Some of the best customer conversations are not about getting someone to spend more. They are about helping them get more value from what they already spend.
That thought came back to me while reflecting on my time at Databricks and a former colleague's writing about customer value.
It is a useful reminder for anyone selling a product whose long-term success depends on whether people actually benefit from using it.
Start with the customer's work
If a customer has a problem with cost, usage, or value, I want to understand it directly. Avoiding that conversation does not make the problem go away.
What are they trying to achieve? Which parts of the product are helping? Where are they spending without seeing the outcome they expected?
Sometimes the useful answer is an optimization, a smaller starting point, or a clearer way to use what they already have.
Trust is not a tactic
I do not think helping a customer spend less should be a clever trick to make them spend more later. It should be good advice on its own.
If that creates the trust needed for a bigger conversation, great. But the advice has to remain useful even if the expansion never happens.
That is a much more believable basis for a relationship than pretending every problem has the same answer: buy more.
Make the mindset visible
A sales team can say that it is customer-focused. The real test is what happens when the customer's best next step and the team's immediate commercial preference pull in different directions.
I am interested in how leaders make that judgment normal. What gets rewarded? What does a good account review sound like? Can a seller explain why a smaller recommendation is the right recommendation?
Those choices shape the conversation a customer actually experiences.
The principle I want to keep is simple: help the customer make a good decision with the information in front of them. An expansion conversation means more when that is what earned it.