What Kind of Icebergs are your Key Accounts?
B2B Key Accounts are typically large global enterprises, with interest across verticals, several lines of business, complex organizational structures, plenty of staff movement across geographies and entities and significant regulatory dynamics. So it’s obvious that the solutions offered to such Clients are equally complex, high value and typically medium to long run. While that kaleidoscopic level of complexity is mind-boggling in terms of management, it is also an indicator of the endless possibilities to build deeper and wider engagement with the Client…across verticals, across geographies, across buying units. If a Client has made the cut to be listed as a Key Account and be managed by the elite Key Account Management Squad, then it’s assumed that they are either high performance- high potential Accounts or High- Potential- Low (current) value Accounts (that need developing).In this post, I’m focusing on the ‘High Potential’ piece of the equation. How do we unlock all that potential in our favor? The visible potential and the invisible potential – i.e., both parts of the iceberg. If we lose a Key Account like that, it can unbalance the entire ship, even possibly sinking us. However, if we find a sustainable way to harness the potential it offers, of what lies above and beneath, then we are well on our way to winning with KAM. Unlocking the true business potential of a Key Account involves being a good hunter (spotting available opportunities for revenue – the visible part of the iceberg) and a good farmer (nurturing white space opportunities for growth and value creation, till they are ripe for harvest- what lies beneath). At DemandFarm, we call the latter Account Farming. Ok- with that said, the question is- how? What areas of Key Account Management play the biggest role in unlocking the business potential of Key Accounts? Here are some that come to my mind..I’d love to hear from you on others: Relationship Management Now, this is my number 1 pick for factors impacting Account Farming. I’m referring specifically to people: who are the people that matter in this Account and how can our relationship mapping with them be leveraged for growth? Large B2B companies have matrix structures with complex, often complicated relationship networks. People move around hierarchically, geographically, across verticals and buying units, and sometimes even functionally. So what are the key focus areas? First, is knowing the right people in key roles, their formal and informal affiliations, a predisposition towards significant issues, hierarchy, etc. Second, it’s about connections – connecting the right stakeholders at the Client end and internally, leveraging the right relationships at the right time, for the right opportunity Third, it’s about investing in building and nurturing the right relationships at all levels- gatekeepers, influencers, and decision-makers included – for the mid to long term Finally, it’s about capturing all of that into a format available to all internal stakeholders. Leaving it in the Account Manager’s head makes you vulnerable, but it’s virtually impossible to keep tabs on all of this in real-time, without a technology enabler Data Management This is a close second to Relationships. Winning with Key Accounts is all about client-centric intelligence and insights. So it’s important to address where the data comes from, what needs to be mined and how it needs to be managed. But the secret sauce is qualifying the quantitative and quantifying the qualitative. Remember that old saying – not everything that can be measured counts, and not everything that counts can be measured. In my eyes, knowing what to quantify and what to qualify is the secret to spotting business potential. It’s about having your eyes on the right metrics and building the right models to act on critical qualitative indicators. The right technology can make this process smoother. Even more important is enabling KAMs to leverage insights without spending inordinate time steeped in data. This involves: Leveraging data already available in other systems such as CRM to generate real insights – at DemandFarm we call it the Data consumption vs. data Creation approach. The former minimizes pressure on the KAM to be filling in forms and capturing data. Real-time data available in one format at one place with one click: shockingly, even today, much time that should be spent building relationships and doing strategic work is spent in housekeeping tasks like collating and formatting data from various sources, generating reports manually, etc. Account Planning How customer-centric we are is revealed in our Key Account Planning. And how customer-centric we determine how well we can unlock business potential. There is no way to widen and deepen engagements with Key Accounts if we don’t plan with an eye on the entire landscape and white space – including everything about Client plans, pains, and opportunities, competitors, regulatory constraints, etc. Opportunities for growth and value creation are uncovered if we know what the Client aspires to, and how they plan to get there. The process of Account Planning needs to go beyond the process of annual planning. Internal Collaboration Strategic Account Management is a team sport – everyone needs to be on the same page to harness potential effectively. Lots of wheels need to be set in motion to capitalize on medium to long-term value creation opportunities. How well we are able to manage data to spot opportunities; building an internal business case to go after the right growth areas; setting clear expectations and buy-in from internal stakeholders; spending time on collaboration rather than clarifications and explanations, institutionalizing core key account management processes to avoid surprises and improve accountability – are all crucial indicators of a collaborative team. The right platform can make the process of collaboration seamless. Got some more you’d like to share? Write into us at [email protected]
B2B Sales is a Funnel. No, Its an Hourglass aka a Damru!
