How to Prevent Unexpected Contract Terminations

About a year ago, I was serving as the fractional revenue leader, managing sales and recruiting for a client.

Within a five-week period, we lost three billable consultants — all blindsides.

Each of the three customers called with the same message:

“We’re ending the assignment.”

And every time, both the sales rep and the recruiter were completely caught off guard.

The first time it happened, I thought, “Okay… here’s how we’ll fix it.”

I told the team: both the recruiter and sales rep need to maintain relationships with their consultants. Stay close. Stay proactive. Ask drill-down questions. Never assume or let yourself be surprised.

But it happened again. Twice.

By the third time, I realized this wasn’t a communication issue.
It was a systems issue.

Most staffing firms say they have a policy for who “owns” the consultant relationship.

Recruiters usually get that responsibility — because leaders want their reps “focused on prospecting.” And since the recruiter sourced and placed the candidate, it feels logical.

Other firms assign that ownership to sales.

But here’s the crux of the problem — and why teams get blindsided with unexpected terms.

Recruiting managers, as they should, consistently ask their recruiters about candidate pipelines and submittal activity. Sales managers, as they should, constantly ask their reps about prospecting activity.

But neither ask their people how often they’re talking to their billable consultants or their hiring managers.  And even when they do, they rarely dig into what those conversations actually sound like.

Here’s the truth:
Rep and recruiter behavior is dictated by the questions managers ask.

So your COBs — consultants on billing, your best internal sales resource — fall into no-man’s-land.  And when that happens, you lose visibility.

You get caught off guard.
You lose renewals.
You miss opportunities.
You lose revenue.

After that third surprise termination, I stopped lecturing and started systemizing.

I built frameworks and templates for recruiters and sales reps — conversation guides with specific questions for both the candidate and the customer after day one, week one, 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days and so forth.

Sounds like overkill? It’s not. Here’s why.

Go role-play this scenario with your recruiters. You play the role of the consultant, and your recruiter is calling you (the candidate) to “check in.”

Here’s how it usually goes:

Recruiter: “Hey [Candidate Name], just checking in to see how things are going.”
Candidate: “Things are good.”
Recruiter: “Great. How’s the team?”
Candidate: “They’re good. Busy.”
Recruiter: "How is the assignment going?"
Candidte: "Pretty good I suppose. I can't complain."

That’s the gist of the conversation.
It’s surface-level. Safe. Forgettable.

Sales reps do the same thing with their customers.
Neither ask the right questions.
Neither dig deeper.
Neither ask follow-upclarifying questions.

Why?  Because they’re afraid of what they might hear.
God forbid we actually have to solve a problem  for our consultants or clients.

That’s why I created simple templates like this — so there’s no guesswork.

Sample questions recruiters should ask candidates:

• How do you feel you’re fitting in with the team? Tell me more.
  
  
• What cadence have you and your manager set for 1:1 feedback meetings?
  
  
• What goals have you and your manager established for your first 30/60/90 days?
  
  
• How is your performance being measured?
  
  

Sample questions account managers should ask customers:

• How are you feeling about the consultant so far?
  
  
• Have they met your expectations? What expectations have been communicated?
  
  
• What do you like most about them? What are you still unsure of?
  
  
• Have they run into any challenges?
  
  
• How do you feel about their communication with you and the team?
  
  

Why bother with all this?

Because your goal is simple: surface potential issues early — before they explode.
If you uncover friction points early, you give the client, the consultant, and your team a chance to course-correct before it’s too late.

This is exactly what we did.

And the result?
✅ No more surprise terminations.
✅ Higher renewal rates.
✅ Healthier consultant and client relationships.

To make it stick, I built a simple—but powerful—system.

Every morning during our daily huddle, I pulled up a shared spreadsheet listing every consultant on billing, their start date, and a series of columns marking the key milestones: day one, week one, 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days.

Each date represented a scheduled check-in with both the consultant and their hiring manager. Everyone could see it. Everyone was accountable.

Those names—the consultants we had worked so hard to place—were no longer buried in the background. They became the heartbeat of our morning meetings.

I reminded the team how much effort it took to win those job orders, to source, screen, and place those people. The spreadsheet wasn’t just a tracker—it was a daily reminder that our work didn’t end at placement. It began there.

And that’s when everything changed.
What had once been a blind spot became a point of pride.
We stopped losing consultants.
We stopped getting surprised.
And for the first time, our team operated with rhythm, visibility, and ownership.

In my next post, I’ll take this a step further.  I’ll share how to co-sell with your COBs—your consultants on billing—and turn them into champions who help you uncover new opportunities for cross-selling and upselling.

It’s one of the most overlooked levers for account growth, and I’ll walk you through exactly how to do it.