Strategic Account Map: Account Mapping Process for Strategic Account Management
Buying decisions in companies are getting increasingly complicated. Recently, Gartner has reported that “the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves 6 to 10 decision makers.” What involved a one-person decision some years ago, now has multiple decision-makers or stakeholders. In addition, there are different types of such decision-makers. Add to this the number of key accounts you have to manage and keep track of, and suddenly you’re overwhelmed! Patricia Fripp, author and presentation skills authority says, “Technology doesn’t run an enterprise; relationships do!” So, while you may have CRM systems in place to track all your data, the biggest drawback is just that – a CRM system only tracks data! How do you record usable information on the key decision makers, their preferred communication styles, the key account’s major pain points, and all other intel you gather over time? Enter – Strategic Account Mapping! What is Strategic Account Mapping? In its simplest form, a strategic account map is a visual representation of key contacts, decision makers and relationship dynamics within a key account’s organization. Looking for an easy way to identify key accounts? Use this cheat sheet! Why go through the trouble of this exercise? Because relationships matter. And with business relationships, you want to maintain a relationship with the organization as much as you want to maintain a relationship with a key person or a strategic decision maker. In the words of American billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban – “Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.” The fact is that people leave, but your relationship with the key account doesn’t have to end there. This means it’s important to have several points of contact within the organization and keep track of all the key information you need to keep your most important customers happy. Thereby increasing sales and revenue! Within a key account’s organization, you may need different points of contact for different activities. There could be one point of contact that’s essential for maintaining the relationship, another may be essential on account of their decision-making authority, and you could need others to confirm important details or pitch ideas to. All these are important for different reasons. Just identifying whom to reach out to isn’t enough. To optimize time and increase efficiency, it’s best to know who the decision-makers are. In this way, you can start developing those all-important business relationships. And cultivate them in a way that you can at some point go beyond the people and be strongly linked with the organization. With all this as background, you can see why this cannot be a one-time project. Strategic account mapping is, in fact, just the beginning of the business relationship. It is the starting point of the map that gets bigger, with more details and more layers. It should be a continuous building process to which details keep being added. How do you add details? When a new point of contact is established. This could be because the original point of contact is separating from the organization or has been transferred or promoted. It could also be on account of the contact being on long leave or taking a hiatus. When another department in your organization has collected data through surveys or interviews. By browsing the key account’s social profiles, periodically checking their websites for new appointments, new launches etc. and scanning the news for announcements about them. Before or during any major projects undertaken, renewal of service contracts or similar activities where new information or details may be discussed. Strategic account planning is just good business practice. When it is consciously and actively made a focus, it helps you build better and stronger connections with your key accounts. Since details are constantly tracked and updated, a strategic account map can be the source of reference for every new interaction. It helps to avoid contacting the same person over and over again, making others feel side-lined. Knowing exactly whom to reach out to begin a new conversation makes your communication more targeted and relevant. You, therefore, appear current and better-informed, earning major credit for your organization! Importance of Strategic Account Mapping for Key Account Management Even today, the 80:20 rule applied to business holds true. That is, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients. Combining this principle with the knowledge that client retention is less expensive than client acquisition, key account management becomes vitally important. And it all starts with strategic account mapping. Strategic account mapping is the first step of Key Account Management. It should begin with the first interaction with the key account and continue to be built and reviewed with every deal. Strategic account maps are relevant and important to every department that has a connection with your key account. Your sales teams are, of course, the biggest beneficiaries, but strategic account mapping can be equally invaluable to marketers and customer service representatives among others. Top 5 Benefits of Strategic Account Mapping Some of the major benefits of Strategic Account Mapping for Key Account Management are: 1. Client retention Despite all the data on customer retention v/s customer acquisition, only 18% of companies focus on customer retention. This offers an excellent opportunity! Since the major objective of a strategic account plan is to map the important and influential players of key accounts, this information can then be used to communicate and deal with them effectively. In-depth and current information about pain points, priorities and influencers can make a big difference in your dealings with key accounts. With this information, your teams are able to offer services and solutions that are pertinent and appropriate and that match the key accounts’ requirements, thus showcasing your knowledge and interest in them. 2. Long-term relationships Your relationship with a key account may begin with one point of contact or a friendly face that has helped you get a foothold. But to manage
Strategic Account Planning Template: How to Create Account Plan Templates for Account Managers
