One of my most annoying traits as a child has come in handy as a grown-up: asking obvious questions. My oppositional defiance disorder notwithstanding, asking obvious questions is useful precisely because they’re so obvious that sometimes no one has asked them before.

That comes in really handy when evaluating things, especially policies and processes. Like a child whose familiar routine has been disrupted by change, the question “WHY are we doing this?” makes people stop and think, “Well, I don’t know. Why are we doing this, indeed?”

Here’s why I’m thinking about this.

Right now we are in the busiest time of the year: showdown to Q4. For my dealers in the retail verticals this is the make-or-break time. It’s countdown to the Super Bowl — your company has One Shot to get this year’s revenue and profit in the bag.

Don’t miss your targets. That’s dazzling consulting advice. I’ll send you my invoice. The reason I bring this up is now is the time I am building marketing and promotional plans for my dealers.

The goal here is simple: Help them find ways to sell more of my stuff.

I’m trying to hit two sales targets with one plan:

• First, I need to help my dealers hit their targets.
• Second, if and when they all hit their targets, then I hit my target.

So we have funds, our own, and our brands to spend on this. The question is always how are we going to spend them in a way that maximizes the chances of victory?

That is a big topic and not the point of this post.

Where I am going with this is we are talking about allocating our program funds to various dealers, in the way that we think will move the needle. I already covered that.

A big part of our strategy is to look at dealers in the bottom quartile and ask ourselves if the reason they don’t do more business with us is because we don’t give them enough love.

If someone is a small customer with you there are two possible reasons:

• They’re just a small dealer. They just don’t have the volume of business, full stop.
• They’re a small dealer with you, but a big dealer to a rival vendor.

It’s not always immediately clear which is which, so you have to find out.

It’s a no-brainer that if you want to move the needle, not just a little but A LOT, the best way to do that is to give the smaller client a reason to give you more of their business.

Conversely we have big accounts, powerhouse dealers who do big business with us. We cannot leave them out of the Q4 festivities.

A point that came up in group discussion when I was crafting marketing plans for my big clients as well as the small clients I’m trying to grow was this: I was asked “why are we doing this if we already have their business?” That’s when I pumped the brakes. We may have their business now. Tomorrow is another day, we might not have it then. Believing you have someone’s business locked up is a dangerous assumption; I have made it before and it has cost me. I am not doing it again.

Let me be clear. This is so important, I’m going to break it out as quotation, even though I’m quoting myself, which is kind of weird:

The expiry on your Preferred Vendor status with the client is the date of the next time your company screws up.

There it is, right there.

Read it again. Say it out loud. Say it out loud again.

Now forward this to everyone who works for you.

I have blown this. More than once, I’m ashamed to say. I’m not doing it again. I will be as proactive as I need to be to ensure that my client remains my client.

And if I have to give away a few points of margin to ensure that I have ALL of their business then that is a fair trade.
You don’t need to hear my problems, but the particular verticals in consumer tech that I am in are facing PROFOUND headwinds that I would need a three-part series to break down for you.

But none of you care, and I don’t expect you to care. You all have your own problems. To the point, I’m already watching dealers fail. I’m losing clients not because I screwed up, but because of market forces they couldn’t survive. I don’t know about you but I can’t afford to lose good clients.

Topline growth is extremely difficult to come by right now. So if that’s the case, that means I have to engage in capital preservation, making sure the clients that I have stay with me, and stay happy. Every good client matters, large or small.

The fact is that right now in this business second place is first loser, and I don’t like losing.