Tag: White Space

Unlocking White Space Opportunities Using AI-powered Analytics in Account Planning

Analytics is making inroads into influencing sales decisions, but there is still a long way to go. McKinsey’s Unlocking the power of data in sales survey shows that 57% of sales organizations their advanced analytics practice as inadequate. While organizations have more data than ever before, many of them struggle to benefit from even basic analytics. Many are on the verge of developing well-designed analytics programs, but the question of delivery of significant top-line and margin growth remains. Using AI-powered analytics can be the answer, as it can nudge sales teams by offering better facts and views. Organizations should identify areas where analytics can add value and implement AI power wisely. Ebook: AI-Assisted Account Planning – Conversations of the Future Part 1 Organizations need a commercial strategy that is not just focused solely on attracting new business while maintaining the status quo with existing accounts. Today’s B2B sales environment requires teams to balance retaining and growing existing accounts, just to keep pace with the competition. A Gartner survey supports this – teams that focus on improving ongoing customer conversations on an account, typically grow that account by 48%.  Learn More: Analysts’ Predictions of AI for Sales, Account Management and Sales Enablement in 2023 The Shift toward Digital Account Management Companies are constantly looking for new ways to improve their sales and marketing strategies – and digital account management leverages technology to create personalized marketing and sales campaigns for specific accounts, resulting in better customer engagement and increased revenue. Shifting towards digital account management and powering it with AI-based tools can allow sales teams to target their products effectively. Listen to The Shift Podcast – A DemandFarm Original on Digital Key Account Management Account-based selling and account-based marketing are not new concepts, and many organizations have already adopted these techniques successfully. However, before adopting any new technology, it is essential to have the right processes in place. Companies should start with a pilot or proof of concept (POC) where they select a handful of accounts and test the effectiveness of their digital account management strategies. By doing so, they can identify the benefits, obstacles, and potential value that the approach brings to their business. Learn More: Key Account Management Scorecard Template to Identify Key Accounts Incorporating digital account management involves creating a transparent process that involves everyone in the organization. By involving people in the process, companies can increase transparency, gain buy-in, and ensure that all stakeholders understand the impact of the new approach. Therefore, involving employees from different departments such as marketing, sales, and customer success, and making them understand the value of digital account management, can make the transition smoother. Organizations must focus on driving revenue goals by leveraging digital account management, by ensuring every account receives a personalized experience and better engagement, leading to increased revenue. Relationship-based selling has become more critical in B2B spheres. With digital account management, companies can tailor their approach to individual accounts, building strong relationships that drive revenue growth. By providing customized marketing and sales campaigns, companies can increase customer engagement and drive better results. The shift toward digital account management can be a game-changer for companies looking to improve their sales and marketing strategies. To do so successfully, companies must have the right processes in place, involve their employees, and focus on driving revenue goals. By starting with a pilot and scaling the approach based on results, companies can realize the potential of digital account management and enhance their overall sales and marketing effectiveness. Case Study: 2x Improvement in Customer Relationships with Org Chart Infusing AI-based Analytics in Key Account Management  Key account management can be a lot more effective with up-to-date data. The relevance of data can be assured by capturing details automatically and regularly while keeping key account managers free to focus on customer engagement. They can streamline their activities and define the usefulness of their engagements, and identify if accounts are getting the right amount of engagement. With AI, they can define what the right amount of engagement is, leverage existing relationships, and more. Identifying Account Intent AI can be helpful during account selection, by providing managers with details about the total addressable market, like revenue threshold, sector, previous engagements, and other parameters. From this, sales teams can whittle down their accounts list and create relationship maps. This refining of target accounts allows key account managers to enhance the probability of success instead of spreading themselves thin across opportunities. With the help of AI-based tools, they can establish customer intent quickly, and strike before competitors do. Optimizing Customer Touchpoints While sales graphs give the impression that customer journeys can be linear, seasoned sales executives know this is far from the truth. The buyer’s journey and its existence is something that’s been discussed many times, but it’s very hard to predict what their needs will be. AI can help in creating more realistic versions, and build a persona based on online behavior – which can be more pointed in B2B scenarios. This can allow key account managers to make the right move at the right time, and close the deal. Personalizing to the Customer With B2B tools, education, and continued knowledge transfer is essential for continued success. With AI, sales teams can create repositories that cater to the specific needs of customers – if the audience gets what it wants to see and read, it is bound to stay engaged. AI can lead to accurate content planning by using data to build a profile of interests on individual accounts. The rest is to pull the most relevant content to the front of the website, as per the user’s preferences. Hyper-targeting the Messaging The ability to hyper-target prospects is the predecessor to personalized website content – the same essence, but the value it brings is different. AI can utilize data on what prospects are researching and identify areas of growth that come under the product goal. By understanding the areas customers are looking to invest in, key account managers can

