
- then make sure you do what you promised and give them regular updates as you go
- you might think— there is no way I can fix this, I just don’t have the resources or time to make this good. That may be true, but somehow empirically these things turn out alright
/fin