Driving Sales Excellence in 2025: What, Why, and How?
Our story begins in 2003, a time of great distress in British Cycling. The national cycling team of Great Britain was the epitome of mediocrity at the time, having won just one medal in a century of existence. Fast-forward to 2008 and the squad took home 7 out of the 10 available medals in the Beijing Olympics – a remarkable feat that they would repeat in the 2012 London Olympics. In fact, by 2015, the squad had even won three Tour de France – the holy grail of competitive cycling. Make no mistake. This is much more than your average rags to riches story. But a natural question begs – how did the worst cycling team in the world suddenly turn into world champions? Our answer lies in the strategy of “the aggregation of marginal gains”. It was Introduced by Dave Brailsford in 2003 when he was appointed the new performance director of British Cycling. The idea was simple yet hauntingly effective – to think small and not big. This involved breaking the entire process of competing into its constituent elements and then improving each of them by 1%. In practice, this meant painting the floor of the team truck white to spot impurities that undermine bike maintenance, hiring a surgeon to educate team members on ideal hand-washing techniques to avoid illnesses, making athletes sleep in the same postures every night, and other such countless initiatives. Why does this work? How can such small improvements accumulate into such head-turning results? And most importantly, what can we learn here that can be implemented in sales and account management? Sales Excellence: Getting Ready for 2024 The What and Why of Sales Excellence As reported by Salesforce, organizations spend anywhere between 5 – 15% of their entire revenue on sales. Revenue. Not profits. This is as significant as an investment can get in a single organizational department. Naturally, it makes sense to have a well-defined framework that milks the maximum possible ROI from the equation. And this is where Sales Excellence comes in. In Key Account Management, Sales Excellence is an amalgamation and progression of all possible sales functions. Drawing parallels from the management philosophy of Dave Brailsford, this would mean constant improvement in all key initiatives that go into sales – sales training, sales culture, sales tools, sales technology, and more. From a 360-degree point of view, Sales Excellence model translates to stepping into the world of British Cycling. It cares about everything – the number of deals that are closed, deals closure times, deals won rate, the support level extended to salespeople, and much more. What Ideal Sales Excellence Looks Like For Sales Excellence and Sales acceleration to function at its ideal capacity, leaders and the organization at large need to live and breathe the practice. For a concept that involves attention to detail at unprecedented capacity, anything less than 100% buy-in would be a shame. What does such dedication look like in practice? At the foundational level, Sales Excellence strategy begins with staunch onboarding, training, and up-skilling support for salespeople in a manner that grows into the shoes of a pan-organization culture. Sales Excellence means that salespeople are not only attuned to the best practices of sales but also work closely with other departments (such as marketing) to better understand the personalized needs of every buyer. Key ingredients to formulate an ideal Sales Excellence framework includes: Sales Strategy: Scoping, understanding, and implementing ideal sales targets and budgets by taking into account both current and potential customer segments. Market Penetration and Development: Defining the best mix of digital channels that promotes market penetration at maximum capacity. Sales Processes: Defining the end-to-end sales structure and making crucial decisions related to key account management, customer classification, customer acquisition, and more. Pricing Strategy: Increasing profitability with the right pricing strategy in place. This includes closing the right number of deals, defining key accounts, order management, and more. Impact of Sales Excellence on Deal Closures In a traditional capacity, sales are driven by taking into account how effective the entire organization or sales department is in executing their roles and responsibilities. But such monitoring is often undertaken at a bird’s eye level with KPIs catering to teams or entire sales functions. Sales Excellence goes way beyond this and brings a fundamental shift in this practice. Sales Excellence questions not just the leaders or the sales functions but every individual salesperson. This means monitoring metrics such as the deal closure time, deal win rate, the training and proficiency levels of salespeople with the tools, organizational support, and the like. What does this mean? When the spotlight is on every individual salesperson, improved deal closure is nothing more than a natural byproduct of the practice. Revisiting the story of the British Cycling team, focusing on every detail in the small picture ultimately has a significant cumulative impact on the big picture. How to Measure Sales Excellence Now that you know what Sales Excellence is all about, the next step is figuring how to measure it. The age of Sales Enablement and Sales Transformation has paved the way for many key metrics and frameworks that need to be put to ideal use to measure success in Sales Excellence. Here is a round-up of the key metrics that you should be focusing on: Time to Full-Ramp: How much time does a salesperson spend to put up his/her shop? The quicker they are set up and running (in both individual and organizational capacity), the better the results. Collateral Engagement: So you have provided every salesperson with the ideal content and sales collateral. But are they putting them to good use to move prospects through their buying journey? Communication Analytics: Are salespeople eager to up-skill and keep up to date with organizational and product updates? Monitoring communications (at a high level) can be indicative of their eagerness to be prepared. Sales Performance: This is a direct measure of the effectiveness of all sales efforts and includes monitoring KPIs such as
Everything You Should Know About Account Management KPIs
Jose Mourinho is quite a peculiar figure in the world of football. Our story unfolds in the Champions League semi-final match between Inter Milan and Barcelona in 2010, arguably the biggest competition in football. Inter Milan, managed by Jose at the time, was set to host Barcelona, a team that was (and is) known for its quick and accurate ball-passing prowess. To make things worse for their opponents, Barcelona also has the most lethal football player today – Lionel Messi. With a much weaker squad on paper, Jose had to pull off an audacious stunt to win. And, rather unexpectedly, he did. One of his primary tactics was to not cut or water the grass at the Inter Milan ground for weeks (a screwed tactic that he used again while at Real Madrid). This took the Barcelona players by surprise and affected one key metric that dictates their signature playing style – pass success rate. The result? Barcelona lost the match 3-1, and Inter Milan went on to win the competition. An obsessive focus on just one key performance metric was enough to stifle the best team in the world at the time. That is the power of KPIs. If understood well, they can be shrewdly used in any field, including key account management, to turn the tide from a bird’s eye perspective. This blog takes a look at how you can do the same for your key accounts and scale them by encouraging the right management behaviors. Account Management KPIs What are Account Management KPIs? Account management KPIs, or key performance indicators, are metrics monitored