How to Identify White Space Opportunities and Expand Account Revenue

Key account managers are always seeking ways to drive growth and deliver value to their accounts. While acquiring new customers is exciting, maximizing the potential of existing accounts is often the most strategic and profitable approach. Retaining and expanding relationships with your current customer base reduces acquisition costs while deepening trust and loyalty. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by identifying White Space Opportunities—gaps in your customer’s current investment with your offerings. These represent unmet needs or untapped potential that, when addressed, foster growth for both your company and your customers, while strengthening long-term relationships. What are White Space Opportunities? Selling to existing accounts is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. It demands less time, fewer resources, and minimal effort while delivering significant returns. Key Account Managers are increasingly focusing on identifying White Space Opportunities—areas within their accounts to upgrade, upsell, or cross-sell their services. These gaps represent overlooked solutions or unmet needs that can drive value and growth. By addressing these gaps, businesses not only generate additional revenue but also reinforce their position as a trusted partner, delivering tailored solutions that align with their customer’s evolving goals. Download Now: The Most Comprehensive White Space Analysis Template for Strategic Key Account Growth If Opportunity Doesn’t Knock, Build a Door! White Space actually means different things to different people. Some think of white space as an open playing field, with no competition. A few look at it as an untapped market. But the general consensus is that white space refers to the gap between what your existing customers have already bought from you and what other unique products and services you can offer them.  More details about White Space in Business can be found here. While in editing and publishing, white space is also referred to as negative space, in business these gaps are seen as opportunities. These gaps can mean the opportunity to offer a product to a customer that has never used it, reconsider how a product or service can be used or offered or focus on under-utilized services or product features. Sometimes these opportunities can easily be identified. At other times, depending on the sector you’re in, it may need some effort, thought and ingenuity.  Sales teams are extremely adept at finding White Space Opportunities because of a thorough understanding of the product. Being in contact with customers and understanding their current and future needs, they can suggest changes or tweaks in products in a way that would most appeal to customers. Here’s how you can align White Space Opportunity with your growth potential.  What is White Space Analysis and what does white space mean in business? White Space Opportunities are identified through a process called White Space Analysis. This process helps companies discover possibilities among their existing customer base to cross-sell and upsell. It also uncovers accounts that may need more attention and focus.  While it is always satisfying to bring in new customers and business opportunities, it is important not to ignore your existing customer base when looking for revenue-generating avenues. This practice gained importance during the Covid-19 pandemic when selling practices changed drastically.  Companies started nurturing their existing customers to try and create new growth opportunities for themselves. Customers were equally pleased to stay with a company they had already tried and tested, rather than seek out a new product or service provider.   How do you identify white space opportunities using white space analysis  There are a few steps if you want to know how to do white space analysis: 1. Understand your current status An effective analysis begins with what your current position is. You will need to collate and analyze customer data using the Best customer data platform to gain insights into your existing customers’ investments in your company. If you don’t have this level of customer data at hand, getting it organized could be a time-consuming task, but an essential and invaluable one. If you have a large customer base, start this exercise with those customers that have the highest potential for investment in the future.  Once you have this data, you will be able to identify which product or service your customers have invested in – and to what extent. You can segregate this data by: The size of your customers’ organizations The sector your customer’s business is in  The type of opportunity they represent The products or services purchased When they bought with you All this data properly charted out and visually represented will give you a better understanding of white space opportunities.  2. Identify customer accounts White space analysis is an elaborate process. It requires a thorough understanding of what your customers need and how you can position what you offer to meet that need. You may need to further explore your customers’ needs, for example, by the areas or regions they are based in. Or by the opportunity type, they represent i.e., long-term customers, new customers etc. and the added investment they are likely to make.  Understanding the customer’s business is also important at this stage. For example, are they looking to expand their company? Are they consolidating their business? Are they traditional and hierarchical companies? Are they more modern and flexible? Once you have a thorough understanding of your customer’s current investments in your products and services and knowledge of their needs – you’ve identified your opportunities! You can now cross-sell and up-sell your products or services. This exercise also allows you a better understanding of how you can reposition your own products, add or alter product features, and introduce upgrades and enhancements.  3. Analyze the selected customer accounts Once you’ve identified which customer accounts have the highest potential and are keen on future investments, you can go one step further.  Identify which centers or units within your customer’s business make their own buying decisions. These can be based on departments, divisions, or regions. To make this distinction, you will also need to have information like where and how decisions are made, and budgets allocated to

What is Whitespace Analysis in Sales?

