The secret to winning a key account for long-term
Key account retention, when seen from the eyes of vendor partners, is not just about proving the solution that was asked, but to understand the client’s business and help them grow. But with the fragmented state of data on customers, it is difficult to understand what drives the decision making on the customer’s side. With the right strategy and the right tools, however, key account managers can ensure they have relevant data which allows them to work smart. With proper data about the client in place, Account Managers can demonstrate value to the key account by knowing their business and industry, helping them set goals, develop corresponding strategies and create a concrete, actionable plan. With properly organised data, even a new member of the accounts team can start on an even keel with the information available. With proper data, reaching out to key accounts regularly becomes a meaningful activity, which works towards enhancing the relationship. At the end of the day, technology enables us to do what we already do better. People buy from people they trust, and with sophisticated key account management tools – the task of establishing trust can be simplified. Also, with AI and ML being used increasingly in Key Account Management solutions, we are seeing the software provide helpful suggestions, touch points, key focus areas and more. Watch the complete DemandFarm Fireside Chat to learn how your organization can have a long and fruitful relationship its key customers here
Digital Key Account Management- Unlocking the secret to managing Key Accounts
Previously published under the Council Post for the Forbes’ Business Development Council The Pareto principle, better known as the 80/20 rule, is applied for numerous purposes in boardrooms all over—but the essence holds true for a majority of cases in the business world, especially when it comes to managing and retaining customers. The idea and allure of gaining new users always outweigh the duty of catering to existing customers. And it makes sense why: More customers result in better streamlining of resources and approaches, leading to more savings, higher profits, and better output. But this shouldn’t come at the cost of key accounts contributing to the company’s ongoing revenue. Handling these key accounts is often considered an art. As anyone with knowledge of the enterprising history of business would know, it is only the suavest, sociable account managers who can manage relationships between organizations that are mutually beneficial. The roots and troubles of Key Account Management At the peak of the industrial age, about 50 to 60 years ago, businesses differentiated between strategic customers and regular ones. They treated their large accounts preferentially, and the practices to maintain a big account were translated into methodologies which led to creating templates. This led to a layer of complexities in which consultants would create a sometimes 50-page template to manage a key account. Over the years, this has become theoretical and no longer actionable. In the end, account managers end up creating account plans which amount to nothing but filling in the fields of complex templates which may never be referred to again. What began as an initiative to improve product and solution quality by focusing on the most valuable customers has turned into a complex process that is, at best, seen as a nuisance. And at worst, it can harm relationships between organizations. The cracks in traditional key account management practices have proven untenable in the current scenario, where it is often impossible to have a meeting in person. The fundamentals of account management, which relied on keeping in touch with key clients, are no longer viable across industries and verticals. This luxury of time doesn’t exist in the current scenario, as customer preferences change regularly. The representatives for key customers are looking for a partner who can empathize and help them succeed in their business roles, not a cog who provides what is necessary for the supply chain. When organizations treat their key accounts as strategic partners, the real value of relationships can be seen. Finally, a renewed focus on individual careers has made the movement of employees between companies much more common. This often means that the traditional KAM data is rendered obsolete much more quickly. Why Key Account Management? Even after all the drawbacks, organizations keep trying to accomplish key account management the traditional way because it yields results. Yet key accounts are responsible for 33% of sales revenue, according to a survey by Gartner. A poll on Analytics and Advice for B2B Leaders by Gallop shows that organizations that excel at key account management see disproportionate account growth solely by their ability to engage their customers. The numbers are impressive, too: 34% more profitability, 50% more sales and revenue, and 33% greater chance of being the top choice of clients for future business. The results can be seen fairly early as well. One survey shows that customer satisfaction increases by 20% within a few years of establishing a key account management program, which usually is reflected by a 15% increase in profits and revenue. The benefits compound over time, as KAM programs that are operational for five-plus years usually report figures that are nearly double. Taking the Digital Way Ahead With digital account planning, we are seeing a significant shift for the good in the area of strategic account management. B2B companies that had the luxury of time in the past are moving at a faster pace. The employees typically lasted for years in one organization and often could negotiate multi-year deals to provide products, parts, or services. This is almost unheard of in this era of constant change and optimization and one-year contracts. But when the focus was on keeping the client representative happy earlier, account managers could span out their planning across multiple years at once. Digital tools help in key account management by ushering in a new way of business. Digital key account management transforms key account planning into a dynamic, data-driven process that provides actionable information and insights. The intelligence present in the organization regarding its key customers—what one might term tribal knowledge—resides in the way clients and key account managers interact and add value to the relationship. But this seemingly unstructured information can be captured into an enterprise memory which can be replicated or used by a team rather than a single person. What the Future holds With the record created by digital key account management, an enterprise memory is built which narrates the story of a client’s needs and problems. This provides a solid start to those filling in for their colleagues or replacing someone. With the help of these tools, employees can approach the problem of managing a key account more creatively and provide the necessary human touch with efficiency. The cognitive skills of account managers still rule the roost, and no level of automation can replace the intuition an experienced key account manager brings to the job. It can only enhance it.
