Account Management Archives

Are You Managing Your Accounts? Or are THEY Managing YOU? Five Questions to Ask

September 7, 2020/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

If you’re an account manager, you should always be asking yourself: Am I managing my accounts? Or are they managing me?

There’s a fine line between delivering on what your clients ask for (good) and doing their busy work for them, without adding strategic value (bad). You might wonder, if there’s good money in doing the busy work, why not be “just another vendor?” The answer is, vendors are the first to go. Trusted advisors and strategic partners stay on the payroll, even when times are tight.

So how do you reach “trusted advisor” status? Here are 5 questions to ask to see if you’re on the right track. In other words, whether you’re managing your clients—or they’re managing you.

Tactical execution or strategic planning: When do your clients reach out?
Single foothold or large footprint: How embedded are you in the organization?
Status quo or strong growth: How are your accounts performing?
Reactive or proactive: Do you have an account plan in place?
“Yes” vs “Yes, and”: How much value do you add?

Now we’ll take a look at each of these in a bit more depth.

1) Tactical Execution or Strategic Planning: When do your clients reach out?

If your clients always come to you having already decided the path forward, with the expectation that you’ll simply help them execute that plan, that’s a bad sign. It means they think of you as bringing additional capacity, rather than capacity plus perspective, expertise, and insight. While it’s important to add capacity for your clients, it’s also important to remember that capacity alone is easy to replace, and often ultimately cheaper to bring in-house or move to another vendor who underbids you. If you’re capacity only, you’re always in a precarious position.

If, however, you’re considered a strategic advisor, you open up a few opportunities. The farther upstream you are in the strategic process, the more you have a chance to influence the path forward, and discover new opportunities to engage your customers. Whether you cement your relationships in a specific service offering, or expand your footprint within the organization, you’ll be better positioned to do so if you’re part of the conversations at the highest, most strategic levels.

2) Single Foothold or Large Footprint: How embedded are you in the organization?

A single strong relationship with a key stakeholder is a great way to get in the door with a customer, but it’s not enough to stay there. What happens when that person leaves the organization, or switches gears? To build strong relationships, you need to expand your footprint within your client’s organization, both vertically and horizontally.

The best way to start is by creating a dynamic org chart for your customers. This visualizes key relationships, both with leadership and across functions, so you can be more influential in the organization, and more proactive in your product and service offerings.

Finally, the key is to work your way to the C-suite. The principal here is the same as in question 1 above: The farther upstream you are, the more influence and growth potential you can unlock.

3) Status Quo or Strong Growth: How are your accounts performing?

This is a key performance indicator for any key account manager. Of course, the worst case scenario is to lose the account — but just holding on to accounts isn’t great, either. Especially if you’re scrambling to keep clients happy, and making yourself less profitable along the way.

The profitability of an account (in addition to straight scope/revenue) can be a valuable indicator of how well you’re managing your clients, vs them managing you. Client management includes client education: making sure they understand what’s possible, how to get there, and how to collaborate efficiently and seamlessly. (Hint: Sometimes this requires difficult conversations, vs just saying “yes” to everything they ask for. See Question 5 below for more.)

Of course, profitability is a factor of efficiency and revenue. Not proactively managing your accounts means you’re leaving money on the table. Maybe you’re too much a vendor and too little a strategic partner; maybe you’re not fully embedded in the client’s organization. If you’re not aware of additional business opportunities within the account—and how to seize them—you’re probably not managing your clients.

If you’re managing your accounts well, you are increasing your SOW year-over-year, while also increasing your internal efficiency. It all adds up to more profitable work.

4) Reactive or proactive: Do you have an account plan in place?

If you’re constantly scrambling to keep up with client requests, pivoting suddenly, changing timelines and deliverables, and generally putting out fires, you’re not managing your accounts. You’re reacting, but you’re not leading.

Account leadership extends to both internal teams and the client. But it only happens when you have a clear vision and a clear account plan to get there. That means creating an account plan that methodically translates big picture strategic objectives (which you’ll know if you’re embedded in the high-level, strategic work in your customer’s organizations) into discrete action items.

Your clients should be active partners in creating the account plan. But they shouldn’t be the only ones with a plan—or else you’ll be playing catch up.

5) “Yes” vs “Yes, And”: How much value do you add?

At their worst, key account managers are a glorified email forwarding service. They let the team know what the client has asked for, and if the team proposes a new idea, or pushes back on a timeline, the account person just stubbornly repeats what the client said.

This is not account management. This is simply relaying information. The skill and finesse of client management requires a “yes, and” approach, where you are willing to (a) propose alternate solutions and (b) push back when the work will suffer as a result of something the client asked for.

We’ve talked before about how to have difficult conversations with clients. It’s never fun. What’s fun is blowing the client away; having an incredible meeting where they can’t stop telling you how grateful they are for the work you’ve done and the value you’ve added. The truth is that sometimes the path to great work requires pushing back on the client’s initial request; if you are a strong account manager, you have to be willing to raise alternate solutions—and if you’re good at it, you’ll find your clients are receptive.

Conclusion

In order to see the most growth potential in your accounts, and engage in fulfilling, strategic, value-added work, you can’t be someone your customers manage — you have to manage them. To see how Kapta can help, schedule a personal demo today.

Make Your Account Reviews Count: Your guide to leading account reviews that drive client satisfaction and open the door to organic growth

Don’t just check the box. Move the needle.

Account reviews are an incredible opportunity. They open the door to feedback, insights, and opportunities. They’re a chance for face-time between leadership and cross-functional teams from both organizations. They strengthen relationships, build customer engagement, and create opportunities for organic growth through customer improvement.