by account management teams for both internal assessment and external performance evaluations. They serve as benchmarks to gauge effectiveness within specific areas of the company, similar to how marketing KPIs analyze the efficacy of various marketing campaign components. Setting Powerful Key Account Management Objectives Starting any business is easier than scaling it. That’s the first axiom in the corporate world. However, with key account management, challenges can be particularly complex. With a lot of strategic moving parts, such as Land and Expand, it is important to clearly define and lay the foundations of powerful account management objectives to steer the ship in the right direction and deliver the desired results. More often than not, establishing the right mindset is a precursor, and the biggest challenge, to selecting ideal account management KPIs. And this also brings us to a major pitfall in this domain – focusing on too much too soon. This reminds me of an Aphorism by Nassim Taleb from The Bed of Procrustes- “They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant; in a complex world, intelligence consists of ignoring things that are irrelevant.” The best account management growth strategies are the ones that are the most simple. Most accounts should consist of only a few impactful components that set you apart from your competitors. And by natural extension, this means focusing on only a handful of impactful KPIs rather than the opposite. KAM Glossary: Crucial Account Management Terms Explained The Importance of Generic KPIs Our notion of simplistic account management philosophy also extends to selecting generic KPIs to determine the performance of departments. Surprisingly, most leaders often focus on specific KPIs while making decisions, failing to realize that the specificity of the KPI itself takes them away from the big picture! For instance, imagine a Key account manager focusing on the expansion rate of a couple of accounts to assess his performance, failing to make note of the high churn rate of his entire portfolio. Any decision made in such a scenario would be biased and would overlook the true picture. Aligning Key Performance Indicators for KAM Okay, so you have your account management objectives in place and are ready to dig into some quality generic KPIs to build a solid foundation for account expansion. But another challenge crops up – an account management KPI that is fit for one department may not be so for another. It might also be the case that the incentives of your account managers depend on multiple KPIs. How do you then align various KPIs together to reach the desired results? By constantly iterating your account plans, as explained by Calin Muresan, Business Manager at Netguru. More than a blueprint for your teams, account plans should be looked at as frameworks to deliver results for your clients. By constantly finding KPIs that are dependent on each other and iterating account plans accordingly, leaders can keep the roles and responsibilities of account managers and ensure that KPIs are aligned in terms of: Strategic Direction Business Processes Business Units For example, consider that an account plan has the objective “Increase customer satisfaction”. To measure this, the management might have the option of two KPIs – %age Customers satisfied or Customer satisfaction index. Now if ‘Expenses incurred in account operations’ is another KPI to be minimized, selecting the correct option of the two would consider the budget allotted for KPI activation. As a general rule, it should also be noted here that the efforts or expenses that go into measuring the KPI for key account management should not be greater than the benefits that are realized as a result. 11 Crucial Account Management KPIs that dictate Success With the foundational jargon and mindset in place, let’s now take a look at the top Account Management KPIs (generic or otherwise) that account managers must focus on for long-term success. 1. Unlocking Key Account Success: Understanding Customer Lifetime Value and Its Strategic Impact Customer Lifetime Value is a metric that can single-handedly dictate the success of any key account, which denotes the total revenue that a business can generate from a single account in the entire course of the arrangement. It is calculated by: Customer Lifetime Value = (Customer Value) x (Average Customer Lifespan) Why is it important? Because it instantly tells you about your most revenue-generating buyer personas. Other key applications of CLV by extension include:
Sales Acceleration – The Complete Guide
Sales acceleration could be compared to a Formula 1 pit stop. Formula 1 pit stops are the most nerve-wracking events of a Grand Prix race. The cars decelerate to make it slowly into the pit from a top speed of 240 mph. The pit crew pounce into the car – fuel-ups, changes tires and completes the check-up in a matter of seconds. The world record for the fastest pit stop in 1.82 seconds. Let that sink in. The perfect pit stop happens because of the synchronized activities of a hundred team members working on the minutest of details. The Mercedes team has over 980 team members, with each of them working round the clock to get every possible detail of the car right. Sales acceleration does the same to a lead as the lead begins its journey towards becoming a customer. An inbound lead fills a demo form on the website. The user analytics software tracks source (Organic search, referral, or social media) and the complete journey of the lead on the website – pages visited, time spent on-page, and what prompted them to fill the form. Based on the email id of the lead, the lead enrichment tool updates the company information of the lead including details such as Job Title. The lead insights tool quickly gathers all market-related information about the company such as new CEO, new product launch, fund-raising, and the new roles the company is hiring for. The sales rep is now armed with enough data points to have an intelligent conversation with the lead. Sales acceleration isn’t done yet. There is more including automated calling, fallback emails, automatically scheduling meetings, and more. Let us accelerate and go deeper. What is Sales Acceleration? Traditional sales methods of prospecting are over, almost. Cold calls are out. Inbound sales is in. Lists are out. Intent driven inbound leads are in. Transactional sales is out. Contextual consultative sales is in. Sales acceleration is the perfect answer to respond to the challenging demands of new age buyers. Sales Acceleration may seem like a self-explanatory concept, but it is far from it. At the surface level, it is about improving the speed and efficiency of the sales process. The idea is to identify key areas of improvement in the sales process and scale them in a way that adds tremendous value. This may include: Reducing process inefficiencies and refining the results Leveraging key trending technologies that accelerate sales Systematic and scalabe training to the sales team Aligning marketing and sales with SLAs that are in line with changing market conditions Continuous analytics to drive a metrics driven culture Analysts and industry thought-leaders have heaped praise on sales acceleration. Analyst firms such as Gartner and Aberdeen continue to raise projections for the sales acceleration market. User review websites like Capterra, G2Crowd, and Software Advice now even have a separate category featuring sales acceleration software. Sales leaders, managers, and even users are talking about the need for sales acceleration, and with good reason. Why Sales Acceleration matters? There is no denying that the sales industry has undergone fundamental evolution. Your average sales rep today is no longer overbearing to the point of repulsion. Instead, they are highly trained, professional, and empathetic