Account planning as a team sport

 

Many organizations consider account planning as an opportunity to inventory opportunities. Others view it as a way of monitoring sales activity without getting too involved. A successful completion of the process results in a planning document being filed somewhere. A survey conducted by the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) found that, even within their membership, a few years ago a mere 11% of account plans were “effectively executed.” That’s a pretty dismal completion rate, given that these plans should be the primary pathway to better customer relationships and higher revenue generation! And I don’t have any evidence that this percentage has grown in recent years. Savvy sales leaders, on the other hand, view account planning as a co-creation and alignment process, a continuous mix of discovery, conversation, hypothesis building/testing and value creation. For field reps and KADs/SAMs alike, good account planning, as an ongoing process, is a fabulous way to engage the customer, solve real problems and maximize your opportunities within an account.

Customers don't know what they don't know It's your job as the external expert to help customers learn new things, "to see around corners" as one executive at a key account requested of my team. We talk with customers across industries and have a very different perspective of what's possible.

It came as a surprise to one operations leader at a major airline that he could receive realtime notification of operations issues, rather than the overnight batching of data that populated his dashboard each morning. While we may take that capability for granted, he wasn't aware that this was possible. He simply didn't know what he didn't know. Once he became aware of this new possibility, he moved quickly to incorporate both realtime and strategic operations monitoring.

Inputs and outputs Great field reps work with their technical counterparts, CSMs (if any) and others to identify the strategic opportunities and challenges for their accounts. Conversant in their customers' business operations, they build business value hypotheses on how the customer can more effectively achieve their desired business results. The process involves a lot of inputs, analysis and outputs. But...it is not a linearprocess...it's a continuous process, similar to discovery. And the goal is enrollment...enrolling the customer in believing that these larger goals are possible, and getting stakeholder buy-in. With that buy-in and commitment, anything is possible.

Great account planning is a team sport The team includes not only sales, sales management and leadership, technical consultants, SMEs and other vendor personnel, but also customer stakeholders.

Without the active participation of the customer, we're not conducting account planning, we're building empty hopes that likely don't align with the customer's goals, time frames, priorities and investment strategies. To have real impact, we must align with their goals and priorities. Sometimes we can help shape those goals and priorities. Budgets will follow. But...if they're not at the table while we conduct our planning, alignment and buy-in is simply not possible. And effective governance of the process ensures that this is not a one-time touch point, but an ongoing exchange of ideas and joint investments that lead to better business results for both parties. Suspect that your account planning could be more productive? Lets talk...