But account reviews only work if they’re done right.

Below is our guide to leading engaging and productive account reviews. We’ve included big picture best practices as well as several practical tips. To learn more about how Kapta can support you in making account reviews count, schedule your personal demo.

Schedule Regular Check-Ups

We say it all the time: Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) are a thing of the past. Not because business reviews aren’t critical, but because quarterly isn’t enough.

So how frequently should you schedule account reviews? As always, it depends. If you’re already in constant contact with your client, through regular status meetings or deliverables reviews, you can afford to schedule less frequent formal reviews. If you are not already talking to your client all the time, you need to schedule account reviews at least every 2-4 weeks.

However often you have them, make sure your account reviews are separate from day-to-day meetings, so you can focus on the big picture, invite big players, and check in on the relationship as a whole, rather than getting lost in the weeds of any given deliverable.

Prepare to Add Value

We conducted a survey of over 100 CIOs and CMOs, and found that most account reviews fell flat for one simple reason: The team wasn’t prepared. Give yourself time leading up to the meeting to put together a deck. Assign an owner, and then ask:

What did we cover in the last account review? Make sure you’re not repeating yourself, or asking questions you should already know the answer to.
What did we commit to in the last account review? If you haven’t already, make sure you follow up on the status of any outstanding deliverables or action items.
What do the numbers (really) say? Account reviews are a great time to cover any relevant metrics or KPIs—especially if they’ve changed since the last review. But remember: Your clients don’t want to interpret a dozen charts and graphs. They want you to do that for them. Make sure you translate data into key takeaways and actionable insights.
Has the team weighed in? If you work on a cross-functional team, make sure key people from each department review your presentation. They might have insight you don’t have, or they may see a red flag. You can also consider inviting those team members to the review, as appropriate (see below for more tips on getting the right people in the room).
Are we adding value? Remember, you’re pulling your customers away from their day and work to come to this meeting. Don’t just tell them what they already know.
Can we be more succinct? As the French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously said, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” Whittle down your slides to those that add value, spark meaningful conversation, answer outstanding questions, or raise new, important questions. Avoid fluff. A too-long presentation is a hallmark of not having fully prepared.

What it all comes down to is this: You can’t put together your next account review the day before your next account review. You need time to get input from the team, turn data into meaningful insights, and build a review that adds value and sparks good conversation.

Stay Client-Focused

Remember: It’s not about you. Account reviews are a great opportunity to demonstrate value and show what you’ve accomplished, but you have to make sure you relate back to your customer’s stated goals. Structure the meat of your presentation around active client objectives, including:

Recap: Here’s what you (the customer) wanted to achieve, and here’s what we (together) decided to do to get there
Current status: Here’s where we are (progress, timing, budget, metrics of success)
Key takeaways: Here’s what we’ve learned to date (if applicable)
Course correction: Here’s how we’re adjusting our approach (if applicable)
Thoughts/comments? Pause periodically to get client input (more on this below)
Next steps: Here’s what we’re doing next

We’ll talk more about the client input piece below—for now, just make sure you’re building in plenty of time for a 2-way conversation, rather than a 1-sided presentation. And ask yourself with every slide or bullet point: Is this meaningful/interesting to my customer? Or just to me? If the answer is the latter, take it out.

Because you’re structuring the bulk of your account review around your client’s stated goals, any pipeline reviews need to happen separately. A good account review may reveal new client goals (and new opportunities for business), but it’s not an overt sales meeting. It’s a reckoning against the goals your customer has already set, and the commitments you’ve already made. You can come back to new opportunities later.

Create a 2-Way Conversation

Account reviews are a great opportunity to hear from your clients first hand. They’re a face-to-face Voice of Customer exercise—but only if you talk with your customers, not at them.

Ask about their satisfaction. Are they happy with the work? Are they happy with the team? Ask if there’s anything they’d like to modify or improve. Ask about their goals. Have they changed or evolved since the last time you spoke? Are they facing new market trends or competitive threats? The sooner you know, the more proactive you can be about solving their problems—before they reach out to another vendor, or another vendor reaches out to them.

In order to get meaningful Voice of Customer insights, you need to make sure the right customers are in the room. Here are a few practical tips:

Build a balanced room. Don’t send 10 people from your organization if there are only 2 attendees from the customer side. A balanced room creates a balanced dynamic—if customers feel outnumbered, they may be less likely to speak up. Not to mention, sending too many people raises dollar-sign-question-marks in your client’s mind, ie “Am I paying for all these people to attend?”
Invite leadership from both sides: Sending leadership from your organization signals to your client that their business matters. It’s also an excellent chance for managers to observe their team in action, and to gauge the health of the relationship. Not only can leadership take action if there are red flags, but they can also use their observations to drive better internal performance reviews for the team.
Invite cross-functional teams: A common mistake account managers make is feeling too possessive of their client relationships. It’s understandable—those relationships are a big part of the value you add to an organization. But if you allow your full team direct access to your customers, they’ll do a better job for your customers. Keeping other departments siloed from the client makes it impossible for people to act with the customer top of mind.
Build in time for feedback: If your account review is 1 hour long, prepare 30 minutes of content to present. In doing so, you build in plenty of time for clients to actively participate in the review, adding commentary, questions, and feedback along the way.

End with an Action Plan

It’s been a great meeting. You presented insightful, relevant updates. Your clients were engaged participants. You revealed new opportunities and asked interesting questions. So now what?

Make sure to leave meetings with an action plan in place. Include deliverables, commitment, and timing. Schedule the next review, and identify any particular attendees who should be there.