personalities who constantly check on their customers and guide them towards gentle, value-oriented sale closures. How is this achieved? By using the right amount of research, analytics, and a number of software tools including account planning software. What was once a soft-skill, now also includes a technically sound and process-driven culture. With the right team culture, sales acceleration fits right into this equation. It makes use of processes and data to achieve sales success, rather than relying on ad-hoc decisions and hunches. That isn’t to say that soft-skill of sales doesn’t matter in the equation. The sales equation also has another factor at play – the buyer. The new B2B Buyer needs no sale Gartner in one of their recent sales insights summarized the B2B buying situation well. Sales teams have very little opportunity to influence customer buying decisions. All the information related to the purchase is available online via digital channels. Gartner research says, “When B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. When buyers are comparing multiple suppliers‚ the amount of time spent with anyone sales rep maybe only 5% or 6%.” A study by CIO Insights in the recent past made similar claims. It claimed that 70% of buyers have already done their requirement analysis before speaking to a sales representative. Close to 50% have already decided the solution before engaging with sales. No wonder sales is becoming a channel rather than ‘The Channel.’ This growing B2B buyer behavior aligns really well with a sales acceleration approach to sales. Something, which was demonstrated with success by Mark Roberge at HubSpot. The Sales Acceleration Formula – Mark Roberge Mark Roberge is the best selling author of the book ‘The Sales Acceleration Formula.’ In the book, Mark (Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot) describes how he devised a sales acceleration formula for scalable and predictable revenue growth at HubSpot. Using this, he was able to scale revenue to $100 million in 7 years. According to him, the Sales Acceleration formula or process has 5 key pillars. Sales Hiring Formula Defining the ideal characteristics of a salesperson for your organization and devising a framework to test these skills. Finding top-performing salespeople by incentivizing internal recruiters on success rates. Determining the first ideal hire in the sales team, someone that perfectly aligns with the characteristics, long-term vision, culture, and maturity. Sales Training Formula Creating a systemic sales training program that is focused on the buyer journey, sales process, and sales qualification matrix. Taking into account individual traits and skills of salespeople in a way that is predictable and scalable. Constantly iterating the sales training program and ensuring that it aligns with the needs of the team instead of merely the organization. Sales Management Formula Sales Training: Focusing on a
How to Optimize Your Business? – Thanks to Sales Enablement Tools
Nowadays, businesses need the right tools and data to remain competitive in their respective market. This makes now the best time that you check out sales enablement software. These are solutions that provide your team with the proper tools, knowledge, processes, and functions to maximize every sales opportunity. Sales enablement is more than just about lead generation. It covers an umbrella of functions such as recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, providing resources, and evaluating the effectiveness of certain programs within the organization. Likewise, sales teams are not the only ones who benefit from such sales enablement tools. It can also help marketing teams, human resource teams, and more. It syncs every department within your organization and ensures that their goals are aligned towards one goal, which is an increase in productivity and efficiency of sales. With that said, here’s how you can optimize your business with the right sales enablement tools in the market. 1. Synchronize source of content and data As mentioned earlier, sales teams aren’t the only ones who get to use sales enablement tools. It can affect your whole department as well. It does so by providing a centralized source of content and data for all departments. This source of content and information is critical for engaging with potential customers and closing deals with them. Having a single source of truth for all your content can help you create a more streamlined and organized sales enablement strategy. This helps sales reps and other teams reduce wasted time and efforts on searching for and using relevant content to use for their campaigns and operations. This centralized repository of data can also help you improve your sales account planning, especially if you integrate it with your customer relationship management (CRM) software. DemandFarm is a powerful account planning platform for integrated planning where you can connect your data with external sources for a holistic approach. 2. Personalize buyer’s journey With your customer data organized and aligned properly across departments, this makes it easier for you to personalize your potential buyers’ journey and experience with your company. After all, not all customers need and want the same thing. You would often need to use different tactics to close a deal for each prospective customer. Through sales enablement tools, you can create a relevant and personalized sales account plan for each respective prospect. This serves as a guide that contains all the critical information you will need to interact and close a deal with them. As more customers begin to look for genuine and dynamic interactions, relying on a scripted sequence for each sales pitch won’t be enough. You need to be in tune with your targets’ behaviors, needs, and wants instead of forcing them to fit into your own sales process. And since sales enablement aligns your sales team across all departments, they can get the needed data to learn more about their leads. 3. Streamline communication between marketing and sales team Marketing and sales team may have different functions and tasks within an organization, but they are inevitably tied with one another. A study by LinkedIn shows that 58% of aligned sales and marketing teams have higher lead conversion rates compared to those companies with teams that have poor communication. Sales enablement software can help you with that. It does so by streamlining content for both sides. What one produces, the other can use for its operations. These may be in the form of content, data, and reports. Likewise, it provides transparency on both sides to keep goals aligned throughout. Nowadays, this alignment between the two teams is becoming increasingly important for your business’ growth. With digital marketing blurring the line separating the two departments, these two teams must collaborate to ensure meaningful engagement with potential buyers. 4. Leverage data and analytics Nowadays, data and analytics have become an integral part of running a business. It helps generate relevant content for their brands, make smart decisions, develop better strategies, and create meaningful relationships with their customers. According to a report by the Havas Group, 81% of brands often go extinct because they no longer create relevant content for their customers. Meanwhile, only 19% collect and utilize data for marketing and sales purposes. This goes to show how much data can affect your business’ growth. One of the benefits of sales enablement is its ability to track and measure the performance of your sales process. You can gain insights from your interactions with your prospects and those who are engaging with your marketing content. This includes top-performing content, trends and prospect behaviors, and areas of improvement. You can use these insights to develop content and process to close deals faster and more frequently. 