A recent McKinsey study predicts that AI could replace ~30 percent of work hours by capitalizing on autonomous AI by 2030. The same study states that up to 375 million workers globally might have to reskill or upskill due to AI automation.

That’s a lot of human work hours up for grabs by robots! So is AI expected to eat up your Key Account Manager’s jobs as well? Are they on the chopping block too?

Truthfully, there isn’t a simple yes or no answer. It depends on your Key Account Management (KAM) maturity level, your approach to your KAM program, your goals, and how you want to roll with the AI punches.

Account planning, as you’re aware, is a mixed bag of strategic and operational activities. It involves manual account data entry of contact and relationships data, tracking organizational changes, analyzing growth trends at an account level, reporting on accounts as well as at a KAM portfolio-level, and so on. 

That’s not all. Relationship management, account planning, strategic partnerships, whitespace analysis, sales forecasting, competitive analysis, internal collaboration, executive presentations, tracking account growth… phew! That’s a lot of activities to squeeze in every single day.

Now, on a scale of 1-10, how many operational and strategic activities are you involved with in your day? Let’s have a quick reality check here to find which side you are on. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where this is going.

If you spend more hours on operational work, you need AI badly to take care of your grunt work. It is your ally, your enhancer, the co-pilot in your KAM journey. 

So here’s our hot take—the operational tasks are bound to be replaced by AI and the strategic activities are bound to get enhanced by AI. The more strategic your AM can be, the more valuable they will become.

Enter: AI in Key Account Management 

Today’s AI is much like Harvey Dent, the DA of Gotham City. Like Harvey, AI has two faces—the dreaded and the good.

The dreaded side instils fear that it will usurp the role of the Key Account Manager. The good side helps AMs to do their job better.

When we talk about AI in KAM, we’re not seeing a future where AI replaces the human element. We are far from it. Instead, we’re forging a partnership where AI handles the heavy lifting, leaving you to focus on what truly matters: maintaining that human-to-human connection with your key accounts.

Why use AI in KAM?

So, what can AI do? I have both a short and a long answer. Pick the one you want. 

TLDR: It can automate those pesky tasks you hate, give you insights that you never knew you needed, and uncover opportunities that were hiding in plain sight. All of this so you can focus on the good stuff–building strategic partnerships and driving growth.

The long answer:

For starters, AI in KAM can increase your understanding of the customer’s business by 72% and improve efficiency in identifying non-competitive deals by 27%. Since you’re in for the long answer, I’ve taken the liberty to build out a really long list of use cases for AI in KAM.

As bad as this list will help our competitors, we are sharing this exhaustive list just for you! 

Use-cases of AI in KAM:

1. AI auto-generates your org chart/relationship map: Free up almost 20 hours of your life every week! Let AI automatically create and update your organization chart, including key stakeholders and their relationships.
2. Personalized customer communication: Tailor your messages to each customer by using AI to analyze their preferences, purchase history, and interactions. For example, AI can suggest personalized product recommendations or follow-up emails based on customer behavior.
3. Predictive sales forecasting: Because fortune-telling is a thing, even in sales. Improve your sales forecasts by using AI to analyze historical data and identify trends. For instance, AI can predict which accounts are most likely to close deals or churn.
4. Cross-selling and upselling opportunities: Identify potential cross-sell and upsell opportunities by analyzing customer purchase history and preferences.
5. Risk scoring: By quantifying risk factors such as customer churn, contract renewal likelihood, and payment history, sales teams can allocate resources more effectively and increase revenue.
6. Net-new optimization: AI can help you target the right customers at the right time and increase new business revenue by analyzing customer data, market trends, and competitor activities.
7. Customer sentiment analysis: Monitor customer sentiment by analyzing social media listening, surveys, and other feedback. AI can help you identify areas for improvement and address customer concerns.
8. Predictive churn analysis: Identify customers at risk of churn. This allows you to take proactive steps to retain them.
9. Competitive intelligence: Gain insights into your competitors’ strategies and tactics. This can help you stay ahead of the competition and identify new opportunities.
10. Voice of the Account (VOA) Analysis: Analyze each account’s feedback from various touchpoints, such as call recordings, emails, and social media, to identify common themes and sentiments.
11.  Account-focused content: Generate personalized content to use in your account communication. This could include custom reports, presentations, or social media posts tailored to the account’s interests and preferences.