Here’s another practical tip: Block your calendar for an additional 1-2 hours following the meeting to give yourself time for immediate action items, such as:

Contact report
Scheduling subsequent client meetings
Scheduling internal regroups
Alerting internal teams to any immediate feedback or next steps
And more

Just as we encourage you to build in time leading up to the review, we encourage you to build in time following the review. Setting aside time to prepare and follow up, respectively, means you take account reviews seriously—and that’s the first step towards making them work for you.

Drive Customer Improvement

Good account reviews should require internal follow up. Maybe you gained some valuable insight on current deliverables, and you want to share with the broader team to inform their ongoing work. Or maybe you heard some interesting nuggets that could turn into opportunities for organic growth. Pull some good minds together and start brainstorming how you might help your customers reach goals.

Customer improvement is the practice of knowing your customers—and their business—almost better than they know themselves, so you can offer ideas and insights they wouldn’t have thought of on their own. That’s the kind of value-added relationship that grows over time, but it takes time to make it happen. Don’t just run your account review and forget everything you heard until the next one—use internal resources to translate client comments into meaningful feedback for the team, and meaningful growth potential for your customers.

Conclusion

We’ve covered lots of best practices for conducting excellent account reviews, and we’ve included practical tips throughout to help you operationalize your approach. Now—what kinds of tools do you have to help along the way?

Kapta’s real-time tracking and reporting tools make it easy to access on-the-spot data for any given account. Pull metrics, show progress, and visually demonstrate value with a few clicks.

Kapta’s collaboration hub gives you a central repository for the output of client reviews, whether it’s a change in approach, an update to timing, or an update to strategy.

And Kapta’s VOC tools help capture client feedback and client goals in a way that prompts follow up and further discussion, reinforcing the behaviors that transform customer relationships.

To learn more about how Kapta can help you prepare for and make the most of account reviews, schedule a demo today.

Team Building Inspiration for your Key Account Managers

January 20, 2020/in Account Management, Key Account Management /by Lesley Poladsky

We talk a lot about customer engagement here at Kapta, and there’s good reason for that: Without customers, you don’t have a company. Period.

But internal engagement matters, too. The bigger and more demanding your book of business gets, the more you need cross-functional teams to keep your clients satisfied. And it’s not enough that they just be cross-functional; they need to be highly functional.

Employees are higher functioning and more deeply engaged when they’re able to use their strengths to be successful at an organization, and when they’re able to work more productively with their team.

So we’re taking a break from our client-facing content to look inward, and offer some inspiration around team building. At its heart, team-building is about connecting to coworkers as people. The goal isn’t for everybody to be best friends—it’s to help your teams understanding how individuals think, process, prioritize, and work, so they can communicate and collaborate more smoothly and effectively.

Often, the simple fact that coworkers are people, too, gets lost in the day-to-day stress of deliverables. Team-building is about stepping out of everyday work, however temporarily, to gain perspective and check in as a team. There are many ways to do this; we’ve grouped them into 3 main categories:

Routine, onsite check-ins
Offsite retreats or workshops
Social outings

We’ll take a closer look at all three so you can evaluate what might work best for your next team-building event.

1) Routine, On-site Check-Ins

We go to meetings all the time. Status meetings. Client meetings. Meetings to review deliverables. In fact, it’s not uncommon for teams to complain about the sheer number of meetings they have to attend every day, especially if there’s no time set aside to just work.

With that in mind, it’s good to be judicious about adding more meetings to the calendar; however, it’s also important to set aside time for team check-ins. In other words, meetings that aren’t about any specific client or deliverable, but rather a general opportunity to get together and share positive feedback.

We find every 4-6 weeks is a good interval for meetings like this, and there’s no reason not to serve food and drinks. Monday morning with coffee and breakfast burritos; Wednesday lunch; or Friday afternoon with chips, dips, and beer. Food and drinks set up a pleasant space that’s unlike most of the other meetings your team will attend that week.

Within each meeting, the goal is to provide opportunities for the team to express appreciation and positive feedback for the work their colleagues do. Rather than leaving this open-ended, which may result in more superficial comments, structure the conversation around Team Norms.

Team Norms are values each team agrees to early in their work together. These values should feel like a natural expression of the company’s values or culture as a whole, but they are tailored to specific teams or work groups, so they can be a little more practical and specific. Some good examples of Team Norms include:

We encourage constructive feedback, because it gives people a chance to be more successful, sooner.
We don’t fight amongst ourselves. Different functions have different priorities, but we are all working together to accomplish the same task.
We do not email each other on evenings or weekends unless we’ve talked about it ahead of time.

It’s important when establishing Team Norms to get buy-in from the team as a whole, and to keep the list to about 5. Nobody needs a Team Constitution—just a few, key, shared values to help guide the culture of a specific working group.

Once those are established, your monthly team check-ins can include a chance for everyone on the team to share an example of how a teammate exemplified Team Norms. These kinds of check-ins reinforce shared values and give the team regular, quick chances to show their appreciation, which can help keep lines of communication open and smooth as work continues. And, since they happen onsite in the course of the normal work week, they are often relatively inexpensive and easy to schedule.

2) Offsite Retreats and Workshops

Occasionally, you need to step even farther out of context to get your team thinking differently about their coworkers. This is where it can be useful to go offsite, or bring in 3rd party groups to facilitate workshops.

Unlike regular team check-ins, which are structured around Team Norms and include appreciative remarks about work, offsite or 3rd-party facilitated workshops should take your team to a completely different environment. These exercises help people step outside their normal day to better understand themselves and their own strengths, as well as the strengths of their teammates; a good facilitator will then help your team apply what they’ve learned to their workplace environment.

