Invest in Key Account Management Software, Not your CRM
Without the right tools, you can't be nearly as effective, efficient,…
July 15, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyHere’s Why Using NPS (Net Promoter Score) is LAZY and is Putting Your Company at RISK
Are you using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge the health…
July 8, 2019/by Alex RaymondWhy Investing in Key Account Management is a Better Bet Than Investing in Sales Right Now
In business, as in everyday life, many of our decisions are based…
July 1, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyHow Much is Your CRM Really Costing You?
We hate to break it to you, but you’re spending too much on…
June 24, 2019/by Alex RaymondHow To Enhance Your Individual Workflow for Key Account Manager
No matter what it is in life, it’s good to be the best at it.…
June 17, 2019/by Alex RaymondHow to Use Purpose and Vision Messaging to Grow Your Key Account Management Program
It’s no secret that if your organization is new to key account…
June 10, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyBuilding a Value-Based Account Plan
Account plans not only serve as a map to lead your account to…
June 3, 2019/by Alex RaymondThe Basic Formula for Creating a Metric for Customer Success
There are a lot of intangible factors in key account management,…
May 27, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyWhat Sets the Good Account Managers Apart from the Great Account Managers
There’s nothing wrong with being good – let’s get that…
May 20, 2019/by Alex RaymondAre You Falling into These 7 Account Management Traps?
Account managers and key account manager (KAMs), listen up! You’ve…
May 13, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyWhat Does Value Really Mean in the Eyes of Your Customers
There’s no way to move forward with a value-driven plan or…
May 6, 2019/by Alex RaymondThe Four Pillars of Building a Strong Account Plan
Do you know what goes into a strong account plan? If you already…
April 29, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyCategories
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How Key Account Managers Can Use LinkedIn to Maximum Effect
/in Key Account Management /by Alex RaymondSocial media has rapidly changed society over the last decade or so. It’s made us closer online, and we’re able to keep in touch with practically anyone. While you might love scrolling through cute dog pictures on your Instagram or Facebook feed, one social network is making huge waves over on the professional side of the spectrum.
LinkedIn can be a key account manager’s best friend, and the perfect tool that they need to do more for their clients, stay in the loop with the competition, and recruit new prospects. If you aren’t keeping your LinkedIn up to date and staying active on it, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for growth and outreach.
Some assume that LinkedIn is only useful if you’re on the job hunt and need to reach out to recruiters and hiring managers. While it’s great for that, many companies are leveraging it for growth and some even credit it as the key to their development efforts over the years. Could you say the same?
Today, I’m going to take a look at some of the most important elements of being successful on LinkedIn, along with some of my tips to help you improve your profile. If you follow these tips and start thinking of LinkedIn as less of a social network and more of an information gathering, lead generating, and recruiting tool, you’ll see why so many key account managers are so active on the platform.
Connect with Who You Know
The first step to ramping up your LinkedIn profile is to connect with as many people as you know, as you long as you do know them. Your online network should reflect your real-life connections first and then you can start reaching out to new leads, customers, and recruits with a solid backing of other LinkedIn members that can introduce you or get you connected. You should go through your contacts list (you can integrate it into your profile to make it easier) and then start adding away.
You should follow your colleagues and people that you have built professional relationships with over the years at conferences, workshops, and past jobs. Next, you want to stay connected with your customers and their companies. This way, you can stay in the loop about what’s happening in their industry and organization and they can also be advocates for the great work that you’re doing to their other connections.
Keep an Eye on the Competition
In addition to connecting with your customers and their organizations, you also want to keep an eye on the competition as well. You can learn a lot about a company or someone on LinkedIn because it seems like we are willing to tell the online world just about anything (for better or worst). Use this as an opportunity to gather some intel on your customer’s competition along with your own competitors.
Learn more about what’s coming down the pipeline at their competitor’s company so you can get a jump on preparing their account plan. Figure out what your competitors are most excited about, who they just signed, or who they are letting go so you can swoop them up. All of this information is out there, just sitting around, clogging up LinkedIn feeds, and it’s free for the taking. If you aren’t getting on LinkedIn and keeping up with this information, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to put yourself and your clients in a better position.
You should also follow hashtags and industry insiders that regularly report on your sector. It’s good to know what is happening with the industry as a whole so you can make better-informed decisions for your clients and your organization, but also so you can have the info to back up your Trusted Advisor title. You’re the expert in this field, so continue to learn every day and discover new questions to ask your clients.
Figure Out What Matters Most
As mentioned earlier, people love to put a ton of information about themselves out on LinkedIn. Perhaps one of the most important things that you can learn from your connections on LinkedIn is what matters most to them. Whether your clients come right out with a long post about what they look for in a vendor or you can see a pattern based on the posts they interact with, the information is all there—you just have to look for it.
