Why Strategic Account Management Needs More Work than Normal Account Management
The strategic account management process is about building value-driven relationships with your key customers. It is a synonym of Key Account Management. The strategic account manager’s role is to identify those key customers that generate maximum revenue and profitability as compared to other regular accounts. These managers act as a bridge between the company and stakeholders on the customer side. The idea is to increase customer lifecycle value by starting small like with a free trial or test project, adding value, and building trust. Strategic account management is a function that more often than not, loses its criticality in the mire of operational account management. While most Account Directors and Managers wholeheartedly agree to the fact that Key Accounts need a different level of investment in terms of time, resources, and frequency, this still remains an area that does not receive its due. The reasons may differ but whatever the reason, the results of not paying heed to Strategic Accounts, are almost always the same – poor. So we know that we simply cannot afford to ignore Strategic Account Management. Account Planning Softwares can help optimize the time and effort in developing strategic account plans. The correct implementation and understanding of strategic account management are paramount to the growth of revenue. But let’s now understand ‘WHY’? It’s the old rule that has always worked – The 80-20 principle: The rule says that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Pay attention to this 20%. These 20% form your Key Accounts. It is like a gold mine – the more you dig, the deeper you will go and understand: You get to the gold, only as you dig deeper. Your strategic accounts are like a gold mine – Complex, deep, and not easily read. Just sitting on them is of no use, until you start digging and understanding the people there. How do they operate, who is the key man/woman in the hierarchy? Who is the influencer? How will he/she help me? Is my main influencer leaving that company? In that case, do I have a backup man? There’s nothing superficial about Strategic Account Management. You need to dig deeper and for that, you need an effective tool. Relationships have no formula. You got to try and make them work all the time: Strategic accounts involve many people across multiple functions, hierarchies, and geographies. Relationship mapping needs hard work and smart work. It is not an overnight heist. In cases that win equally on merit, the winner is usually the man who has won the customer’s trust. From this perspective, it pays to look into certain key questions: Are you assigning dedicated time to this key man/woman? Are you listening for cues to leverage the relationship and business? Are you reviewing the relationship? How often are you doing it? Do you have a relationship-building action plan? More than one key project at a time: Strategic accounts have more than one key project going on at the same time and you cannot afford to accord a step-motherly treatment to any. This means Account Directors need to be focused on each of these projects in equal measure. This requires creating strategic account managers for each project who are able, capable, and know the ropes of Key Account Management. It also requires training them on a regular basis. For a CSO or Account Director, it means creating a team of key people in order to achieve a superlative performance. A CRM is not enough: The key to strategic account management is making sense of the big data available to you. While a CRM may be giving you the data, you need to work on this big data, analyze it and leverage the findings to your benefit. He who uses big data to narrow down and get to the key focus areas is usually far more successful. The first step to focusing on your Strategic Accounts is to focus on them, use the right tools and leverage the findings by taking action. Also, learn how to set up your KAM process in 9 steps or read other blogs on strategic account management. Explore the complete guide to Cross-selling and Up-selling to identify unexplored opportunities for your business as well as your clients’ business and grow better in 2021.
Key Account Planning Simplified
If you are a key account manager, I understand what you go through every year during the account planning process. You want the key account planning simplified. Jacob is responsible for building the key account management strategy and executing the plan to achieve annual targets. Bridging the gap between planning and execution is a challenge, always. The even bigger pain point is getting started on and building the plan itself. He is required to spot the real opportunities for value creation and growth across the length and breadth of his Key Accounts. All this tends to become very overwhelming. Typically, this situation reaches a crescendo towards the end of the year when key account managers end up spending a month or two, preparing account plans for the next year. This is thanks to complex methodologies and visually appealing PPT templates that most of the times make the simple; complex. I am dumbstruck. I strongly believe that key account planning can be simple, and exciting. I encourage all key account managers to peruse the following checklist. DemandFarm has done its best to simplify. You will find this simplicity also reflected in the Account Planner. Do give Salesforce Account planning and MS Dynamics Account planning a shot when you are logged into your Salesforce or MS Dynamics instance. Key Account Planning Checklist The As-Is Account managers simply jump into the key account planning process. Investing time and focus to understand the current state of key accounts is a valuable intervention capable of giving the key accounts a much-needed direction. Knowing win/loss areas, active opportunities, the orientation of the contacts in the accounts, and the accounts’ market position with respect to the competition are valuable markers to establish the As-Is. Identify whitespace opportunities Once the as-is is done, key account managers have a clear sense of where the current growth opportunities lie. Juxtaposing those opportunities with competition and mapping them with internal capabilities opens up the ‘whitespace’. Simple. Align the sales process to the buying process B2B buying has changed. CEB had a data point which said, “57% of the purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier.” On similar lines, SiriusDecisions says, “67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally.” Therefore, Strategic account management Plan has to build strategies that proactively seek out opportunities. Getting an account landscape which identifies buying centers in the account and the ability to map them with internal products/solutions can align sales to the buying process. Learn More: Opportunity Planner by DemandFarm boosts tracking capabilities in 65+ opportunities for Dairy MAX Align the Plan to the annual account targets Account targets count. At the end of the year, it is the only thing that counts. Ironically, during sales