The bus factor: how many relationships leave with one person
Developers ask: what if the key person gets hit by a bus? Sales has the same question — and the answer usually hurts more.
Software developers have a morbid but useful metric: the bus factor — how many people would have to be hit by a bus for the project to stop. When knowledge lives in one head, the bus factor is 1 and the project hangs by a thread. Now ask the same question of sales: how many of your customer relationships would leave with a single person?
Departure is a slower bus
In practice it's not about accidents. It's resignations, retirements, long illnesses, parental leave — and ordinary holidays, which are a small bus factor every July. When a customer's history lives in one salesperson's head and private inbox, years of context leave with them: who decides, what was promised, where past negotiations ran aground. The successor doesn't start from zero. They start below zero — the customer explains everything a second time and wonders why they're bothering.
The relationship can't be handed over. The context can
Honestly: trust is personal, and some of it always leaves with the person. But that's no argument for giving up — it's exactly why you hand over what can be handed over: the facts, the history, the dates, the open promises. A successor with context rebuilds trust in months. A successor without it takes years, if ever — and in the meantime the customer is at their most vulnerable to a competitor who “happened to call.”
A handover tests the system, not the person
Companies handle handovers with memos written in the last week of a notice period. That's too late — memory can't be exported retroactively. The real insurance builds up continuously: meeting notes written on the day of the meeting, reminders with reasons, history in one shared place. Then a handover isn't a quarterly project but a morning meeting: here's the timeline, here are the dates, this one hates morning calls.
What to take away
Run a quiet audit: pick your three most valuable customers and imagine their salesperson leaves tomorrow. What remains besides the signature on the contract? The answer is your company's bus factor — and it can be raised before you need it.
The shared relationship timeline in Lemnio is insurance that builds itself — through ordinary work. Start free, or write to [email protected].