Notes for owners · Channel and customer growth
Account management for your five biggest customers
A one-page plan per account, a contact map, a review routine and a risk list for the five customers whose loss would hurt most, with a layout you can copy into a sheet.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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If any one of your five biggest customers left tomorrow, something would have to give: a loan instalment, a machine, somebody's salary. Those five need a different routine from everyone else. It has four parts. A one-page plan per account. A map of who you know at the customer. A review held on a calendar date. A risk list in plain sentences. A sheet with five tabs is enough. The skill lies in being honest about the risk column.
Which five count?
Do not rank by invoice size alone. A customer who takes high volume at a thin margin and pays in ninety days is a different case from one who takes less and pays on time. Rank by the margin each leaves you, then ask two questions about each name. If this customer left tomorrow, which commitment of ours becomes hard to meet? If their orders doubled, could we serve them, and would we want to?
A customer who passes the first test is a key account, even if that makes three of them or seven. Five is a working number because one person can hold five plans in mind.
What goes on the plan?
One page, one tab each. Seven rows:
- What they buy from you, and what share of their need you cover.
- What they buy elsewhere.
- What they need that is not on the invoice, such as a delivery window or a person on call.
- The next three dates that matter to them, like a rate-contract renewal or a plant shutdown.
- One thing you will do that they have not asked for.
- Their payment days as actually taken.
- Who owns the account on your side, with a deputy.
"What they buy elsewhere" is the row most likely to stay empty. It is also where extra orders may be: the customer already knows you, so the next order can start as a conversation, not a pitch.
Who do you actually know?
An account that rests on one friendship is fragile. When that buyer is transferred or retires, the successor may already have another supplier for the same part. Draw a grid under the plan.
| Role at the customer | Name | Last spoke | Who of ours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Places the orders | |||
| Uses what you supply | |||
| Approves payment | |||
| Signs off a change of supplier |
You will find a gap. You know the buyer well, you have never met accounts, and nobody has asked the user whether the goods are any good. Fill the gaps one at a time. A visit to the user, with a question about what slows their work down, will show you what a satisfaction form misses.
What does the review cover?
Put a date in the calendar for each account and hold it whether or not anything is wrong. Twenty minutes is enough. Cover four things in the same order. What changed on their side, what you promised and whether you kept it, what they buy elsewhere that you could supply, and what the risk list says today. If you review an account only when there is a problem, the customer learns that your attention means trouble.
What belongs on the risk list?
Be blunt. This page is for you and your deputy only. Write each risk as a sentence a stranger could follow.
The buyer who likes us is due for transfer and we have no second contact. A competitor has been seen quoting the same part to their purchase head. Late deliveries on the last two orders were mentioned once, in passing. Payment has slipped from forty-five days to seventy. They asked twice for a price cut and we gave one without asking anything back.
None of these is a statistic. They are observations, and writing them down is the point. A risk on paper is one you will notice getting worse.
The shop that trusted a friendship
Here is an invented case. A CNC job-work shop in Belagavi has five customers: two auto-component makers, a pump maker, a tractor-part supplier and a hydraulics firm. The owner thought the pump maker the safest, since the buyer was an old friend and had ordered for ten years. The grid told another story. The buyer was the only person at the pump maker who knew the shop, and accounts had never spoken to it. The shop's biggest part was also being quoted by a second vendor, and the risk list put that account first.
The response was small. The shop's production head visited the pump maker's assembly line and asked the supervisor what slowed the line down. One batch of housings had arrived with burrs that cost an hour to clean. Fixing that became the "unasked for" row, and the supervisor became a second contact. The second vendor kept a share of the work all the same: the shop's orders from the pump maker fell by about a fifth, and the risk stayed on the list.
What stays out of the plan
No growth target per customer. Targets can turn visits into sales calls, and a key customer may notice. No list of their troubles dressed as your opportunities. And keep the file away from a junior who could forward it by mistake, since it carries your honest view of each buyer.
Know where it stops working. If a customer buys on the lowest quote every time, no plan changes that. For such accounts the useful row is the margin, not the relationship.
Begin with the account you worry about
Pick the customer you feel least sure of, write that account's page this week, and fill the risk list first. If you want help deciding which five count and what each plan should say, tell us what you need; where account plans sit in the rest of your selling is covered under sales.