4 account penetration strategies to take your retention revenue to the next level
One of the most important laws of growing a SaaS business commands that every company has to face the proverbial “valley of death”—long and dry spells of famine caused by several factors. It’s par for the course that most high-growth SaaS companies stall out in the range of $20–$40 million ARR despite a breezy initial success in scaling their business from 0–1. Other times, external market forces—such as the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic—can cause growing businesses to hit a plateau in their growth trajectory. In many ways, such episodes of growth impediment are sort of trial by ordeal to test the perseverance of a business and its teams. If a company is able to storm the rough weather, it will likely come out of it stronger and ready to take on any challenge. If they don’t survive the challenge—too bad, they probably didn’t have the mettle, to begin with. One way ambitious companies and their GTM teams cope with the rough times is by shifting their focus on an area that is often overlooked, i.e. their existing customers. Of course, it’s tempting to double your business just by pounding out hundreds and hundreds of new leads every month. It’s the exact kind of growth playbook that makes you a VC darling and helps you secure several rounds of funding initially—but not when you hit a wall. When your company is tumbling down the death valley, it’s more logical to focus on your existing base of users to extend a helping hand than to scream for help in a vacuum. There are many upsides to refocusing on your current users to expand your retention revenue. An average sales cycle when selling to existing accounts is 50% shorter than closing deals with new accounts. That means little to no investment in new customer acquisitions, exploiting new revenue channels, and expanding your TAM potential. In a long time horizon, most B2B companies earn 70% of their revenue from 20% of their customers. Taking that as an average, it’s only logical to have a pre-emptive account planning strategy to enable sales opportunities on your immediate radar. Here are four strategic account penetration tips to expand your revenue potential, improve customer lifetime value, and enrich sales velocity. 1. Leverage account-based customer marketing Account-based selling and marketing are nothing but evolved, perhaps more refined, versions of account management or account farming. Sales coaches and theoretical consultants keep adding new templates and playbooks around this topic to reframe it as a new concept, which has made ABS and ABM more complex topics than they actually are. The result? In one of its recent findings, CSO Insights reports that 54.9% of B2B companies have gaping holes in their account penetration strategies. Often, the culprit is the broken hand-off processes between cross-functional teams and information silos even when the teams are catering to serve the same account. For account-based customer marketing to succeed, you should have a proactive strategy to implement your campaigns—not a reactive approach to upsell and cross-sell when an account matures. Start by identifying the target accounts and engage in frequent conversations with them to understand their broader business requirements. This will help you gain visibility into their business environment, sales pipelines, revenue targets, growth bottlenecks, and end-customer needs. Once you have the data, create powerful content stories and messaging to show them the opportunity cost around wasted money, process delays, and long conversion cycles. Strategically position your solution—through a blend of display and retargeting ads—to showcase how using your solution can help them not just to overcome their current problems but achieve their revenue milestones. The idea here is to present your team and solution as strategic partners in their growth rather than mere software vendors or implementation partners. Here’s yet another strategy to leverage account-based sales and marketing to expand revenue growth—use whitespace analysis for farming key accounts. It’s basically a tool to help you identify whitespace farming and mining opportunities, discover areas where you can grow your account, and align or map your resources to accomplish your goals. Whitespace analysis gives you the advantage of strategically positioning second-order selling opportunities with a clear view of the account landscape. For instance, you can use whitespace analysis to identify potential cross-sell and upsell opportunities within your existing key accounts. With whitespace mapping, you can easily find opportunities for additional account penetration and expansion based on an account’s past performance, similar purchase patterns, and competitive landscape. A well-done whitespace analysis of key accounts will help you identify your best selling offerings or products, see gaps in product or service lines, spot revenue opportunities with little to no competition, anticipate and build capacities, and maintain a high-growth pipeline. To pull off most of the ABM campaigns successfully, you would need a