Tag: CRM

Key Account Management in CRM

Key Account Management in CRM If you’re like most businesses, your customer relationship management (CRM) system is the backbone of your sales process. It’s where you track your leads, deals, and customer data. But what happens when you start to scale your business and land bigger customers? Suddenly, your CRM doesn’t seem so robust. In fact, it might even start to feel like a hindrance. That’s because most CRMs are not built for Key Account Management (KAM). If you are managing large, complex accounts, you need a CRM that is up to the task. Key Account Management vs. CRM: Are you doing enough for your Key Accounts? At the outset, Key Account Management (KAM) is seen as an extension of CRM. The end goal is to sell a product or service to a customer. However, they fundamentally differ in their approach to achieving the goal. There are a few key reasons why KAM is often seen as a more effective strategy than merely relying on your CRM. First, KAM takes a more holistic view of the customer, seeing them as a partner in achieving mutual goals rather than simply a transactional relationship. Second, KAM focuses on building long-term relationships with key customers, rather than trying to maximize short-term gains. Finally, Key Account Managers are typically more highly trained and specialized, they are better equipped to deal with the complex needs of key accounts. What’s the difference between CRM & KAM?   CRM software/system   KAM software   Objective   Generating new leads for sales   Identifying and building long-term relationships with existing customers   Process   Sales-driven   Relationship-driven   Approach   Reactive   Proactive   Sales and marketing strategy   One-size-fits-all approach   Personalized strategies   Success measure   Based on the increase in top-line sales   Based on the gradual increase of ROI over time   Data Insights   Insights generated from historical data   Insights generated to anticipate future needs   Value proposition   Value creation for customer   Value co-creation with customers   Business Process and Approach Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solutions are sales-driven.. They are an important tool for business development to identify leads and nurture relationships throughout the sales funnel. All CRM solutions are devised around AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. It is a reactive process that is based on customer interactions across the sales funnel touchpoints. Whereas, Key Account Management solutions are relationship-driven. KAM helps an organization cultivate, nurture, and deepen its relationship with key accounts in the business. This helps to gain deeper insights into the customer’s domain, conditions, and hurdles, which helps source the unique assets that are needed. KAM is a proactive approach involving account management plans based on the future needs of the customer. A KAM strategy is typically more focused on large accounts or customers that have the potential to bring in a significant amount of revenue. On the contrary, a CRM strategy is more focused on maintaining and growing relationships with all customers, regardless of their size or potential revenue. The sales team at a company that uses KAM will be much more focused on developing a deep understanding of their key accounts and customizing their sales pitch and approach to each one. The marketing team, on the other hand, will be more focused on creating and managing customer relationships across a wide variety of channels. Hope is not a Strategy! Key Account Management is focused on building relationships with key customers and understanding their needs. CRM is focused on managing customer data and interactions. While a CRM is designed primarily for sales, key account management forces you to approach your data in a new way. KAM forces sales and marketing teams to unite around a common goal: building deep relationships with high-value accounts. This collaboration fosters a more comprehensive view of your customers that extends beyond just the sales team. Strength in Unity A key account should not be assigned to one employee. The Key Account Management strategy often requires a more consultative and collaborative approach, as account managers work closely with their customers to understand their needs and develop custom solutions. This means that an account is not centralized, but rather distributed among various employees. This may seem counterintuitive to most companies, which have a sales rep assigned to all their customers. A KAM solution must facilitate collaboration across various teams (sales, marketing, tech, etc.).   Role of Management CRM solutions are geared toward sales reps and marketers. The process requires multiple levels of approval from decision-makers. The entire process can be automated to specify each approval step, share files, and deliver campaigns faster. On the other hand, Key Accounts are a top priority for CEOs and CSOs. Their involvement in Key Accounts is imperative at all levels, strategic, operational, and relational. They play a central role in defining key accounts, identifying customers, and allocating appropriate resources to their key accounts. Reporting and Insights There are some key differences between analytics in CRM and Key Account Management. In CRM, analytics is focused on understanding customer behavior and trends and using that information to improve customer experiences and how to best interact with them. KAM analytics is focused on understanding the key drivers of customer profitability and growth. KAM analytics is much more strategic, while CRM analytics is more operational. Both CRM and KAM are important for businesses, but they require different approaches to analytics. While your CRM software is great for centralizing your client data, it cannot help you with KAM functions or provide insight into the relationship. To prepare for success, you need a tool that seamlessly integrates with your workflows and empowers everyone involved in the sales process. With KAM software, you don’t just track how far you have come based on data from previous months. Historical data does not help drive new sales. However, understanding your current strategic path and how far you’ve gotten on it helps you look ahead and plan your opportunities, investments, and operations better. Process and Technology 