Some good examples of activities like these include Tangrams, Liberating Structures, and DISC. In Tangrams, the team creates images out of geometrical shapes, learning along the way how many unique ways there are to tackle a problem, and how a high-functioning team needs different kinds of thinkers to thrive. Liberating Structures are designed to boost engagement and inclusion, with a focus on creating a culture of innovation within an organization. And DISC is a personality assessment, designed to build nuanced profiles for each team member, illustrating how they work as individuals, and how they can better relate to each other. In all cases, a skilled, 3rd-party facilitator is key to making the experience engaging, meaningful, and valuable for everyone.

In all the examples above, teammates learn more about what makes each other tick: How they function, how they think, and how to create a smoother, more satisfying work environment. It’s not just about making people happy at work; it’s about making teams more effective.

There are also options that get your team out of the office and moving around, without the same level of in-depth reflection. A good, old-fashioned ropes course can build leadership skills and strategies, as well as trust and communication. If it’s winter or if your team is decidedly uninterested in dangling from moderate heights, Escape Rooms are fun and social, and require teamwork, creativity, and communication. Neither ropes courses nor escape rooms are necessarily designed to crystallize clear learnings about your coworkers’ strengths or your team’s dynamics, but they are more than just a social outing in that they demand cooperation among the team.

Offsite or 3rd-party moderated team building workshops necessarily require more investment than in-line meetings. However, they are a worthy use of time and money, especially if the team is coming out of (or looking towards) a particularly stressful set of deliverables.

3) Go Social

Sometimes you just need a break. No workshops. No puzzles. No meetings. Just time outside the office to reconnect as people, and remember that even if so-and-so sent an annoying email about such-and-such, or handled a situation poorly, you still mostly like them as a person.

The options here are endless: Top Golf, arcades, bowling, or just a nice happy hour at a nearby bar. Social outings can’t tackle the deeper level of who we are, how we work, and how we can work together better, but they’re a nice release valve when things are stressful, and an important reminder that relationships matter.

Conclusion

Ideally, your team-building strategy involves a mix of all these elements. Periodic deep-dives, offsites, or 3rd-party workshops to learn more about each other and how to work together better. Regular check-ins to make sure the way you’re working day to day is reflective of the values you share and the people you are. And the occasional social event to lighten the mood.

It can be easy to dismiss the time or money it takes to stop working and, as Socrates advises, “live an examined life.” But it’s not just about internal satisfaction, though that has its own merit. When a team is high-functioning internally, they can be high-functioning externally, too. Teams with strong internal relationships are better poised to build strong client relationships, and clients recognize when a team has good chemistry, just as they recognize when a team is falling apart.

So make a plan for team building in the coming year, and let us know what you do, and what kind of results you see.

Career Paths for Successful Key Account Managers

September 26, 2017/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

Key Account Management is demanding work, but many businesses are beginning to notice its considerable value. And many people are noticing its value, too — after all, one of your greatest career assets is your relationships, and key account management is all about building strong relationships.

More key account manager positions are being created and advertised in major industries, which can make this an attractive opportunity for long-term career growth. In a competitive business environment, becoming a Key Account Manager is a smart way to position yourself, as it gives you direct access to your company’s most important asset: Customers. Read on to learn what it takes to begin a KAM career, and what opportunities this choice may lead to in the future.

Requirements for Key Account Manager Positions

To become a Key Account Manager, you will need to bring the right mix of experience and skills to the table. This is a highly competitive environment with high stakes, because the difference between developing a key client and losing a key client can make or break a business. As partner to customers, you are the engine driving organic growth. These are some of the typical requirements for the Key Account Manager position:

1. Bachelor’s degree or higher in a related business field

Qualifying fields may include business administration, sales, marketing, communications, business management, or otherwise. However, your major or minor are really only important for entry-level positions out of college; your work experience is ultimately more important. The art and skill of great client management is hard to teach even in the best programs. It takes on-the-job experience to build judgement, timing, instincts, and process — as well as practice with KAM software and systems.

2. 3 – 5 years of significant experience

It’s beneficial for you to have experience working with CRM or Account Management tools, working directly with customers, or working in a junior position in a key account management department. Again, the most important of these is experience working directly with customers, as your judgment and interpersonal skills are so central to your role as a KAM.

3. Collaboration and interpersonal skills

This position requires you to create a warm partnership with at least one key account, and then maintain that relationship with focused attention, responsiveness, and quality communication. When we say the job requires “strong interpersonal skills,” we mean the ability to listen, remain flexible, address a diversity of needs, and stay open even when a situation gets complicated or heated. The ability to collaborate well with folks immersed in a company culture entirely different than your own will be essential to your success, so if you do your best work alone, this might not be the position for you.

4. Written and spoken communication skills

A large part of your job as a Key Account Manager is to facilitate communication between all parts of your organization and those of your key accounts. You will need to be able to identify the communication styles of the people you work with and tailor your approach accordingly. Some people require more reassurance, while others take a “just the facts” approach. Being able to adapt how you speak or write to each of your specific audiences is a valuable skill in this field.

5. Strategic thinking and sales

You must be able to think strategically to create win-win scenarios for your key accounts and your organization. Creating this sort of reciprocal gain requires careful planning and strategic thinking in the areas of operations, sales, and more. As is the case for many key relationships throughout our lives, the goal is always to create a mutually-beneficial outcome.

6. Analytical skills

As a Key Account Manager, you must have the ability to analyze threats and opportunities within your industry as well as your key accounts’ industries. Financial analysis and competence are often great supplemental skills for Key Account Managers to have.