solid partnership between marketing and sales because the silos between the two teams would jeopardize your chances of exploiting lucrative revenue opportunities. A tight alignment between marketing and sales can lead to a 32% increase in year-over-year revenue growth. When the two teams join forces with each other, the partnership opens new doors of business opportunities for expanding your retention revenue. For example, sales enablement is an arena where the two teams can come together to improve their team KPIs while bumping up their companies’ revenue. According to stats, businesses that have sales enablement as an integral part of their sales process have a 49% win rate on achieving forecasted deals. This lends itself over to account penetration too. The marketing already has core first-party data that they can leverage to create impactful content assets and create account-based email drip campaigns. They don’t have to open their purse to spend a dollar on acquiring new customers while the sales can borrow marketing’s expertise to create valuable sales collaterals like pitch decks, comparison docs, business cases, and so on. The collaboration is a win-win tactic for both teams and you can even tether the two teams to a common KPI to encourage a tighter alignment.
What DemandFarm brings to the table! (Milind Katti at the SaasHoles Podcast)
Milind Katti at the SaasHoles Podcast Key Account Management is rapidly changing from traditional methods to becoming digitized. Watch Milind Katti, COO & co-founder at DemandFarm, in conversation with Kevin Gaither and Pete Jansons in the SaasHoles podcast. Find out how DemandFarm came to be pioneers in Digital Account Planning. Track the shift from individual-driven to data-driven account planning. Get to know the benefits of converting tacit knowledge to enterprise memory. Check out the following topics in this podcast: Relationship Mapping & Account Management Building relationships as account managers The role of automation in SaaS Hunters vs Farmers in business
The rise of Digital Account Planning and how DemandFarm created its own niche
When we started DemandFarm, we realized that for B2B firms, winning an opportunity is not enough. It is about winning an account in the long run. Keeping that in mind, our vision was to build digital tools for making account-centric sales effectiveness even more prominent. That was the vision with which we had founded the company. And then, we started building account planning tools around the central theme of account-centricity, and over the years, we have seen astounding traction as it took over and helped in making account managers productive and the overall account management process far more effective. The Market Gap we have filled While the CRM has been very good with Opportunity Management, it does not have any process to support large account management, like account planning. Even today, a majority of companies do account planning on PowerPoints and Excel sheets. It is a disparate process with very little standardization. While account-based marketing solutions have helped, there was a big need for a technology solution to address account planning, or account-based sales, which was still very relationship selling driven. With our digital account planning solution, we have done that, and have addressed a big market need. We have helped enterprises answer relevant questions such as: How relevant are your offerings? Does it solve a specific challenge that the customer is facing at that point in time? Do you have on-demand data that can help you make the right decisions and make the right interventions at the right time? How strong are your relationships in terms of breadth and depth? Digital account planning tools can help organizations take a measure of how mature is your communication with the customer. In simple words, digital account planning tools can provide much-needed intelligence and clarity into some of your key accounts. For example, when multiple members from a sales team interact with a large client, there is a lot of information about the client that is there with the individual account managers. DemandFarm’s OrgChart can help in converting this tribal knowledge to enterprise memory by capturing the organizational hierarchy, affinity with client stakeholders, their decision-making power, budget control, internal political mapping, and more into a visual canvas available to all. Similarly, DemandFarm’s Account Plan module is designed to help enterprises create an annual plan for each key account with clear goals and objectives using both qualitative and quantitative insights. Account plans can be created based on account segmentation parameters such as relationship health and account attractiveness or competitor analysis going beyond SWOT to wallet share analysis. Our key account management software has now evolved to a point where we have been able to create a new category, Digital Account Planning, which was not known as a category a few years back. We have succeeded in institutionalizing the account planning process and have helped several organizations standardize the key account management process across