General Consultant Discussion

About 75% of our customer losses is due to new management coming on. Has anyone seen anything different? And do you have a way to combat this? Does scheduling annual meetings with management help? Thanks.

My biggest cause of attrition is due to ownership selling the company to a larger company and never allowing us an opportunity to meet with the new owners. The second biggest is CPA firms who are giving away MAS consulting as a loss leader. New clients at any cost.

The only way to combat it is to visit/call regularly. Once a year isn't really often enough.

I try to keep in touch with management AND users. When a new controller/CEO steps in, they'll usually ask the users who supports the software.

Two steps that can help: 1. Deepen the relationship. As @MarkKotyla states, get to know as many folks in the department as possible. Track them in CRM - roles, personal emails (if you can), Facebook, etc. 2. Broaden the relationship. Get to know the executives, sales people, marketing people, customer service, etc. Point 2 is where CRM helps since it's almost a necessity to get out of the accounting department to introduce CRM properly. The same could be said about other solutions in the Sage portfolio (such as HR) but CRM is the most pervasive.