7. Business development

Part of building a strategic partnership is gradually increasing and expanding your business with key account clients. Business development can occur in both directions; be ready to identify patterns of need across key accounts to help your company choose which offerings to add to their portfolio. At the same time, keep your key accounts up to speed on how your company’s new offerings could benefit them in particular.

Potential Career Paths for KAMs

Before you take a specific job, it’s good to know what doors that choice might open for you in the future. Pathways of upward mobility depend on the size and scope of the organization you join. Larger organizations often offer a clear career path within their well-established key account program. If the scope of the company is more limited, you may have to look outside your department to find options for vertical movement.

If there is no direct path within a smaller key account management department, there are still career paths possible for those who excel at Key Account Management.

Sales

The simplest path for most Key Account Managers is upwards through the sales department. While key account management is not strictly a sales department function, it’s usually inter-related; Key Account Managers do generally work closely with the sales department in order to create a strong strategic partnership with clients.

It’s possible to jump into a managerial or more senior sales position from a Key Account Manager position, especially as a regional or national sales manager. Eventually, you could seek promotion to the director of sales or VP of sales position.

Account Management

Regular account management departments perform similar functions to key account management departments but with a less personalized approach and a wider selection of clients. This makes a Key Account Manager a good candidate for senior positions in the account management department.

Growing into a role as senior account manager or national account manager from Key Account Management allows you to lead with the strong relationship skills you have built during your time in a KAM role. That said, smaller organizations are less likely to have account management departments large enough to allow for much upward mobility.

Business Development

Because one of the critical duties of a Key Account Manager is to understand their clients’ needs and organizational structure in depth, moving to business development is a great option for a systems-minded Key Account Manager. Your deep understanding of key accounts can help you to find and approach potential business leads for your organization, or to direct a team of business development agents.

You may be able to move up as a business development manager or director, which can parlay into a more senior marketing or sales position eventually.

Operations

In some cases, Key Account Managers may be able to move into operations manager positions. This is not as common, because it usually requires a larger horizontal leap than the other career paths. Operations and key account management do not have as much overlap as the other career paths listed, but if your particular strength is turning others’ goals and dreams into realities, this might be the right path for you.

The functions of smaller organizations tend to be more closely linked, so they may offer the option to jump into operations more frequently. When filling higher-ranking positions, it’s common for a smaller organization to extend the search to a broader range of departments including KAM.

In truth, there are many options for advancement as a Key Account Manager. Your specific upward mobility path will depend on the particular strengths you bring to the table as a successful KAM and on the size and type of company you join. It’s good to remember and articulate that the Key Account Manager skills you develop are widely applicable to other areas of the organization. When the time is right, you can confidently present yourself as capable of succeeding in the high-ranking position of your highest aspirations.

To learn more about Key Account Management — and how to do it well — download our Big Book of KAM.

How Secure Are Your Key Accounts?

February 8, 2016/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

As a key account manager, it’s important to always keep this question in the front of your mind: How secure are your key accounts?

The truth is that you have an incredibly important job in your B2B organization. If you are a key account manager, you are responsible for maintaining ongoing relationships with your company’s most valuable customers. Each day, you must man the front line of your company and ensure that your key customers are satisfied and supported.

It doesn’t matter what you sell, your company is more profitable when you can establish and maintain positive, long-term relationships with your clients. Once the sales team closes the deal, the key customer comes to you, and now, you must ensure that they receives the kind of value of service that makes them want to continue in the business relationship for years to come.

Nurturing Your Key Accounts

There is a lot of pressure on you, as an account manager, to nurture your key accounts. That is, after all, the key to building healthy and happy customer relationships.

These are your company’s most valuable and important clients in your hands. Depending on your market, they are the most recognizable brand names or the ones with the highest volume of customers. It’s crucial to have a sense for how secure your relationships are with each of your key accounts. Some issues that endanger the security of your relationships with key accounts are competitor threats and problems that customers fail to mention. Here are several issues to monitor.

Your key accounts are exploring other options.

Often, key customers research the prices that your competitors charge. This is to be expected. They want to verify that they’re getting both quantity and quality from your company. If a competitor offers a lower price and the customer feels the quality of the product or service is equivalent, then he or she could easily jump ship.

Keep research on hand to show how your pricing structure stacks up against your competitors. If your key customer brings you a competitor’s quote, try to match it or be prepared to explain to them how they’re getting more value for their money with you.

Competitors are trying to seduce your key accounts.

Sales representatives from competitors may aggressively contact your customers and offer them special perquisites to earn their business. This might include taking representatives from customer firms out to lunch or on trips and offering temporarily lower rates for switching providers. Your company must offer a higher quality of service, so customer account contacts are not tempted by these competitor tricks.

Key customers aren’t telling you when they are displeased with your service.

Commonly, disgruntled customers will not come right out and tell you that they are not happy with the service they are receiving. There are many potential sources of a customer’s unhappiness. You could have a weak link on the account management team, a person who offers a lower level of service than a long-term customer has typically received. Or, a customer does not know how to correctly use your product or service and is afraid to ask for help.

Conduct random and frequent phone calls to your key accounts to see how they are feeling about their relationship with your company. Is there anything they need from you that they’re not getting? Do they feel that they are receiving the level of service that was promised to them?

Account managers aren’t following up regularly with key customers.

As an account manager, it is your job to maintain regular contact with your key accounts. This ties right in with the previous point. When you make a concerted effort to stay in touch with your key accounts and encourage a positive, mutually beneficial relationship, you are more likely to have an understanding of where your relationship stands.

