I recently had a client who lost nearly a dozen significant customers. They didn’t know why and asked us to help. They also requested that we review the relationship health of their Top 150 accounts, in order to avoid further surprises.
This client is a best-in-class provider of HR services. They were aggressively growing revenue, actively acquiring companies and constantly improving quality. There was no obvious reason for clients to be leaving, as their competition was good—but definitely not better.
Give me the real deal
I conducted a postmortem with 8 clients that recently left. In my experience, our customers’ clients are very open with us, as they see us as a pathway to improve our clients’ offerings and service levels. Sure enough, these 8 clients were not just honest with why they had left, but, frankly, eager to tell me what had happened.
I was shocked that in all cases, the reason for leaving had NOTHING to do with a major failure. In each case, there were little things that added up to death by a thousand cuts. The one factor that rang true across all the clients that left…their voices were not being heard!
When it came time to present my findings, the entire sales leadership and business unit executives were present. I presented all the findings, which included some operational issues (billing, service time, contractual language, etc). Then I told them the customers were not being heard—not only that, but the customers were UPSET when they told me they weren’t being heard. I shared that that this was the one reason they all had decided to leave.
That message resonated within the leadership teams—everyone was listening in this conversation. I believe that everyone in the room became self-aware that yes, they were so busy implementing new solutions & processes, driving new sales, dealing with Covid safety and health protocols, and so on, that they had lost connection to their customers and had temporarily stopped listening to their concerns.
It dawned on me that in this crazy world, there is so much noise in our personal and professional lives, that we probably all struggle a little with filtering out the junk and focusing on the critical. Think about the last two years and what has happened…Covid, political discourse, inflation, war in Ukraine, mass shootings…then add in that our client was growing rapidly and changing their solutions at an unbelievable pace. They were dealing with so much. It would make sense that the account teams were overwhelmed and could not filter out all the noise, so the voice of the customer was drowned out.
No more surprises, please
It was time to start phase 2 of the project, which was to look at our client’s top 150 customers and assess their relationship to each customer. Using a Holden Advisors’ proprietary Account Health Assessment tool, we quickly dove into our client’s top 150 customers. We then conducted 15–20-minute interviews on every account. We were NOT surprised that the Account Executives had rated the accounts “healthier” than they were but after pointed questions, the Account Executives and the entire management team agreed with our view that almost 30% of their top 150 accounts were in danger (red) or in a few cases, already prepared to leave.
We were then hired to do a third phase of the project, which was to help guide each Account Executive that owned a red account to getting that account back to green (healthy). We held meetings every two weeks to provide guidance with the AEs, which helped them re-invigorate the relationship and drive positive results.
Show me the money
This project showed a 90%+ effective rate in turning the red accounts to either yellow or green and secured almost $100 million in at-risk revenue. In many cases, once the relationship was fixed, the accounts actively sought out MORE business and revenue grew. What was the biggest factor in turning the accounts to green? The Account Executives were actively listening and amplifying their customers’ voices internally to all facets of the company. Small improvements to our client’s processes and solutions were seen as massive improvements by their customers.
I certainly cannot predict whether the amount of noise we all hear is going to diminish soon, but with a good filter, we all can improve our personal and professional lives by hearing what is truly important.
