On-Demand Webinar: Unfiltered take on AI in Account Planning: Meet DemandFarm’s KAM AI Stakeholder Mapping for Key Accounts- How Digital Account Planning Tools can make an Impact?
Stakeholder management is gaining more and more traction in recent years with ever-evolving customer needs and the advent of technological solutions for integrating relationship-building channels and capabilities. The expectations from both external and internal stakeholders are getting increasingly higher and pushing the envelope of stakeholder relationship management. Fred Reichheld, the Bain Fellow and Management Consultant at Bain & Company says that “For every customer that complains, there are 26 who don’t say anything. And instead of vocalizing their frustrations to your team, they simply stop buying from you and cancel their subscription.” This might not seem like much in traditional low-value sales where sellers have a large number of customers to cater to but it makes a massive difference in your bottom line when you are dealing with high-value key accounts. In fact, a study by Bain & Company states that by improving customer retention merely by 5%, the company’s profits can go up by as much as 95%. When you look at these two facts in tandem, it becomes critical to focus on the key stakeholder relationships not only for their sake but for yours as well. Who are the Stakeholders? Stakeholders in its general sense is a very broad term that can go on to include any individual or group whose decisions can either affect you and your business or be affected by the decisions you take for your business. These could be your customers, employees, partners, consultants, investors, and so on. In the context of key account management, the stakeholders are the people within your key accounts that have a say in the buying process, also known as external stakeholders, and the people within your organization that are overlooking and ensuring the buying process is not only a success but as smooth as possible are the internal stakeholders or the relationship owners. The unfolding of the modern B2B sales process has given rise to buying groups that consist of a group of people that increasingly possess more product knowledge and technical awareness that not only require their expectations to be met but need to be wowed too. This places the onus on your key account management team to step up their game and craft and execute an account-centric stakeholder relationship building and management strategy. Gartner Research reports that your customer is no longer relying on your sales and support team for attaining the information about your product or solution, they are conducting independent research and relying on both offline and online channels to make up their mind. A report by UserIQ states that 87% of respondents from SaaS organizations that have a churn rate of less than 1% report that, they are fully or somewhat aligned on key customer relationship management. To keep the churn rate at its minimum, you will need to keep your communication with your key accounts authentic, targeted, and relevant to keep your account engaged which is made possible by data-backed stakeholder mapping. What is Customer Stakeholder Mapping? 1. Definition of the Stakeholders’ Goals Stakeholder Mapping begins with defining the interests and goals of the buying centers in your key accounts. Knowing what they need and want can not only enable you to assess if the account is a good fit but will also help you provide a tailored offering that the stakeholders won’t be able to refuse. The key account buyer not only demands convenience in terms of accessing the information they might need but also want the communication and the expert consulting services to be authentic, targeted, relevant, and timely. 2. Segmentation of Stakeholders The next step in the stakeholder mapping process is to segment the individuals or buying groups with respect to their roles, attitude, influence, and the amount of budget they control. This Relationship attribution is the key to stakeholder analysis as it provides data-backed insights into understanding your stakeholders’ interests and goals. When analyzed properly it could also help you comprehend who is on your side and who is against, what pressure they are under with respect to meeting certain goals, and what are the internal dynamics of the organization so that you can strategize accordingly. Your key account managers need to know how to strategically map these individuals within accounts with respect to their role, their stances, and the amount of budget they control. All this stakeholder intelligence needs to be actioned upon and monetized to expand and grow that account. 3. Mapping of Stakeholder Relationships The next step in stakeholder mapping is to dissect the relationships that your internal stakeholder team has with the external team and also the ones that the individuals within their team have within themselves. This would help you learn who can positively or negatively influence who and to what extent? We all know that the account-based selling scenario can get very complex with multiple buying centers and buying committees that are responsible for these buying jobs. Individuals within these committees not only hold the power to influence the buying decisions (for example, by just delaying the purchase process and preventing it from progressing to the next stage) but can also influence other decision-makers within the committee to rule in their favor. Your key account managers need to know how to strategically map these individuals within accounts with respect to their role, their stances, and the amount of budget they control. 4. Nurturing the Stakeholder Relationships Stakeholder management does not end once the deal is closed but is an ongoing process that lasts throughout the customers’ lifetime which needs to be extended as long as the mutual business interests are sustained. Developing these long-lasting relationships turns recent adopters into loyal long-term customers. Once you have the above attributes of your stakeholders mapped out, you will have clarity on what communication needs to be directed at whom and when. Maintaining an Engagement cadence with the key contacts is as important as the level of engagement. Maintaining an Engagement cadence with the key contacts is as important as the level of engagement. e.g
Key Account Retention – The 4 Key Dos
The better your Key Account Management, the better the chances of your Key Account Retention. Key Account Retention is a straight derivative of how you build your relationship with your Key Accounts. It is not a data or a numbers game, but a relationship-building regimen. It is something you work at, for the long haul. There are certain Key Dos for Key Account Retention. We spell them out so that you don’t leave anything hanging loose when it comes to keeping your Key Relationship under a tight fist, yet nurturing it in a way that blossoms and keeps growing into a richer and mutually rewarding business association. The 4 Key Dos Look at KAM as a joint venture A vendor-buyer relationship takes away the ‘joint’ and ‘trusted’ feeling from a relationship. It becomes more of an association that a relationship. But if you work with your Key Accounts for a joint win, make joint plans with clear metrics, you will succeed at super speed in winning your customer’s trust. Joint objectives, joint strategies, joint plans, and joint ownership is the best way to look at your Key Account Relationships. Measure it to grow it Every plan is only so good as it is measurable. Without tangible figures to showcase the success of your plan or otherwise, there is no way you are going to win the trust of your customer. It is best to clearly define the measurable at the beginning of a relationship and measure it periodically as decided. This sets the tone of expectation, ownership, transparency and, therefore, trust. Every plan, every step, every point of value-added, is only as good as its measure of success. Numbers are important, keep them looped into your plan and be open for discussion. Timely reporting is key As support to #2 above, it is important to keep the flow of communication open on both ends between you and the customer. This establishes and nurtures trust because relationships are about being open about everything, including setbacks. Timely and periodical reporting with facts and figures help to keep the strategy on track as also the relationship. Build one-on-one relationships Your relationship cannot happen with an organization. It is built with real people. It pays to understand the hierarchy, the straight lines, the dotted lines and everything in between. It helps to know people at all levels in your customer’s organization and especially those who are influential, seniors, your brand champions and even those who play the devil’s advocate. This way you can build an individual relationship with every person in the customer’s organization who you think is instrumental in building and growing your Key Account. There is no substitute for hard work when it comes to building a one-on-one relationship with your customer’s key people. Explore the complete guide to Cross-selling and Up-selling to identify unexplored opportunities for your business as well as your clients’ business and grow better in 2021.