account planning and execution there emerges a tendency to do more. This often distracts the account managers from the targets. Account planning and execution-only have to ensure strict adherence to strategies and initiatives that are directly linked to account targets. Nothing else matters. Not even a Metallica concert. Use a real-time tool The problem of making account plans in a PPT is this – it is passive and remains passive through the life of the account plan. It is only seldom that the KAMs revisit the PPTs to align their align and adjust their annual account plans. And it isn’t that the KAMs don’t want to. Updating account plans becomes an operational problem in an ever-changing environment. Dynamic, responsive and real-time updating account planning tools like the ‘Account Planner’ can support account managers by saving them from operational grunt work. How would you rate the account planning template& process of your organization? Simple or complex? What initiatives have you taken to simplify? What worked? What did not? What technology tools were leveraged to simplify and improve the process? If you’re interested in transforming your sales post the pandemic, explore our blog on Sales Acceleration in Account Management and how it can help you grow your business in 2021.
White Space Analysis Template for Key Accounts
What is White Space Analysis? White space analysis is the process of digging through the sales data to hunt for new white space opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling. White space is essentially a gap that a business can use to scale its revenue with its products / solutions / services. A simple yet powerful tool for locating White Space in key business accounts I have learned over the years that a business process and strategy can have powerful outcomes if it can be explained in a simple way. But ‘simple’ does not mean ‘easy’. It is often construed that way. Simplicity only makes understanding the problem easily. But arriving at the solution to the problem could still be hard. White space Analysis helps you to discover areas where you can grow your account, align and map your resources. This can help you identify your farming and mining white space opportunities. The analysis report provided can reveal some insight into what can be improved in the near future to increase sales and ROI. One of the ways to simplicity is to identify the two variables/parameters and put them on a two-dimensional X & Y-axis. Then think of various possibilities at a different position of this grid. I set out to build software for Key Account Management. One of the basic, but fundamental problem was to understand ‘Account Landscape’ and ‘Account Mapping’ to identify areas of growth in a Key Account. As usual, I started thinking of two variables – people on both sides. This means the products & services of both parties again, opportunities, strategic initiatives of the customer and of my company, global footprint of the account. Finally, I arrived at ‘Buying Centres’ of the buyer Account & ‘Offerings’ of the seller as two variables to build the Account Landscape. The resulting matrix is a simple and yet powerful tool to understand the Key Account. Where is the whitespace in your business? Deciding what offerings (products/services/solutions) to take to market is not easy. That is the most fundamental aspect of any business. That’s for the management to decide. But an Account Manager has to identify the ‘buying centers’. These are the units in that account where one can take my offerings independently. These are usually divisions/functions and for a global account combined with regions. For example: ‘Retail Banking Europe’ & ‘Merchant Banking’ could be buying centers for a Bank. This will set the Account Manager thinking, which offering is applicable to which buying center(s). Which of those boxes are easier to penetrate? Maybe because my offering there has a compelling value proposition for that buying center and there seems to be no incumbent competitor either. That is my ‘White space’ of growth. The following Account Landscape shows the progress in that account over the years. How White-Space Analysis can help you? Let me share how white space mapping actually helped a DemandFarm customer to unlock $40 million from the existing 23 accounts. A $600 million IT services company with 50+ key accounts used the account landscape to map and grow their accounts. When DemandFarm has implemented a couple of years ago the account managers of these accounts were asked to identify various buying centers of the accounts. Here we have taken an example of Airbus. So, the account manager of Airbus identified Helicopters, CIO Org, Commercial Aircraft, etc. as the Buying Centers. Before this, we had already configured various service lines or Offerings which the customer was taking to the market. For e.g. Engineering Consulting, Enterprise Security, IoT, then had Platforms and so on so forth. How can you identify White Space business accounts? Having created these Offerings and Buying Centers in the account, DemandFarm generated an account of Landscape. This is how the account looked in the beginning, we had all the Offerings as the Columns and the Buying Centers as rows. One can see Opportunities & Engagements at multiple places. The account was well placed then, but the revenue growth of the account had stagnated. Because of the standard offerings like Engineering Consulting, Enterprise Security, etc. which were less relevant now. So, the company introduced new Offerings. One such example is when DemandFarm acquired a big Salesforce competency shop enabling them to offer services around Salesforce practice. The challenge was to make the account managers embrace this change and grow the existing platinum accounts which seemed stagnant. Then, Salesforce was configured as a new offering and started appearing on the account Landscape as the new column. Since this was a new Offering the account managers were made to think where this new Offering could be sold. Obviously, it cannot be sold to the existing Buying Centers and therefore two new Buying Centers were identified & created namely Sales and Marketing. The combination of these new Buying Centers & the new Offering became the focus area or the ‘white-spaces-analysis’ for growth. White space mapping helps you to map areas to grow your service or product. After this, the Account Manager created a plan to grow business with the new offering in the new Buying Centers. While the old buying centers were not generating new business, the account manager was still able to plan for an additional $1 million in Marketing and another $1million in Sales Buying Centers. A similar exercise in all strategic account management for all new offerings leads to an additional plan of $40million in 2017. They are well on their way to achieving $28 million of that plan. There is a lot of power in simplicity and visualization. However, it should not be concluded as ‘easy’. Explore the complete guide to Cross-selling and Up-selling to identify unexplored opportunities for your business as well as your clients’ business and grow better in 2022.