5. Improve customer engagement The different types of sales enablement tools are geared towards one thing, and that is to drive up your sales productivity and revenues. It would also help in sales acceleration and sales transformation. With the right data and relevant content, you can improve interactions with target consumers and create meaningful relationships with them in the long run. Engagement is essential when it comes to closing deals. The constant streams of communication ensure that your leads are nurtured, and your potential buyers remain interested in your company. Without that point of contact, all your marketing and sales teams’ hard work can fall apart along the way. Sales enablement gives you the necessary tools and data to keep engagement with your prospects and consumers relevant and effective. This includes videos, CRM, whitepapers, datasheets, and more. 6. Integrate with your other solutions The beauty of technology is that you now have other tools, devices, and solutions within reach to help you manage and operate other aspects of your business. Sales enablement applications are just one of the software you can integrate within your system. Having one software may sometimes not be enough. After all, no solution is one-size-fits-all. Sales enablement software has its limitations. Nonetheless, you can incorporate sales management software into your strategy to further enhance your
Cross-Selling vs Upselling – The Main Differences
Recall the last time that you were at McDonald’s (even though it feels like a decade at this point). What did you order? Maybe you only wanted some fries and coke, but the cashier convinced you to convert them into a happy meal. Or perhaps you noticed a new addition to the burger suite (at a point when you were hungry enough to devour a buffalo) and decided to try it out instead. If we start inspecting such encounters closely, an interesting pattern emerges. For instance, walking into a shoe store and subtly pitched to add a pair of socks or shorts to the cart. What is this? And more importantly, why does it work so well for almost all organizations, regardless of industry? Guide: Cross-selling and Up-selling Explained What is Cross-Selling? At its worst, Cross-selling is an advanced sales tactic. But at its best, it is a customer success story that corporate leaders yearn for. As we have seen in the examples above, Cross-selling is the process of satisfying the customers’ additional needs that the primary product cannot fulfil. In other words, it means encouraging customers to buy complementary products with their purchases, increasing the overall cart value. This places the strategy miles away from cold reach-outs and sales prospecting simply because it taps existing customers instead of new ones. What is Upselling? Up-selling is the first conceptual sibling of Cross-selling, where the end goal is to increase the cart value not by introducing new items but by increasing the size or quantity of the initial purchase decision. For marketers (or salespeople), this may translate into selling a higher-end subscription to the customer with more advanced features or integrations. In most cases, upselling works much better than Cross-selling since it is easier to improve the commitment of a purchase decision that the customer has already made! What is the difference between Cross-selling and Upselling? More often than not, Cross-selling and Up-selling are used interchangeably, marking a conceptual error. The best way forward is to consider Cross-selling a complementary product and Up-selling an upgrade. For instance, upgrading an economy aeroplane ticket to business class would be an Upsell. But shopping from the in-flight product catalogue, such as headphones, would be a Cross-sell (since you have already bought the plane ticket). Upselling is almost always associated with a higher-margin product. Cross-selling deals with similarly priced complementary products with no significant enhancement in the margin. Thus, margin expansion is a function of upselling. Cross-selling helps boost order value and volume. The following examples will make the difference vivid. Case Study: TaskUs registered a 30% increase in up-selling & 20% increase in cross-selling Why are Upselling and cross-selling Important? When Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, went onstage to deliver a keynote at Inbound 18, no one expected what was coming next. He officially shattered the traditional concept of Sales Funnels – a cornerstone of marketing strategies since 1898. His argument? Funnels are inherently outcome-centric. They do not care about the customers once the sales process is over. The solution? Delighting customers with the new Flywheel model instead. As HubSpot explains, companies can drive more referrals and repeat sales by using the momentum of happy customers. This is a strong indication of the direction in which the digital world is headed. With increasing transparency and customer awareness, businesses today have no choice but to invest their energy into delighting existing customers. Why? This is because, in present hyper-competitive landscapes, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer, as reported by Harvard Business Review. In other words, upselling and Cross-selling are much better business strategies than Sales and Customer Acquisition. Here’s why you should be paying close attention: 1. Revenue Growth Both Upselling and Cross-selling have a direct positive impact on your average order value. This is a rather obvious outcome when customers are motivated to opt for higher-priced alternatives or add-ons. To put the numerous benefits in perspective, here’s what Neil Patel explains happened in 2006 when Amazon added Up-selling capabilities with the phrase – “customers who bought this item also bought”. They clocked a 35% boost in sales! Source 2. Strong Customer Relationships The fact that customers are willing to buy is itself a testimony to existing solid relationships. Successful cross-selling and up-selling can strengthen this relationship to the point of co-dependence, provided that you can deliver on your promise. But this also comes with a word of caution – never try to pitch additional products/services that buyers do not need. And even when you do get the pitch right, always be willing to take no for an answer. 3. Increased CLV For certain businesses, such as in the SaaS space, upselling and Cross-selling can amount to as much as 70-95% of the revenue. This means that in a modest scenario, initial sales can rake in only 5% of the revenue! This brings us to another critical revelation – the effect on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). With most of the revenue being a direct result of the day-to-day experience of customers with the business’s products/services, Up-selling and Cross-selling also have a direct bearing on the overall CLV. How to Cross-sell and Up-sell in Key Accounts? Cross-selling v upselling is an art form where customer success teams need to target the sweet spot between under-delivering and under-pitching, and Account Planning plays a significant role in making this possible. Here are some of the best practices that will help you paint the canvas with more conversions: 1. Understand Customer Needs and Goals Even though it may look tempting, don’t just bombard your customers with product suggestions. The right Upsell/Cross-sell opportunities are hard to come by, leaving no room for squandering. The best way forward is to prospect customers first and answer questions like: What were they looking for in the first place? What are their short-term and long-term goals? Is there any budget or operational constraints? And more… Once you know everything about them, proceed to take the right call – Upsell or Cross-sell?