White space in sales is referred to a gap that a business can identify and use to scale its revenue with its products or services. White space analysis is the process of digging through the sales data to hunt for new white space opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling. This cheatsheet helps you to leverage your sales data to find out potential gaps in your key accounts. Find out what whitespace means, and 6 quick steps to execute whitespace analysis in your strategic accounts.  

White Space Opportunity : Your potential areas for growth

White Space Opportunity The ultimate goal of key account management is to recognize opportunities for growth in their strategic accounts. At DemandFarm we have designed a simple yet powerful framework to identify potential business growth through white space opportunity. What is a White Space? Are you giving all your focus to new opportunities or keeping an eye on current customers to see if there are any emerging opportunities? There is a gap between when your sales professional finalizes a deal with a new customer and start fresh with a new prospect. To fill out this gap, did you know that it costs 10 times less to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one. The gap between the products or services that your existing customer has purchased and the other products or services that your company has to offer is known as white space. The goal of this identification is to seek growth of key accounts which is done through existing solutions and relationships. Failure to realize these opportunities, leaves a lot of money on the table and also allows competition to sneak in. These white space opportunities can be unearthed through creation of a visual white space map and it’s careful analysis. Here is how it works. Step 1: Identification of Offering Identify and list down all the products/services/solutions that your company sells to the customer. Let’s call them OFFERINGS. It is advisable to not exceed more than 10 offerings. If your company has more, try to have sub offering classification and club more than one sub offerings to a single parent offering. Step 2: Identification of Buying Centers Identify and list down ‘Buying Centers’ in the account. Buying Centers are those units in the account that can buy your offering(s) independently. They could be various divisions of the account or functions in an account or territories in the account. They can also be a combination of these three. This is tricky. It requires a deep understanding of the account in terms of organizational structure, power centers, decision-making process, budget allocation, etc. Therefore, this step is not static. Buying Centers could change or get added over a while. If you don’t know the account well, it’s ok to start with just one. Since it is tricky, let me explain with an example. Let’s say your key account is a large global bank. Divisions may include the following: Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking, Investment Banking, Merchant Banking, Asset Management, Wealth Management. Functions may include: Finance, IT, Sales, Marketing, Operations, HR Territories may include: North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America. Now depending on what your offerings are, Buying Centers could be: Retail Marketing, Asia Operations, IT infrastructure, Asia, Wealth North America. You get the drift. One thumb rule is Buying Center should be able to independently buy at least one of your offerings on its own. Step 3: Creation of Account Landscape Create a matrix/grid using these two lists – Offerings versus Buying Centers. I call it Account Landscape. Here is an illustration. Step 4: Insertion of Opportunities Data in the Account Landscape Mark all the areas where you already do business in the Account Landscape with opportunities data. This could be all ‘Closed-Won’ opportunities in the past 12 to 24 months. A view of ‘Closed-Lost’ Opportunities is also helpful to know where you did not win. Also, of course, active opportunities in pursuit now. Step 5: Analysis of the relevance of Offerings Examining each offering and deciding its relevance in this account is the next step in white space analysis. Not every offering of yours is relevant to all accounts. It is very helpful if you can also assess the intensity of competition where relevance is high. Similarly, assess each buying center for its attractiveness. A simple RAG (Red-Green-Amber) analysis will do. Look at the illustration below Step 6: Identification of White Space Opportunities Now, it will be easy to identify this white space opportunity for business growth. Start with ‘Green’ boxes and see vertically and horizontally where growth can happen. There could be opportunities to ‘mine’ for more revenue in existing projects. In the illustration above, I have identified 3 of them. Highly relevant offering with highly attractive buying centers gives me two of these opportunities. It also helps that we are already engaged with other offerings in these buying centers. As you can see, a methodical approach to unearthing new opportunities to grow your accounts as illustrated above is very impactful. At DemandFarm, we have made this process easy by building these tools inside your CRMs. We believe that the Account Managers are the heroes. Their expertise, experience and domain knowledge is what matters the most when it comes to handling key accounts. So at DemandFarm, we try to do our best to equip them with account management tools and frameworks to help them visualize better and to make their thinking strategic, focused and cohesive.

