Welcome to this second post in a three-part series we’re publishing on Account Management.

In Pt.1 we introduced account management and explained that the way your customers buy is changing.

Now, let’s get into how you need to evolve to make that change benefit you…

Existing customers are potentially your biggest revenue growth opportunity.

Indeed, the top five initiatives for organisations are typically Revenue Growth, Customer Retention, Profit Growth, Sales Effectiveness and Increased Revenue per Customer.

Four of these are lagging indicators, business results that come in some time after sales activity for a certain time period.

They correlate directly to account management effort and how well it is executed.

Consider this.

If your metrics and bonus structures incentivise your salespeople to just go after new business, you might be shooting yourself in the foot.

Because one customer who does business with you over, say, 10 years of a strong commercial relationship will probably be worth more to you than 10 new customers who might just buy from you once.

Many sales organisations feel that they’re not maximising the potential of their existing accounts.

That means account management professionals are leaving dollars on the table…and allowing competition to steal business from you.

What Are The Issues In Account Management?

So what are the issues here? What is preventing us from doing this?

The first issue is often lack of knowledge. In many cases, while account management professionals know what to do, they’re sometimes at a loss as to how to do it.

We make a sharp distinction between process and methodology.

Process is the ‘what’ you should do in order for you to get from A to B.

The methodology is the ‘how’ you choose to do it.

Account management, especially when it involves account teams, marketing departments and partner organisations, can be a complex task.

Information sharing and communication are critical.

Everyone needs to be on the same page, knowing the objectives and their specific role in accomplishing them.

When people are in different regions and don’t have the right tools at their disposal, then planning, updating and disseminating the knowledge and instructions becomes a major ordeal.

Properly aligning a global account team across regions, borders, languages and cultures, to act as one unit, helping each other, can be a very big task.

What Makes Great Account Management?

In CONSULTER’s experience, it is mostly lack of knowledge or field experience that is the most critical issue. So how do you create great account management?

There are five main areas to great account management. These are: Profile, segmentation, create opportunities, select and do.

Before you develop your ‘go to customer’ strategy, you first need to research your market. Only then can you begin to understand the profile of the market and your customer – the issues your customers think about and their organisational structure.

Some units of an account are more attractive than others. So, you need to segment the account — establishing which particular niches in the account are of high value to both you and your customer.

Once you’ve prioritised the segments in your account, then you can look to create new opportunities.

You must address your customer’s business needs as though they were your own.

Figure1: The context to account planning

You need to select the appropriate strategy to approach the account and focus on those areas that will provide maximum return on your efforts (so long as those returns are aligned with your customer’s needs).

With the right strategy in place, you need to focus on execution — building a business development plan for the account while leveraging marketing, partners and other resources to help you succeed.

If you adopt, use and keep using a structured account planning methodology, you’ll fix issues before it becomes too late, lose your way less often, and get to where you want to be.

In our final post in this series of three, we’ll walk you through how to profile your customer and segment your market for a more effective and sustainable sales strategy.

Welcome to this first post in a three-part series we’re publishing on Account Management.

Let’s get into it…

How much does your business rely on its existing customers versus new ones?

Research proves that it costs about seven times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.

But many businesses still focus on growing new business rather than cultivating their current accounts.

Smart companies are changing their sales organisations to pursue business opportunities.

The way customers buy is changing. It’s more important than ever that your business maximises sales opportunities from both existing and new customers.

How do you do that?

We suggest you focus on your Sales Manager.

Sales Managers play the pivotal role in making or breaking the sales methodology, process and technology initiatives in your organisation.

Re-assessing your Account Management practices is where you should start.

This post is the first of three that will give you an insight into effective, dynamic Account Management.

We’ll show you how to create an Account Management strategy that unleashes your Sales Manager and their team to generate more revenue from your business’s existing customers…and improve your new customer acquisitions.

The Way Customers Buy Is Changing

Research from CEB Inc. (now part of Gartner) shows that today’s B2B customers get on average 57 per cent of the way along the buying process before they engage with a salesperson.

They use the internet for research; they browse vendor content, ask peers for advice, and pay close attention to ratings and reviews. They are self-educating.

Good Sales Leaders knows they have to change to keep up. That means moving from a traditional “go-to-market” model, in which sales people are primed to sell products according to their own agenda, to what Forrester Research calls a “go-to-customer” model, in which sales teams are capable of understanding the individual customer’s needs.

Vendors think that price is the reason for selection 48% of the time.

This is wrong.

The customers (who are the people making the decision — and therefore who know) believe that price is only a factor 25% of the time.

From the customer’s perspective, Customer Service is the #1 factor in determining whether they buy or not.

Executives tend not to believe that salespeople are adequately prepared to engage with them.

Their perception is that sellers know about their own offering, but don’t take sufficient account of the realities and the needs of their customer.

In fact, only 36% of executives believe that salespeople understand business problems.

To grow your business, you need to take action to convince your customers that you do understand their problems and needs. You’re not just there to push your own product.

Your interests and their interests must be one and the same.

But how do you get your executive customers on side?

What Is Account Management?

There are three fundamentals of account management.

First, it’s about penetrating our target accounts and drilling down on as much information as we need to understand your customer.

If you get that right, you can create good relationships with your customers.

That leads you to the second role of good Account Management; to create the kind of relationships that help to defend you against your competition.

In other words, build enough understanding and trust between your business and customer that your buyers no longer simply go for the cheapest option. Instead, they opt for the best and most trustworthy commercial partner — you.

Thirdly, Account Management has a very important role in targeting and creating new business from your existing customer base. Once you have trust and history with your customer, you can grow your relationship with new services, offers and continuity programs.

Our next blog will delve into how to generate more business from your existing customers by harnessing the potential of account management.

Tag: account planning

What Are The Top Initiatives For Account Management?

What Are The Issues In Account Management?

What Makes Great Account Management?

What Is Account Management And How Do You Master It To Create Concrete Results In Your Business?

The Way Customers Buy Is Changing

What Is Account Management?