organizations in less than 3 months. Once implemented, account managers are equipped with all account insights that may impact their active opportunities and leadership has a global view of key accounts at the click of a button. More importantly, they are able to effectively plan across regions and across multiple teams in a seamless manner. Enterprises also have increased visibility of potential and growth ambition within key accounts. Digital account planning tools give meaningful insights to overcome questions raised by the account manager such as – How to keep track of who all they know and what all they know about them? Where do they lie in the formal hierarchy of their organization? Who controls what budgets? More importantly, DemandFarm helps enterprises evolve contacts to relationships. Account Managers are able to keep a check on internal influences within their customer organizations. The heat maps help Account Teams take informed decisions in the opportunity pursuits. Who to target? Who else to bring into the meetings? Who is our champion? These questions can be easily answered now.
Sales Playbooks for Key Account Management – Everything You Need to Know
All salespeople dream of rolling out strategies that run high on the ‘leads’ factor. But sales is not just about sustainable leads – it is about engaging with your audience and translating the brand’s offerings into tangible solutions to convert them into ideal customers. But how can you do that effectively without resorting to trial-and-error for every customer? This is where a sales playbook comes in. A sales playbook is a how-to guide that puts the correct strategy and tools at salespeople’s fingertips to maneuver every sales cycle stage skillfully. It walks your sales personnel through commonly-encountered scenarios, including prospecting and nurturing leads, when to sell what product or service, dealing with different types of audiences, and more. If understanding what a sales playbook comprises can be a head-scratcher at times, what with its many elements, knowing how to make it work for Key Accounts is doubly tough. Nevertheless, employing a playbook polished by their sales experts unsurprisingly gives companies an edge. However, rote observance of processes that may have gone out of date can stall, if not seriously impede, this growth. Unfortunately, even as fledgling digital applications gained traction within most business departments in the 2000s, many companies failed to leverage technologies to their full extent for sales. Adapting Sales Playbooks for the Digital Selling Age Two recent phenomena have turned this attitude on its head. First, ubiquitous digital interactions — that have reshaped the customer journey and, subsequently, the sales process. Second, the onset of the pandemic and the massive shift to remote work, which has forced sales personnel to navigate their business relationships online and, often, individually. This makes the sales process a bit tricky, especially when you consider the high customer expectations most key account leads harbor. Today, every employee reflects the company, and salespeople more so, for being the company’s first representatives. A consistent and uniform approach while mostly working separately can be difficult to accomplish if mishandled. This is where the digitization of processes can help. If incorporated smartly and appropriately, it can help companies capture and retain strategic accounts. For example, DemandFarm’s Org Chart digitizes an organization’s existing internal hierarchy, relationships, influence, and decision power (read more on this in the next section). All this and more deliver the following key benefits: Ease of Transfer: It is important for sales reps to have a connected view of data, and digitization enables the entire sales pipeline to be transparent to all team members. This means that if a salesperson is unable to entertain their prospective key client, anyone else from the team can take over with ease. Analytics Management: With every piece of information online, monitoring performance indicators, generating reports, and analyzing customer data to improve pitch and process is effortless. Better Process Efficiency: Complex internal processes increase the burden on sales reps. Digitization can mitigate this by facilitating sales teams to use less time and effort and fewer resources to do the same work, equipping them with more efficient processes. While the advantages of digitizing your sales playbook to manage your key accounts are clear, is it possible to do so without disrupting operations? Cue in sales tools for the digital world. Role of Digital Tools to Make This Easy To circumvent possible rejection of your transformed sales playbook, you must ensure two things before zeroing in on any tool. Understand the needs of your business: With more than a thousand vendors in the sales tech arena, there is no dearth of tools. However, it is important to understand which of these tools is ideal for your business requirements lest your investment goes to waste. Involve Your Team: Before deciding on the tool, talk to your team members about the issues they face and invite