Land and Expand – The Ultimate Strategy For Business Growth
Imagine that you’ve just graduated from college and landed a job with the organization of your dreams. The salary is generous (to put it mildly) and there are immense opportunities for professional growth. All in all, it’s a perfect fit. On the third day of the job, you enter the CEO’s cabin and demand that she assigns you to the flagship project, doubles your salary, and promotes you on the spot. That escalated quickly, didn’t it? It is not supposed to (umm, never even think about trying this). In reality, you may have to showcase exemplary skills for years before being anywhere close to such atrocious demands or expectations. This is even applicable in your personal life and the analogy from Forbes hits home in that regard. This is nothing but a modest case of land and expand business strategy. Definition: What Is Land and Expand Strategy? Land and Expand is a business strategy that is based on three simple rules: Rule#1: Efficient selling involves a natural progression. Rule#2: Selling too much too soon can undermine deals. Rule#3: Current customers are the best source of income. In other words, land and expand strategy dictates a strategic framework under which the salesperson first focuses on landing a small deal with an organization (‘Land’). The goal is to first get the foot in the door. Now that he/she becomes a part of the organization, it gets considerably easier to explore opportunities for upselling and cross-selling over time (‘Expand’). For instance, let’s say that you work in a tech company that sells hotel management software. Your latest convert is a multinational hotel chain with tremendous potential for account growth. Under the framework of ‘Land and Expand’, you would go above and beyond and do everything in your power to overdeliver. This might mean providing hands-on training to their employees or constantly anticipating and addressing possible concerns even before they arise. Think about your favorite restaurant that sends you a free pudding with every order. Or your local store that provides free delivery even for low-key shopping sprees. The idea is to delight customers and exceeds expectations, forging long-term relationships. As HubSpot lays it down for newcomers, ‘Exemplary Service’ is key. Now, let’s say that the client loves the experience and a couple of hotels can significantly improve their day-to-day productivity, saving thousands of dollars every month. Imminent trust looms around the corner, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. This is where you sweep in and start taking advantage of possible upselling opportunities, potentially introducing your software to hundreds of other hotels in their portfolio. What it Isn’t? Notice that we have cautiously used the term ‘business strategy’ in the above definition. Contrary to popular beliefs (and the lingo of marketing gurus), Land and Expand is not a sales strategy. It is a business strategy that masquerades as a sales model. It may seem that the sales team is doing all the heavy lifting. After all, they are the ones who plant the seeds and nurture them to fruition. But many variables are working in the backend to support their case. This can range anywhere from ideal marketing and pricing strategies to unmatched deliveries and focused vision. As evident, this is very different from the case of one user organically leading to 10 other users. Importance of Land and Expand Strategy Once you decide to implement this framework, you’ll find that it takes the center stage in everything that you do. At its peak, it may even be driving more than half of your entire revenue. If properly executed (a big IF), Land and Expand strategies can help you: Significantly increase your cross-sell and upsell rates while also protecting you from discounted deals. Reduce the overhead cost of acquiring additional revenues with fertile customer expansion strategy and retention patterns. Taper the risks associated with selling by increasing the number of customer touchpoints and conversion timeframe. Accurately pitch the value proposition of your offering to your clients with an extended sales timeframe. Land And Expand Process The first step is to keep track of new user signups so that a sales representative or a customer success representative may identify ideal customer early on, even before your product is widely used. A typical ‘Land and Expand’ strategy will include several activities, each will ensure the relationship with the customer is strengthened across all potential stakeholders. Cold calls, emails, in-person meetings for lunch or at events, webinars, linking one of your executives with the customer’s decision-makers, or even a quarterly business review are some of the possibilities. You’ll need to keep an eye on user acceptance of your product as you improve your relationship inside the customer’s organisational hierarchy. It is critical that you maintain your focus on product adoption at all times. Make sure you understand the broader potential use cases for your product as well as the commercial impact it will have. As the product gains traction, it’s time to take advantage of the relationship you’ve developed with the customer’s decision-makers. Your product’s advocates and power users will help persuade high-level decision-makers of the importance of implementing your solution throughout the organisation. Land and Expand Action Plan: How To Implement It? For the strategy to work, you need to have a repeatable strategy action plan that moves the customer from one milestone to another, irrespective of the pace. Such a framework should include steps such as: Acquiring small pieces of business within potential accounts. Servicing every ensuing task at extraordinary levels. Developing trusted relations with multiple potential stakeholders. Penetrating the business by encashing this trust at strategic touchpoints. In the context of conversion and engagement funnels, Hunter And Bard neatly presents the framework as follows. At the ground level, this framework calls (rather, screams) for a support system in the form of sound practices. No Land and Expand strategy is complete without these: Right Off the Bat: Exceptional service should be the talk of the town from day one. Trust is an important
Risk Assessment of Key Accounts during COVID-19 pandemic
Risk Assessment of Key Accounts during COVID-19 pandemic We’re in a global crisis that’s unlike anything we’ve seen or could have ever expected. All organizations are facing an unprecedented level of risk that requires timely action. “Predicting the unpredictable: dealing with risk and uncertainty” has always been a key mantra, and this holds today with the emergence of COVID-19. As an Account Manager, you are best placed to provide new insights to top management regarding the impact on your organization’s existing business and opportunity landscape. The impact on annual plans and account plan goals should be on your organization’s radar now to allow them to take consider these when making decisions. This is a time of rapid change. Drastic ad hoc actions are taken to address challenges to the business environment. Ad hoc strategic actions pose major risks and the evaluation of risk with each action is critical. The four keywords to keep in mind to manage risk during this crisis are mitigate, transfer, avoid, and accept. The first step to managing business risks is to identify what situations pose a risk to your finances. Consider the damage a risk could have on your business. Once you have a list of potential business risks, develop a process to weigh the severity it possesses for the key account. Set up a scoring system for risks, from acceptable to undesirable. Look at the likelihood of the identified risks occurring at your business. Gauge the financial impact the risk could potentially cause. Risk Assessment Framework 1. Risk Matrix A risk matrix helps you prioritize business risks by ranking the potential impact and likelihood for each account. Color coding helps visualize accounts based on their risk rankings, and you can also designate zones in your matrix as generally acceptable (GA), as low as reasonably possible (ALARP), and generally unacceptable (GU) to create an at-a-glance view of which key accounts to prioritize. 