I recently received a frantic call from a colleague asking advice. After my friend had invested 20+ years working with a key account, a competitor had sold his client the latest automated welding system; and my friend wasn’t given even the slightest consideration. The balance of the account’s business was also in serious jeopardy.

Do you take existing business from your key customers for granted? Could yesterday’s success lead to today’s complacency? How do you ensure that past successes don’t foster future failures? Here are six principles for retaining and growing your existing customer base.

• Establish Call Frequency with a Purpose — Use a call planner to ensure that all key accounts are visited or telephoned on a consistent call rotation schedule.
• Develop an Internal Inside Sales Contact — Communicate frequently with the individual within your organization responsible for customer service to your KEY accounts. Maintain a customer relationship database of decision-makers’ interests; share this database with your internal group; knowledge fosters consistent ongoing relationships in each account.
• Introduce New Faces — On a regularly scheduled basis, bring customer service reps, staff (credit, administration, etc.), and vendors to your customers’ facilities for visitation. The more diversified and frequent these face-to-face contacts, the less likelihood of competitive infiltration and account receptivity.
• Stay Abreast of Key Account Internal Personnel Changes — The most vulnerable time to gain or lose business in KEY accounts occurs when personnel changes materialize; knowing both the supervisor and the subordinate of your key contact minimizes the risk.
• Latest Technologies Awareness — Keeping current with the latest technology in your industry is absolutely necessary. It is not only critical to know your products and services, but you must also be able to recognize and introduce new business ideas, computer software technology, internet services, etc. In our mobile economy, successful vendors act as the customer’s “agent of change.”
• Offer Outside Services Consultations — Cross-sell your customer’s services/products in the marketplace; look for new hires; help solicit new vendors/subcontractors, etc. Ensure your success by promoting their success.

Unfortunately, the business (above) was NOT SALVAGABLE. The savvy competitor offered superior technology and had also mastered the six principles outlined above. The competitor continues to thrive in the marketplace. My associate and his company are now faced with a “crisis” of survival because of their complacency.

In his acclaimed international classic, The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino, writes in his Ancient Scroll Marked III, “I will persist until I succeed, I will … not let yesterday’s success lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.” Complacency over time can truly be FATAL!