Moving beyond CRM: Why Key Accounts need a dedicated Account Management platform

Driving and sustaining growth is very different from achieving a goal According to the results of multiple surveys, the biggest priority of a CEO is to achieve growth, Yet, only a small quantity of corporate leaders succeed in driving and sustaining growth because the focus is not exactly on achieving growth, but acquiring customers – at least in the B2C world.  For B2B software solution vendors, however, the choice is different. They can focus on acquiring new customers, but it is the existing partnerships that enable them to do so. The focus on acquiring new customers might be exciting in the beginning, but statistics show that the action of onboarding new customers is five times costlier than keeping an existing one, as the odds of a successful sale are between five and 20 percent. Nurturing existing customers requires a different kind of work, where team members ensure their customers see the solutions provider as one and they think of one as their trusted advisor to help them meet their desired outcomes. As existing customers already know the team and have experienced the working of other solutions, the probability of a successful sale rises to 60 – 70 percent. The Survey also reveals how existing customers are twice as likely to try new products from their service provider, and their spends are 31 percent more than new acquisitions. The numbers make it clear that focusing on existing accounts and allotting resources to their emerging needs leads to success, yet organizations tend to prioritize acquiring new users above expanding the footprint of existing customers. A survey by Alpine Investors found that nearly 70% of revenue-oriented activities were prioritised on new customer acquisition, and only the remaining 30% were focused on engaging existing customers to generate more revenue. The findings were backed by the Miller Heiman CSO Insights Report, which found that 57.3% of global sales leaders surveyed prioritised capturing new accounts, even when the revenue from new customers accounted for only 29.9% of the revenue.  The signs of the tide turning are evident too in these surveys, as the next item in the order of priority for sales leaders is to increase penetration into existing accounts. These accounts account for 70.1% of total revenue, which marks an increase over the previous years’ numbers. No matter how exciting winning new accounts is, the focus on the bottom line makes organizations rely more on the growth of existing relationships. This growth comes from expanding the scope of existing accounts, while improving activities that ensure account retention. The CSO survey showed this to be an important roadblock too, with only one-third of the leaders (34.6%) admitting their confidence in the abilities of their organization to expand existing accounts.  Making the most of key accounts: where organizations falter The elements of account management that drive successful strategies have changed a lot over the last few decades, but nothing compared to the changes that have happened since 2020. The new normal requires organizations to majorly redesign their Account Management processes.  Having a dynamic account management and sales process is the biggest driver of success to achieve sales goals, as they allow teams to adapt to new conditions quickly. This gives them a concrete base to work on, and cater to discerning buyers, disruptive technologies, changes in the market, buyer need changes, features launched by competition, and more. A constant revision of account plans helps vendor organizations to keep their customers happy in the long-term.  But establishing a dynamic account management process is not feasible for all clients – and establishing a key account practice becomes essential. Like account managers, key account personnel also take care of the needs of the clients, but in a proactive way rather than the reactive nature of current account management (the  number of accounts that an account manager handles makes it almost impossible for them to be proactive, to be fair). They tackle challenges before they become serious issues, observe relevant data and tweak the key account plan accordingly to meet upcoming needs, and keep their organization ready for changes. Only 28.9% of SaaS vendor organizations report being anywhere close to that level of process maturity, and they are qualified by their revenue goal achievement and customer stickiness. They also enable their key account managers (KAMs) with relevant tools that allow them to create and maintain dynamic processes for every key account, and take the partnership forward from a solutions provider to a trusted advisor. Source: Gartner Understanding the limitations of CRM Customer Relationship management (CRM) software are the backbone of any organization dabbling in sales in any capacity, and their importance in software B2B sales is immeasurable. Rightfully so, as they simplify sales opportunity and customer acquisition by capturing key metrics. They accurately pinpoint leads in the sales pipeline so that sales teams can take relevant steps to convert them into customers. Their strong focus is what makes them indispensable, and it is the same factor that rules them out from enhancing existing partnerships. As typical sales cycles are a few months long (at most, a couple of quarters) CRM tools are not equipped to plan long-term strategies, which is the need when it comes to existing clients. They don’t provide provisions to track customer goals, history, experiences, and a whole lot of other factors. Sales teams and key account managers should be able to accurately track and monitor changing goals and expectations, to get the customer to understand that the vendor organization is genuinely interested in providing them with solutions for the issues they’re facing. Download this guide to learn how to move beyond your CRM and build a successful Key Account Management process in 9 steps! Driving success with Key Account Management Software Key Account Management tools are geared to build solid relationships with existing customers. They help account managers save and analyze precise information about their key accounts. Watch Now: The Changing Role of Technology in Key Account Management  The volume of the data, structured by

