If you think strategic account planning is just another buzzword in the industry, think again!

Do you know?

Increasing customer retention by just five percent increases profits by 25 to 95 percent.- Harvard Business Study. Account Planning is a basic framework for every organization to have a customer-centric approach to increasing customer retention.

Understanding the accounts, analyzing, planning and delivering the right solution for the right customer requires rigorous efforts at the backend and also requires proper strategic account planning templates in place which can be simplified by employing proper account planning tools with advanced features. Is your account planning tools missing out on any basic feature?

Is it causing you to lose any major revenue opportunities? No worries! Explore the essential features below to examine your account planning tool

Account Planning tools & software to strategically grow revenue

Analyze:

1. Whitespace Analysis

Understand current engagements with accounts and explore possible opportunities & whitespaces with the 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.

2. Relationship mapping

Know the organizational hierarchy of the accounts to better understand the relationships and the influences between the contacts.

Relationship mapping helps you 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.,

3. Communication matrix

Capture all your interactions to sketch the communication pattern which can help in planning communication strategy.

The communication matrix helps you optimize the time for salespeople by giving a trend analysis of the interactions made with the clients. Finding a successful communication pattern and following the same will help close more deals in less time.

Plan

1. Account Segmentation

Segment accounts based on the account health score to understand them objectively.

Account Segmentation will help you segment the client accounts into different buckets based on various attribute scores marked in a graph with account attractiveness across relationship score. This enables the salespeople to come up with the right strategic account management action plan based on the account positions like Star, Strategic, Streamline and ignore.

2. Competitor Stacking

With competitor analysis, Understand the strength and weakness of competitors along with the analysis of customer spend vs wallet share

Competitor Analysis allows you to better understand the market, potential and the 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.

3. Annual Account plans

Build your account plan with the growth strategy for Buying centers, Engagements, Financials, and Revenue.

Annual account plans provide directions for every function in the company to plan their objectives and strategies for the year. Though these strategic account plans are not so elaborated, they help you with the insights on the changes to be made in the current structure to drive future growth. Though most of the companies follow yearly strategic account planning, it must be a continuous process throughout the year to be more effective.

Grow

Account Tracking

Know your progress against the plans for the year and keep an active track on it.

account planning tools that help you track accounts

Real-time data from the CRM helps you to track multiple parameters to check progress against the plans. Mapping dynamic goals and priorities of the Client to ongoing plans will enable you to make the right strategic calls at the right time.

Using Account Planning Tools, Powerful actionable insights can be derived to avoid deviations from the goals. These three account planning & strategy best practices can turn potential clients into key revenue-generating clients. Though Key Account planning is a tough journey, a technology-driven approach with data insights can transform account planning as a whole.

So, it’s time to take stock and use the right Account Planning Tools to make the most of this critical process.

If you're interested in transforming your sales post the pandemic, explore our blog on Sales Transformation in Account Management and how it can help you grow your business in 2021.