How do you 'Feel' about measuring Loyalty

I worked with a company that once had a major account about which all reports from the field were highly encouraging . The relationship was strong - so strong no one even monitored the volume on a weekly basis. Just before a board meeting, the general manager reviewed the top account numbers an d saw a precipitous drop in new applications from this account. There wasn't time to ask the VP to ask the Regional Manager to ask the account manager so she made the direct call to her account representative. He was shocked.

It was too late in the day for him to reach the 'loyal' account. But he did give me a run down of how friendly his contacts were during the last sales call. They raised no issues and enjoyed the tchotchkes and he rarely checked the numbers because he felt welcomed and well liked in his sales calls there.

Turns out they genuinely liked him - liked him too much to hurt his feelings by telling him their VP decided to split the account with a competitor.

Instincts, sensitivity, reading people, building relationships are important account management skills but there has to be a reality check and it should be a measurable one.

Obviously, tracking your volume is a blatantly obvious, basic reality check but so is service reliability, delivery on customer promises both external and internal , sales pipeline conversions and feedback from defecting accounts are a reality check on how you 'feel' about interactions with your business to business accounts.

Try it. Measure something in your customer interaction s you think is important and obviously true. How true is it? Or if you measured something recently, how useful was it. What did you do differently afterwards?

I'd appreciate knowing what you learned.
PS If you want to see some approaches and examples of process and results measurement, I can recommend sources.
Brian Shepherd
Principal Consultant
Shepherd Consulting LLC
brian@accountcaffeine.com
http://www.accountcaffeine.com/
www.Linkedin.com/in/briansshepherd
415-516-8433
San Francisco