Concentration risk and new logos

If one client pays for a big share of your payroll, you don't have a client. You have a landlord who can raise the rent whenever they want.

New logos are how a services firm buys back its independence.

How concentration creeps in

Nobody plans it. A firm lands a good account, does great work, and the account keeps expanding. One team becomes three. The client's VP loves you. Revenue looks healthy.

And it's easier to grow inside a happy account than to win a new one. So the sales effort drifts toward expansion. The partners are busy delivering. Outbound slows down. A year later, the firm realizes one buyer's budget decision could reshape the whole business.

Then that buyer leaves. Or a cost program lands. Or procurement decides to consolidate vendors. The post on pipeline when a big client ends covers what happens next, and none of it is fun.

The real cost

Concentration doesn't just create risk. It changes how you behave.

You start saying yes to scope you shouldn't take. You discount renewals to protect the relationship. You hire for one client's stack and one client's culture. Your best people get locked into one account and stop growing.

And when you do try to sell new work, you're rusty. The team hasn't written a cold hypothesis in months. Nobody knows what the market looks like outside the one account you know too well.

A new logo motion that fits a busy firm

You don't need a big outbound team. You need a small, steady habit that never stops, even in the quarters when the big client is growing.

Start with a short list. Twenty or thirty accounts that look like your best client, in industries where your case studies travel. Not hundreds.

Watch those accounts for real change. A new leader in the seat that buys what you sell. A filing that names the pressure. Hiring for the problem you solve. Several signals at one account in the same weeks is where you spend time.

Then send a small number of researched notes every week. Three sources, a few facts each, a hypothesis for the buyer, the champion and the technical lead. Five good accounts a week is plenty for most firms. The point is that it never stops.

And put someone's name on it. In a lot of firms that's a partner or a practice lead who carves out a few hours a week. Practice leads as sellers covers how to make that work.

Use the big client as a reference, not a crutch

Your dominant account is your best proof. Use it.

The work you did there is a story you can tell to similar companies. The problems you solved are hypotheses you can test elsewhere. If you rebuilt a claims data platform for one insurer, you know what the next insurer's misery probably looks like.

Saw the new head of claims operations started this spring, and the open roles for data engineers suggest the claims platform is next on the list. In the first few months, I'd guess the hard part is getting clean history out of the old system before anything new can be built. Is that close, or is the bigger issue elsewhere?

That opener comes straight from what you learned at your big client. It just points it at a new account.

How to know it's working

Track a few things. How many target accounts have an active conversation with someone on the buying committee. How many first meetings were held with an economic buyer this quarter. How much of next year's revenue is coming from clients you don't have today.

That last one matters most. If it's close to zero, you're betting the firm on one relationship.

The habit that pays later

New logo work feels slow. It takes months to turn a first note into a signed engagement. That's exactly why it has to run every week, in good quarters and bad ones.

The firms that survive losing a big client are the ones that never stopped looking for the next one.