Aren’t we all familiar with the Sales Funnel? It has defined the shape (literally) of marketing and sales, over the years. But I argue that for B2B companies, it is not a sales funnel, but an HourGlass or a damru. (Wikipedia says Damru is a small two-headed drum, used in Hinduism and an instrument used by Lord Shiva) Traditional B2B Sales Funnel What happens in a conventional sales funnel? Marketing generates thousands of leads and passes on the qualified leads to the sales team, who in turn win the deals. So far so good. But some B2B companies offer many solutions and long-term engagements with their customers. For these companies winning the first deal is just the beginning. It is consciously followed by identification of Key Accounts that are then, Farmed and Mined for more revenues i.e. LAND and EXPAND. Enter the Hourglass I was looking for a visual aid that could give me a good representation of this reality. The Traditional B2B sales funnel never gave me a good representation of this process. Thus, I extended the funnel by adding an inverted funnel at its bottom, shaping it as an ‘Hourglass.’ Images are a powerful means to drive home a point- in this case, Key Account Management as a critical component of revenue generation for B2B companies. Please refer to the diagram below. For most B2B companies, the bottom half of the ‘Hourglass’ generates 80%+ of the revenue in a given year. The most commonly used nomenclature is ‘Hunting’ & ‘Farming’. Hunting is to acquire new customers while Farming is to grow the business from existing customers. I have noticed that in recent years, companies have recognized that Hunting & Farming teams need to operate separately. Because inherently, hunting and farming skills are quite different. A good hunter is a flamboyant sales guy who connects with many people and ensures entry into an account. Whereas, a Farmer is a more intellectual and consultative type. He has a great knowledge of both customer business processes and how the solution fits into the concerned business’s reality. So a good hunter is invariably not so good at farming. The reverse is also true – a good farmer is uncomfortable in hunting. In a nutshell, a Hunter sells, while a Farmer helps a customer buy. Filling the Hourglass The hourglass concept can be further extended to include not just all the marketing and sales functions, but also tools and technologies that are impacting these functions. The ‘Hourglass’ also helps in organizing various functions in a B2B company. As you can see in the above diagram it is easy to define various roles of Marketing, Inside Sales, Sales and, Account Management in the revenue lifecycle. If I extend this further to sales and marketing technologies, we get the above. So, above the narrow neck, we have technologies and tools in Marketing automation, Inside Sales, Lead qualification and, Sales Process Automation. Key Account Management Software settles down below the neck. What is your view of ‘Hourglass’ as the right way of looking at the revenue pipeline for B2B companies? I look forward to your views.
Sales Enablement Tools for Key Accounts
Sales enablement as a concept is still evolving. Typically, sales enablement tools ‘enable’ sales teams with the right intel and content at the right time to make the right selling decisions to their most important prospects and customers. Sales enablement tools are powered by technology and allow scaling up of the processes that help move white space opportunities forward. However, when it comes to B2Bs that earn up to 80% of their revenues from a few (say 20%) Key Accounts, the whole ball game demands a different level of engagement and enablement. Undoubtedly, it is easier to grow the business from existing customers than to win new ones. This is all the more true in the case of large B2Bs selling high value, high engagement solutions, which are hard – and expensive – to win. Such B2B Key Accounts are typically complex, global entities. They have multiple buying units spread across varied lines of business, verticals, geographies and even functions. With the right enablement tools, the potential to farm and mine these Accounts for optimal revenues is virtually unlimited. Each key Account is owned by a Key Account Manager (KAM) who is responsible for managing the relationship and growing revenues from the Key Account. Without enabling technology, managing Key Account complexities and growing revenues would be unfeasible. Hence for good Strategic Account Management, you need a great Key Account Management tool. However, the nature of technology enablement required goes far beyond what sales enablement solutions offer. B2Bs need KAM Enablement tools, a subset of sales enablement tools specially designed keeping the complexities of Account Management in mind. KAM Enablement tools like a Key Account Management Software typically combine the ability to ‘manage the repetitive tasks at an operational level, the data & analytical complexities at an organizational level, and the flexibility KAMs need to build the relationships at a strategic level’. DemandFarm seamlessly enables all three so that KAM can most effectively and efficiently handle both- the scale and complexity of Global Key Accounts. This helps the key accounts grow while making the life of a key account manager easier. Learn more about how KAM Enablement will help you grow your business: Read the blog here.