3 Ways John used Salesforce Partner DemandFarm to Grow his Key Accounts

If you are managing Strategic Accounts using Salesforce within any sales organization, this one is for you! Salesforce partner DemandFarm’s data-driven and scalable practices helps you increase revenue from your key accounts. Sales teams now get support in terms of insights, best practices, and timely nudges. This has helped them experience a boost of at least 20% in their productivity with focus on the key aspects of account growth. If you are highly reliant on sales data being in spreadsheets and presentations, unable to coordinate between global teams, and are missing trends in the B2B buying processes, then the Account Planner is your go-to fix. DemandFarm’s Account Planner can help you: Enhance digital account management practices Get an instant, real-time view of your progress Use contextual insights to rapidly grow your accounts Download this E-book to learn how DemandFarm can enable you with Actionable Sales Insights to transform your digital selling today!

Build Strategic Account Plans in Salesforce with DemandFarm

What is Strategic Account Planning in Salesforce? Strategic accounts are the lifeline of every organization which brings substantial profit through repeat business for several years. Strategic account planning is the process of building robust plans to offer proactive management for these strategic accounts to help them in achieving business goals. In this blog, you will also understand the importance of Account Planning within your Salesforce CRM. 56.5% of Organizations don’t take advantage of account planning tools to grow their strategic accounts. Though Account planning takes much effort and time, organizations can benefit from addressing the level of complexity and competition which is increasingly common in sales today. Above all, a good key account planning strategy will invariably lead to great account plans for all strategic accounts. Hence, Effective key account management must be an ongoing process and not just a one-year event which can reduce the complexity and save time. Key Benefits of Strategic Account Planning 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%) Case Study: Healthcare Industry Company Boosts Strategic Account Revenue by 30% Account Planning in Salesforce ‘Account Planning is more strategic than tactical’ Over the decades the account planning process has become stale and ineffective. There are two primary reasons Firstly, account planning methodologies have become too complex and theoretical. Most importantly, the account planning templates thrust down to the account managers are just a checkbox item filled once before the year and forgotten. It’s not that Account Planning is only tactical. Perhaps it’s more strategic now. Moreover, the strategy is in thinking of a better solution for the customer that they haven’t thought about. Earlier the strategy was supplying to the customer’s defined strategy. So how do we solve this? You can solve this by enabling Account planning in Salesforce CRM. Salesforce is one of the most popular customer relationship management tools in the world. It helps the sales team to automate their daily tasks and provides them with valuable insights into customers. Sales Account Planning is one of the most important sales tasks that is mostly executed outside of CRM. The complexity increases, because there are a lot of third-party integrations necessary. To optimize this, the sales team must be empowered with key account management software to execute account planning inside the CRM.   