How You Can Recover From Losing One Of Your Biggest Clients- Valutrics

In less than three weeks, we had redefined what a client looks like in terms of financial spend and value match. We reworked our sales differentiator, and we wrote our own sales and marketing plan to increase our leads pipeline. We organized new assets and prepared to deploy a campaign of our own in our newest markets of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and Chicago, Illinois, USA. We also strengthened our cash flow by aggressively trimming positions that we should have trimmed months ago, and we looked at our expenses with the zeal of a mad barber.

In the mix of this redesign, we also decided to take our client-loss reactions and systemize all of them, which means we now look at cash flow, human resources and new business development with more aggression, tighter reins and more rhythmic, measurable objectives. The swift kick in the pants we received from that client’s departure has ignited a great many positive decisions– decisions we should have been reckoning with all along. While I’m sorry that it took a big loss to wake us up, I’m also grateful. I’m certainly grateful for our former client’s patronage in the first place, but I’m also grateful to have the opportunity to capitalize on a fresh start.

I admit: As an (unfortunately human) entrepreneur, I can only consider so much at any given moment. Every new idea, book, speaker, client interaction or employee occurrence has given me a linear ladder step forward in terms of understanding and decision-making. However, I have realized that advancement isn’t a linear ladder; it’s a sprawling cargo net. I need to regularly step back and look at the entire cargo net of opportunity all at once, rather than wait for events to unfold on their own. Simple though it sounds, mine is a classic case of being proactive versus reactive.

In the end, I’ve learned that sometimes if you want to win, you have to lose. As I said to my team on that fateful day of 23 May, “onward and upward.” See you at the top of the cargo net!