It’s universally accepted that getting new customers in the door is a more expensive exercise than retaining existing ones. When customer retention can directly be linked to profitability, doesn’t it make business sense to increase customer retention? A report from Bain & Company suggests that a 5% increase in customer retention results in a 25% increase in profit for companies in the financial sector. While these statistics may change for different companies and across sectors, what’s important to focus on is the impact of retaining your customers. The statistics here show a direct link between increased revenue and existing customers. Based on the report, existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers. But to retain your existing customers, you will need to spend time and effort to get to know them, understanding what measures you need to take and what resources you need to allocate. Both strategic account management and strategic account planning, are important processes geared towards developing better relationships and retaining your customers. Strategic Account Management v/s Strategic Account Planning Though the two are sometimes confused, strategic account planning is the next, and more focused step after strategic account management. Strategic account management is practiced at a macro level. It takes into consideration all key accounts and then focuses on those that should be given more attention and higher priority. It is an important process because it involves the utilization of limited resources available. Strategic account planning, on the other hand, is practiced at a micro level. It examines relationships with specific existing accounts. This process is fluid because the company-client relationship keeps evolving and changing and the plan must accordingly shift to accommodate those changes. This approach takes into account a holistic picture i.e., it analyzes data and information gathered from customers, competitors, partners, collaborators and the industry. It is thus able to address concerns and challenges and offer meaningful solutions to customers. A strategic account plan is as significant to the company as it is to the customer. Benefits of Strategic Account Planning to the Company Among the many benefits of strategic account planning to sales and account management professionals are: 1. More Efficient Closing Closing is, to sales what oxygen is, to breathing. And closing becomes more effective when sales professionals have a better understanding of what the customer needs, what motivates the buying decision or what objections they need to overcome to close the sale. With a strong strategic account planning process in place, sales professionals are better equipped with the information they need to do their jobs effectively. Since this is an evolving process the information available is also updated and current. 2. Prioritize Key Relationships The focus in strategic account planning is on customers already in the system. The strategy is to prioritize important accounts and maintain those relationships. By combining hard data with the knowledge o customers’ goals and priorities, sales professionals are better able to focus on those accounts that will yield profitable results. They are also able to identify gaps with more ease and offer products and solutions at the right time and in the most appealing manner. 3. Research Strategic account planning, especially with the help of a strategic account plan template provides an opportunity to gather and organize information in a structured manner. Through research and a proper study of the various parameters, it encourages better learning of the key accounts. Gaps are easier to identify and can be matched with opportunities. Objections can be identified and successfully addressed. Valuable solutions can be offered – customized to needs. This process helps sales professionals gain a better understanding of customers’ needs, objectives and indicators of success. It also helps them offer relevant solutions at the right time and in the right manner to add value to the customers’ needs. Benefits of Strategic Account Planning to Customers The process of strategic planning wouldn’t be as effective without the customers benefitting from it too. Here are some ways strategic account planning adds value to important customers: 1. Customized Solutions The main objective of strategic account planning is to gain a better understanding of key accounts. This information, if used effectively, can be used to present customized solutions to customers. Sales representatives can proactively offer solutions relevant to the customers’ needs and business objectives. 2. Enhanced Relationships It’s easier to maintain and enhance existing relationships than build new ones. This also works well for customers. For the customer, building and maintaining a relationship means familiarity with the people, products and processes of the company. It could mean that requests are attended to more quickly, orders are processed quicker and transactions are generally smoother. Any issues that may crop up will be addressed and handled efficiently. 3. Increased Satisfaction Prioritizing and developing relationships with customers means that the company is focused on the immediate needs of the customer – which builds customer satisfaction. Identifying gaps and offering the appropriate solution at the right time increases this customer satisfaction. Especially if the solution is customized and tailored for the customer. Now, that the need for a strategic account plan has been established, let’s look at how best this can be implemented in your organization. The best and easiest way to start is to develop an account plan template. Download Now: 9 Steps to Build a Rock-Solid Key Account Management Process Why do Strategic Account Managers need an Account Template? There are several reasons why a strategic account plan template is relevant and important. An account template: 1. Saves Time Account Managers are busy. They are most focused on meeting budgets, closing sales, and achieving revenue goals. Putting together reports on key accounts – no matter how promising they appear – is not something that’s high on their priority lists. Having an account template doesn’t negate the need to actually put some work into filling it. It does, however, help with structured research and organizing the details required. It also makes it easier to input, refer to and update the information as needed. 2. Increases Consistency Through research, it has been estimated that an average adult makes about
Fireside Chat: Driving Strategic Account Growth With Digital Account Planning
DemandFarm is challenging global market leaders with its unique Digital Account Planning solution. Watch Milind Katti and Abhijit Gangoli live as they share with Express Computer, The Indian Express Group, their perspectives on Driving Strategic Account growth with Digital Account Planning.
