Do you have one big account? Something that brings in a huge chunk of your business? Well don’t go relying on it.
You may have heard of The Pareto Rule – 80% of your business comes from 20% of your clients. So what would happen if one of your big clients decided to leave you (or if they went bust, or relocated, or lost one of their own major clients and used you a lot less)?
‘Churn’ in business is a reality – stuff happens and customers leave. So take a long hard look at your client portfolio – would the loss of one or more of your biggest customers have an impact? How much of an impact? Would it be enough to cause you to downsize, to not make a profit this year, to close?
Even if you did survive, what effect would it have on morale, on the confidence of your staff, your reputation in the market place? Sometimes it’s about a lot more than money.
So, you should have a plan in place to win more big accounts and develop existing ones to spread your risk.
However, what if that ‘big’ client was a lucky recommendation or a small account you grew. Yes, you did everything right once you had it, but do you have anything up your sales sleeve to duplicate this success or to gain more similar clients? Many companies don’t.
Losing a ‘big one’ is a horrible place to be, but the reality of business is that it will happen eventually.
So I have a question for you: What are the implications for your business if you lose your biggest client suddenly?
If the answer was a bit scary and you would like a chat about how to prevent this happening, schedule a discovery call and see if this is something I can help with. Here is a link to my diary: Book here