Strategic Account Planning – Process, Challenges, Solutions
What is Strategic Account Planning? Account Planning for Strategic Accounts or Strategic Account Management is building value-driven relationships with your key customers that can help in long-term development and retention, thereby maximizing the revenue potential. It is a synonym for Key Account Planning. The account management process has always been complex. The complexities exist at all levels – thinking, documenting, presenting, planning, training, and reviewing. According to a CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, 90.6% of those surveyed said that strategic account planning was relevant to them and, therefore they would do it. Therefore, key account managers must know how to build strategic account plans with the best practices. Using account planning software like DemandFarm’s Key Account Management Software can substantially streamline operations. Taking you through the entire process and strategies may be a bit too long for a blog. But in this one let me make the ‘thinking’ part a little easier with frameworks, directions, and principles for a phenomenal strategic account planning exercise. Why is strategic account planning important? Strategic account planning enables sales professionals to understand their customers better – know their needs, goals, and challenges enabling them to create customized solutions and address specific customer requirements. Account planning also pushes businesses to take proactive measures to address potential customer issues. Important Processes of Strategic Account Planning 1. Decoding the present scenario Understand account information in terms of revenue/profitability/growth, products/services, geographic spread, and the account’s initiatives and plan for the year. This is publicly available data that can be easily found, so it makes no sense to use this to analyze your client’s financial position and organizational structure. The most relevant questions and the ones that will be unique from your competitors are questions like: Which areas of your business are most important to you? Where do you see yourself in two to four years? Are there areas of interest that you might either reduce or grow? What kinds of obstacles do you worry about? What would you like to see from a prime supplier? 2. Understanding the Voice of Customer (VOC) Ask any strategic account manager, and they will tell you that the days are gone when the client account landscape was represented by a one-way dialogue for engaging prospects. Today, account heads are shifting their listening and response mechanisms quicker as VoC represents a huge chance for driving loyalty and increased sales. What challenges, concerns, and problems have clients been discussing? How can you address those problems with the products/services of your company? This kind of insight is usually not available publicly. It involves having an in-depth discussion with customers to understand their plan and pain points which can help in new product development or even tweaking the current product to suit their strategy and requirements. The success of this depends on the quality of relationships between the client and their customers and the knowledge of both customers and your business. 3. Building Strategic Connections Through Relationship Management With Accounts You can have multiple types of relationships with clients, and they can be either Tactical, Cooperative, Interdependent, or Strategic. You can use a simple weighted attribute method to arrive at one of the four. A skilled account manager uses the best practices and strategies to plan and create the account management organizational structure with an account plan and process in place. Having the right training and using certain principles increases the skill set of the manager to deal with strategic accounts. With People Sketch an organization chart with hierarchies, titles, and roles of all the contacts that matter. What is also helpful is to identify your supporters/detractors/champions among those contacts. Who controls what budgets? Who influences whom, both positively/negatively? Why? To convert deals and present your customers with a high-grade experience, you need to be informed of the positions your contacts hold within their business and their level of influence in the decision-making process. Mapping their level of influence and their relationships within the organization can help you to concentrate your efforts on the plan appropriately. Relationship mapping helps the sales and marketing units of the business to optimize their lead generation plans and increase revenue from existing accounts. Modern technology keeps the method of creating relation maps automated. Gathering insights using modern technology can automatically keep your relationship mapping efforts up-to-date. 4. Growth Opportunities Based on the above 4 data points, identify the buying centers in the account and map which of your products/services is consumed in which buying centers. Understanding Buying Centers can help key account managers in account planning and innovation. The Buying Center is a 40-year-old concept associated with Webster and Wind and can be hugely useful. The Buying Center is a part of the organization that involves a bunch of executives who have varying influence on the B2B buy decision. Performing a complete buying center analysis is an essential first step to help key account planning managers understand which messages and tactics best convey the value of their products. That can give you an idea of two types of growth areas: Mining Growth Finding out which of the existing projects/contracts/businesses can grow this year is where mining can happen. Farming Growth What new opportunities can be explored this year in your strategic account management process? That’s where farming growth comes in! All this can allow you to set a revenue goal for the year. Download Now: The Most Comprehensive White Space Analysis Template for Strategic Key Account Growth Build a Strategic Action Plan – A Strategic Account Plan Template You need to analyze a few categories to build an action plan for your accounts. You can start off by listing down action items, specific activities, monthly plans, and the support required, along with timelines. We are a firm believer in keeping the key account management process simple yet powerful. Over-analysis can lead to paralysis, so keep it short and simple. I would emphasize more action items and numbers and less on theory. In today’s dynamic business