White space Mapping: Unlock your New revenue potential

White space Mapping It was Friday, and I wanted to have some fun with the team, so we started up one of our favorite games – Foxymorons. First came the usual clichéd ones to set the ball rolling. Deafening silence. Happily married. Clearly confused. Pretty Ugly. Living Dead. And then some of the clever ones…(welcome to the world of techies) – Customer support. Virtual reality. IT career…you get the drift. And then one of our interns said ‘white space.’ Undoubtedly the office was thrown into a debate (it was close to lunchtime and a welcome distraction) on whether it qualifies as an oxymoron or not, but it set me thinking…. White space – Theory, Practice & All the In-Betweens White space Analysis is one of the most ‘used’ modules across all DemandFarm users. It is one of the most comprehensive modules I have ever experienced and honestly, it is one of the most important bits of DemandFarm for all stakeholders in the Strategic Account Management ecosystem. Consistently, users have come back to tell us how useful it is; and how it has got most of what KAMs, Sales Ops, and Leadership need to be able to make strategic decisions about their Account. It is a module we invest a lot of time on because one of the promises we make to DemandFarm users is growing Key Accounts. But what is ‘White space’? Sometimes we internalize terms to the extent that we forget to see the word for what it really is or originally meant – for me it had become ‘a DemandFarm module.’ Now serendipity had made me re-reflect on the word and its nuances. As I usually do in such cases, I first turned to the theory. What was the textbook definition of White space mapping in the management context? Rudimentary searches did not throw up much, and I would be happy to hear more about the specific management theory on Whitespace Mapping. Here is what I did find – at a theoretical level, White space business analysis is a great key account management tool, primarily used in the innovation context. It typically approaches the quest for organizational innovation from two broad perspectives- external and internal. But I found the purely ‘innovation-centric’ discussion inadequate for the way we approach it in Key Account Management. What’s Hiding in the Great Unknown, Amidst All that Data? Opportunities, Of course! White space opportunities So obviously I then looked at Whitespace in the KAM context more deeply. Here, instead of broader organizational innovation opportunities, we are focused on serving a particular Key Account (which is no less complex than an entire industry!). When we speak about Whitespace mapping and analysis at DemandFarm, the focus is on joining all the dots (across the Client and industry) for the big picture and then identifying all the white space opportunities for growth – laterally or up and down the value stream. In other words – a visual representation of the current deal pipeline and (short and long-term) opportunities. Not just opportunities to sell, but opportunities to add or create value for the Key Client and their business (including innovation to the product, service or process). Just to complicate matters further, it is also about being able to see the Clients whitespace, anticipate and build capacities in order to be able to serve them in their innovation efforts over time. That is how you go from being a vendor to a preferred business partner, and that is the very soul of Account Management. Our job is to leverage technology to bring all the varied data points together. So KAM Sales teams can focus on interpreting the intel, turning them into strategic action, creating the business case and buy-ins, and consistently nurturing, deepening and widening their Key Client engagements.Finally, I turned to the practicing professionals to get their thoughts on what the White space Mapping and Analysis mean to them. Here are some of the responses. It is where 80% of my Account Planning work gets done” said one. ‘It helps me build my business cases for internal buy-ins’ said another. A CXO friend – also a DemandFarm user – said ‘it is the maximum info about the account in terms of business opportunities.’ Paraphrasing her, white space mapping allowed her to see where they were strongest and weakest, where they were selling – and where they were not, and provided the strategic intel required to fill the significant gaps. So, that is how a Friday afternoon game led to a session on White space mapping and its meaning. Two things are certain – the meaning of White space mapping in practical terms for us as a KAM technology will keep evolving. And two – Whitespace is anything but white (or blank). It is a space teeming with intel, linkages, and cross-linkages (and somewhere in there, lots of wonderful opportunities!) – it is a busy, busy place. At DemandFarm, we hope to give it the structure needed, so users know where to look for the vital cues that help grow, mine and farm their most valuable Accounts. The Power of Visualization $40mn in planned revenue A $600 million IT services company with 50+ key accounts used the account landscape to map and grow their accounts. When DemandFarm was implemented a couple of years ago the account managers of these accounts were asked to identify various buying centers of the accounts. Here we have taken an example of Airbus. So, the account manager of Airbus identified Helicopters, CIO Org, Commercial Aircraft, etc. as the Buying Centers. Before this, we had already configured various service lines or Offerings which the customer was taking to the market. For e.g. Engineering Consulting, Enterprise Security, IoT, then had Platforms and so on so forth. Account of Landscape Having created these Offerings and Buying Centers in the account, DemandFarm generated an account of Landscape. This is how the account looked in the beginning, we had all the Offerings as the Columns and the