Sales Effectiveness In Strategic Account Management
Lego, the favorite toy brand for children and one of the most nostalgic ones for adults, had a bit of a downturn in the early 2000s. Back in the 1990s, Lego had begun innovating and expanding its product lines. What could go wrong with that? The brand new, action figure-like toys stood apart from the original brickwork that Lego had always been associated with. This shift worked terribly with customers, i.e., kids, who just wanted good old Lego bricks back. Lego almost went bankrupt in the year 2003, as Wharton’s knowledge base reports. Lego then had a change of systems. They first brought in a new CEO, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, in 2004. His approach was to ask the kids what they want. Through extensive market research and efforts, he realized that they simply wanted to BUILD. They invested in a major, Cannes Lions-winning award campaign called ‘Imagine’ in 2006 and sustained it. They got back to the drawing board and recreated what they used to be best at. And they came back better. Fortune shares that back in 2015, Lego became the second biggest toy company in the world. Lego could have simply stopped the production of pre-built toys and gone back to what they were. But they decided to start things afresh by picking on each detail from product to sales to marketing and advertising. This is similar to how sales effectiveness works. It doesn’t allow you to concentrate on a categorical problem. It forces you to look at entire processes and overhaul what’s needed to not just fix things, but make them better and effective. What is sales effectiveness? Sales effectiveness doesn’t have a very rigid definition, as you’d gather from asking multiple sales professionals. Let us look at the most concrete and sensible understanding of the term, after weeding out misconceptions. Sales effectiveness (over some time) = Average output per salesperson (based on company strategy) Where, Output = profit/ revenue/ new product line sales. Further variables in this formula include what sales effectiveness refers to. It could be any of the following: Effectiveness at each stage of the process Effectiveness per territory, product, etc. Individual effectiveness against the average Effectiveness based on tenure Impact of investments on the effectiveness Further, the company strategy element here is crucial. Imagine your company is planning to push a new product line to slowly replace an older one. If your reps are very effective at selling the older line but not the newer ones, this effectiveness is futile. Key Elements of Sales Effectiveness in Strategic Account Management There is a lot of ambiguity surrounding sales effectiveness. Many confuse it with sales productivity and sales efficiency. To put some structure to the definition, you should take note of the following elements of sales effectiveness. Sales process: Firstly, you need to introspect and check if you have a real sales process. If not, you need to put one in place right away. If you do, you need to ensure that it exists not just for you and that everyone is aware of it. Next, ask yourself if it aligns with your target group’s purchase cycle. When you’ve ensured that all of these factors are aligned, check the effectiveness of your process. Opportunity management: How you manage your sales opportunities has certainly got a lot to do with sales effectiveness. This is also where account managers come in for strengthening wins. You need to have a clear sales pipeline with defined stages for appropriate opportunity management. Check if there are objective criteria attached to each stage. Not just this, but address the percentage of dormant deals in the pipeline. This is where effectiveness and efficiency both matter a lot. Another important factor is the accuracy of your sales forecasts. Sales enablement: Sales enablement is enabling your sales team to close deals with the help of resources they need such as content, tools, knowledge, etc. Sales enablement strategy is a function of both marketing and sales departments. Essentially, marketing does the research and studying and provides enabling material, while sales pass on critical information required for customers to make purchase decisions. Sales efficiency: Sales efficiency is largely a measure of the speed of sales operations. It is usually calculated for a quarter. Sales efficiency = Gross revenue of a sales team/ Costs incurred by the team Where, Costs incurred = salaries, perks, office space, training expenses, etc. Sales efficiency checks are used to uncover systemic issues in your sales processes. For example, is your sales cycle reasonable and feasible to the transaction size? How many meetings or calls does it take for a win? Introspect and nitpick within your sales process. Sales efficiency is all about taking a hard, critical look at your sales efforts and finding a starting point for improvements. Sales performance: Sales performance is the measure