The 7 Biggest Challenges Account Managers face while making Account Plans
Strategic Account Management may be accepted by the organization and the leadership as a good Account Management practice, but it is not devoid of challenges. Once the managers start practicing it, they realize the real-world problems or rather, challenges that they must face while creating strategic account plans. Let’s take a good look at the 7 Big Challenges faced while creating strategic account plans. Where did we get this top secret information? Straight from the managers themselves and their organizations, of course! KAM Glossary: Crucial Account Management Terms Explained 1. The eternal tug-of-war between short-term and long-term Even when the organization has made a policy decision of having a Strategic Account Management cell for Key Accounts or Strategic Accounts, some managers may find it difficult to choose between the short term and long term. Many times, the short-term wins as it is more achievable and managers often feel a quick sense of accomplishment. That’s exactly where the challenge lies; to choose the long-term over the short term when the situation so demands. It isn’t enough for managers to hit short-term goals and give themselves the pat on the back, it is integral to concentrate on strategic account plan goals like maximization of customer lifetime value too! Guide: Comprehensive Career Path for a Key Account Manager 2. Having access to an effective strategic planning tool Strategic account management needs more work than normal accounts and hence better tools. Although strategic account plans are about building key relationships and nurturing them, this process does need to be automated. There are various strategic account planning softwares and tools available that help the managers in planning and managing their strategic accounts well. But having access to a suitable tool may be a challenge, to begin with. Challenges of strategic account management can be overcome by ensuring the planning tool is made a part of the responsibility of the strategic management team and the leadership. 3. Having a good relationship with all key customers (other than that one key customer) within each Strategic Account It’s not enough to have a good relationship with just one key person within one Strategic Account. People move from one organization to another. Strategic Account Managers cannot afford to put all their eggs in one basket and need to form good relationships with other key people within the Strategic Account. This ensures that a great account isn’t lost, simply because the biggest influencer left the organization. A dynamic OrgChart can be extremely helpful to ensure that Strategic Account Managers know exactly where the influencers and detractors lie in an organizational hierarchy. 4. Interacting with enterprise-level organizations and key buyers at the top level Strategic Account Planning requires a CXO-level management involvement in any client. This bottleneck may arise due to a lack of training. This is very easily rectified with proper recruitment, training and a top-down approach to Strategic Account Management. 5. The actual implementation of the Strategic Account Plans Strategic Account Plans will remain so unless they’re put into action by a motivated Strategic Account Manager. The biggest detriment of a Strategic Account Plan is actually its implementation and thus it must be taken into account while creation. 6. Formulating a fair and comprehensive compensation policy for Strategic Account Managers Since the conversion in a Strategic Account happens over a period, incentive planning and compensation for Strategic Account Managers cannot be the same as your Salesforce, yet needs to be fair. Proper metrics need to be defined and implemented, which is a major HR challenge. It will keep evolving over time and will vary from organization to organization. 7. Training and skills in strategic account management What kind of training and skill sets do Strategic Account Managers need to acquire and how frequently do they need to be trained, is often the question. It’s a crucial decision that leadership needs to take, as it is not a good idea to take chances with the capabilities and delivery of the Strategic Account Managers. We are certain there are many more such challenges and that we can list more than the seven mentioned here. What is essential to this subject is the fact that the Top Challenges for high performers do differ from the Top Challenges of the average performer. Average performers are more concerned about the most fundamental challenges that are lower in the challenges hierarchy, such as ‘having access to an effective strategic planning tool’ and ‘the tussle between short term and long term goals’. On the other hand, high performers would be more concerned about challenges such as ‘fair compensation policy for strategic account managers based on sales results’ and ‘effective ways of building and communicating value’. Do share with me, your top Challenges of Effective Strategic Key Account Plans/Management!