What is the Process of Account Planning in Salesforce? The components of the strategic account planning process could be: There is a lot of user-created data that already exist in Salesforce – Contacts, Opportunities … Salesforce has plenty of tools to pull intelligence around accounts, contacts from social networks, and the internet. Also pull in data from other relevant systems – outlook/google calendar, CPQ, etc. These sources already have built connectors to Salesforce. That provides account teams with a deeper understanding of their account – landscape, whitespaces, and financials. Configure simpler Salesforce Account Planning templates Check out DemandFarm’s Key Account Management & Salesforce Native Account Planning Software on Salesforce Appexchange What does Salesforce Account Planning look like? Account teams have visual maps of their accounts in terms of landscape (products versus buying centers), a Salesforce Org chart with a heat map, and financials including existing deals, active opportunities, and forecasts. Armed with this data and insights build account plans easily inside Salesforce. You can track and review your accounts live with Salesforce account planning. Collaborate with all stakeholders across your organization to drive growth. 6 Reasons why you should opt for 100% native Salesforce app for your account planning: Simpler to use: 100% Native Salesforce Apps are always simpler to use leading to quick training & onboarding cycle & high adoption rates Real-time analysis: All of your data is updated in real-time and is always 100% accurate and 100% up-to-date Secure: Native apps comply to all the organizational security settings established within your Salesforce Data Protection: No security risk since data never goes outside your Salesforce CRM Lightning Fast: 100% native app also means that your reports will run faster and save you time Skip Sync Issues:  No syncing issues like that can make you lose valuable data or create inconsistencies While making account plans in Salesforce always ask for account management tools that are 100% native to Salesforce. Essential Features of Account Planning Software within Salesforce 1. Data Analysis and Tracking Keeping track of your Sales Account Plan is the key to effective account planning. A good Key Account Management software will allow you to create plans with milestones and timelines. It should also help you check your progress against your goals and provide you with timely alerts so that you can make proactive changes. A visual pipeline with the different deal stages and with each stage divided into tasks is ideal. It’s also important to have industry analysis tools that keep you informed on industry trends and market forces. Similarly, customer relationship analysis is a must-have in any strategic account planning template software as it’s the key to understanding the customer. Customer strategy maps (to assess your customer’s short-term and long-term strategy), stakeholder assessments, and competitor assessments are all essential tracking tools that should be a part of your KAM software. 2. Visualization to Represent Key Analyses Given the variety and complexity of stakeholders that need to be tracked and analyzed, information overload is a real possibility. Given that the human brain is much more receptive to visual data, your strategic account software should enable the visual representation of complex data. This will help managers make faster strategic decisions. A bird’s eye view of strategic account management helps to identify opportunities and quickly present value-added solutions to the client. 3. Data Consolidation Without strategic account software, most of your data will likely be all over the place in different formats, from Word docs to PPTs to spreadsheets. It’s important to have consolidated on one platform so that everyone can access data in a consistent format and be

