Your first 90 days as the new owner

The first 90 days set retention for the next 5 years. Most lost accounts after an acquisition leave because the new owner felt absent, anonymous, or disorganized, not because of price or service quality. Here's the playbook.

Week 1. Send a personalized intro from the seller AND from you to every customer. Email + text + (for top 20% accounts) a handwritten card. Same-day response to anything that comes in. Drive every account with the seller, even if you've already done a ride-along, repetition imprints faces and dog names.

Weeks 2–4. You're servicing every stop personally with the seller riding shotgun. Goal: zero gaps in service quality, zero missed gates, zero confused customers. Bring a clipboard with the seller's notes and add to them.

Month 2. Introduce a tech if you're hiring one. The seller stays involved as a "consultant" doing weekly check-ins for billing and complaints. Send a 30-day check-in email to all accounts: "How are we doing? Any concerns?", and personally call anyone who responds with anything less than positive.

Month 3. Begin the operational improvements you noticed in diligence: switch to better billing software, modernize the customer portal, raise prices on the most under-priced accounts (small, well-communicated). DO NOT do this in month 1, wait until customers know you and trust you.

Retention math. Industry average post-acquisition churn over 12 months is 8–15%. Buyers who follow this playbook hold under 5%. The difference on a $20k/month route is $24k–$36k of preserved annual revenue, far more than any "savings" from cutting corners on transition.