Sales Enablement, Tops the C Suite’s List of Must-Dos.
As per a recent Forbes Insights New Report with Brainshark, “The Power of Enablement: Bridging the Sales Productivity Gap,” that studied 200 plus US base executives, what topped the charts of priority for the C-level executives, was ‘How to improve sales productivity’ and how ‘Sales Enablement’ was important to productivity. They believe that sales productivity is critical to future growth and are willing to put their money where their belief is, as it has obviously been paying them rich dividends. Sales enablement solutions, as we see, are the top technology solutions they plan to invest in. Scaling up in numbers and the quality of selling across the chain becomes important as organizations grow. As the sales in organization grow, it is not just enough to focus on each sales representative, each account, and even each Key Account manually or through traditional methods and tools. Sales enablement in this situation plays a critical role. As Brainshark CEO, Joe Gustafson says, “You have to tackle sales productivity from two angles: improving efficiency and improving effectiveness.” This happens with Sales Enablement. It’s helpful to go through what this Report reveals. It reveals certain interesting findings of Sales Enablement and top-performing organizations. CEOs look at Sales Enablement Technologies to leverage their content. The two things important to CEOs are Sales Content Analytics and giving the sales representatives easy and instant access to content in the field. With Sales Enablement, organizations can make sure that their sales team always has information and resources at their fingertips. It is like a Content ATM- but accessible across devices. Integration with the organization’s CRM further improves content disbursal at the right time to the right people and in every selling situation. Moreover, it provides the right training for every such situation as well. With Content Analytics, you can measure the impact of content through revenue analysis, white space opportunity analysis and also help in identifying best sales practices. Content plays an important role in Sales Enablement for top-performing organizations. Consistent sales messages: All leading sales organizations provide consistent sales messages throughout the buyer’s journey. Sales enablement helps to scale up in communication and messages; this is how consistency in sales messages is made possible. Value and consistency separate top salespeople from the rest: Selling value over price is made possible with the help of sales enablement solutions, so is the consistency of the salespeople in impactful delivery. Continuous sales coaching and mentoring: Sales managers consistently coach and mentor their sales representatives. This would not have been possible without sales enablement as a key enabler. Performing companies value and harmonize sales and marketing: The Report says that 3/4ths of the top-performing organizations follow a good syncing of its sales and marketing functions. This helps in better utilizing the joint prowess in identifying leads and closing deals. There are multiple takeaways from this Report that a CSO can use. Trust you have already picked those up and are following those.
Social Selling -The Route for Building Sales Effectiveness
Inherent in the term ‘Social Selling’ is relationship building, lead nurturing, lead farming. The way these are termed may differ as per different individuals, but they mean one and the same thing. Using and leveraging social media platforms to identify prospects, connect with them, engage with them in conversations and then build a relationship mapping with them before taking it offline as well. Social media has totally revolutionized the way we sell – yes, even in the more complex B2B industry. It has changed the dynamics of demand and supply in a way that has not been imagined before. In this whole new yet not-so-new world, ‘Who Blinks First’ has also changed – it could be the buyer who hunts the seller or vice versa. A lot indeed can happen over Social Media! You can also use the best SMM panel for more efficient and streamlined social media management. Let’s do a quick sprint on how the Social Media Selling Process works and what one needs to do, to be good at it. Identify the right Social Media Platforms for your product. One quick way of picking the right platforms is to find out – Where is your customer present, online? What are his favorite haunts online when he is wearing his professional hat? It is also important to be aware of his favorite haunts beyond his 9 to 5 garb. Once you know this, you will be able to pick the top 3 social media channels/platforms he frequents. That’s where you connect with him. For instance, for a majority of B2B companies, a professional platform works better – such as LinkedIn. Work on your profile on that platform. Build a good profile. A profile on any Social Media platform needs a lot of working upon. Your profile is the face you show to the public. So while you need to be careful you are not shouting from the rooftops about your accomplishments, you must note all your accomplishments accurately. Being honest and transparent while working on your profile, has its own merits. Do not forget to have a nice formal, professional photograph uploaded. Research your prospects Do some research on the people you would like to connect with. See their profiles, take your time researching, be professional, yet creative and original when you send out that request for a connect. Among the millions on that platform, you need to give him a strong reason to want to accept your request to connect. Keep your connections engaged Keep your connections engaged in conversations. Be regular in updates – this helps your contacts stay updated with the happenings in your company and life Listen, acknowledge and applaud. Do all of these, as the case may be. Do read your contact’s updates. Comment on those acknowledges his accomplishments as you read about them, share an article that may be of interest to him and applaud when the situation demands. These things help you stay visible in his mind and ensure recall at a later stage when you may need it. This also sets the stage for your prospect to develop a ‘liking’ towards you – the first building block of trust and a long-term relationship Take it offline, too. When you have developed a fair engagement mutually, seek a meeting or a phone call with him. This is when you move your purely online relationship to offline. Keep it going. From here onwards, keep up the engagement online and offline. Social Media Selling has made it very convenient to ensure that we skip the cold calling or legwork of the old days and connect with our prospects in no time at all and is now being recognized as a route for building sales effectiveness. It has made it very convenient to form a connect and build a relationship. And if we were to go by Social Media Analytics, these are relationships that have greater chances of converting into hardcore sales. 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.