Alleviating Key Account Management pain with Salesforce

Alleviating Key Account Management pain with Salesforce How do you feel this time of the year with Yuletide and the New Year’s around the corner? “Mixed emotions.” If you are a Key Account Manager, I can perhaps understand your answer. It isn’t so much about the pressure of time than the complexity of doing key account management in perfect detail. DemandFarm, in its many posts, has dealt with the issue of complexity in key account management. Here is a short recap. The complexity stems from two broad factors: Strategic – Key account managers confront the tough job of thinking clearly and unambiguously on two business fronts. One, about the client’s business challenges or growth opportunities. Two, understanding one’s product and service offerings, to offer a credible solution to the client. Operational – On top of the strategic ambiguity, there is a long list of operational hassles account managers have to deal with. Account plans siloed across systems – many powerpoints, word documents, meeting minutes and emails. Ineffective activity management thanks to multiple excel sessions which becomes unwieldy quickly. Managing meetings with stakeholders both internal and external. Plus the added trouble of managing CRM applications across many devices. To address the above challenges and the complexity associated with it, businesses the world overturned to CRM applications, particularly Salesforce. For businesses, it was to instill a new way of working on Leads, Contacts, and Accounts. Well, almost !!! Everybody loves Salesforce The world’s favorite CRM should not sound like an exaggeration when it comes to Salesforce. “Salesforce is to businesses what the iPhone is to consumers,” said someone. This statement may sound too casual, but reflects the inherent power of the Salesforce.com CRM system. The latest Salesforce study from Bluewolf – an IBM global Salesforce consulting agency – is a strong testimony to the power of this CRM system. 86% of the surveyed 1800 Salesforce customers believe they can use Salesforce to drive innovation in their business. The survey goes on to highlight that 83% of the IT function believe the same. It is indeed noteworthy that Salesforce has been able to get vehement buy-in from one of the most challenging user segments, in this change management exercise. Such is the power of Salesforce. Salesforce faces challenges, nevertheless. The single biggest risk to a Salesforce implementation remains – Change Management. Because it is a new way of doing sales, business development, customer experience. Yes, it is about changing the culture, capturing data, maintaining activity logs, getting rid of spreadsheets, putting rigor into doing and documenting sales meetings. Yes, it is not easy. Organizations and teams who look beyond the ease, find the rewards. Salesforce Key Account Management Fundamentally, Salesforce isn’t built for Key Account Management. It is built for opportunity management. It keeps sales teams focused on what needs to be achieved. It does by providing them with a ready-to-access dashboard that documents every day how sales teams are going about their planned goals. Given the structural difference in how Salesforce is built, it does not ‘naturally’ address the necessities of key account management. Account management and sales leaders address this gap, through Salesforce customization requests and applications from the Salesforce App Exchange. A good bunch also learns to live with the inherent account management limitations of Salesforce. In most cases, DemandFarm finds that account management is done outside of Salesforce. Dgt27, a Salesforce consultant in NYC, assists businesses in doing account planning. These account plans reside in distributed documents – PowerPoint, Excel, notes, and Word documents. We are yet to fully understand why? If you are an account management professional and see this happen in your organization, I request you to document your perspective in the comments section. So how do strategic account management teams address limitations with Salesforce? 1) Strategic One – View of Key Accounts ‍This is a fundamental issue faced by many strategic account managers. The Salesforce system’s inability to present a single view of the overall account plan. Not all the reasons are directly related to Salesforce. Scattered & Siloed Data – During the planning process, account plans tend to get distributed. Multiple versions of the same file tend to exist, creating confusion and wasting precious key account manager time. Non-standard approach – Many variations exist in account plans thanks to the lack of a standard approach in capturing data and checking its quality. Account Planning outside Salesforce – It is ironical but true. All accounts data and information are within Salesforce, but all the planning actions happen outside of it. In many cases, the carefully drafted plans also remain outside of salesforce, thus unable to impact the accounts to the maximum. KAMs lack a central view of account plans. This compromises insights. Thus, resulting in improper forecasting and inefficient allocation of resources for maximum impact. Account structuring also takes a knock because of this issue causing ineffective account management initiatives. 2) Usability ‍User experience is an important driver to usage and adoption. A lack of ease of use is a deal-killer. It is not an issue that is discussed too often in the context of key account management. It is not difficult to figure out why this is important. Just look around. Every human on the earth is using cutting-edge web and mobile apps on the latest smartphones. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon shopping, LinkedIn and the list is endless. So, how would their expectations be about using digital applications? As good as it gets, right? Usability of Salesforce account planning is not cutting-edge, yet. Salesforce Lightning has been a welcome surprise, but there is more ground to be covered. The platform nature of Salesforce also contributes to ‘wanting’ usability. IT Teams and CIOs love Salesforce since its ‘platform’ nature allows them to make, break, make, break and remake. This customization flexibility comes at the cost of UI and UX, not something that IT teams prioritize during their development stages. The result is usually a compromise for the user. In this case, the key account managers. 3)