The situation
An agency brought me in on a senior contract to take over a portfolio of high-profile accounts at risk of churn: a national optical retailer, a luxury fashion house, a home appliance brand and a leading business school. Different sectors, same underlying pattern. Delivery had drifted, communication had become noisy, and the clients had lost a clear sense of who owned what and where things were heading. None of them had a single catastrophic complaint. All of them were quietly interviewing alternatives.
The work
Accounts in that state do not need a new strategy deck. They need the basics executed so reliably that confidence has a reason to return. I ran a brilliant basics reset across the whole portfolio.
Ownership came first: a clear RACI on every account so both sides knew exactly who was responsible for each workstream, who was consulted, and who decided. Communication came next: the tangle of threads, decks and status calls simplified into one reliable channel and one dependable rhythm per client, so nothing important could get lost and nothing trivial could crowd out what mattered.
Then direction. Each client got a strategic roadmap they helped shape and signed up to, so every piece of work traced to something the client had already agreed mattered. Progress against the roadmap was reported plainly, including where things were behind.
With the accounts steady, the commercial work started. I led the renewal process on the flagship account and built new growth propositions across the portfolio, including a multi-tiered SEO retainer pitched to a global consumer brand. Underneath it all, I put playbooks and mentoring in place so the delivery teams could hold the standard without me in the room.
The results
Every account in the portfolio was stabilised within 60 days. The churn conversations stopped, the renewal advanced, and the growth pitches created a forecast of over £1.2m in incremental renewal and upsell revenue for the following half year. The agency kept its clients and its team got a repeatable model for running senior relationships.