SAMA’s Annual Conference 2019 – Key Speakers To Look Out For
We are excited to be a sponsoring partner at the Strategic Account Management Association’s (SAMA) Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida on May 20-22, 2019. We are just a few days away and we can’t wait to be there. For those of you who don’t know about the Strategic Account Management Association, it is a global knowledge sharing and networking organization devoted to developing, promoting, and advancing strategic customer-supplier value, collaboration, and learning. Hundreds of key account managers and sales leaders of all levels attend the conference to build their network and expand their businesses. It enables the attendees to connect on the future and the challenges of their industry. The #1 challenge conference attendees encounter remains the same. Aligning the internal organization around co-developing and delivering value to a small number of critical customers continues to vex even the most progressive, customer-centric organizations. That is why SAMA’s 2019 conference revolves around this perpetual challenge and is called “The state of precision: aligning with your strategic customers for extraordinary results. This time around SAMA, we have several influential industry leaders as keynote speakers at the event. Let’s look into who these speakers are and what they will be speaking on. KAI KLATT Head of Sales Tools & Technology – Sales Center of Excellence at Diebold Nixdorf Kai is a specialist in digitizing sales processes and bringing radical innovation to sales performance. He ensures a consistent, value-added, and best practices-driven approach from improvement potential identification to implementation management and continuous improvement to drive adoption and to support sales performance improvements. Diebold Nixdorf has triggered a new approach to SAM as well as highlighted the business impact that this technology-led change has brought to SAM’s results within the company. An esteemed customer of DemandFarm, Diebold’s story will inspire your enterprise to take a similar route to make your account planning & execution ridiculously easy. Kai Klatt will be speaking on “How to leverage technology for strategic account management.” JOHN PINEDA Director at Boston Consulting Group John is an expert in pricing model transformation, monetization of digital platforms, and pricing value to improve core business profitability. He has worked with clients across a wide range of industries including technology, data/business services, life sciences, industrial goods, and financial institutions. He has supported clients in implementing large-scale pricing programs, applying pricing quick hits tactics, and developing new subscription-as-a-service revenue models. He will speak on “Digital Readiness: Changing the way we price and sell innovative digital value.” JONATHAN HUGHES Partner at Vantage Partners Jonathan Hughes is a partner at Vantage Partners, and an expert in strategic sourcing, supply chain management, negotiation, strategic alliances, and organizational transformation. He has worked with leading companies and state-owned enterprises across a range of industries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. He has a particular focus on developing and implementing new strategies that leverage enhanced collaboration – across internal organizational boundaries, and with external business partners. Jonathan’s experience includes deep transformational work at both an enterprise and functional level, with a focus on sourcing, supply chain management, and alliance management organizations. He will be speaking on “Alignment with procurement.” During this session, Jonathan will share insights from a multi-year benchmarking study of hundreds of procurement organizations, along with case-studies from more than 20 years working with procurement. Key topics will include: What makes procurement tick: understanding their goals, metrics, and incentives Why and how to profile procurement within each of your accounts How to speak the language of procurement Procurement hot buttons and how to avoid pushing them Aligning SAM with supplier relationship management programs at customers See You There Do not miss these star speakers as they will transform how you think about SAM and its processes. They will share energetic stories while offering practical takeaways for achieving your strategic goals. These individuals have expertise in implementing the necessary changes to bring better coordination, collaboration, and revenue to their respective organizations. Looking forward to seeing you all at the SAMA Annual Conference 2019.