2. Risk Rating Key A rating key enables you to visualize risk rankings and designate the GA, ALARP, and GU zones. The rating key also suggests the preferred action for each of the 3 zones. 3. Risk Zones Generally Acceptable (GA): In the area of the chart ranked “low,” risks have little impact and/or are unlikely to occur. Risks in this region don’t pose an immediate threat to the project or organization, and some can even be ignored. As Low As Reasonably Possible (ALARP): This is a zone of acceptable risk, encompassing the “medium” ranking areas. Risks falling within this region of the matrix are tolerable or not significantly damaging; work can proceed without addressing these risks being immediate. Generally Unacceptable (GU): This is the area of the chart where risk is “high”. Risks in this region are quite damaging, highly likely to occur, and would threaten the project or organization. They are the highest priority, and you must address them immediately. 5. Financial Impact The total financial impact of the risks across your organization categorized by the zones and by the severity to re-evaluate the guidance numbers for the entire organization. 6. Risk Response Plan The account manager can plan for managing the risk(s) (Avoid / Transfer / Mitigate / Accept) for the key account management. Action items for the same can be planned. Support required from peers, partners, or third parties can be highlighted timely, acted upon, and followed up. Your business risk assessment is not a one-time commitment. Review risk management processes periodically to see how you handle risks. Also, lookout for new risks that might not have been relevant in the previous assessment of the key accounts. DemandFarm’s Account Planner enables you to do this risk assessment inside your CRM making the Account Manager’s job easy. This simple risk analysis will help you avoid hazards that could damage your finances. The risk assessment of key accounts informs you about the steps you need to take to protect your business. You can see what situations you need to address and avoid.
Account Planning Template – Step by Step Guide to Strategic Account Planning
Account Planning Template Existing customers are a critical revenue source for every organization. Meeting growth targets requires sales leaders to build robust strategic account plans and establish well-defined account management processes in the organization and this is where account planning templates come into the picture. Having a customizable template for account planning not only helps retain customers but also enables account teams to identify, develop, and execute growth opportunities within their account base. KAM Glossary: Crucial Account Management Terms Explained What is Account Planning? Account planning is a process of building strategic plans to improve value-driven relationships with key customers that can help in long-term development and retention, thereby maximizing the revenue potential. Effective account plans and templates help account managers gain a more in-depth understanding of the client. The Account Planning Book of Evidence study surveyed 1034 people from 62 countries to determine why organizations undertake the account planning exercise. Most of the results were unsurprising: Better Win rate (75%) Increased understanding of customers’ business (72%) Shorter sales cycles (58%) Better customer loyalty (55%) Increased deal size (49%) Better executive access (47%) Identify non-competitive deals (27%) The Account plan contains critical information about the prospect that every sales rep should know before even thinking about making the initial phone call. Capturing this information down in a concise, structured way helps the salesperson to focus on what is important about the account and how it aligns with your company’s offering. Having a plan can help you go one step further, give you the edge over a competitor, or deliver the crucial piece of data that can close the deal. Simply put, the Strategic Account Plan is the blueprint of the sale. Here, is a template to create quick and effective account plans that help account managers win the game. Account Planning Template 1. Account Overview Documenting the Client’s landscape is important to give a bird’s eye view of their business and general information to the account managers for them to dive deeper. Also, this information must answer all the basic questions about the client like What the client sells, who are their clients, what size are they, where are they located, and much more. 2. Account Segmentation Account Segmentation will help the sales team segment the client accounts into different buckets. This enables the salespeople to come up with the right strategic action planning based on the account positions. You can segment accounts based on the account health score to understand them objectively. 3. Account Financials Understanding the basic financials of the client organization will help identify your potential revenue sources. Also, listing the specific business units and geographic regions of the clients will enable you to know the areas to which you can cater and estimate the Total Annual Revenue potential from the client. 4. Whitespace analysis Whitespace mapping is the virtual representation of data to uncover hidden white space opportunities to target. It helps you to identify the gap between the products/services your customers require vs the products/services you offer. Understanding the pain points at different levels and offering the right solution helps increase revenue from the existing customers. The Sales team can understand current engagements with accounts and explore possible opportunities & whitespaces with the white space analysis. Learn More: Opportunity Planner by DemandFarm boosts tracking capabilities in 65+ opportunities for Dairy MAX 5. Relationship mapping Relationship mapping helps to visualize all the key stakeholders in one place. This mapping tool – org chart software also helps salespeople to explore detailed information about the contacts of the accounts on the budget control, influences they have on each other, etc., You can Know the organizational hierarchy of the accounts to better understand the relationships and the influences between the contacts. 6. Competitor Analysis Competitor Analysis allows you to better understand the market, potential, and behavior of the customers. This analysis with a bunch of data gives a company an advantage over the competitors to grow by developing new market strategies. With competitor analysis, the sales team can also understand the strengths and weaknesses of competitors along with the analysis of customer spend vs wallet share. 