The Wrong Version of a Relationship

Here's a version of every client relationship that no longer fits, and most service providers hold on to it way too long. I did it for a while too, not consciously, but the fractional support model we had with this client hasn't changed since they onboarded at 10 million. By the time they were at 25M, we were delivering the same service to a completely different business. The right thing, the hard thing, was to name it. The model you're on was built for where you were. It's not built for where you are, and I think you need something different now. That sentence cost us a contract. It also saved a relationship and opened a door to something neither of us had planned, because once we have stopped trying to make the old version work, we could actually talk about what they needed now. The ceiling of your current model is not the ceiling of your relationship, but you have to be willing to say that out loud.