"Only the paranoid survive.” – Andrew Grove, former Intel CEO
We all love the good times. You’re cruising along, your strategic accounts are growing, and your business is thriving. What can go wrong? Even in the good times, danger is always lurking in any competitive business environment. Accounts can be lost, even with a solid and consistent performance. Sometimes it’s easy to see when you’re at risk of losing an account. Services or product failures and unresolved customer complaints often lay the groundwork for a vendor change. But sometimes you can overlook signals that, if missed, will make it too late before you can turn the tide.
Although there are several signs your account is at risk, here are five of the more common indicators:
- Product usage changes. Perhaps the easiest signal to catch is a change in product usage. Volumes could drop, or portions of your offering could dramatically decrease, which could indicate an impending change. Reviewing product usage patterns with your clients in regular business reviews can help avoid this surprise.
- Communication style or cadence changes. Your day-to-day contacts may reduce contact, cancel meetings, or postpone strategic conversations. This could include losing access to senior members of the buying center (a sign that they may be heading in a different direction).
- The buying center changes. Your current relationship contacts introduce you to someone new and influential in the buying center. You have a meeting or two, and then they disappear. Or worse yet, you fail to recognize a new member(s) to the buying center. With the introduction of a new buying center member, priorities and decision-making criteria can shift. If they are seriously considering a new vendor, your current relationship contacts may keep talking to you, but new players will likely not.
- New C-level leadership is in place. Changes in senior leadership can often create swift adjustments in an organization. New executives looking to make their mark may be change agents, and this will put incumbents at risk. When a new senior level decision maker enters the picture, you better get in front of them quickly.
- The RFP you receive looks different than expected. This means you were either not involved in development of the RFP (an incumbent in good position will often have this opportunity) or someone has gotten in behind you to change the rules of the game.
If you find yourself in any combination of the above positions, react deliberately and aggressively. Make sure you understand the client’s value drivers, and position your messaging for the most senior members of the buying center. This is often a time to double down on team selling by making sure you have the right resources to address your client’s business needs and pain points. And, to strengthen client relationship at multiple levels.
