Many welding account reviews amount to a sales printout and a cup of coffee. The owner asks about price, the rep promises to look into it, and nothing changes. A good review should show the customer what they're getting, show you where they're buying from someone else and end with a plan.
Know your own numbers first
The exec dashboard shows sales, margin, cash, receivables and pace on one screen. Company goal shows the month, year to date and the year at the current pace. Rep pace to goal shows each rep's month against goal, and a weekly rep review email goes out every Monday with each rep's own accounts, while the GM desk sees everyone.
Top accounts up and down lists the ten accounts buying more than last year and the ten buying less. The growing accounts are where you invest: a managed consumables cabinet, a machine demo, a better delivery schedule. The shrinking ones are where you need answers. Maybe a big job ended. Maybe a competitor won the gas. Maybe a new shop manager doesn't know what you do for them yet. Customer health adds another view, showing which customers are slipping, at risk or lost.
The shrinking list is often the more valuable one. A customer buying less isn't always lost, and a well-prepared review is the best place to find out what changed and win it back.
Your largest accounts deserve a review every quarter. The ones moving in either direction deserve one now.
Category gaps are the heart of the review
Category gaps show what each customer buys from you and what it buys elsewhere. In welding, that's often eye-opening. A shop might buy all its gas and wire from you but get abrasives from an industrial supplier, helmets and PPE from a safety distributor, and its plasma consumables online.
A strong review agenda:
- What the customer bought last year by category, and how it changed.
- Service highlights: deliveries made, hard-to-find parts sourced, certs supplied, reorders on schedule.
- Category gaps, with a specific offer or demo for one or two of them.
- Any slipping items, and what happened.
- Next steps with dates, logged as follow-ups in the app.
Before the meeting, pull up the customer to see everything on one screen: open quotes, past-due invoices, recent visits and notes. The rep walks in knowing the full picture, including the past-due invoice that should be settled before anyone talks about new business.
Reports the customer can see
Customers get their own spend, usage and category reports in the app. A shop owner can see what his welders spent on consumables this quarter without asking. A plant manager can check wire usage before setting next year's budget. A contractor can see what a job consumed. That openness builds trust, and it puts you in the room when the customer plans.
It also helps the customer make his own case. A production manager trying to justify a move to a better wire or a managed consumables program can use the same reports you brought to the review.
A review built on real numbers changes the conversation from price to value. Done consistently with your top accounts, it's one of the most reliable ways to grow a welding business without adding a single new customer.
Ready to walk through it with your own accounts? Book a demo.