How to Ensure Your Key Accounts are in Good Health – Top View

It is all very well to think and expect that your C-Suite in your Key Account Management structure will live up to your expectations vis-à-vis Key Account Health and they will know every little bit of detail that needs to be known.

However, if you are using traditional health monitoring methods, then this is next to impossible. After all, when your Key Accounts scale up, how much is one Director or a handful of your top people going to know about the details?It is, therefore, necessary to have a transparent system that addresses the 3 points listed below:

Is your KAM team cued into the key goals and success parameters of their clients?

‍Sharing the above in black and white with the team assigned for KAM Sales is very important to measure the performance of the Key Accounts. This adds to the building of trust and retaining of the Key Account as the client sees your team as his trusted advisors, who are working with him towards a common goal. Unfortunately, though, this is not the case. Many Key Account Managers are not aware of the tangible goals or have not got it in writing.

Are the contracts well documented and broken down in small, understandable, easily accessible dockets?

‍The answer to this is usually, NO. Contracts are big 30 pager documents which are lost in the grind and dug up only before the all-important reviews or during a crisis. The Strategic Account Management team often forgets or is not aware of the small details on say Page 24 that a client may refer to when he is not happy. At that time, it is too late.

As the top management, it is important that you have your entire team completely cued into each and every detail of the contract, however, big the contract. The best way to do this is to document the contract into small-sized dockets accessible to all for regular browsing.

These need to be discussed and rehearsed during every weekly meeting for quick recall from the team. This practice ensures that the goals listed down and well discussed are also well followed and achieved.

Has your team put down in writing clear internal goals that increase the probability of retaining that key account?

‍Internal goals have to be quantified to measure what the team is up against. The account health as defined above depends on the frustrations in the account management that crop up.

It helps you, as a Director, to quantify these frustrations and discuss this with the team clearly, so that you can all put your heads together to improve the situation. Generic, non-tangible goals and performance measures are not enough; they should have a strong metric system in place that can be easy, transparently monitored from anywhere. Team members need to have access to this system.

Clear, measurable insights into Key Accounts are known to increase not just customer retention, but also positively impact profitability by 25 to 125%

DemandFarm’s Key Account Management software helps you and your Key Account Management team to quantify these goals, spot the gaps and improve them for better performance in the relationship mapping and profitability of Key Accounts. Also read our blog on Key Account Management VS Regular Account Management.