Are You Ready to Survive Losing Your Largest Account?

I met with a consulting group the other day that was starting to grapple with the fact that their largest client was going to leave the end of this year.  The really bad news is this client represents 90% of the overall business.  Not good.  The fact is clients come and go all the time, it is the nature of this business.  The interest in talking to me about this coming event came from the need to start a serious prospecting campaign and how best to do it, fast.  I can help do this by working hard to contact potential clients that may not have been cultivated very well in the past.  I had to ask the question, how did you get into a situation where one client was 90% of your business.  The answer was we just got so busy with this wonderful client that was giving a strong revenue stream we just stopped spending time of prospecting for new ones.  Obviuosly, they forgot about the sales funnel and how it needs to be worked all the time at all levels, if you plan to stay in business after you lose a prime client or account.  Secondly, don't ever let one client or account represent 90% of your business.