of your sales team’s efforts for meeting strategic sales goals. It is a checker for your sales team’s track towards reaching sales goals. There are a lot of quantitative metrics involved in studying sales performance. For example, what percentage of your sales reps achieve their assigned targets? How productive are your top 20%? There are revenue-generated, pipeline-generated, and opportunity-led KPIs for measuring sales performance. Your sales process, sales enablement efforts, and sales efficiency investments, all contribute to sales performance. For enhancing performance, keep highlighting areas of improvement, focus first on quality prospects, and make a tight yearly sales plan, among other measures. Sales skills: There can be a very long list of customer-facing and non-customer-facing sales skills prescribed for improving sales effectiveness. Customer-facing skills include prospecting, communication, discovery, business acumen, storytelling, active listening, presentation, and negotiation. On the other hand, non-customer-facing skills include technology, buyer research, time management, planning, judgment, and collaboration. Even though these are a lot of factors, focusing on each one can help you extract maximum effectiveness out of your sales reps! How Sales Intelligence impacts Sales Effectiveness in Strategic Account Management Sales intelligence is the need of the hour in a
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
Understanding SAM (Strategic Account Management) Better
SAM, as Strategic Account Management is often called, is very often misunderstood to an extent that it becomes important for us to talk about it every now and then. Such is the criticality of this concept called SAM that we cannot afford to ignore it. The strategic account management process is about building value-driven relationships with your key customers. It is a synonym of Key Account Management. The strategic account manager’s role is to identify those key customers that generate maximum revenue and profitability as compared to other regular accounts. With DemandFarm’s Account Planning Software, account managers can reduce the time and effort involved in the entire process but we’ll get to it later. These managers act as a bridge between the company and stakeholders at the customer side. The idea is to increase customer lifecycle value by starting small like with a free trial or test project, adding value and building trust. So here we are, with SAM again. Let’s go busting certain myths about SAM, one by one. The first thing we need to know about SAM is that it is not just an elite organization’s hobby or interest or vanity for that matter. Most people and most salespeople think and believe that SAM is only for the top-notch, revenue earning monstrous sized conglomerates. Which is not the case. It is not a concept or a practice reserved for the elite few, it is for everyone, every organization that has certain important accounts, we call as Strategic Accounts. SAM is not defined by the size of the organization, big or small customer, or its strength of people. It is defined by the criticality of the Account, the value of that account in the organization’s portfolio. The potential of that Account is the most important determinant. SAM is part of the larger business strategy and not a selling practice. This part needs to be weighed in a proper light. SAM is a strategy; it belongs to Account Management and not sales. It has a different methodology to it; there is more of prospect nurturing to SAM than the classic way ‘selling’ happens. There is a different team that looks aft SAM. This team needs to be hired differently, trained differently and evaluated in a different manner. SAM is not too expensive, time-consuming or complicated. It is simply working on a different plane than the Sales plane. It is more about co-creation, collaboration, and value creation – with the customer and for the customer. The focus of SAM is on winning through relationship building, lead nurturing and becoming a true partner, the customer’s trusted advisor. As against sales, which is more transactional in nature. SAM works on addressing the looming danger that every organization faces, of its products becoming commodities. SAM helps in creating key differentiators in value to the customer and hence leads to better Key Account Management. And better Key Account Management leads to revenue growth. Just because SAM is not easily understood, organizations typically shoo it away not knowing that they are shooing away a huge opportunity in creating value for their own organizations as well. But all hope is not lost. To truly understand what SAM is, we urge you to look at SAMA. SAMA (Strategic Account Management Association) is a non-profit, 8,000-member organization that can help your company determine whether SAM is the right direction, and help you in your efforts to implement and maintain a successful SAM initiative. SAMA’s mission is to “establish the strategic, key, and global account management as a separate profession, career path, and proven corporate strategy for growth.” Strategic Account Management Association is a knowledge exchange base, an extensive network of experts and practitioners focused solely on the area of strategic account management. Before you shrug SAM away, do visit SAMA (http://www.strategicaccounts.org/)
