I need to see the next miss in my key account before it happens.

I need to see the next miss in my key account before it happens.

Misses rarely come out of nowhere. The warning signs show up in SLA reports, delivery metrics and the client's own performance reporting, long before anyone calls it a problem.

Five questions to see if your team can find risks to the account early today:

1. Does your team review the most common risk points in your contract and delivery on a set schedule?
2. Does your team tell the client about a potential risk before it becomes a miss?
3. Do you hold SLA reviews with your internal team and the client?
4. Does your team track the client's own performance metrics, along with your SLAs?
5. When the client is falling behind, does your team help them fix the root cause?

Two or more no's, and your next miss may already be on its way.

One of my largest accounts was behind in key performance metrics with several of their customers. If one of their projects was behind by one day, the estimated direct cost was $55K per day, plus another $800K per day in lost revenue. The issue was not tied to our services, nor did any penalties or incentives flow down to our contract.

We met with them, learned the root cause of the issue, and determined how to solve it. It required some new capabilities and investments, but we developed an immediate fix that brought them back to delivering 95% on time every 5 days.

The solution was expanded to include more projects and extended several times until the client was in good standing with their customer's compliance standards. This client would go on to be a Vital Partnership that has lasted 20+ years.

Our system, the Vitality Index, shows your key account teams where they stand today, the work it takes to level up, and how to do it, until they reach a vital partnership that lasts.

Where is the next miss in your key account most likely to come from?

We built a free, 4-minute Key Account Risk Assessment. It gives you a risk score for your key accounts across team alignment, account planning, account transitions, and visibility. Link in the comments.