Relationship Mapping Strategies: A Complete Guide to Master Them
Upselling, cross-selling, and the entire scope for your revenue expansion hinge on understanding the reality of relationships within your key account. Customer relationship mapping serves as a strategy that helps visualize these connections, offering critical insights that traditional methods like organizational charts can’t capture. Relationship maps often employ a relationship heat map, which visualizes the strength of relationships using colours or line thickness. For instance, strong, frequent interactions might be represented by bold lines, while occasional contact might appear as thinner or dotted lines. These relationship mapping examples demonstrate how identifying key influencers within a client’s ecosystem can lead to more effective engagement for successful outcomes. Read on to learn how strategic relationship mapping tools help visualize account dynamics, offer valuable insights, and illustrate the informal networks that influence decision-making, workflow, and information dissemination. Imagine this: A key account manager might discover through relationship mapping that the decision-making process in a major client company involves not just the C-suite but also influential middle managers and technical leads who have significant sway over procurement choices. Armed with this insight, strategies can be tailored to engage all relevant stakeholders, ensuring comprehensive coverage and better alignment with the client’s needs. Importance of a Relationship Map A well-crafted relationship map provides a dynamic blueprint of the interplay between different stakeholders, helping organizations navigate internal politics, foster collaboration, and enhance communication. It’s precious in scenarios such as managing change, driving sales strategies, or implementing complex projects where understanding the influence and roles of various individuals can significantly impact outcomes. What is a Relationship Map? A relationship map is a visual representation of the connections between individuals or entities within an organization. Unlike a traditional org chart, which outlines hierarchical reporting lines, a relationship map highlights informal networks—showing who communicates with whom, who holds influence, and how these connections impact business processes. This strategic tool goes beyond surface-level interactions, uncovering hidden influences and connections that can drive decision-making, shape workflows, and even impact customer relationships. Understanding these informal networks allows key account managers to target the right people with the right messages, ensuring that sales strategies and stakeholder engagements are perfectly aligned with internal dynamics. Key Components of Relationship Mapping and How to create a relationship map? At its core, a relationship map consists of two fundamental elements: nodes and links. These components work together to provide a visual representation of the network within and around an organization. Nodes represent individuals or entities. In a business context, a node could be a key account manager, a client contact, or even an entire department. The positioning and size of each node might vary to reflect the entity’s role or significance within the network. For instance, a node representing a CEO might be more central and larger compared to one representing a junior staff member, signaling the CEO’s broader influence across the organization. Links connect the nodes and show the relationships between them. These relationships could be professional, such as reporting lines or collaboration histories, or personal, reflecting mentorship roles or informal communication channels. The strength of a link often denotes the intensity or frequency of interactions between the nodes. For example, a thick line might indicate regular collaboration on projects, while a dotted line might show occasional communication. Additionally, attributes of these relationships are critical for a deeper understanding of the network dynamics. These attributes include: Strength: How strong is the influence or dependency between entities? A strong relationship might mean frequent interaction and significant influence on decision-making processes. Frequency of Contact: How often do the entities interact? Regular weekly meetings might suggest a closer relationship compared to quarterly check-ins. Influence Level: What is the level of influence of one entity over another? For example, a senior director likely has a high influence level over their direct reports but might also wield considerable informal influence over other departments In practice, consider a relationship map created for a sales team. It might reveal that a salesperson frequently collaborates with the marketing team more than their direct sales colleagues, influencing product promotion strategies significantly. This insight can help managers adjust roles or support structures to optimize team performance. The 6-step Process to Create a Business Relationship Mapping 1. Identify Objectives Before you start mapping, clarify what you hope to accomplish. Objectives can vary widely, from improving sales strategies to enhancing internal communications or managing stakeholder relationships. For instance, a company might use a relationship map to identify key decision-makers in a client company to tailor their sales approach effectively. Every client-side team will have various positions, which are demands made by certain individuals or parties. These positions stem from the multiple strong reasons that parties will have. This could be their needs, concerns, hopes, desires, and fears. The closer your agreement is to the overall interest, the better the deal. 2. Gather Data Collect detailed information about the individuals and relationships you need to include in the map. This involves not just names and titles but also the nature of their connections, the history of their interactions, and their influence levels. Tools like surveys, interviews, and internal records can be useful here. In practice, a project manager might gather data from team members about their previous collaborations and areas of expertise. The relevance or the pecking order of the individual or group is a subjective measure that will keep changing in the client’s lifecycle. This is why keeping this map updated is so important. This is helpful because by clarifying your interests before a negotiation, you will be in a better position to define your goals for the negotiation. Using this list, you can create a diagram that speaks about all the stakeholder groups and the individuals within them. This diagram should give you a fairly good idea for everyone who is involved. 3. Identify the Interests of the stakeholders within the account After having made a list of all the relevant players, you must now analyze them. You will have to jot down these client interests
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.