Insight Selling – The Key to Good Strategic Account Management
Are you leveraging insight selling for strategic account management? The strategic account management process is about building value-driven relationships with your key customers. It is a synonym of Key Account Management. The strategic account manager’s role is to identify those key customers that generate maximum revenue and profitability as compared to other regular accounts. These managers act as a bridge between the company and stakeholders on the customer side. The idea is to increase customer lifecycle value by starting small with a free trial or test project, adding value, and building trust. Insight selling may come across as a complex term but broken down into digestible shots is a simple term to absorb and practice. Insights that the seller offers the buyer during the entire buying journey, from the first call he makes to the email he writes, helps the buyers in their decision. The 3 Stages of Insight Selling for Strategic Account Management 1. Collaborate Collaborate with the buyer in discussions about his current situation. See if you can spot a problem or an opportunity. See if your buyer is trying to mitigate ‘pain’ or increase ‘pleasure’. Once you identify this part, collaborate with him in discussions on ideas of how to solve his problem or get a solution to his situation. The buyer needs a partner, a friend who thinks out of the box, who is not part of his team, yet is ready and willing to partner with him in ideas without getting into bean crunching. The buyer needs to see that the sales rep is proactive and willing to take things further in the long term. Once he sees that the sales rep is willing, the buyer begins to develop a liking towards the sales rep, which is the key step in building trust. 2. Persuade The moment sellers start looking at buyers as human beings like everyone around us is, they stop thinking of them as devils, who are there to pick a thorn in everything sellers have to say. In selling, it is called ‘stepping into the shoes of the buyer’ or ‘empathetic listening’. Whatever you label it, as sales reps we need to think from the buyer’s point of view. Some tips: What is the buyer looking for? Maximizing his ROI. Give him the numbers, the statistics, and case studies he needs to be convinced about a good ROI. Help him calculate, even. No harm! Be an expert not just on the product you are selling, but the pros and cons of your product and also the competitors’. More than that, make sure you know the numbers game like the back of your hand. Because the buyer first wants to know whether going with you is a rationally and financially correct decision. Convince the buyer that he is choosing a minimum risk, safe position, when he decides to go with you. Buyers, like you and me, are a frightening lot. Inwardly. They don’t show it. But remember, it is always lonely at the top; and making the right decision about something, which costs a lot of money may be a frightful moment for your buyer. Help him by providing case studies to show that when he goes with you, he is choosing a minimum risk position. Do not hesitate to focus on the risks involved with other choices, in case, he chooses those. A buyer will want your insights into his decision. You have already won him over by collaborating on the journey so far; now he wants you to help him take the final call. You are in a position of power but also in a position of immense responsibility. You have to talk about the risks involved clearly with his choice, but you also need to help him mitigate those risks. This will help the buyer partner with you. 3. Co-create Co-create with the buyer. Make the buyer feel that you are helping him make the right choice. If you haven’t already learned your lesson the hard way, the buyer dislikes it when the sellers try to hard sell or push their way down his throat. He is more inclined to consider buying from you if you make him feel that you are helping HIM make the right choice, and not pushing your choice on him. A key human emotion is that every person needs to reinforce the feeling to himself that he has taken the right decision. Help your buyer do that. Insightful and intuitive selling helps in building long-lasting, trusted relationships between the seller and buyer and goes a long way in building your Strategic Accounts, and also helps in better Key Account Management. If you liked our blog, you can also read about the 6 strategies of Cross-Selling. You can also explore our blog on cross-selling and up-selling in which we’ve elaborated how it can be used to grow business in 2021.