It is not enough to only call once every couple months, when it’s time to make a sale. You need to position yourself as a resource and a partner in the success of your key customer’s business. Contact your key accounts regularly to inquire how they feel about your product or service. Take the time to get to know your key accounts and what they need from you to reach their business goals. If you aren’t talking to your key accounts, you’ll likely be surprised when they decide to leave.

Your key accounts require continuous service. Personalized contact through phone calls, emails, letters, and site visits can satisfy your most valuable customers’ needs. When these strategies aren’t possible, generate emails and mailings to keep customers informed. Give them updates about your products or services. Send them special offers that encourage them to scale up or scale down based on their changing needs. Thank them personally when they refer new customer accounts to your business.

In the long run, you’ll feel more secure about the relationships with your key customers when you are doing everything in your power to ensure their overall success.

How to Keep your Key Account Managers from Only Chasing Checks

January 18, 2016/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

Your key account managers are the unsung heroes of your B2B sales. They are the primary point of contact for all of your most important accounts and therefore, have the greatest responsibility to provide a high level of service and value to those customers. In many ways, the long-term success of your business hinges on the success of the relationships your key account managers nurture with their clients. It is their job to ensure the customer feels happy, supported, empowered, and inclined to continue doing business with your company, now and into the future.

However, when you speak to customers, you often hear complaints that key account managers are only heard from when it’s time to renew a contract or pay an invoice. There is a disconnected feeling, and while the customer may understand the value of what is being provided, they don’t get the feeling that someone is on their side and working to help them achieve their goals.

The Impact of Key Account Managers Chasing Checks

The impact of your key account managers being driven only by a check is significant, and overtime, it will show in customer retention. Your customers will begin to view your team as reactive and haphazard, rather than proactive and strategic.

Instead, they want to feel as if you are ahead of the curve, always looking to improve and enhance their business as well as yours. Key account managers that are chasing checks only have low value interactions that decrease trust and make the customer feel unworthy. They begin to see that interactions only occur when payment is owed. Your business will begin to be seen as replaceable and just another commodity vendor, not a trusted advisor. If you want to truly make a difference and have a long-term impact for your customers, your key account managers need better training.

The Solution is Arming KAMs With the Tools They Need

Of course, the solution to decreased trust is to rebuild it with current key customers and establish it from the beginning with new ones. Arm your KAM’s with the tools they need to provide this effectively.

Give KAM’s incentive to have strategic conversations with customers.
Prioritize goal discovery and uncovering key initiatives from customers.
Strive to understand the problems your customers face and how you can help get them resolved.
Build a communication cadence and strive to interact with customers in a way that adds value and makes them feel less stressed, better equipped and aided in their problem solving.
Link back to their goals during interactions to help customers see the strategic and value-added approach of your business.
Connect customers with tools and resources outside of a KAM’s job scope. Customers will see and appreciate this dedication.

Training your key account managers in this direction will benefit your business, your customers and your managers themselves.

Manager Incentives

To further encourage these interactions, you can incentivize this communication. For instance, managers can keep record of problems they are able to help customers with, so that future customers can benefit. Through these records, you can award bonuses to managers that are able to help key accounts achieve their goals most effectively.

Schedules

A schedule will help key account managers stay on track with regular outreach to clients. You can give your managers a schedule to follow that shows how often they should be reaching out via email or phone for strategic talks. Ultimately, these are the calls that make customers feel important, and by scheduling this communication for your key account managers, they will see the importance of it as well. Reaching out only when money is owed or contracts are due is unacceptable. However, key account managers will likely revert back to bad communication habits and customer relationships will deteriorate, without the right schedule in place.

The key to knowing how to keep your key account managers from just chasing checks is in better training. Account managers need to understand the importance and value of interacting with customers positively, in a way that connects with their goals and needs. Through these interactions, key account managers, and your business as a whole, will have better customer retention and long-term sales.

Why Your QBRs Suck

December 22, 2015/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

It’s the end of the year again and all of your top customers have had their Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) with your organization. As usual, you gathered your customers and some of your top executives to:

Discuss status of the project
Review outstanding bugs and issues reported
Share your upcoming product roadmap
Agree on a series of vague and non-specific follow items

Phew! You’re all done – time to wrap up the year and start planning for 2016. Good job, Key Account Manager, you completed all of the year’s QBRs.

I hate to tell you this, but…your QBRs suck.

They are a waste of your time, your customers don’t get any value out of them, and they are hurting (rather than helping) the relationship with your biggest customers.

How do I know? We asked your customers. Over the past six months, the Kapta team has conducted over 100 interviews with CIOs and CMOs (big buyers of products and services at most organizations).

Specifically, we asked them about their relationships with their vendors, what they like and don’t like about QBRs and status review meetings, and what vendors could improve.

The results were astounding, and not good news for most Account Managers. Only 28% of respondents considered QBRs “valuable” while 31% considered them “not valuable” and 41% called them “neutral.”

Here are some of the quotes we heard about QBRs:

“They are a waste of time.”
“Take too long.”
“I ask my vendors for 4 charts and they show up with 55 PowerPoint slides.”
“I’ve started delegating these meetings to my staff because they just aren’t important to me.”
“The conversation is way too tactical, not strategic at all.”
“They haven’t done their homework. Their executives show up and ask the same questions ever time.”
“The vendors just talk, they don’t ask questions or listen to what I need.”
“Who says these meetings have to be every 90 days? Sometimes I need a vendor communicating with me much more often, sometimes much less. But they never ask how I want to work with them.”