9 Quick Steps of Key Account Management Process
Key Account Management Process The title may make it all sound easy and that the Key Account Management process can be created in 9 easy steps. But as you may already know it isn’t that simple. However, the sooner begun, the better done. Let’s cut to the chase and start knocking out the 9 steps easy and quick. KAM Glossary: Crucial Account Management Terms Explained These 9 steps go over key account planning, setting up, implementing and reviewing a key account management process. Step 1: Building a Framework Build a Key Account Management framework that suits your needs, targets and goals. Define your Key Account Management journey including adherence to processes and the timeline for your targets. Build roadmaps with milestones and goal-setting. Step 2: Account Segmentation Identify and use analytical thought to determine what your key accounts are. Analyze both potential and current contribution to determine key accounts. Use analytical thinking to understand stakeholders and understand your key customers. This helps the sales team segment the client accounts into different buckets. This will enable salespeople to come up with the right strategic action plan based on account positions. Nearly 33% of a SaaS vendor’s revenue is usually a result of a few key accounts. Nurturing these key accounts and growing with those relationships is important to produce stronger results while lowering selling costs side-by-side. Segmenting key accounts, therefore, becomes essential for future growth. To learn more about the need for key account segmentation, the types of key account segmentation and various customer segmentation strategies, check out this blog here. Step 3: Defining Roles and Responsibilities Identify the major personas that will be involved with the key account management process – Account Management, Sales Enablement, Sales Leadership, Sales Ops, Revenue Ops etc. Determine what their roles will be, how it will play into your Key Account Management process. In addition, establish how they will collaborate with each other. Step 4: Draw up a Key Account Plan Blueprint This blueprint should clearly state the main direction, opportunities, and priorities for each Key Account. It should have a direct link to customer information and should be built as a collaborative effort between internal and external stakeholders. This should then be made available and accessible to all involved in the account. It is also important to check if you have had the customer involved and cued into this plan. Having clarity on which information is important and which is not is also essential. A large amount of information is of no use if it is not relevant information. In addition, it is important to have the information regularly updated, and in real-time ideally. Step 5: Get into Action The key is to get into action and have a clear plan. This should include pondering on questions like: This should include: What needs to be done? By when (clear timelines need to be specified and agreed upon and followed)? Who will be involved and who takes ownership? How will results or success be defined, measured, reviewed and communicated? What’s your troubleshooting plan? What are the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved? What is the escalation POA? Last-minute crisis in case the account is in danger? Step 6: Track, Monitor, and Recalibrate Account plans are dynamic and relationships keep changing. It is inevitable that you will lose some whitespaces, or miss out on some crucial data in the process. It is essential to keep track of Account Plans, continuously monitor changes and recalibrate based on these changes. In addition, a vital part of the Key Account Management process includes course-correcting plans along the way to ensure growth and progress in your accounts. Evaluate Now: Framework to Assess your Key Account Management Maturity Guide Step 7: Communicate with internal and external stakeholders The plan stays on paper if it is not shared and buy-ins are not done in time. Internal Stakeholders Internal stakeholders that are the team members need to know the customer status and value to be delivered at all interfaces. Clear roles need to be charted and communicated. A few questions need to be answered: – Is the customer status/value recognized at all touchpoints? – Regarding the proposition, what you will / will not deliver? – Are the roles of all of the account managers known? Read Now: Stakeholder Mapping for Key Accounts External Stakeholders Externally, customers need to have details of all members on his account. They need to be in agreement with the proposition, opportunities, priorities, and activity. Once again, there are a few questions that must always be dealt with: – Do customers on that Key Account have access to the details of the account team? – Are they bought into the proposition, opportunities, priorities, and all planned activities? – Have the KPIs been shared with and agreed by the customer? Step 8: Opportunity Planning As important as it is to manage accounts via Key Account Management framework, it is just as important to have a proven framework for Opportunity Planning. Having a framework for