Loading Clients

What this Key unlocks

Ideal clients are assets. Cultivating long term relationships with them is the bread and butter of the firms that beat the global consultancies. This Key covers client management ownership, strategic client scoring, senior sponsorship, account plans, budget cycles and walking the client's corridors.

Inside Everest, this Key is worked in 90 Day Sprints: one or two levers per sprint, measured, reviewed with peers and locked in before the next cycle. The Loading Clients result page shows the three levers most firms need to pull first.

Questions founders ask about Loading Clients

What client retention rate should an IT services firm expect?

Know what percentage of the clients you billed two years ago are still billing today. Strong firms sit above 70 percent. Below 50 and the pipeline is refilling a leaky bucket, which is why this Key usually produces the fastest margin gain: the clients are already won.

Who should own each client relationship?

A named senior person who is not the delivery lead, with a relationship rating out of ten they can defend with data. When the delivery lead owns the relationship, the conversation is always about this project, never about the next three.

How much of our sales effort should go to existing clients?

At least 60 percent to current services for current clients. New logos are expensive and slow. The firms that beat the global consultancies grow inside the accounts they already hold, by walking the client's corridors and knowing the budget cycle.

What is a client health report?

A weekly one page view of every key account rated green, amber or red, with a named senior owner acting on every amber within the week. It turns retention from a feeling into a rhythm.

What is a referral map and why does it matter?

For your largest account, ten or more named relationships: sponsors, users, finance, procurement, the people who moved to other firms. If you can only name two, the account is one restructure away from disappearing.

How do I deal with a client who is 40 percent of revenue?

Protect it and dilute it at the same time. Deepen the relationship layer so the account survives a sponsor change, and run the Loading Services levers hard until it sits below 30 percent. A buyer discounts heavily for concentration, and so should you.

Should we fire bad clients?

Score them first. Strategic client scoring on margin, growth potential, relationship depth and strategic fit usually shows that two or three accounts consume senior time for little return. Reprice them before you fire them; most of them leave on their own at the right rate.

How does Loading Clients connect to Loading Rates?

Existing clients are where rate increases land first, because trust is already there. A firm with deep relationships raises rates with a conversation. A firm with transactional relationships loses the client. Work this Key before you touch the rate card.