Salesforce Org Chart – For Contact Hierarchy and Relationship Mapping
Org Chart and Relationship Mapping in Salesforce with DemandFarm Account Management is evolving every day. If you are a part of the sales/account management team, a better understanding of your client and improving the strategic relationship with them is indispensable to cracking any deal. Do you think a small tool – Org Chart builder in Salesforce could be your savior in this? Contacts being the heart of your client’s organization, managing them efficiently is critical for which Salesforce has become a ‘default’ in most sales-driven and account-driven organizations. While the baton is with you, over a while contact data gets ‘muddled’ useless. Meanwhile, still betting on PPTs and whiteboards will land you at a high risk of losing your valuable clients to competitors. It can also lead to slow decision-making, missed growth opportunities, and avoidable waste of effort. So, strategizing accounts, equipping yourself with the right tools, and efficiently managing your tasks will be the key to being on track. Salesforce Account Planning could provide much-needed clarity and help you manage your accounts more profitably. Why do you need a Salesforce Organization Chart? 1. Visual Map of Contacts Salesforce.com functions as the go-to system for all aspects of a customer relationship. But David Taber, the author of the Prentice Hall book, “Salesforce.com Secrets of Success,” remarked rightly in this post how quickly data gets discounted in salesforce. This happens because of the following reasons: Lack of process in adding customer data Ever-changing hands in marketing, sales, and support Omission and commission errors To be fair to users, the existing user interface showcasing contacts in a ‘list view does not help either. It seems fine until the number of contacts is in single digits, but not when contacts grow beyond a manageable list. That is when the need for visual relationship mapping arises. The last three salesforce organization chart software inquiries at DemandFarm had a very simple requirement. They just wanted a tool to display their salesforce contacts visually in the form of an organization chart. 2. Handover and Onboarding I just got off an org chart demo with a sales operations team. Would you guess their biggest complaint in managing contacts within Salesforce? It isn’t to do with managing contacts. It is when an account manager or a sales rep leaves. A simple process to hand over accounts always seems missing. The issues do not stop at handover. When a new account manager joins, it feels as if the current account is in a state of mess. A neatly populated Salesforce org chart builder could make this transition frictionless and even more exciting, maybe. 3. Sales Enablement Initiatives Sales operations and salesforce admin teams work together to help sales teams spend more time on quality sales conversations than the operational hassles of setting up systems like Salesforce. In this endeavor, sales ops teams are always on the lookout for tools and processes that improve the functioning of sales and account teams. The simplicity of the best org chart software that is native to Salesforce is a compelling use case. DemandFarm’s Organization Chart in Salesforce DemandFarm’s Salesforce Organization Chart is a powerful interactive tool that is native to CRM i.e, you require zero integration. Key Account Management in Salesforce becomes a breeze with Demandfarm. The tool is so simple that you can build a Hierarchy map of your accounts in just a few minutes by dragging and dropping them with pre-built templates. Organization Chart Features 1. Hierarchy Mapping Hierarchy mapping is a visual representation of the client’s organization which can lend you a lot of deep insights about their profile like white space opportunities and associated budget. 2. Influence Mapping Influence mapping helps you understand the kind of influences each contact has over the other inside the client’s organization. With this, you can upsell and increase your revenue. 3. Relationship Mapping Relationship mapping gives you an understanding of the relationship you have with each of the contacts in the client’s organization. Based on the relationship/affinity, you can plan the right approach to avoid any mess. 4. Power Mapping Power Mapping can help you in knowing the right person with the highest decision power in your client’s organization. To shorten the sales cycle and close the deal, is very critical. Conclusion Building the Salesforce Org Chart is the first step toward effective key account management (KAM). Without the Salesforce Org Chart, there is no Strategic Account Management. Let’s start building Organization Chart for all large key accounts now. It is a journey. Over some time, this Org Chart will be your most potent weapon to defend and grow revenues in the account. It is not one time nor is built by one person. It is a collaborative effort by multiple people over a while. Hence it has to be easy to build within Salesforce. DemandFarm’s Org Chart is one such tool. Go ahead and take a free trial today!