monitoring opportunities, opportunity planning & management capabilities ensures that you don’t rely just on your CRM for knowing your customers. Map stakeholders and identify potential hurdles, keep track of your team’s progress on large enterprise accounts. Use relevant intelligence to strategize and plan tactics to build a buyer-focused opportunity plan. Read Now: The Practical Guide to Sales Opportunity Management Step 9: Monitor, Control, and Review the Key Account Management Process This step checks the critical parameter and is the final determinant of success with regards to the following: – Value / profitability – Plan progress – jointly monitored efficiency – Whether the identified opportunities have materialized – Whether the Account management KPIs and SLAs have been achieved – Formal measurement of relationship quality using a formal evaluation process – Whether you would still place this account in the Key Accounts roster These nine steps, if followed diligently and exhaustively, will help you set the Key Account Management process in place and make it
Top 3 Highlights of Dreamforce 2019
Dreamforce 2019 Dreamforce – undoubtedly one of the largest tech events in the world. Salesforce’s massive event gathers more than 170,000 attendees at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco. Dreamforce 2019 was an electrifying week filled with innovation, excitement, and inspiration. 4 Days; 2,700+ sessions; 50+ speakers Did you get a chance to catch up on any of the keynotes or ‘fireside chat’ between Marc Benioff and Apple’s Tim Cook? But other than these wonderful conversations, there are few important highlights of Dreamforce 2019 which you need to know! Welcoming the Newbie – Tableau Since Salesforce’s acquisition of Tableau for a whopping 15.7 billion in an all-stock deal in May, lots of efforts are put in to employ the massive capabilities of the leading analytics platform inside Salesforce. Salesforce has also made huge investments in AI which can boost Tableau’s efforts shortly. In the keynote, Adam Selipsky, President and CEO spoke about the need for building a data culture within every organization. Starting the keynote, Selipskya specified the merger as a “natural combination” to join Salesforce. In terms of fit & overlap, Selipsky and Benioff gave a high-level overview of what to expect. Anyways, users and partners can definitely expect some high-level analytical advancements in the Salesforce platform very sooner. ‘Hey Einstein’ – Voice to Customer experience ‘Hey Einstein’ is similar to Alexa or Google’s assistant but a more focused solution for the workplace. It’s all about bringing Salesforce closer to the community by introducing voice access to Salesforce data which will enable salespeople to quickly access data on the go and to ask the system questions about their data. Salesforce is soon launching a tool that will allow companies to quickly build basic Einstein skills to pull up data from Salesforce. Salesforce Chief Product Officer Bret Taylor gave a small demo and added that “We’re really excited about the idea of voice in businesses — the idea that every business can have an AI guide to their business decisions”. The list of announcements included. 1. Einstein Voice Skills Ready-made dialogue snippets and tools tailored toward specific roles or industries, designed to help “admins and developers to build custom, voice-powered Salesforce apps”, which could be rendered as Alexa Skills, Google Assistant Actions, or other tasks that can be carried out by voice assistants. 2. Service Cloud Voice Resources that closely integrate contact center functions with Service Cloud-based applications and services, enabling agents to avail themselves of Einstein in all its capabilities through a “unified agent console”. 3. Einstein Call Coaching Console for managers that use conversational data to spot trends and provide sales reps with best practices and insights to support designed to improve customer experience (CX). Trailhead GO One of the key announcements at Dreamforce was a deepening of the partnership between Apple and Salesforce. The Giants – Apple and Salesforce have jointly come up with a new companion app Trailhead Go – a sales coach and learning solution which is compatible with iOS and iPad OS. This also implies that no Android for now. Announced in Dreamforce and now integrated with the Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce has entered into the Edutech market providing its users and partners with the best technology resources. Though priced at $25, it’s worth it because of new enhancements of AI and Voice power. Also note that Salesforce has redesigned and launched its Salesforce Mobile app with advanced features like deeper analytics and insights to users, using Siri shortcuts and FaceID with Apple’s design features. It’s completely free and is available in the app store. Conclusion With all these exciting announcements about partnerships and developments, Dreamforce 2019 has ended up leaving us excited for the future of technology. What was your highlight of Dreamforce 2019? Write to us and also stay tuned for our next blog on ‘Account Planning sessions in Dreamforce 19 – Everything you need to know!’