Why Strategic Account Management Needs More Work than Normal Account Management
The strategic account management process is about building value-driven relationships with your key customers. It is a synonym of Key Account Management. The strategic account manager’s role is to identify those key customers that generate maximum revenue and profitability as compared to other regular accounts. These managers act as a bridge between the company and stakeholders on the customer side. The idea is to increase customer lifecycle value by starting small like with a free trial or test project, adding value, and building trust. Strategic account management is a function that more often than not, loses its criticality in the mire of operational account management. While most Account Directors and Managers wholeheartedly agree to the fact that Key Accounts need a different level of investment in terms of time, resources, and frequency, this still remains an area that does not receive its due. The reasons may differ but whatever the reason, the results of not paying heed to Strategic Accounts, are almost always the same – poor. So we know that we simply cannot afford to ignore Strategic Account Management. Account Planning Softwares can help optimize the time and effort in developing strategic account plans. The correct implementation and understanding of strategic account management are paramount to the growth of revenue. But let’s now understand ‘WHY’? It’s the old rule that has always worked – The 80-20 principle: The rule says that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Pay attention to this 20%. These 20% form your Key Accounts. It is like a gold mine – the more you dig, the deeper you will go and understand: You get to the gold, only as you dig deeper. Your strategic accounts are like a gold mine – Complex, deep, and not easily read. Just sitting on them is of no use, until you start digging and understanding the people there. How do they operate, who is the key man/woman in the hierarchy? Who is the influencer? How will he/she help me? Is my main influencer leaving that company? In that case, do I have a backup man? There’s nothing superficial about Strategic Account Management. You need to dig deeper and for that, you need an effective tool. Relationships have no formula. You got to try and make them work all the time: Strategic accounts involve many people across multiple functions, hierarchies, and geographies. Relationship mapping needs hard work and smart work. It is not an overnight heist. In cases that win equally on merit, the winner is usually the man who has won the customer’s trust. From this perspective, it pays to look into certain key questions: Are you assigning dedicated time to this key man/woman? Are you listening for cues to leverage the relationship and business? Are you reviewing the relationship? How often are you doing it? Do you have a relationship-building action plan? More than one key project at a time: Strategic accounts have more than one key project going on at the same time and you cannot afford to accord a step-motherly treatment to any. This means Account Directors need to be focused on each of these projects in equal measure. This requires creating strategic account managers for each project who are able, capable, and know the ropes of Key Account Management. It also requires training them on a regular basis. For a CSO or Account Director, it means creating a team of key people in order to achieve a superlative performance. A CRM is not enough: The key to strategic account management is making sense of the big data available to you. While a CRM may be giving you the data, you need to work on this big data, analyze it and leverage the findings to your benefit. He who uses big data to narrow down and get to the key focus areas is usually far more successful. The first step to focusing on your Strategic Accounts is to focus on them, use the right tools and leverage the findings by taking action. Also, learn how to set up your KAM process in 9 steps or read other blogs on strategic account management. 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.