White Space Analysis of Key Accounts

What is White Space Analysis? White space analysis is the process of digging through the sales data to hunt for new white space opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling. White space is essentially a gap that a business can use to scale its revenue with its products / solutions / services. A simple yet powerful tool for locating White Space in key business accounts I have learned over the years that a business process and strategy can have powerful outcomes if it can be explained in a simple way. But ‘simple’ does not mean ‘easy’. It is often construed that way. Simplicity only makes understanding the problem easily. But arriving at the solution to the problem could still be hard. White space Analysis helps you to discover areas where you can grow your account, align and map your resources. This can help you identify your farming and mining white space opportunities. The analysis report provided can reveal some insight into what can be improved in the near future to increase sales and ROI. One of the ways to simplicity is to identify the two variables/parameters and put them on a two-dimensional X & Y-axis. Then think of various possibilities at a different position of this grid. I set out to build software for Key Account Management. One of the basic, but fundamental problem was to understand ‘Account Landscape’ and ‘Account Mapping’ to identify areas of growth in a Key Account. As usual, I started thinking of two variables – people on both sides. This means the products & services of both parties again, opportunities, strategic initiatives of the customer and of my company, global footprint of the account. Finally, I arrived at ‘Buying Centres’ of the buyer Account & ‘Offerings’ of the seller as two variables to build the Account Landscape. The resulting matrix is a simple and yet powerful tool to understand the Key Account. Where is the whitespace in your business? Deciding what offerings (products/services/solutions) to take to market is not easy.  That is the most fundamental aspect of any business. That’s for the management to decide. But an Account Manager has to identify the ‘buying centers’. These are the units in that account where one can take my offerings independently. These are usually divisions/functions and for a global account combined with regions. For example: ‘Retail Banking Europe’ & ‘Merchant Banking’ could be buying centers for a Bank. This will set the Account Manager thinking, which offering is applicable to which buying center(s). Which of those boxes are easier to penetrate? Maybe because my offering there has a compelling value proposition for that buying center and there seems to be no incumbent competitor either. That is my ‘White space’ of growth. The following Account Landscape shows the progress in that account over the years. How White-Space Analysis can help you? Let me share how white space mapping actually helped a DemandFarm customer to unlock $40 million from the existing 23 accounts. A $600 million IT services company with 50+ key accounts used the account landscape to map and grow their accounts. When DemandFarm has implemented a couple of years ago the account managers of these accounts were asked to identify various buying centers of the accounts. Here we have taken an example of Airbus. So, the account manager of Airbus identified Helicopters, CIO Org, Commercial Aircraft, etc. as the Buying Centers. Before this, we had already configured various service lines or Offerings which the customer was taking to the market. For e.g. Engineering Consulting, Enterprise Security, IoT, then had Platforms and so on so forth. How can you identify White Space business accounts? Having created these Offerings and Buying Centers in the account, DemandFarm generated an account of Landscape. This is how the account looked in the beginning, we had all the Offerings as the Columns and the Buying Centers as rows. One can see Opportunities & Engagements at multiple places. The account was well placed then, but the revenue growth of the account had stagnated. Because of the standard offerings like Engineering Consulting, Enterprise Security, etc. which were less relevant now. So, the company introduced new Offerings. One such example is when DemandFarm acquired a big Salesforce competency shop enabling them to offer services around Salesforce practice. The challenge was to make the account managers embrace this change and grow the existing platinum accounts which seemed stagnant. Then, Salesforce was configured as a new offering and started appearing on the account Landscape as the new column. Since this was a new Offering the account managers were made to think where this new Offering could be sold. Obviously, it cannot be sold to the existing Buying Centers and therefore two new Buying Centers were identified & created namely Sales and Marketing. The combination of these new Buying Centers & the new Offering became the focus area or the ‘white-spaces-analysis’ for growth. White space mapping helps you to map areas to grow your service or product. After this, the Account Manager created a plan to grow business with the new offering in the new Buying Centers. While the old buying centers were not generating new business, the account manager was still able to plan for an additional $1 million in Marketing and another $1million in Sales Buying Centers. A similar exercise in all strategic account management for all new offerings leads to an additional plan of $40million in 2017. They are well on their way to achieving $28 million of that plan. There is a lot of power in simplicity and visualization. However, it should not be concluded as ‘easy’. 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 2022.