Don’t allow your relationships with your customers to be focused on only one or two people. By doing so, you may put your business at risk if the people you deal with should happen to change positions. For your biggest customers, make sure you have multiple contacts (including administrative personnel) and take the time to get to know all of them. Then you will be prepared if a contact should leave or
be promoted.
Time and time again, I’ve watched companies lose significant amounts of business all because no one invested the time to establish multiple relationships with a customer. Just as it’s important for you to know multiple contacts for your customers, your customer should know multiple people in your company. Having “cross-relationships” not only helps prevent the loss of business should a key person leave, but often creates new business opportunities because more minds focused on the relationship.