suggestions for possible solutions. Your sales team needs to be comfortable with your chosen tool to employ it efficiently. Components of an Ideal Sales Playbook in KAM Now that you’ve got a good idea of what to do before selecting your ideal tool, let’s go over the types of sales tools available to you for key account management. Sales Intelligence Sales intelligence involves analyzing data and using it to create insightful reports and estimate future performance. Whether it be sales performance reports or productivity logs or analytics on strategic account behavior, sales intelligence, as a function, takes charge of all data extraction and scrutinization. Relationship Intelligence is a crucial part of any Sales Intelligence process as it helps to map all the relationships and interactions among the teams of customers, both current and potential. It indicates the nature of each entity’s connections and influence on others. Relationship Mapping is important for any Sales Intelligence process because: It helps to gain insights into the relationship, no matter whether it be in terms of age, tenure, seniority, or any other factor. It is useful when trying to understand the growth rate of an organization, which can be achieved by examining the number and nature of relationships in the company. It is integral to any sales process, especially in business-to-business (B2B) companies. This is because the company’s growth is usually dependent on the growth of its relationships and how its team locks down key deals. Sales Enablement As the name suggests, sales enablement empowers salespersons with the resources they need to prospect, close, and nurture leads. This is facilitated by analyzing the data from the marketing, content, and sales departments and drawing on it to align the three cycles, consequently enabling sales personnel to close deals. Benefits of Sales Enablement include: Salespersons can effectively capture key accounts by streamlining communication between departments and providing resources like content and information. The sales team can be better prepared and equipped for upcoming meetings and presentations. Advanced analytics helps companies to understand the current state of their sales cycle, allowing them to identify areas of improvement and highlight the highest-value opportunities. Sales playbooks are an effective way of organizing both your sales enablement and relationship intelligence data into one place. You can read
Account Management 101 – A Complete Guide for Key Account Managers
Account Management: A Comprehensive Guide Account management is the process of building and nurturing strong relationships with key customers to drive growth and revenue for a business. It’s all about understanding your clients’ needs, providing exceptional service, and creating value that keeps them returning. Account Management is all about identifying and focusing on your top 20% of accounts, which have the potential to drive 80% of your revenue while being a trusted partner/advisor to them. As a trusted partner or advisor, you’re not just there to sell them your products or services; you’re there to help them achieve their business goals and overcome their challenges. Hence, getting to know your clients and their businesses is crucial to anticipating their needs and proactively offering solutions that make their lives easier. A study by Global Partners Training found that 61% of companies reported that strategic account management or key account management programs helped them increase their revenue and customer satisfaction. Account management is about being a trusted partner who helps your clients succeed. This comprehensive ‘Account Management 101’ guide explores the fundamentals of account management, the importance and key responsibilities of account managers, and account management best practices. Continue reading. KAM Glossary: 65+ Crucial Account Management Terms Explained Definition: What is Account Management? Account management is all about nurturing strong, long-lasting relationships with your key customer accounts. It’s not just a one-time transaction; it’s a continuous process of managing and strengthening those crucial client partnerships throughout their journey with your business. The role of an account manager is like being a trusted advisor to your most valuable accounts. They oversee the sales process, making sure things run smoothly from start to finish. But it’s not just about closing the deal. To understand Account Management better, here is an example of Jane. Jane is an account manager at an organization that offers a CRM solution. Her first task is guiding her customer – a retail chain smoothly through the sales process – coordinating meetings, demos, negotiations, and everything required to close the deal successfully. But her work doesn’t stop there. Once the contract is signed, Jane starts planning for the long term. She develops a strategy to ensure a seamless rollout and implementation of the new CRM across all the client’s store locations. She coordinates training sessions for the end users and schedules regular check-ins to gather feedback. Account managers are also responsible