6 Attributes of a Successful Key Account Manager
Decades ago, psychotherapist Thom Hartmann proposed two mental models that described how people go about their work. The hunter mindset, based on nomadic societies, suffered from a short attention span but had hyper-focus for short bursts of time. The farmer, based on agrarian societies, was patient and worked steadily with the understanding that he would enjoy the fruit of his labor in the future. These two mental models have been used to guide hiring. Most recruiters look for hunters to fulfill sales roles and farmers to fulfill account management roles. This clear distinction between the hunter and farmer mindset gets blurred when hiring a Key Account Manager. In the past, hunters were focused on acquisition and farmers were focused on retention. A blend of these attributes is required to successfully fulfill a Key Account Manager role. Traditional Account Managers tend to be too patient and they acquiesce too quickly to unreasonable client demands. This is detrimental to forging a mutually beneficial and strategically viable partnership. On the other hand, a hunter mindset is too short-term focused and will often lose out on larger opportunities because of the relentless pursuit of the sales opportunities immediately in front of them. When recruiting for a Key Account Manager, look for the following: 1. Leadership A KAM should be a visionary. They should help everyone see and be excited by what’s possible. Their customers and their peers should respect them. They should be able to respectfully challenge and direct the customer in the customer’s best interest. This means they must have a degree of comfort with tension. Traditional Account Managers are too quick to cave in when facing tension with clients. Also, when progress needs to happen internally, they need to have the respect of their team. Team members should want to go the extra mile for them. 2. Communication This is a big one. The best KAMs are able to keep all stakeholders informed on all the important issues. They will often have to lead the presentation of project updates or account reviews. Whether oral or written, it is critical that all communications are concise, clear and convincing. Communications must also be highly nuanced for the particular stakeholder or group being spoken to. 3. Business Acumen Many salespeople are far too focused on closing deals and do not understand broader business issues. This approach is fatal when it comes to Key Account Management. A Key Account Manager must be able to see the bigger business issues for the client and help the client manage their business. They must also ensure all business deals are profitable for both sides. 4. Relationship Savvy Today’s Key Account Manager must be able to read people and connect meaningfully with a variety of personalities. They must understand that all progress is made through relationships. They must know when to take the lead in relationship development and when to enable others to take the lead. Their objective is to build a highly intricate web of many-to-many relationships between the client’s people and theirs – the more intricate the web, the greater the partnership and the higher the cost to switch to a competitor. 5. Results Oriented Today’s Key Account Manager must have laser focus on getting results for the customer. This means they must be proactive and not wait for the customer to notice they are not on track to achieving a particular goal. They must have a “no excuses” mindset. They do what needs to be done. They coordinate multiple resources to the achievement of the decided upon outcome. They will take the blame for failures and give credit to the team for successes because they are driven by outcomes not their ego. 6. Appetite for Learning A successful Account Manager recognizes the pace of change we are undergoing. Consequently, they are always open to training and development. They never rest on their laurels. Part of the respect they gain from others comes from the fact that others see that they are constantly growing in their perspectives and abilities. They constantly look for white space opportunities to improve in areas that they have identified as important. All of these attributes require a mix of a hunter and a farmer mindset. There are some things that must be looked after with a short-term laser focus. These short-term issues must be executed while simultaneously understanding how they fit into and accelerate long-term objectives and a long-term vision. It is an unusual mix of attributes as it requires mental flexibility. Those who possess these traits will lead their organizations and their clients too much greater rewards than we have seen in the past from either hunters or farmers.
Meet Jack : The Account Planner
Meet our muse, Jack. Key Account Manager. Account Planner. Data Interpreter. Relationship Builder. You. You know Jack. He is just like one of us. Surrounded by data, information, statistics, and revenue numbers. Clients who demand the world. Internal stakeholders that need convincing. Jack wears many hats. But that just works. With a family to look after and a life full of interests and hobbies, work-life balance stretches Jack the most. And Jack inspires us to stretch ourselves here at DemandFarm. Here’s why. Let’s talk about Jack in his Account Planner avatar. Jack is accountable for one of the most critical Key Account processes – building the strategy and executing the plan to achieve annual targets. While bridging the gap between planning and execution is a huge challenge, an even bigger pain point is getting started on and building the plan itself. You may identify with Jack’s life around Annual Planning Season. Let’s look at everything that occupies him in the run-up to and during the account planning process. Gathering business insights The most part of Strategic Account Planning involves gathering data from several sources, collating it into a standard format and mining that data for actionable insights to help build the annual plan. A comprehensive white space analysis, competitor analysis and a long hard look at the state of the relationship are other indispensable activities at this stage. This is where he is able to spot the real opportunities for value creation and growth across the length and breadth of his Key Accounts. Collaboration with internal stakeholders Account Planning is one thing and achieving the planned goals is another. It just cannot happen without the engagement of key internal stakeholders, all of whom probably have their own drivers and constraints. An effective annual plan would not only build the business case behind the goals and create buy-in; it also sets targets and expectations from team members. This helps him put everyone on the same page and coordinate the internal effort to achieve the plan. Governing the plan Tracking the plan, measuring performance, quantifying the qualitative indicators effectively – Jack needs to seamlessly bridge the gap between planning and execution. And he needs to check deviations, course-correct and stay flexible enough to grow with the Clients needs and goals. Handling the many aspects of Annual Account Planning can be overwhelming! So here it is. For all the Jacks out there, I get it. Having been a Key Account Manager in my time, I understand how crucial this time of the year is for you. Like I said, we are inspired by the work you do. So we build technology that helps you win. And this Annual Account Planning Season, we want you to try it for yourself. Imagine… An Account Planning technology that: Works from inside Salesforce, using data already in the system Integrates all the data at one place, in one format Creates action plans that you can easily share, leading to specific goals, activities, support required Generates Insights, metrics, and measures for Key Accounts Easily tracks whitespace, people, and actions, seamlessly governs progress And it is yours FREE until the 31st of December 2016. Sign up here and get started on the best Account Planning experience you will ever have. I guarantee it. PS: It’s an all-access pass to our best planning module ever, no questions asked. Sign up today, and unlock the true potential of your Key Accounts.
