There are many ways of measuring risk, but did you know that your sales concentration may be placing an unnecessary risk to your business? This also applies to sales professionals as well.
I have seen it over and over again, whereas a small business relies heavily on one or several large customers, and then the customer disappears. Sometimes multiple large customers disappear at the same time. Either they go out of business, cut-back due to a slowdown, have management changes, or other various changes happen that are beyond their control. This will all impact your business as your sales now plummet.
As a good rule of thumb, you don’t want to have more than 10% of your sales from one customer. It creates more risk than necessary because you never know if or when things will change. There is an adage known as Murphy’s Law that states, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Additionally, you don’t want to rely heavily on one referral source for new business either. Murphy’s Law applies here as well.
What should you do to minimize your risk? First, never build your business around one or a few customers. This may be the case when a business is relatively new, but over time it is a huge risk. Secondly, assess sales per client to acknowledge who the large customers are. And thirdly, you need to market your business to decrease your risk of serving a few large customers.
A healthy business is constantly looking for ways to reduce risk. This not only decreases your chance of set-backs, but increases your odds of insuring ongoing success.