7. Communication Planning Capturing all the past interactions between the client and the team will help to sketch the communication pattern that can add value in planning the overall communication strategy. It gives you a year-wise verdict on whether you are in super touch or you need to work more on the volume of meetings. It’s an extremely important exercise to improve your communication strategy to maximize ROI. 8. Account Management KPIs Defining the Account management KPIs is critical to measure the progress of accounts over time, make adjustments in the process & stay on track, solve problems that are in the way, and tackle new opportunities in the accounts. It also helps in analyzing account planning patterns over time. Learn More: 11 Crucial Account Management KPIs that dictate Success Why do you need a Sales Account Planning template? Creating a Strategic Account Management template is not an easy exercise. It can’t be done in an hour before a meeting. So there is a need for a template that can help account managers build quick and effective plans. Most importantly, it gives you a better framework of the data needed to understand the customer. Knowing more about your target and being equipped with insider account knowledge of the account is one of the biggest advantages a salesperson can have. DemandFarm’s Account Management Software DemandFarm’s Key Account Management Software enables dynamic account planning capability natively inside Salesforce CRM and integrates to all other leading CRMS to make account planning ridiculously easy. It helps in achieving a deeper understanding of your Key accounts through improved data visualization and qualitative analysis. Our key account management software empowers companies to visualize, plan, and drive growth in Key Account Sales. Our digital account management experts will be more than happy to guide you. Book a demo today.
Sales Account Planning – A Step by Step Guide
Sales Account Planning What is a Sales account plan? A Sales account plan is sort of like a guide with all the critical information a sales team wants to close each of their crucial accounts and keep them for the long run. It is more often used to establish sales objectives for the team and develop strategies necessary to achieve them. Companies of all sizes may use variants of account programs based on the industry, type of client, and sales team structure. If you have ever been to a restaurant where the host includes all the detailed information concerning their valued guests about the interests, relationship, and buying habits that an add-on to the experience, then you’ve seen a sales account plan in action. Think of your account as guests along with sales account planning as a way that you show how much you understand and value your guests. Sales account plans may include a range of information, including company size, key decision-makers, timelines, and also a listing of the company’s competitors and the business’s market share relative to their competitors, as well as their strategic decision-making process. Steps to prepare a Sales account plan Successful sales account planning requires more than just filling out a form. It requires strategic thinking and a clear understanding of what your client needs. Outline the business objective The First step is to outline the objectives by understanding the organization’s current mission and vision, the industry trends, the market potential. Mapping these data with the sales acceleration goals and the product/service offerings of the company can help a sales team set up their objective. Define the target clients The next important step is to analyze the clients with the necessary tools to find the most profitable and lucrative prospects and customers defined by industry, region, product, etc. This analysis can help the sales team know the challenges and hunt for profound growth opportunities to grow the revenue. Build your strategies and tactics List your overall objectives for the accounts and plan how you will get to your goal. It must answer the questions like, “What are our objectives, and what’s our overall direction to achieve them?”. It must include the goal build that takes the overall growth objective into account and builds up the components of how the team’s going to reach that objective. Select the necessary tools for account analysis Understanding the accounts, analyzing, planning, and delivering the right solution for the right customer requires rigorous efforts at the backend. But this can be simplified by employing proper account planning tools with advanced features. Assign the KPIs Build a Performance Dashboard that sets milestones and tracks the progress to those milestones; it also helps identify any adjustments that need to be made. It must answer the questions, “How have we performed? How should we adjust?” Key components of the Account analysis It’s getting increasingly difficult and complex to understand the client business to answer this question: How much will the client be ready to spend on our product? Successful salespeople must dig deeper into the complexities to solve the puzzle. A list of analyses over the client’s business with the previous year’s data can help not only answer this but also can track new opportunities within the accounts. Learn More: Opportunity Planner by DemandFarm boosts tracking capabilities in 65+ opportunities for Dairy MAX Account Segmentation Account Segmentation will help the sales team segment the client accounts into different buckets. This enables the salespeople to come up with the right strategic action plan based on the account positions. You can segment accounts based on the account health score to understand them objectively. Relationship mapping Relationship mapping helps to visualize all the key stakeholders in one place. This mapping tool – org chart software also helps salespeople to explore detailed information about the contacts of the accounts on the budget control, influences they have on each other, etc., You can Know the organizational hierarchy of the accounts to better understand the relationships and the influences between the contacts. Competition Stacking Competitor Analysis allows you to better understand the market, potential, and behavior of the customers. This analysis with a bunch of data gives a company an advantage over the competitors to grow by developing new market strategies. With competitor analysis, the sales team can also understand the strength and weakness of competitors along with the analysis of customer spend vs wallet share White space analysis Whitespace mapping is the virtual representation of data to uncover hidden white space opportunities to target. It helps you to identify the gap between the products/services your customers require vs the products/services you offer. Understanding the pain points at different levels and offering the right solution helps increase revenue from the existing customers. The Sales team can understand current engagements with accounts and explore possible opportunities & whitespaces with the whitespace analysis Benefits of Sales account planning Better Win rate Increased understanding of customers’ business Shorter sales cycles Better customer loyalty Increased deal size Better executive access Identify non-competitive deals DemandFarm’s Account Planner DemandFarm’s Account planner offers integrated account planning inside CRMs that makes sales account planning ridiculously easy. It helps in achieving a deeper understanding of your Key accounts through improved data visualization and qualitative analysis. Salesforce is one of the most popular customer relationship management tools in the world and our products are Salesforce native which means Salesforce Account Planning becomes a breeze.