This isn’t just a laundry list of AI’s capabilities but an impactful roadmap to transform your KAM program. Of course, what will work for you is very subjective to where your enterprise stands with respect to your KAM Maturity level. 

But the urgency is very clear!

Your challenges can be a leading indicator of what AI should do for you. Your open deals might not be seeing the closures you expected them to. There might be untapped opportunities, unexplored white spaces, and blind spots leading to poor win rates and lost deals. 

You’re probably unable to land big logos, or even if you do, you’re unable to expand on them. You might be losing wallet share to competitors due to inaccurate KAM planning.

A recent Gartner survey found that only 16% of 372 key account managers reported being able to focus primarily on strategic activities, their core responsibility. This statistic highlights the common challenge of underutilization and missed opportunities within KAM relationships.

In a nutshell, key account managers often grapple with 3 major challenges on a day-to-day basis—

• Daunting data: The sheer volume of customer data can be daunting, making it challenging to extract meaningful insights.
• Time-consuming tasks: Manual tasks like data entry, report generation, account research, building presentations (PPTs), creating spreadsheets (Excel), and analyzing complex data can be time-consuming and hinder productivity.
• Predicting future trends: Accurately forecasting customer behavior and market trends is crucial but often challenging.

AI can address these challenges by:

• Automating routine tasks: AI can automate repetitive tasks, allowing account managers to focus on strategic activities.
• Providing predictive insights: AI can analyze vast datasets to identify patterns and predict future trends, enabling proactive account management.
• Enhancing decision-making: AI can provide valuable insights and recommendations, supporting informed decision-making throughout sales.

How to ensure that you are evaluating enterprise-grade AI?

• Trust and Data Security: Prioritize data privacy and security measures, compliant with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA to protect sensitive customer information. 
• Effective integration: Ensure integration with your existing systems to avoid data silos and streamline workflows. 
• Data Quality and Accessibility: Ensure data accuracy, completeness, and accessibility to ensure AI models function effectively. Invest in data cleaning and normalization to improve data quality. 
• Alignment with business goals: Clearly define your objectives for using AI in KAM and select tools that align with your strategic priorities.
• Return on investment (ROI): Conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the potential ROI of AI implementation. Set measurable goals to track progress and measure success.
• Scalability: Ensure the AI infrastructure you choose can handle the expected workload and scale up as needed.

The Future of AI in KAM

As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative applications in account management. Some potential future developments include:

• Autonomous AI: The future of AI is moving beyond predictive and generative AI to autonomous AI, which automates tasks and completes actions without human intervention.
• Natural language processing (NLP): Enhanced understanding of customer conversations and interactions.
• Machine learning: Continuously improving AI models based on new data and feedback.
• Integration with other sales tools: Seamless integration with CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, and other sales tools.

The Future is Now

The same study by Gartner revealed that 46% of organizations have rebuilt their key account programs at least twice in the past seven years due to underperformance. This underscores the pressing need for an innovative solution like AI to address the challenges faced by your KAM team.

With an AI-powered KAM tool, you can expect to see significant improvements in key performance metrics. Studies have shown that a solid KAM tool can:

• Increase understanding of customer’s business by 72%

• Improve efficiency in identifying non-competitive deals by 27%

• Reduce manual workload by up to 50%

• Increase sales win rates by 20%

Think about your KAM program like a classic apple pie. It’s delicious, but it could (read should) be even better. AI is the crumble topping on your apple pie.

DemandFarm’s Vision for AI in KAM

DemandFarm’s vision for AI in KAM stems from the belief that technological advancements should augment human capabilities, not replace them. In line with this belief, our AI solutions are designed to work harmoniously with KAMs, providing them with the insights and support they need to excel in their roles. Here is a glimpse into our strategic goals for AI:

• Empowering account managers: Providing them with the tools and insights they need to succeed.
• Improving customer relationships: Delivering exceptional customer experiences through personalized interactions.
• Driving revenue growth: Optimizing sales processes and identifying new growth opportunities.

As businesses strive to optimize their sales processes, enhance customer relationships, and drive revenue growth, AI offers a powerful toolkit to achieve these objectives. AI is poised to help account managers achieve their goals and drive business growth by automating tasks, providing insights, and enhancing decision-making.