The Decreasing Shelf Life of Key Customer Relationships

Over the past few months, I’ve been researching and developing new content for our Strategic Business Selling practice. With several major projects underway that focus on building key account management skills, a disturbing theme has emerged:

The turnover of key customers with decision-making power within strategic accounts is accelerating, and it is dramatically changing how companies sell, grow, and retain their most important accounts.

Classic key account management teaches us to invest for the long term: deepen relationships, align with long-term strategies, and build multi-year account plans. The assumption has always been that our customers, the decision-makers and champions, will be around long enough to appreciate the effort and reward it with continued revenue and growth.

But today, if a key customer only has a “shelf life” of two to three years, it becomes much harder to maintain continuity, grow business, and achieve account goals. Worse yet, when a new customer arrives, you may be forced to start all over again, sometimes at a disadvantage if the incoming leader wants to shake things up or has an existing relationship with a competitor.

Inevitably, when new decision-makers come in, they question everything and often push back on the value pricing you have worked so hard to position through great products and services.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like this trend will change in the near term, so what are we supposed to do?

Based on interviews and research, here are three suggested best practices to consider:

1) Build Relationships at Multiple Levels

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In most organizations, the decision-making and influence process is distributed across multiple levels. Go beyond the single “champion” and develop a web of trust across executives, mid-level managers, and even functional contributors. The broader and deeper your connections, the more resilient the relationship will be when turnover occurs. Ask yourself the question, “What would I do tomorrow if my key customer were not to be there tomorrow?” Do you know your key contact’s manager and that person’s manager? Would they be an advocate for you if they brought someone new in? In most cases, the manager will support their new hire, so you need to be careful, but this is an absolute must!

 2) Document and Co-Create Value

Too often, the value you create with a customer lives only in conversations or presentations. When turnover happens, that history vanishes. The solution? Co-create formal value documents, including joint scorecards, ROI reports, or success summaries, that can be handed from one leader to the next. This helps you “institutionalize” your value so the account doesn’t reset to zero when a new stakeholder steps in.

When someone new arrives, don’t waste time. Assume you have a 90-day window to earn trust. Prepare a playbook: a short narrative of the value delivered so far, a few powerful metrics of success, and a clear understanding of the customer’s business priorities. By showing you are informed, aligned, and ready to help them succeed quickly, you position yourself as a trusted partner rather than just another vendor.

A few things you should do to stay informed include making sure you are up on the latest strategy, business results, and have listened to the most recent quarterly earnings call (and understood all the information).

Summary Thought
The decreasing shelf life of key customer relationships is a reality that sellers and account managers can’t ignore. By broadening relationships, documenting value, and accelerating trust-building, you can adapt to this new normal and turn customer turnover from a threat into an opportunity.