Strategic Account Planning – Process, Challenges, Solutions
What is Strategic Account Planning? Account Planning for Strategic Accounts or Strategic Account Management is building value-driven relationships with your key customers that can help in long-term development and retention, thereby maximizing the revenue potential. It is a synonym for Key Account Planning. The account management process has always been complex. The complexities exist at all levels – thinking, documenting, presenting, planning, training, and reviewing. According to a CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, 90.6% of those surveyed said that strategic account planning was relevant to them and, therefore they would do it. Therefore, key account managers must know how to build strategic account plans with the best practices. Using account planning software like DemandFarm’s Key Account Management Software can substantially streamline operations. Taking you through the entire process and strategies may be a bit too long for a blog. But in this one let me make the ‘thinking’ part a little easier with frameworks, directions, and principles for a phenomenal strategic account planning exercise. Why is strategic account planning important? Strategic account planning enables sales professionals to understand their customers better – know their needs, goals, and challenges enabling them to create customized solutions and address specific customer requirements. Account planning also pushes businesses to take proactive measures to address potential customer issues. Important Processes of Strategic Account Planning 1. Decoding the present scenario Understand account information in terms of revenue/profitability/growth, products/services, geographic spread, and the account’s initiatives and plan for the year. This is publicly available data that can be easily found, so it makes no sense to use this to analyze your client’s financial position and organizational structure. The most relevant questions and the ones that will be unique from your competitors are questions like: Which areas of your business are most important to you? Where do you see yourself in two to four years? Are there areas of interest that you might either reduce or grow? What kinds of obstacles do you worry about? What would you like to see from a prime supplier? 2. Understanding the Voice of Customer (VOC) Ask any strategic account manager, and they will tell you that the days are gone when the client account landscape was represented by a one-way dialogue for engaging prospects. Today, account heads are shifting their listening and response mechanisms quicker as VoC represents a huge chance for driving loyalty and increased sales. What challenges, concerns, and problems have clients been discussing? How can you address those problems with the products/services of your company? This kind of insight is usually not available publicly. It involves having an in-depth discussion with customers to understand their plan and pain points which can help in new product development or even tweaking the current product to suit their strategy and requirements. The success of this depends on the quality of relationships between the client and their customers and the knowledge of both customers and your business. 3. Building Strategic Connections Through Relationship Management With Accounts You can have multiple types of relationships with clients, and they can be either Tactical, Cooperative, Interdependent, or Strategic. You can use a simple weighted attribute method to arrive at one of the four. A skilled account manager uses the best practices and strategies to plan and create the account management organizational structure with an account plan and process in place. Having the right training and using certain principles increases the skill set of the manager to deal with strategic accounts. With People Sketch an organization chart with hierarchies, titles, and roles of all the contacts that matter. What is also helpful is to identify your supporters/detractors/champions among those contacts. Who controls what budgets? Who influences whom, both positively/negatively? Why? To convert deals and present your customers with a high-grade experience, you need to be informed of the positions your contacts hold within their business and their level of influence in the decision-making process. Mapping their level of influence and their relationships within the organization can help you to concentrate your efforts on the plan appropriately. Relationship mapping helps the sales and marketing units of the business to optimize their lead generation plans and increase revenue from existing accounts. Modern technology keeps the method of creating relation maps automated. Gathering insights using modern technology can automatically keep your relationship mapping efforts up-to-date. 4. Growth Opportunities Based on the above 4 data points, identify the buying centers in the account and map which of your products/services is consumed in which buying centers. Understanding Buying Centers can help key account managers in account planning and innovation. The Buying Center is a 40-year-old concept associated with Webster and Wind and can be hugely useful. The Buying Center is a part of the organization that involves a bunch of executives who have varying influence on the B2B buy decision. Performing a complete buying center analysis is an essential first step to help key account planning managers understand which messages and tactics best convey the value of their products. That can give you an idea of two types of growth areas: Mining Growth Finding out which of the existing projects/contracts/businesses can grow this year is where mining can happen. Farming Growth What new opportunities can be explored this year in your strategic account management process? That’s where farming growth comes in! All this can allow you to set a revenue goal for the year. Download Now: The Most Comprehensive White Space Analysis Template for Strategic Key Account Growth Build a Strategic Action Plan – A Strategic Account Plan Template You need to analyze a few categories to build an action plan for your accounts. You can start off by listing down action items, specific activities, monthly plans, and the support required, along with timelines. We are a firm believer in keeping the key account management process simple yet powerful. Over-analysis can lead to paralysis, so keep it short and simple. I would emphasize more action items and numbers and less on theory. In today’s dynamic business
