Key Account Planning
A Key Account Manager is much more than being a great salesperson – they must protect your most valuable customers and develop a plan to maintain or grow your position by continually adding value.
How well do your salespeople:
- Really understand the business of their customers?
- Focus on the right accounts?
- Plan proactively for the longer term?
- Develop multi-layer relationships with key contacts?
We specialise in developing best practice, tailored Account Plans that work!
We believe that effective, successful Account Plans are updated regularly, take input from and are shared with the full Account team as well as the customer.
Key components of successful Account Plans include:
- The customer’s strategy, business objectives, financial & competitive position
- Robust analysis of your current position (comparative to competitors)
- Potential growth areas
- A clear Customer Value Proposition or Mission Statement
- A Strategic plan to grow or maintain current position
- How to manage multi-layer relationships across both organisations
Please see our Case Study for Key Account Planning.
Decision Makers
Buying has changed: The old approach of “reaching THE decision maker” is simply outdated in today’s modern business world.
There is always a group of people that have influence over the purchase and /or have influence over the success of the implementation that can affect the success of the purchase.
Some of the way decision makers have changed:
- More people are involved in buying decisions.
- The Executive C-Suite and Procurement are more actively involved.
- Buyers are approaching suppliers much later in the buying process.
So sales people today must manage the decision makers and all the influencers not just “to make the sale” but to help the customer achieve real ROI from the purchase by improving the customers business in some way.
All that anyone wants is the “best solution for them.”
The complexity is the “right” solution is different for different people and this often depends on their job role, their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), personal reasons and of course their personality eg the level of risk they are willing to take or speed of decision making
To understand ALL the different types of decision makers and influencers please see my article “How well do you really know your customers” …