for planning and ensuring there’s a solid strategy in place to maintain business continuity with your customer base. Part of their job description is being on the lookout for opportunities to offer additional products or services that could benefit the customer – that’s what we call cross-selling and up-selling. As the partnership progresses, Jane is always on the lookout for opportunities to offer additional solutions. Maybe the client could benefit from an advanced analytics module to better understand their retail customer behavior. Or perhaps they need a custom integration to sync the CRM with their inventory management system or other tools in stack. Jane suggests these cross-sell and up-sell options when appropriate. The goal here is to maximize client retention and growth by really catering to customers’ needs. But account management isn’t just about keeping your best clients. The ones who have been with you from the start and played a role in your company’s success story? Those clients are invaluable assets to your organization. Developing a winning relationship with them is the secret ingredient for businesses of all kinds. Evaluate Now: Key Account Management Maturity Modelling Guide What is the importance and the role of account management? The key thing to understand about account management is that it’s all about the long game. As expert Olivier Riviere put it, true strategic accounts aren’t just big spenders – they have special meaning for growing your business over time. You need to know which accounts have that lasting potential. Account management is a continuous process of nurturing relationships, not a one-off sales transaction. It takes consistent time, effort, and investment to manage those accounts well. But make no mistake – even long-term clients could leave anytime for a competitor if you don’t give them the service they deserve. It is a long and cyclic process that takes time, effort, and money. However, those key accounts are likely to churn anytime or be snatched by your competitors. The client who has been with you for years would be a vital lead for your competitors. Hence, the chance of losing them can be detrimental for your business. A good account management strategy can prevent it. Must Watch: Liangbi David Shen, Head of Revenue Operations at Cambridge Mobile Telematics sharing their experience around building processes & strategies for Account Management. Account Management vs Sales – What’s the difference? In simple words, Sales focuses on winning new customers and net-new revenue, whereas account management recognizes existing key customers and nurtures long-term relationships with them while expanding revenue. Say you run a consumer electronics business. Your sales team focuses on promotions and discounts to offload inventory – they’re all about meeting this month’s numbers. In and out transactions. An account manager, on the other hand, might cultivate a partnership with a major retailer for years. They’d coordinate product launches, train retail assistants, and provide reporting tools – whatever that key account needs to keep doing business with you long-term and grow over time. It comes down to sales accelerating immediate numbers versus account management planning future growth by adding value to key accounts. And make no mistake – landing and retaining those high-lifetime-value accounts takes strategy and resources. Likewise, account management finds the scope for future benefits rather than the benefit of a one-time deal. Not surprisingly, the art of account management and identifying key accounts is a complex process. You have to carry out a broad business prospect to afford and manage such accounts because they are going to benefit from your time and effort in the long term. So,
How Key Account Management solutions help make sales teams more efficient | DemandFarm at DeepTech Innovation Week
Effective key account management requires you to increase profits, develop relationships, increase satisfaction, grow revenue, improve retention and reduce conflict. It’s a big, complex job and organizations need to invest more in the right technology to help account managers be more effective. Existing customers are a critical revenue source for almost every organization. Meeting organizational growth targets requires sales leaders to establish well-defined account management processes and tools that retain customers and enable account teams to identify, develop, and execute growth opportunities within their account bas
Leveraging Smart Tools to Manage Key Accounts – Live Webinar
Achieving a deeper understanding of Key accounts is really critical for an account manager to grow revenue. This is only possible through improved data visualization and qualitative analysis of key account data. See how DemandFarm’s Account Planner (Enterprise) can help you scale and standardize your account plans with data-driven account planning!
No Org Chart, No Key Account Management!
See and Listen – How Veracode built thriving strategic relationships with their key accounts using the humble Org Chart from DemandFarm? Learn More: How Org Chart helped Slalom manage over 50,000 key contacts