Sales Representative to Sales Operations – A Good Move?
We understand that this might be a point of view that is subject to argument, but that did not stop us from putting this down, as we believe that this might prove to be a good move. Let’s see why. The Sales Representative has seen, lived, breathed, tasted, every bit of the sales process himself. He has tasted rejection and success, pain and pleasure, respect and denigration; he has seen it all in his role as a sales representative. He knows the process inside out and stands a good chance of knowing what works and what doesn’t. The Sales Representative will understand the challenges and pain points of the sales team and the weak links in the process and systems and process as he has experienced them first-hand. So simply put, he will know how to address them. He will be able to put an operations department in place that takes the routine work off the sales team’s shoulders so that the team can focus on their core strength, sales. The Sales Representative will have an all-around view of the sales-marketing- customer triangle of love and will do his best to keep it in the love mode and not allow it to deteriorate. He will add more value to the sales team’s role and ensure he keeps smoothly running operations so as to enhance the performance and productivity of the sales team. On the other hand, many times, organizations opt for external administrative heads or specialists. Let’s find out why this might not be a good problem to have for the sales team. The non-sales person will never know how the sales organization or department works and the nitty-gritty involved. He will never know the sales departmental processes inside out or how they work, as much as a person who has lived with these processes would know. He would not be able to relate to the real world challenges and problems and the aspirations and inspirations of the sales team. He may be more focused on tactics and not results. He may be more reactive instead of being proactive, which is more a result of not knowing fully how the sales system works. He would still be an outsider to the sales department and may not be readily accepted as one of them soon. Sales and Operations are not being two separate things, and being intricately intertwined, needs a sales representative, a hands-on guy to perform sales operations well. Sales operations are perhaps one of the most important roles in the sales organization and on the sales floor and the person who heads it needs to be chosen from one among the tribe if it were to work smoothly without too much friction.
How to Measure Sales Enablement Efforts?
Efforts. Data. Metrics. Efforts. Data. Metrics. Repeat. Without metrics, efforts don’t work. Without results, efforts don’t count. This is true in today’s data-driven world of sales too. If you look at the Sales top down, you will see that things are pretty measurable. As you travel down the funnel, things don’t seem so clear. We talk about increasing the sales pipeline, about white space opportunities, traffic, leads, warm, hot, cold but once we get to those numbers, no one can tell how to prioritize the projects on hand. This is the Sales Enablement Measurement conundrum. Organizations are uncertain about how to measure sales enablement efforts. How do we measure the alignment between marketing and sales? We have tried to resolve your conundrum here to some extent, using both, qualitative and quantitative methods of measurement. These are at best taken as indicators but will help your sales enablement efforts stay on track. 5 ways to track and measure your Sales Enablement efforts. Track the lead-to-deal rate or lead-to-conversion rate: The Sales Enablement team should be more focused on the bottom end of the sales funnel. This means tracking the lead to conversion rate. This is what will indicate the impact of your sales enablement strategies. Although not entirely, because the conversion rate depends on the number and quality of the leads. Besides this, this can be a good measurement index that also helps to identify trends over a period. Ask yourself the question “Will this project help me close more deals?” If the answer is “yes”, put it on priority. The others can be taken up later or delegated. Measure win/loss rates against key competitors: Sales is a race to the finishing line for every lead to be cracked. Your sales team needs your help and support all the time as they face the toughest of competitors. Monitoring your wins and failures and comparing them with your competitors’ wins and losses, will help you identify the gaps and fill that in. It will help you even further to know where you need to put your energy. Your CRM system will help you with this metric. Amplify your content so that it influences a decision to buy: Content is a universal weapon in the sales arsenal; right from the top end of the funnel to the bottom end. Supply your sales team with the right documents and decks but also, leverage the online medium to publish content through visual media. Then monitor it to see which one is more influential as the buyer is in the last stages of his buying decision. Scaling up online with content is good as you can measure the results of what works and what doesn’t. A good CMS and an analytics tool will help you in this task. This will be a perfect time to go for a sales enablement tool. Also, keep a track of and measure your content production – how many pieces of videos, infographics, newsletters, blogs, etc. produced in what month. This will help you measure the time invested and resultant output from these. Do not dismiss attribution reporting: Attribution reporting helps you to see what content helped influence the buyer in the latter stages of his buying journey. This helps in building more content that was successful and cutting down on content that produced weak results. Sit with your sales team: We mean ‘physically’ sit with your sales team regularly. Maybe for some time, every single day. This helps you to know what content they are sharing with customers, what they are saying to leads, how they are doing their demos. By physically being there, you also absorb the underlying vibes, energy and understand a lot that is unsaid or unseen to the naked eye. The team also finds you more accessible and is more inclined to share feedback openly. This helps them voice their needs when it comes to sales enablement efforts. The above 5 are indicators to measure sales enablement efforts. Share your experiences once you start putting these into practice, or in case you have already done so.