Ouch! That’s not the type of feedback you’d expect from customers, especially given how long you spend preparing for the meeting. [On average, vendors spend 15 to 20 hours preparing for each QBR meeting with a strategic customer.]

Here’s why your QBRs suck: you don’t know enough about your customers. There, I said it.

This is what I mean. You probably think you’re proactive, always on the ball, value-added and responsive. And I’m sure you are. But you also aren’t moving the needle for your customer, and you aren’t challenging them on how to improve their business. If you’re not challenging your customers’ thinking, you aren’t considered a strategic partner or trusted advisor. And that puts your relationship (and business) at risk.

It starts with knowing your customer. Take a step back and ask yourself, how well do you know your customer’s goals? Do you know their team objectives and KPIs? Major company initiatives? How your individual customer sees your product or service helping them to achieve their goals?

Until you have the answers to these questions, you just can’t engage in a meaningful strategic dialog with your client. But once you do, your relationship with change.

Through our surveys and interviews with buyers, they told us specifically what they are looking for in QBRs and update meetings:

“Strategic guidance, not just reviews of bug lists and problems.”
“Bring the conversation back to why we bought from them in the first place.”
“Bring me ideas to make me and my team look like heroes.”
“No bullshit. If something isn’t going as planned, own it and show me how you are going to fix it.”
“I want vendors to update me on how their service is helping me to meet MY goals, not theirs.”

This can be the year you take your QBRs to the next level. The next time you have a meeting with a key customer, ask these critical questions and notice how much more strategic the conversation gets:

Why did you buy from us?
What goals are we helping you achieve?
How can we add even more value to you next year?
What should we stop/start/continue doing?
What feedback do you have on last year’s QBRs?
How strategic is our partnership to you?

The answers to these questions will drive your customer engagement strategy for the year and will provide a clear roadmap on what actions you need to take in order to become a more trusted advisor. Pay attention to the answers, and to the nonverbal cues (like body language and tone of voice) that come with them.

The key to running truly great QBRs is to deeply understand your customer and link your work back to their success. This blueprint will allow you to significantly increase the value you provide to your key accounts.

Next time you’re preparing for a QBR, come back to this list. Let us know your feedback!

Curious to see how you can take your Key Account Management skills to the next level? Download this helpful ebook on how to create powerful engagement plans for your key accounts or sign up for a demo of Kapta.

Keys to Account Management with Ed Powers

November 23, 2015/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

How to Protect your Revenue in Uncertain Economic Times

November 11, 2015/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

The State of Affairs

I’m sure you’ve noticed that words like “recession” and “slow-down” are becoming more commonplace as business confidence wobbles and volatility in capital markets increases.

Those unlucky enough to run businesses during the 2007-08 crisis know exactly what comes with a recession—tough times and high risk. Consumer spending slows, new business disappears, and profit margins dwindle.

For business leaders, it takes guts, grit, and determination to survive economic perils like recessions and depressions.

It takes something else too—existing customers.

Existing customers are the fruit of time, money, and careful cultivation. They are an existing asset, an investment in your economic future, and that makes them immensely valuable for your businesses, be it large or small.

During times of slow or regressing economic development, new revenue sources dry up, making the preservation of existing resources absolutely essential.

How important are existing customers to the longevity of your business? Let’s take a look…

Why Do Current Customers Matter?

Higher close rates

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s far easier to sell to an existing customer than a brand new prospect.

They know you, your business, your products, and your services. They already see the value in what you provide and are willing to hand over money in exchange.

There’s a sense of trust that creates comfort and security—two things integral to securing “wins” during tough economic times. Because your value is proven, your close rates can remain resilient even in the face of a recession.

Spend more, spend faster

Current customers have an established relationship with you and your business. That relationship means more comfort and less resistance to spending.

Data from marketing consultant Laura Lake suggests existing customers spend nearly 1/3rd more per close than new customers.

Not only do they spend more, existing customers spend faster, with lower turnaround time between proposal and close.

As pointed out by sales consultant Ago Cluytens, roughly 50% existing clients will sign-off on a deal in the same fiscal quarter they are presented with a contract.

When dealing with brand new customers, that percentage takes a 30% nosedive.

In spite of these findings, many B2B sales teams still invest more energy in targeting new prospects than they do upselling and retaining current clients.

Shifting your company’s focus to existing customers will increase the size, scope, and frequency of the deals you close. And when the door closes on new business opportunities, you can always mine existing clients to find the revenue you need.

High profits, lower costs

New customers cost money – lead generation, marketing, sales teams, onboarding – and when your business is spending money to make money, your profit margins are taking a hit.

Existing customers, however, are cheaper to win which means “big gains to your profit margins.”

A study by consulting company Bain and the Harvard Business School suggests new customers are actually unprofitable for the first 12+ months of any relationship. According to the research, it’s only later on when “the volume of purchases rise, do relationships generate big returns.”

Translation?—by keeping current customers happy and retargeting sales efforts at those existing clients, your company can significantly and “simultaneously reduce costs [thereby] increase[ing] profits.”

If your organization keeps clients happy by consistently delivering value and trust, profits will remain stable in the face of economic uncertainty.

Keeping Customers Happy with Key Account Management

Be a strategic partner

In tumultuous economic environments, vendors get crushed while strategic partners grow, it’s just that simple.

Strategic partners are human enterprises rather than robotic operations. They’re not interested in transactional behavior and absent-minded product sales, rather they build robust relationships that drives comprehensive customer success for key accounts.

Take the time to completely immerse your business in the operations and objectives of your clients.

Don’t deliver on the “order”, deliver on the goals of your customer. When you do, you’ll create a level of worth your customers won’t want to part ways with, even if the economy is weakening.