5 Essential Skills of Account Managers
5 Essential Skills of Account managers It takes months of conversations, demos, and meetings to close a deal. Both parties will be excited about the partnership. But now what? It’s critical to building a healthy strategic relationship with the client that can assist you with retention and expansion. A well-structured account management process in place might be your key. Guide: Comprehensive Career Path for a Key Account Manager What does an account manager do? An account manager is accountable for the overall management of sales and relationships with customers of the company. Account Managers are always on the lookout of developing and maintaining a strong relationship with the customer by addressing their concerns and needs. What is account management? Account management is a collective strategic method that businesses use to upkeep their best clientele all along with their entrepreneurial journey. It is a process of overseeing the sales structure, planning the business continuity, and managing client relationships coherently. According to a study done by Gartner, customer service doesn’t drive revenue, but customer improvement might do the trick. And that is where key account management responsibilities comes into play. KAM Glossary: Crucial Key Account Management Terms Explained Account Management vs Sales The perspective differences between these two propositions are far and wide. The very difference between account management and sales can be illustrated with the example of a nomad merchant and an online global store. A nomad merchant aims to sell out the commodities in any means to the customers around his way. And the merchant’s sales proposition keeps varying. The online store reaches a far wider customer audience. The online shop owner equips the shop and supports the customer with all possible facilities. Likewise, account management finds the scope for future benefits rather than the benefit of a one-time deal. Not surprisingly, the art of strategic account management and identifying key accounts is a complex process. You have to carry out a broad business prospect to afford and manage such accounts because they are going to get the benefit of your time and effort in the long term. Who are account managers? Account managers are generally a liaison between the business and its clients. They are essential to building strong strategic relationships and a healthy bottom-line with clients. Account managers think strategically and explore white spaces with the clients to retain the business and crack opportunities. White space refers to the gap between the products or services customers have currently invested in and the other products or services that your company can offer to them. The account manager has to take the responsibility to mitigate the challenges, solve the problems and find new opportunities to enhance client relationships. They play a prominent role in the business process to enhance business prospects with the best clients with long-term engagement. While all the account managers need hands-on experience managing customer relationships, there are wide ranges of other (equally important) account management skills that are critical for the role. 5 Account manager skills you will need to master 1. Good listening and understanding capacity In a business organization, good listening is the key to effective working relationships with clients. Listening helps to acquire facts that assist in better decision-making. It is also essential to building trust and can reduce conflict. Purposeful listening can help build objectives, find opportunities and enhance relationships at every interaction with the client. The next essential skill is to understand the bigger picture of the client’s needs and business specifics. Thoughtful analysis can help you anticipate the needs and exceed the expectations. This can be achieved through effective questioning. The account managers must formulate questions that engage the mind and direct the thinking. Effective questions lead to useful pieces of information for decision-making. 2. Collaborative and Customization ability Account management is never a solo game but a collaborative effort. In the evolving business world, companies can’t compete on pricing/product alone. Companies must differentiate themselves with their customer experience. Collaborative selling is the future. Collaborating with customers to make them fully participate in the process can help build strong relationships, in turn, drive sales forward. Even internal team collaboration is essential for a sales account manager not only to relieve his pressure but also to get fresh and different perspectives to solve the problem. 3. Leadership and Ownership capability Account leaders always work towards a vision and have the ability to inspire clients with a creative plan for the future. They challenge the clients and encourage them to make brave decisions. This can help build strategic account planning for disruptive transformations. Account Leaders are unique and embrace changes in every process that can yield huge results. They focus time and attention appropriately on the development of key accounts with a clear idea of actions. 4. Dynamic Business Analytical knowledge Analytical thinking is the key ability to quickly identify the cause and effect relationships. This means understanding the scenario of what might happen in the process and proactively offering a solution to that. Dealing with a pile of information from various sources is critical for every account manager in his day-to-day work. So, having good attention to detail is necessary to notice, retain, and carefully evaluation of client problems. 5. Excellent communication skills Being the liaison between the client and the company, a successful account manager must excel in communication skills. This is necessary to build a strategic relationship with clients and retain them. Keeping everyone in the team well informed about what’s happening and also the results of every process helps in coordination and maintaining rapport. Whether oral or written, the account manager must be able to be clear, concise, and convincing with his thoughts. Key Account Management is a continuous process that requires immense effort from highly skilled account managers. But that’s not enough, the account managers must be equipped with the right key account management tools and account planning tools that can assist them throughout their journey and make life easier. Demandfarm’s Account Planner makes account planning ridiculously