Good work is the ticket to the game. Holding the aim keeps the client.
Clients don’t leave because the work got worse. They leave because nobody on your side was holding the thing they were actually trying to get to – and one day somebody else asked them about it. Start with one client and add as many as you want. Nothing you type is saved or sent; it’s yours for this sitting.
- Read the accounts. Name a client, answer five questions, see what’s holding it – and what revenue sits on the ones nothing holds.
- Build the cycle for one. Their aim in their words, broken into dated portions, with the review that shows the distance closing.
Steps one to three are the read. Four to six are the build. You can stop after the read.
Prefer to watch first? “Why do good clients leave when the work is good?” →
Your clients, and how work is kept in your world
Start with one – the client you’d least like to lose – and add more when you want to. The numbers can be rough; they only need to be right relative to each other.
Use a real name or a shorthand – whichever you’d recognise. Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere; it lives in this browser, for this sitting only.
Five reads on each one
One client at a time. Answer as it actually is, not as it should be – the last question is the one that does the most work, so it’s asked last on purpose.
The read: what’s holding them, and what it’s worth
This is the end of part one. If all you wanted was the diagnosis, you can stop here – part two builds the fix for one of them.
The steps above need JavaScript. Prefer paper, or have it switched off? Open “How this works” below, then do it by hand: for each of your most important clients write the aim they hired you for in their words, when you last showed them the distance closed toward it, who the relationship runs through and how strong it is, what has changed since they hired you, and whether they’d hire you again today. If you can’t state the aim, or the last showing was a year ago, that account isn’t as safe as it feels.
Name a client and run the five reads, and this places each one against the two things that actually hold an account – whether the aim is held and shown, and whether the relationship holds – then puts your own revenue against the answer.
Get their aim, in their words
Pick one account to build a cycle for – everything after this is about that one. Then write down the aim they hired you for. If you can’t yet, this gives you the conversation that gets it, and the test the answer has to pass.
Break that aim into dated portions
Pieces of their aim that can close, and be shown, one at a time. Each one gets a date, because a portion without a date is a hope – and the dates are what set the review rhythm further down.
One test before you write each one: would your client call this progress toward their aim, in their own words? If it’s something you deliver rather than something they get, it isn’t a portion – it’s a task.
The review, and the cycle it runs on
The last piece: how often this gets shown, what it has to contain, and when the aim gets re-opened rather than reported against.
How this works
The research this is built on
The aim is Jobs-to-be-Done in plain language – Christensen’s point that people hire something to do a job for them, set out in “The Cause and the Cure of Marketing Malpractice” (2005) and “Know Your Customers’ Jobs to Be Done” (Christensen, Hall, Dillon and Duncan, 2016). That good work isn’t the lock comes from Jones and Sasser (1995), who found Xerox’s totally satisfied customers six times likelier to repurchase over the next eighteen months than its merely satisfied ones. Why a saved account is worth the trouble is Reichheld and Sasser (1990): cutting the defection rate by five points raised profits 85 per cent in one bank’s branch system, 50 per cent in an insurance brokerage and 30 per cent in an auto-service chain – which is why this counts your figures rather than quoting a multiple. On threading, CEB’s The Challenger Customer (2015) put the average buying group at 5.4 people and Gartner now reports six to ten. The cycle rests on Locke and Latham’s goal-setting theory, which is blunt that specific goals only outperform when feedback on progress is provided; on the Scrum Guide’s sprint review (2020), which exists to inspect the outcome and adapt, covers what has changed in the stakeholders’ environment, and warns against limiting it to a presentation; on the objective-and-key-results decomposition that came out of Intel and was written up by Doerr; and on Harkin and colleagues (2016), 138 studies and nearly 20,000 people, who found monitoring progress works and works better when it’s recorded and reported to someone. That commodity is a position rather than a category has evidence behind it too: Petersen and Rajan (1994) found the depth of a lending relationship measurably increased credit availability to small firms – in the market everyone had written off as interchangeable. The often-quoted line that 68 per cent of customers leave because of perceived indifference has no traceable study behind it and isn’t used here. The reads themselves are James’s own, from owner-led businesses – an offer, not a claim about you.
Why do good clients leave when the work is good?
Because quality was never what held them. Quality is the ticket to the game – it’s assumed. What holds a client is the sense that someone on your side is holding the aim they hired you for, and that the distance to it is visibly closing. Jones and Sasser found the point in the numbers: Xerox’s totally satisfied customers were six times more likely to repurchase over the following eighteen months than its merely satisfied ones. Satisfied is not held.
Is a strong client relationship a strength or a crutch?
It depends entirely on what sits underneath it. When the aim is held and the distance is being shown, a strong relationship is a moat on top of a result – an added strength. When there’s no aim being held, the relationship is the only thing keeping the client, which makes it a crutch: the account feels like the safest one you have and is the most exposed, because you are the reason they stay and you are not transferable.
How do I know if a client is at risk?
Ask two questions about each one. Can you state the aim they hired you for, in their words rather than yours? And when did you last show them the distance closed toward it? If you can’t state the aim, or the last time you showed it was a year ago, the account isn’t as safe as it feels. Then ask who the relationship runs through: one happy contact is not a held account, and buying groups now average five or more people.
What should a client review actually contain?
The aim at the top, the portion of it that closed since last time, the distance from where they started, the distance still remaining, the next portion, and what has changed on their side. What it must not become is a presentation of your work. The Scrum Guide puts the same guard on its own sprint review – it’s a working session, and teams should avoid limiting it to a presentation. Activity is not distance.
How often should I review a client’s aim?
As often as the portions of it fall due, not on a fixed rhythm. Give each portion of the aim a date, and the gaps between those dates set the rhythm: a twelve-month aim broken into four quarterly portions wants a quarterly review; portions a month apart want a monthly one; and an aim with no natural rhythm to hang it on has to be attached to the next real point of contact instead of a calendar. Locke and Latham’s goal-setting work is blunt about why it matters: specific goals only outperform when feedback on progress is provided.
Is my business a commodity if the relationship doesn’t matter?
If nothing is holding the aim and there’s no relationship either, then yes – you’re being bought on price and specification, and you’ll be re-bid on price and specification. But commodity is a position rather than a category. Business banking is treated as a commodity by nearly everyone, and yet Petersen and Rajan found that the depth of a lending relationship measurably increased the availability of credit to small firms. The regional bank that spends years learning what its clients are trying to do is competing on exactly the thing this tool measures.
Not sure the clients are where the problem is?
The two-minute sales scorecard reads seven areas of owner-led selling – whether the result holds year over year among them – and points you at the ones worth starting with. No email, no sign-up.
This is yours to run, whether or not we ever speak.
Running this on your own list will tell you where you stand and what to do about the first one. A fractional seat is a different thing again: a senior operator in the business with you, setting the direction, building the team and the system, and making the calls that move it – including the ones about which clients the business should be built around, what the next level of the relationship is worth, and where the growth actually comes from. Years of hard-won pattern, turned into a handful of good decisions. If that’s what you’re after, the first conversation is free.