This morning I was chatting with my contact who helps look after my packaging products with a fairly new account we have. He is moving to another company that will be dealing with EV car charging for shopping malls and hotels. As sad as it is to see him leave this creates another opportunity to gain another customer or customers as this is how things tend to work out. We could also lose our existing client so good and bad news really.
When chatting this morning he asked for the latest price list so he can get the new company purchasing my products. This is the upside of having a strong relationship as he is already thinking how he can help. When I first started dealing with them I was a client buying my solar equipment and now the tables have been turned and they are my client plus they blossomed from one account into 8 accounts as that is the number of branches they have.
Maintaining the accounts is very simple as it is about maintaining the relationships you have built and expanding on those to others in the company. I have clients where I randomly pop in on a Friday lunch time with a couple of boxes of pizza and this is always appreciated. This gives you an opportunity to meet other staff who may at some point move on to another company so there is thought behind this and not just a free lunch. I would estimate we lost more than 50% of the accounts when our contact moved so a few boxes of pizza every now and then will hopefully do the trick.
Many of our clients have moved since we first met and more importantly they have moved companies and kept us as their client. If they did not believe in what we did and the service we provided there would be no ways we would be recommended and pushed. Under normal circumstances your contact would leave and in a very short period of time you would lose the contract and be out the door. Business is hard enough as it is so protecting your interest is vital if you are going to grow and expand.
In this case I have no idea which company he is heading to next week, but I am pretty confident I will find out next month. The chances are this is a subsidiary of a much bigger company because EV charging stations are not such a big deal here right now, but will be in 5 years time. This will be exciting to see as this could have the potential to open an Aladdin's Cave of opportunities. There are only 500 public charging stations in South Africa and this number will obviously have to explode at some point even with load shedding ,but I guess these will be solar powered.
A quick Google search reveals there are only 3 companies and the biggest one is owed by an asset management company that does commercial set ups which I would guess is where he is heading. We shall wait and see, but will have to keep quiet before he tells me lol. This is big as they have investments to the value of $30 billion in various companies and real estate.