Create a sense of “we’re in this together” and your customers will hold on for the long haul.

An agile Account Manager will play an absolutely integral role in cultivating the type of partnership required to endure economic slow-down.

Key Account Managers start building sturdy relationships with clients on Day 1. Using a combination of active listening and exploratory questioning, KAM’s identify client goals that go beyond what’s outlined in the contract, and speak to those goals with eloquence and acuity.

Most importantly, Key Account Managers make the client feel as though they have an “inside man”. They provide premium, personalized service that helps spawn strong bonds of trust between the client and your company.

Add value every step of the way

Flood your customers with value every step of the way. Give them everything they bargained for and then some more.

This doesn’t need to come in the form of free or discounted product—it can be something as simple as demonstrating a real commitment to relationship development.

How do you demonstrate that commitment?—with talented Account Managers.

Key Account Managers put the customer’s success before their own. They take the time to deeply understand what your customer is after in the big picture and commit themselves (and your company’s resources) to delivering on those expectations at all reasonable cost.

When clients can enjoy that type of dedication from your employees, three things happen:

Clients smile
Client feel understood
Clients keep spending

Account Managers are your golden parachute when the economy slows. They make sure when the going gets tough, good things still happen for your clients and your company.

Show your customer that you understand their goals

Putting your customer first means understanding their goals, which is easier said than done.

It requires excellent listening and clear communication skills.

It requires Key Account Managers.

Only KAM’s have conversations that go beyond specific campaign targets and dive deeply into the mind of your client. They ask thoughtful questions that communicate a desire to walk a mile in the client’s shoes.

That type of engagement creates companionship and respect.

It also lets the client know you understand their company as well as they do, which makes it THAT much easier to secure future business.

Remember, it’s a domino effect.

Key Account Managers have high-level client comprehension
High-level comprehension allows for high-level client service
High-level service facilitates robust client retention
Client retention keeps your company open while the competition closes its doors

Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail

When it comes to weathering severe economic storms, businesses with the best preparation are those that come out on top.

Great companies know their most valuable asset for longevity isn’t the prospect pipeline or sales team, it’s the relationship Key Account Managers can forge with existing clients.

Devote the time, money, and energy to develop a talented Account Management Team, and your company will cultivating the strong client relationships necessary to not only make it through an economic downturn, but come out booming on the other side.

Why the Joint Success Plan will benefit your Key Account relationships

November 3, 2015/in Account Management /by Alex Raymond

It’s easy to forget that business accounts are about people, not just numbers, transactions, and activity. Research shows that building healthy relationships with your key accounts is what maximizes profitability over time. A great starting point to healthy key account relationships is identifying primary goals and the necessary steps for achieving said goals.

Create win/wins with Joint Success Plans

Customers who feel their account managers are exceptional are 10 to 15 times more likely to renew. A catalytic part of Kapta’s Key Account Management Software is our Joint Success Plan^TM (JSP). The Joint Success Plan streamlines process of documenting your customer’s primary goals, mutual expectations, and ambitions toward success.

The Joint Success Plan is part of the onboarding process where you get to talk with your key account customer about their most important goals. As you identify those goals, you can document them as KPIs through the Key Account Management Software. The Joint Success Plan becomes a reference point and action plan for both your customer and your key account management staff. You can assign and track tasks based off their documented goals with communication opportunities for any needed project changes.

Real-time reports may be generated to share with your clients or executive staff to show how much progress and value you’re contributing. The Joint Success Plan is the leading indicator of your key account’s Satisfaction Health Score, a core element of the Kapta Account Health Score system. The aggregated Account Health Score helps indicate future upsell opportunities and likelihood of contract renewal for your key accounts.

With the Joint Success Plan, you have a clearly defined destination for your Account Managers to target. When it comes time to renew or to upsell, you can have a healthy, trusting relationship ready for greater opportunities.

Click to get a demo of Kapta’s Key Account Management Platform

1) Tactical Execution or Strategic Planning: When do your clients reach out?

2) Single Foothold or Large Footprint: How embedded are you in the organization?

3) Status Quo or Strong Growth: How are your accounts performing?

4) Reactive or proactive: Do you have an account plan in place?

5) “Yes” vs “Yes, And”: How much value do you add?

Conclusion

Don’t just check the box. Move the needle.

Schedule Regular Check-Ups

Prepare to Add Value

Stay Client-Focused

Create a 2-Way Conversation

End with an Action Plan

Drive Customer Improvement

Conclusion

1) Routine, On-site Check-Ins

2) Offsite Retreats and Workshops

3) Go Social

Conclusion

Requirements for Key Account Manager Positions

1. Bachelor’s degree or higher in a related business field

2. 3 – 5 years of significant experience

3. Collaboration and interpersonal skills

4. Written and spoken communication skills

5. Strategic thinking and sales

6. Analytical skills

7. Business development

Potential Career Paths for KAMs

Sales

Account Management

Business Development

Operations

Nurturing Your Key Accounts

Your key accounts are exploring other options.

Competitors are trying to seduce your key accounts.

Key customers aren’t telling you when they are displeased with your service.

Account managers aren’t following up regularly with key customers.

The Impact of Key Account Managers Chasing Checks

The Solution is Arming KAMs With the Tools They Need

Manager Incentives

Schedules

The State of Affairs

Why Do Current Customers Matter?

Higher close rates

Spend more, spend faster

High profits, lower costs

Keeping Customers Happy with Key Account Management

Be a strategic partner

Add value every step of the way

Show your customer that you understand their goals

Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail

Create win/wins with Joint Success Plans

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