Across a recent deal, Cogent found something that should make any MSP owner uncomfortable: one technician was the primary contact for the company’s top ten customers — spanning multiple divisions of the business. He was well-liked, genuinely skilled at his job, and, as it turned out, the single point of failure holding a meaningful share of enterprise value together.
This episode of Cogent Conversations looks at what happens when a relationship depends on one person, from both directions. Rick works through what an MSP should do when a client’s leadership changes without warning, and the mirror-image risk owners rarely examine: what happens to a top account if your own key tech or salesperson walks out the door.
The fix, in both directions, turns out to be the same one: stop letting any relationship that matters rest on a single person.
Watch the episode and be sure to subscribe: https://youtu.be/UfZA6EY4zpk?si=U2T7CgX0SZQEO58S
Key takeaways from this episode
- Client leadership changes faster than most MSPs notice. By the time an owner realizes a champion is gone, the decision to leave has often already been made. Rick’s read: these relationships are frequently unsaveable by the time anyone sees them slipping.
- Model your core customer base honestly. Identify the roughly 20% of clients who make up 80% of revenue — that’s the base worth building deliberate retention systems around, not a list you glance at once a year.
- Retention shouldn’t run on memory — build the triggers into your systems. Rick’s suggestion: set concrete reminders in your CRM or ticketing system tied to specific accounts and dates, so a renewal check-in or a relationship touchpoint happens on schedule instead of whenever someone happens to think of it.
- A single point of contact is a single point of failure — on your side and theirs. Cogent recently found one technician serving as the primary contact across a company’s top ten accounts, spanning multiple divisions. The seller got lucky that time. The exposure exists whether or not a sale is happening.
- Institutionalize the relationship past one person, on both ends. Know more than just your primary contact at a client’s company — reach deeper into the account. And make sure more than one person on your own team has a real relationship with every material client.
- The more automated the relationship, the more deliberate the human touch has to be. High-touch accounts tend to maintain themselves. Low-touch, highly automated relationships won’t build real stickiness on their own — someone has to own that on purpose.
Rick points to Evergreen — a real Cogent client and one of the most active acquirers in the space — as proof this isn’t just a nice-to-have: customer retention is their stated top priority, and if a target’s retention doesn’t meet their standard, they won’t do the deal. Whether or not a sale is anywhere on the horizon, the same discipline pays off in the business you’re already running. Relationships that don’t depend on one person, on either side of the table, are relationships that survive turnover — yours or theirs.
If you’re not sure how concentrated your key relationships really are — on your team or inside your top accounts — we’re happy to help you find the blind spots before a buyer does.
