Losing A Client That is 25% Of Our Revenue: Turning Loss Into Opportunity

On Wednesday I got on a call with the client of cool technology business we have been helping grow during the course Q1 2018. Things were going great as we did some channel exploration work on Yahoo Gemini and worked hard to move Bing from being the 4th best to 3rd most profitable channel for the company. I had my agenda list ready and so much to chat about with the client as many on the team were coming off of vacation.

However, what should have been a 30 minute call turned into 5 minutes. The client had to tell us they needed to let us go…

Things are on fire right now Duane. This is hard for me as you’re doing awesome and growing our business. We just need to conserve costs right now.

…many things flashed before me in that minute. Mostly that I really liked my client and would go for BBQ with them in a second. This experience really hit home that you can lose a client through no fault of your own. So much is out of our control when you run an ad agency or consulting business. As a business we prepared for these cases by making sure no one client represents more then 25% of our business but now I feel that number should be 15%-20% at best.

I chatted with the team afterwards and we joked that it felt like a breakup as things were just gelling and we had this ideas to help grow the business beyond running more paid advertising. Through the last few days, we viewed this loss as an opportunity to double down on our other clients and make sure they feel our love for them even more. We want to take their breath away each month by going that extra mile when we can. This was an intense week but one the team will come out of stronger for. Goodbye Q1 and hello Q2 2018.

P.S. If the client comes back, we would welcome them with open arms and ask when do we get started!

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