6 Key SAM Sessions at SAMA Prague
If you happen to be in Prague now, it may not be just for the spring. Strategic Account Management Association’s (SAMA) Pan-European conference is the other reason. After an insightful SAMA 2016, they’re back again this year. Over a two-day action-packed pre-weekend, SAM professionals across the World and Europe will debate, discuss and devour, insights on strategic account management. Will you be around? There are 18 sessions in addition to 2 Keynotes, over these two days. Some of you might attend all of them, including the cocktails. However, if you are someone with only a limited time and energy, I bring to you DemandFarm’s recommendation on the six sessions that you should not miss. These 6 sessions cover digitalization, account-based marketing, analytics, automation and not to forget customer metrics. Firstly, do not miss out on keynotes. Johnson Controls’ Renae Leary talks about using Design to Supercharge Customer Value Co-Creation. The design is one of the least talked about subjects in the realm of Key Account Management. One needs to look at the tech space to understand the profound sales transformation design can bring. Undoubtedly, it would be interesting to listen to the story of how Johnson Controls leveraged design in transforming SAM. It remains to be seen though if Renae would talk form or function, in the context of design. Function, of course, would be forthcoming. Phillip Lund from Schneider Electric has the perfect closing keynote, owing to the touchy subject of talent in SAM. While the Schneider Electric story is about talent management, it would be welcome if Philip could also talk about talent development, skills, and millennials. 1. Quantify and track customer outcomes: Technology tools are changing the game! Fair to say, DemandFarm strongly believes in the power of technology, to help Key Account Managers become successful. Thus, a recommendation for this session. The team has regularly made a case for productivity tools for KAMs. In this session, Valkre consultants Jerry Alderman and Brian Kiep team up with Velinda Cox from Konica Minolta Business Solutions to talk about an insight – technology tools to measure your customer’s business metrics. How cool is that? Come on, how many of us are measuring customer metrics that we are impacting? If we did that and followed through, wouldn’t our customers love us? 2. Digitalization Disrupts the Relationship Map Facing the SAM Today’s customer wields enormous power. We all know why – the internet, social media, and the wave of digital transformation. Hajo Rapp from Siemens (Read Hajo’s interview with DemandFarm) and Volkhard Bregulla from HP, rightly address how digitization is dissolving the web of customer relationships: a Key Account Management strategy would build over the years. We understand the importance of relationship mapping. It is one of the key offerings of DemandFarm’s Key Account Management Software. Will these two gentlemen discuss how SAM can address the intricacies of relationship dynamics in a changing power scenario? Will they also touch upon the importance of visualizing relationships, especially in complex accounts? Nevertheless, perspectives on addressing internal business stakeholders by a technical buyer would be insightful for Key Account Managers from the technology sector. 3. Robot as an Account Manager: Are your clients ready for it? The Mckinsey consultants stole our thunder, almost. My team introduced a Key Account Management BOT called KAM-BOT in November 2016 to introduce the importance of automation in SAM. I am keen to understand what emerged from the Mckinsey survey of 1,000+ business purchasers and decision-makers across all major B2B industries, especially how they like to buy; where digital matters, and where it doesn’t. I am expecting the Mckinsey consultants – Varun and Hamza – to share specifics and some tangible action points for KAMs. Read KAM-BOT ebook 4. The New Era of B2B Growth: Moving to Analytics-Based Sales Is it possible to read anything worthwhile in business today without hitting ‘Analytics’? ‘Data-driven is another. I wish they were ‘just’ buzzwords. To Key Account Management teams, these keywords mean ‘effort’ and ‘study’. Armed with information, customers can ask the right questions that salespeople and account managers may not have anticipated. The Gallup team represented by Jeff and David will rightfully sensitize the B2B audience about the need for SAM to transition from experience, solution, and relationship-based customer management strategies to insight and data-based strategies that demonstrate unique business understanding and help proactively solve customer questions. This session should raise some eyebrows. 5. Accelerate Growth in your Strategic Accounts with Account-Based Marketing Didn’t ABM dominate as the most important sales topic in SAMA 2016? If you belong to the SaaS space, you will not disagree. Now ABM is making inroads into SAM. It is still sometime away before we can see some successful models, the debate is essential to assess proper fit. In his session, Bill Simpson from ITSMA has laid out an elaborate menu for advocating ABM into SAM teams. Will you bite it off? The questions he is addressing cover the entire spectrum from who is using ABM to why the ABM SAM alignment is critical? This one should be overwhelming. Who is headed to the bar? 6. How Aptean Accelerated Growth through a Transformational Account Management Strategy Aptean is a software product company offering a bouquet of enterprise software products. It made a change, from account acquisition to account management. Perhaps, the toughest change management in sales organizations. Charlie and Don from SOAR Performance Group team up with Aptean’s Kyle Bowker to tell the story of Aptean’s transformation. It is these stories that keep the SAM excitement going. Are you excited?