Account Management

Well planned, proactive account management delivers better sales and profit results. How effective are your account management people and processes?

Our approach to account management takes the form of an ongoing six step process, which cycles at a frequency that suits the customer organisation. It constantly addresses the acquisition and updating of account information, the analysis and assessment of opportunities, the modification of strategies and plans, the implementation of new programmes and the evaluation and review of progress to date.

Account planning is a critical element of the account management process. It focuses on developing the account for the long term by concentrating on relationship building, new product penetration, getting the business mix right and protecting existing business and revenue.

Relationship management is key. Critically, account management is heavily dependent on maintaining strong relationships with influential customer players – keeping in touch, knowing the “itch cycles” and anticipating buying windows underpin the whole process.

When it is well executed, account management is a planned, proactive selling approach that:

Drives incremental business
Facilitates outstanding growth rates
Controls expense to revenue ratios
Develops relationships for long term loyalty
Leverages you from a supplier to entrenched partner
Has the potential to control buying cycles
Fosters internal support from senior management

Effective account management is vital to retaining and growing existing customers and to maintaining the competitive edge that helps add new customers to your business and extended product or service business with existing customers.

Either scroll through the whole process or follow the links to each of the six steps in the account management cycle :

Step 1 – Acquiring and updating account information
Step 2 – Analysing and assessing opportunities
Step 3 – Defining goals, strategy and approach
Step 4 – Planning operational activities
Step 5 – Implementing programmes
Step 6 – Evaluating and reviewing progress

You will also find a short summary after the step by step description.

Step 1 – Acquiring and updating account information

Purpose

To obtain sufficient account information to assess accurately the full business opportunity
To build credibility with the customer

The three key areas to consider are the customer environment, your position with the customer (or prospect) and the competitive situation. You need to be clear on:

The customer’s business strategy, who’s who, major decision making processes and core business processes
Where you stand with regard to existing business (if any), how well you are performing and strength of your relationships, particularly with key influencers
Where and who the competition is, and what they are planning for your (potential) customer

The more information you have the better your chances of success, so long as it is current, relevant, concise and readily available to improve the quality of your plans and actions.

Step 2 – Analysing and assessing opportunities

Purpose

To identify and understand long and short term business opportunities

Once again, the three key areas to consider are the customer environment, your position with the customer (or prospect) and the competitive situation. You have the information you need to take a realistic view on:

The number, size and timing of visible opportunities, and how well you are positioned to realise them
How much existing revenue and profit you need to protect in existing accounts, and how well you are equipped to attack target areas held by the competition
How best to attack a competitor’s account
How strongly the competition is entrenched in any target accounts in terms of relationships, the reputation of their products, the duration of existing contracts and the quality of their service

Accurate assessment is always critical, given finite resources, the cost of generating business and the sunk and opportunity costs of getting it wrong.

Step 3 – Defining goals, strategy and approach

Purpose

To build an agreed business plan that addresses the identified opportunities
To create a long term account development plan

Four key areas require in depth consideration when it comes to building a strategic plan for an account. These are clear goals, a well defined strategy, a sales approach that fits the circumstances and a set of business objectives. Realistically positioned milestones plot the route to successful account planning and development. You need to focus on:

A small number of goals, no more than four or five, addressing aspects such as account relationships, new product penetration, optimal business mix and, importantly, revenue protection
Realistic strategies including, for example, account maintenance, direct attacks on the competition, niche market offences that play to your strengths or consciously raising the switching costs and other competitive lock-out strategies
Sales approaches examples such as well timed contract renewal overtures, influencing (even specifying) tenders towards your uniques, keeping in touch with your key influencers, seeking application replication opportunities in other parts of the account or working in a consultative way with known change agents
SMART sales objectives – who should sell how much of what to whom and by when, with milestones that set the pace for closing each planned sale

A clear, well structured business plan will facilitate the translation of the strategy into the planning and implementation of operational programmes and activities.

Step 4 – Planning operational activities

Purpose

To translate the account strategy into specific actions

The operational plan has four constituent parts. They are the prospecting plan, deals plans, the care plan and relationship plans. Each of these leads to a set of actions that you have to set up:

Prospecting kicks off with the development of a scouting plan which identifies key contacts, why you want to access them, what your initial sales objectives are and how you are going to go about building demand
Deal plans, which spell out in detail how you are going to manage bids, ITTs and other known opportunities to close business – see Deal and Bid Planning for our approach
Care plans address all the things, large and small, that make a difference, like keeping promises, sorting service issues, capturing changes in personnel, delivering the right goods or services, getting the invoicing and debt collection processes as near faultless as possible
Relationships underpin everything you do with and for an account. They are fundamental to retaining, adding to and growing the business. Understanding the account’s politics and building a matrix to ensure that all the bases are covered, then keeping in contact with the most influential people in sync with the account’s itch cycles will pay dividends

Having broken the operational plan down into sets of objectives and actions (bit-sized chunks), you are ready to implement

Step 5 – Implementing programmes

Purpose

To win short-term business
To make progress towards long term milestones

Two sets of action plans are needed – team plans and individual plans, along with the monitoring, communication and documentation that you require to measure your progress:

Teams are brought together for initial and ongoing planning sessions, clear tasks are set and agreed and commitments to deliver secured
Individuals are briefed as to what their roles are in the achievement of the prospecting, deal planning, care and relationship objectives, accept and clarify their actions, then commit to delivering in line with the milestones
Reviews, documentation and communication processes are put in place to monitor programme implementation

This step is where it has all come together – individuals carrying out their activities in the context of the whole account management picture – they know what, when, how and crucially – why.

Step 6 – Evaluating and reviewing progress

Purpose

To review progress towards milestones
To learn from successes and failures
To update account information and future business opportunity assessments

Evaluation and review measures success and failure of both internal processes and those that include the customer. Critical success factors are identified, learning from successes and failures is captured, successes are celebrated, recorded and published:

Internal reviews look at the state of health of the account overall, unpack all the reasons why you won or lost specific deals, met or missed targets and milestones
Customer reviews follow a similar pattern, but from their point of view
The reviews identify issues, problems and root causes and quantify the impacts of each win or loss. They look for opportunities to build on successes and formulate strategies to prevent future failures.
Useful learning is captured, so that everyone can benefit from the experiences of the teams involved and notable successes are published as widely as appropriate, once permission has been sought and given.

The learning feeds directly into step 1 of the account management cycle – acquiring and updating account information.

Summary

The account management process is not a single cycle of events and activities. There are multiple cycles moving in parallel at any one time. Managing these and nurturing the relationships upon which they are built are key to successful account management and the personal and business benefits that it delivers.

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