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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, the records to bring, and a practical first check with your team.

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?

Look for these patterns, then use the check below to trace the issue in your own records.

  • 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. Ask the person who owns the records to gather the exports and agreements, then work through these steps together.

  1. 1Export sales by customer by month for two years.
  2. 2Find customers with regular purchases who have had none in the last 90 days.
  3. 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.

  1. Level 1

    Visibility

    A monthly dormant and declining customer list by rep.

  2. Level 2

    Process

    Every dormant account gets a contact within two weeks and a recorded reason.

  3. 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.

Talk through a workflow

Let’s start with one thing.

Give your team more time for the work that needs them.

Show us the quoting, order-entry, or follow-up work that keeps piling up. We’ll map it with you and find a practical place to start.

Start with a free workflow conversation with Alex.