6 Key SAM Sessions at SAMA Prague
If you happen to be in Prague now, it may not be just for the spring. Strategic Account Management Association’s (SAMA) Pan-European conference is the other reason. After an insightful SAMA 2016, they’re back again this year. Over a two-day action-packed pre-weekend, SAM professionals across the World and Europe will debate, discuss and devour, insights on strategic account management. Will you be around? There are 18 sessions in addition to 2 Keynotes, over these two days. Some of you might attend all of them, including the cocktails. However, if you are someone with only a limited time and energy, I bring to you DemandFarm’s recommendation on the six sessions that you should not miss. These 6 sessions cover digitalization, account-based marketing, analytics, automation and not to forget customer metrics. Firstly, do not miss out on keynotes. Johnson Controls’ Renae Leary talks about using Design to Supercharge Customer Value Co-Creation. The design is one of the least talked about subjects in the realm of Key Account Management. One needs to look at the tech space to understand the profound sales transformation design can bring. Undoubtedly, it would be interesting to listen to the story of how Johnson Controls leveraged design in transforming SAM. It remains to be seen though if Renae would talk form or function, in the context of design. Function, of course, would be forthcoming. Phillip Lund from Schneider Electric has the perfect closing keynote, owing to the touchy subject of talent in SAM. While the Schneider Electric story is about talent management, it would be welcome if Philip could also talk about talent development, skills, and millennials. 1. Quantify and track customer outcomes: Technology tools are changing the game! Fair to say, DemandFarm strongly believes in the power of technology, to help Key Account Managers become successful. Thus, a recommendation for this session. The team has regularly made a case for productivity tools for KAMs. In this session, Valkre consultants Jerry Alderman and Brian Kiep team up with Velinda Cox from Konica Minolta Business Solutions to talk about an insight – technology tools to measure your customer’s business metrics. How cool is that? Come on, how many of us are measuring customer metrics that we are impacting? If we did that and followed through, wouldn’t our customers love us? 2. Digitalization Disrupts the Relationship Map Facing the SAM Today’s customer wields enormous power. We all know why – the internet, social media, and the wave of digital transformation. Hajo Rapp from Siemens (Read Hajo’s interview with DemandFarm) and Volkhard Bregulla from HP, rightly address how digitization is dissolving the web of customer relationships: a Key Account Management strategy would build over the years. We understand the importance of relationship mapping. It is one of the key offerings of DemandFarm’s Key Account Management Software. Will these two gentlemen discuss how SAM can address the intricacies of relationship dynamics in a changing power scenario? Will they also touch upon the importance of visualizing relationships, especially in complex accounts? Nevertheless, perspectives on addressing internal business stakeholders by a technical buyer would be insightful for Key Account Managers from the technology sector. 3. Robot as an Account Manager: Are your clients ready for it? The Mckinsey consultants stole our thunder, almost. My team introduced a Key Account Management BOT called KAM-BOT in November 2016 to introduce the importance of automation in SAM. I am keen to understand what emerged from the Mckinsey survey of 1,000+ business purchasers and decision-makers across all major B2B industries, especially how they like to buy; where digital matters, and where it doesn’t. I am expecting the Mckinsey consultants – Varun and Hamza – to share specifics and some tangible action points for KAMs. Read KAM-BOT ebook 4. The New Era of B2B Growth: Moving to Analytics-Based Sales Is it possible to read anything worthwhile in business today without hitting ‘Analytics’? ‘Data-driven is another. I wish they were ‘just’ buzzwords. To Key Account Management teams, these keywords mean ‘effort’ and ‘study’. Armed with information, customers can ask the right questions that salespeople and account managers may not have anticipated. The Gallup team represented by Jeff and David will rightfully sensitize the B2B audience about the need for SAM to transition from experience, solution, and relationship-based customer management strategies to insight and data-based strategies that demonstrate unique business understanding and help proactively solve customer questions. This session should raise some eyebrows. 5. Accelerate Growth in your Strategic Accounts with Account-Based Marketing Didn’t ABM dominate as the most important sales topic in SAMA 2016? If you belong to the SaaS space, you will not disagree. Now ABM is making inroads into SAM. It is still sometime away before we can see some successful models, the debate is essential to assess proper fit. In his session, Bill Simpson from ITSMA has laid out an elaborate menu for advocating ABM into SAM teams. Will you bite it off? The questions he is addressing cover the entire spectrum from who is using ABM to why the ABM SAM alignment is critical? This one should be overwhelming. Who is headed to the bar? 6. How Aptean Accelerated Growth through a Transformational Account Management Strategy Aptean is a software product company offering a bouquet of enterprise software products. It made a change, from account acquisition to account management. Perhaps, the toughest change management in sales organizations. Charlie and Don from SOAR Performance Group team up with Aptean’s Kyle Bowker to tell the story of Aptean’s transformation. It is these stories that keep the SAM excitement going. Are you excited?
