Leak 32 · Sales & Quoting - Dormant customers going unnoticed
A customer who bought every month for six years stopped in March. It is now September. Nobody called, because no report said so.
Diagnostic note. Symptoms, required records, an initial check, and possible fixes. This shorter note does not include a full worked example.
What is it?
Customer loss in distribution is rarely a cancellation. It is a slow fade or an abrupt stop that nobody notices because total revenue held up. By the time the salesperson realizes, the customer has a new supplier and a new habit. A simple monthly comparison catches it while it is still recoverable.
- Family
- Sales & Quoting
- Primary owner
- VP Sales
- Secondary owners
- Sales Managers, Inside Sales Lead
- Primary impact
- Revenue
- Typical data source
- ERP sales by customer and month
- Detection difficulty
- 30-day measurability
Ask yourself
Is there a monthly list of customers whose purchasing has stopped or dropped sharply, and does someone act on it?
Yes, partially, no, or don’t know. “Don’t know” is the most useful answer, because it points at the test below.
What does it look like?
Warning signs. None of these proves the leak exists. They tell you where to look.
- No dormancy or decline report.
- Customers discovered lost during annual reviews.
- Reps surprised when told a customer stopped buying.
What data do I need?
The minimum viable set. Most of it is already in your ERP.
| Field |
|---|
| Sales by customer and month for 24 months |
| Customer’s typical order frequency |
| Assigned salesperson |
The initial check
Start with a small sample. Gathering the exports, agreements, or observations is separate from running the check; agree that work with the person who owns the records.
- 1Export sales by customer by month for two years.
- 2Find customers with regular purchases who have had none in the last 90 days.
- 3Rank by trailing-12-month revenue before the stop.
Dormant = customer with ≥ 6 purchases in the prior 12 months and 0 in the last 90 days; value at risk = prior 12-month gross profit
Then ask one question: Has anyone contacted the top ten since they stopped?
How much could it be costing us?
A conservative range, not a headline. The goal is a number management can trust enough to investigate.
Σ prior-year gross profit of dormant customers × share recoverable with timely contact
Common root causes
Fixes fall into three layers. Not every problem needs software, and almost none needs AI first.
- Process
- No retention process and no owner for dormancy.
- Data
- Customer purchase frequency is not calculated, so “stopped” is not defined.
- Technology
- No alert when a regular customer misses their normal cycle.
What should we do?
Start with the simplest intervention that could solve it. Move down the list only if the one above is not enough.
Level 1
Visibility
A monthly dormant and declining customer list by rep.
Level 2
Process
Every dormant account gets a contact within two weeks and a recorded reason.
Level 3
Workflow
An alert to the rep when a customer misses their usual cycle, with the account history and a drafted check-in.
Where AI helps
- Detecting frequency changes for customers with irregular patterns, and drafting the check-in message.
Where AI probably doesn’t
For customers with regular cycles, a monthly report is enough. Start there.
Before you call it a leak
- Some dormancy is legitimate: a project ended, a plant closed. Capture the reason so the list stays useful.
Think this might be happening in your business?
Turn the finding into a next step.
If the numbers say there is something there, send us what you found and we will help you decide whether it is worth a full investigation. No transaction files needed for that conversation.
Related leaks
- Leak 33 · SalesCustomer and product churn hidden inside aggregate revenueRevenue is up 3%. Underneath, twenty accounts are shrinking, five are gone, and two big wins covered it all. The 3% hides a problem that will show up next year.
- Leak 31 · SalesCustomers buying only one product categoryA good customer buys bearings from you and everything else from someone else. They are one supplier consolidation away from leaving, and one conversation away from doubling.
- Leak 27 · SalesQuotes that are never followed upA quote goes out. Nothing happens. Nobody calls, because the quote is not in anyone’s queue. The customer bought from whoever called.
Let’s start with one thing.
What would better performance look like?
Bring a result you want to improve, a symptom, or a workflow you already understand. You do not need to know the bottleneck yet. We’ll help choose what to investigate first.
No transaction files needed for the first conversation.