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.
Key Account Planning Simplified
If you are a key account manager, I understand what you go through every year during the account planning process. You want the key account planning simplified. Jacob is responsible for building the key account management strategy and executing the plan to achieve annual targets. Bridging the gap between planning and execution is a challenge, always. The even bigger pain point is getting started on and building the plan itself. He is required to spot the real opportunities for value creation and growth across the length and breadth of his Key Accounts. All this tends to become very overwhelming. Typically, this situation reaches a crescendo towards the end of the year when key account managers end up spending a month or two, preparing account plans for the next year. This is thanks to complex methodologies and visually appealing PPT templates that most of the times make the simple; complex. I am dumbstruck. I strongly believe that key account planning can be simple, and exciting. I encourage all key account managers to peruse the following checklist. DemandFarm has done its best to simplify. You will find this simplicity also reflected in the Account Planner. Do give Salesforce Account planning and MS Dynamics Account planning a shot when you are logged into your Salesforce or MS Dynamics instance. Key Account Planning Checklist The As-Is Account managers simply jump into the key account planning process. Investing time and focus to understand the current state of key accounts is a valuable intervention capable of giving the key accounts a much-needed direction. Knowing win/loss areas, active opportunities, the orientation of the contacts in the accounts, and the accounts’ market position with respect to the competition are valuable markers to establish the As-Is. Identify whitespace opportunities Once the as-is is done, key account managers have a clear sense of where the current growth opportunities lie. Juxtaposing those opportunities with competition and mapping them with internal capabilities opens up the ‘whitespace’. Simple. Align the sales process to the buying process B2B buying has changed. CEB had a data point which said, “57% of the purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier.” On similar lines, SiriusDecisions says, “67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally.” Therefore, Strategic account management Plan has to build strategies that proactively seek out opportunities. Getting an account landscape which identifies buying centers in the account and the ability to map them with internal products/solutions can align sales to the buying process. Learn More: Opportunity Planner by DemandFarm boosts tracking capabilities in 65+ opportunities for Dairy MAX Align the Plan to the annual account targets Account targets count. At the end of the year, it is the only thing that counts. Ironically, during sales account planning and execution there emerges a tendency to do more. This often distracts the account managers from the targets. Account planning and execution-only have to ensure strict adherence to strategies and initiatives that are directly linked to account targets. Nothing else matters. Not even a Metallica concert. Use a real-time tool The problem of making account plans in a PPT is this – it is passive and remains passive through the life of the account plan. It is only seldom that the KAMs revisit the PPTs to align their align and adjust their annual account plans. And it isn’t that the KAMs don’t want to. Updating account plans becomes an operational problem in an ever-changing environment. Dynamic, responsive and real-time updating account planning tools like the ‘Account Planner’ can support account managers by saving them from operational grunt work. How would you rate the account planning template& process of your organization? Simple or complex? What initiatives have you taken to simplify? What worked? What did not? What technology tools were leveraged to simplify and improve the process? If you’re interested in transforming your sales post the pandemic, explore our blog on Sales Acceleration in Account Management and how it can help you grow your business in 2021.
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. KAM Glossary: Crucial Account Management Terms Explained 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.
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: Your Guide to Cross-selling and Up-selling 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 world, we would also change the plan