5 Key Account Mistakes to Steer Clear Off in 2019
Key Account Mistakes As we arrive into the new year, it is important to understand the new needs of the business environment. It is no more a one-sided selling process in key accounts rather you have to proactively and strategically handle your key accounts to get the best out of them. This year everything you do will likely be measured by the quality of your interactions and communication while selling is the number one priority. So let’s look into some mistakes we can avoid to have a better return on our efforts. 1. More The Communication, Better It Is Do not fall for this trap. Consistently staying in the loop and holding lines of communication clear and to the point is crucial, but there is such a thing called too much communication. You don’t want to hound the key account with asks and feedback. You’re there to make their life easier and facilitate a seamless relay. Reach out to them continuously and you risk appearing incompetent and not suited to manage their account. Use your best opinion and only reach out to the key account when it is critical in decision making. 2. You’re Not Creating Value, You Are Selling This is what people who want to earn a quick buck say. They’ve already opted in for your assistance so you should concentrate on building trust and value with the key account by producing quality work and making sure you are speaking to their particular business needs. While there are opportunities to upsell and cross-sell, you should not be too pushy about it. Try to up or cross-sell on how it would help their business, and show them that you care about their interests. Create genuine value. Most key accounts have been in their respective industry and have had plenty of exposure to dealing with key account managers. They can see right into a pushy sales guy who has no substance. Wait for the right time in the meeting to start talking about upsells. Don’t try to include a selling opportunity into the conversation every chance you get. 3. Short-Term Thinking You as the key account manager are being trusted with a key account business goals and that means you need to continually think ahead about what role you play in helping them achieve their objectives. Part of this is knowing the business that they’re in and being cognizant of market trends. Do you have a key account in the hospitality industry? Then you should be equipped for their busiest season, for example, one which starts in the autumn right before the holidays. Your role is important in helping to develop an approach that speaks to them and helps them hit their goals during that time. There are abundant resources that can help any key account manager stay on top of their key accounts industry trends. One way is to set up Google alerts for each of your key accounts leading you to know about what’s going on in their business. Other ways are to use resources as simple as doing competitor research or reading expert journals and industry magazines. 4. Overpromising And Under-Delivering This is as straightforward as it gets, but not handling key accounts expectations properly can lose you business and critically tarnish your reputation. When a communication initially begins, some key account managers may want to look good in the eyes of the key account they are managing by promising more than what they can deliver. This practice is inefficient and can lead to trouble. Effective account management process, unrestricted communication, level setting, and the right expectations will guarantee that you deliver what’s promised in scope on time. If your key account is asking for too much, too soon, it is up to you to put your point forward and let them know that they need to adjust their expectations. If you aren’t level setting, you run the risk of being a constant disappointment to your key account. Needless to say, that doesn’t gel well with your long-term, key account relationships. 5. Conversation Gaps Given key account management’s numerous priorities, key account managers need to be proactive communicators. Regular follow-ups may seem unnecessary, but they are critical to the success of ongoing actions. Through regular communication, a key account manager may learn more about the strategic account needs and discover new ways to add value to existing services or upcoming products. Scheduling time to check in with each account allows you to stay on top of your game and promotes critical information sharing. If you’re interested in transforming your sales post the pandemic, explore our blog on Sales Acceleration in Account Management and how it can help you grow your business in 2021.