Key Account Retention – The 4 Key Dos
The better your Key Account Management, the better the chances of your Key Account Retention. Key Account Retention is a straight derivative of how you build your relationship with your Key Accounts. It is not a data or a numbers game, but a relationship-building regimen. It is something you work at, for the long haul. There are certain Key Dos for Key Account Retention. We spell them out so that you don’t leave anything hanging loose when it comes to keeping your Key Relationship under a tight fist, yet nurturing it in a way that blossoms and keeps growing into a richer and mutually rewarding business association. The 4 Key Dos Look at KAM as a joint venture A vendor-buyer relationship takes away the ‘joint’ and ‘trusted’ feeling from a relationship. It becomes more of an association that a relationship. But if you work with your Key Accounts for a joint win, make joint plans with clear metrics, you will succeed at super speed in winning your customer’s trust. Joint objectives, joint strategies, joint plans, and joint ownership is the best way to look at your Key Account Relationships. Measure it to grow it Every plan is only so good as it is measurable. Without tangible figures to showcase the success of your plan or otherwise, there is no way you are going to win the trust of your customer. It is best to clearly define the measurable at the beginning of a relationship and measure it periodically as decided. This sets the tone of expectation, ownership, transparency and, therefore, trust. Every plan, every step, every point of value-added, is only as good as its measure of success. Numbers are important, keep them looped into your plan and be open for discussion. Timely reporting is key As support to #2 above, it is important to keep the flow of communication open on both ends between you and the customer. This establishes and nurtures trust because relationships are about being open about everything, including setbacks. Timely and periodical reporting with facts and figures help to keep the strategy on track as also the relationship. Build one-on-one relationships Your relationship cannot happen with an organization. It is built with real people. It pays to understand the hierarchy, the straight lines, the dotted lines and everything in between. It helps to know people at all levels in your customer’s organization and especially those who are influential, seniors, your brand champions and even those who play the devil’s advocate. This way you can build an individual relationship with every person in the customer’s organization who you think is instrumental in building and growing your Key Account. There is no substitute for hard work when it comes to building a one-on-one relationship with your customer’s key people. 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.
What is wrong with today’s Account Planning?
If I were to answer that in a word – it is ‘Static’ account plans. For too long, Account Plans were long-term in nature (3-5 years) with a fixed set of analyses leading its creation. I think business reality today is far more dynamic and unpredictable to really make long-term account plans. Let me elaborate with examples. Manufacturing companies enjoyed a product life of 8+ years earlier. A car model would last 8 years. So a supplier could work with the manufacturer in the design phase and in turn commit order volumes for several years. Today, products have a maximum life of 24 months. The new manufacturing process and technology favor a smart & nimble supplier. So a manufacturer prefers a tactical vendor who has invested in strategic process & tech. Account Management is a more internal strategy and tactical win with a customer. For over 2 decades, IT services companies enjoyed multi-year-billion-dollar deals. So Account Planning was to ensure the relationship with the CIO & cornering maximum pie in the several billion dollars IT budget. With the SaaS way of IT consumption on the cloud, this model has changed. Almost all department heads are IT buyers but want an expert point solution provider with the ability to connect easily with other software(s). No wonder, small, nimble & smart vendors are winning Martech, Salestech, HRtech, and Fintech deals while larger suppliers are saddled with dying legacy systems management. Our beloved highly skilled Account Managers are expected to make their 2019 account plans with archaic mindset & templates created decades ago. They also know that this is a futile exercise since reality in their account changes in 2 quarters. I believe technology can come to the rescue here. Smart Account Planning tools that can help create plans easily that are simple and dynamic. Also, these Account Planning templates should be able to track these plans and nudge the Account Manager for action. I am in no way saying that strategic account management now is only tactical. Perhaps it is more strategic now. The strategy is in thinking of a better solution for the customer that they haven’t thought about. Earlier the strategy was supplying to customers’ defined strategy. Salesforce account planning is a big bonus favoring you to do all these activities inside the CRM. 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.