We talk about customer touchpoints and the need to make them “remarkable” as a critical element for marketing success.

But, do you think of your accounts payable department as a touchpoint?

It is.

When a company provides you with a service, how you respond to their request for payment is an element of marketing.

You’ve agreed to payment terms, that’s fine.

What’s not fine is when the finance folks say “if we hold this for a few more days, we can get the float.”

Or, “we’re the customer, we’ll pay when we want.”

When this happens, the marketing folks should say, “these are both true. But our consultants and vendors work closely with us, understand our business, and are passionate about it because their survival depends on it. If we give them reasons to talk about us positively to their networks, it helps us all out in the long run.”

If you are late paying your bills to a consultant or a vendor with whom you have a relationship, that person will most likely not say anything negative about you, but they probably won’t feel like they need to go out of their way to say anything positive either.

You want and need your vendors and consultants to be talking to their network about you whenever they can, with passion and enthusiasm.

When you make them ask again and again to get paid (and we all know this happens a lot), you are not only damaging a direct relationship, you are putting a damper on a potentially very valuable channel relationship.

I suppose that there are exceptions (like making payroll-but in that case, you should explain WHY to your accounts payable), but in general…if you pay your bills on time (or even early!), you’ll probably end up with vendors/suppliers/consultants who are also Raving Fans.

That can’t hurt, can it?