This goes for both your customers and your competitors. Learning what your competitors care about the most can give you a slight edge in many ways. For example, if you’re in a bidding war with a rival over a new account, you might be able to compromise on things like revenue share in exchange for a longer contract when you know your rivals wouldn’t dare offer that. While this is a pretty specific example, if you spend enough time on LinkedIn, you really can learn a lot about your competitors, customers, and even yourself in some cases.
Be Proactive
Part of leveraging LinkedIn for growth and your organization’s gain means being a trusted voice on the platform. To do this, you need to be proactive and optimize your profile to the fullest. There are a ton of guides online about what to write in your bio or how to list your qualifications so I won’t get into those nitty-gritty details here. I will say, however, that sharing content and interacting with 1st and 2nd-degree connections can be huge for making some noise on LinkedIn.
Content is king on LinkedIn, and the beauty of it is that you can post pretty much anything on there as long as people can gain some value out of it. Whether it’s an article about a lesson you learned from a client or you have the perfect recipe for saving an account, others want to read your thoughts. The more that you can post and the more people that see it, the more your credibility rises. With that online credibility, you’ll be able to grow your network, get those introductions, and get those new accounts. It’s really that simple. Although it can take some time at first to make some waves on the platform, if you log on every day and are active on it, you can make it happen.
Make Connections
Along with connecting with people that you already know and have relationships with, your LinkedIn profile should be on your business card and a piece of contact information that you give and gather at trade shows, conferences, and when you’re out and about. When you’ve built up a solid profile on LinkedIn and show that you are active, people will see you as the expert in your field and it establishes offline credibility for you and your organization as well.
With as much as we use social media these days, most people aren’t too wary about giving out their LinkedIn information and it’s pretty par for the course in modern networking. Because of this, rather than flat-out denying you, you might have a lot more luck with hesitant connections at trade shows. Maybe you didn’t make the best first impression and they aren’t quite sure about what you’re offering. Even though they maybe might not give you their phone number, they’ll likely give you the LinkedIn handle, and then you can use it to make a push to make a better impression the next time around.
But, chances are you crush it at conferences and don’t need to worry about wary contacts. Imagine you’re having a great conversation with someone but didn’t get a chance to get their contact information. You can look them up later on LinkedIn and preserve the contact for the future. Even just 15 years ago this wasn’t possible and many account managers and salespeople know the struggle of losing a potential lead because of lack of contact information. LinkedIn solves that problem.
Above All, Keep it Professional
It seems like it should go without saying that LinkedIn is a professional space, but it seems like some people on the site could use a reminder. When everyone has three or four separate social network accounts, it’s easy for the lines to blur and Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn all become kind of the same conglomerate. Fight against this and make sure that you treat each network differently, using it for a different purpose and presenting yourself differently.
While the vast majority of LinkedIn users are fairly professional, it is the internet, so every once in a while you’ll run into a troll or a hater in the comment threads. Remember, your clients, coworkers, boss, and future connections can see what you post, what you comment, who you argue with, etc., so it’s crucial that you always maintain your professionalism on the platform. You want to use it as a way to build your offline credibility, not hurt it. Save the slang, swears, political opinions, and flame wars for Facebook or Twitter; LinkedIn is basically your online office space.
Avoid Being Pushy
As you make new connections, you’ll probably be excited to get in their inbox and start pitching them on whatever it is you’re offering. Whether you have a new job opportunity or you want to sign them onto your service, you should avoid being overly pushy. People don’t respond well to others delivering aggressive sales pitches to their inbox. It is annoying and gives a bad name to our LinkedIn efforts when, in actuality, there’s a perfectly acceptable way to do it.
Avoid spammy-sounding messages or messages that sound disingenuous, like you sent the same exact canned response to all of your new connections. When you reach out to someone, make it personal and don’t come out of the gate with a sales pitch. Think about the person on the other end of your message and treat them how you would want to be treated on the platform.
Follow Your Friends’ Professional Journeys and Recruit If You Can
The final reason that key account managers should use LinkedIn is to keep in touch and follow along with their friends’ professional journeys. Provide them with endorsements and vouch for them to help them land their next big job. You can also use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool if you’re connected to fellow account managers working for competitors. Maybe they could be your next coworker.
Summary
If you’re exclusively relying on old-school methods to make connections and network, you aren’t using all of the tools available to you. LinkedIn is more than just a digital resume. It’s a powerful tool that you can use to make connections, build relationships, and make a sale. There’s a right and a wrong way to use it but luckily many others have broken it down to a science. Optimize your profile and stay proactive, and you’ll start to see some results from your profile.
About Kapta
Kapta believes in relationships first, and number-crunching second. The Kapta platform was developed to make the modern key account manager’s life easier. Rather than spending every day bouncing from app to app and staring at spreadsheets, Kapta does all of the technical work so you can get on the phone and build relationships with your customers. Kapta is the KAM platform that account managers rely on to become the Trusted Advisor for their clients and is a crucial tool to create mutual success. Built into the platform you’ll find powerful tools like Voice of Customer (VOC) Insights, account health scores, account planning templates, and so much more.
What’s Your Definition of Key Account Management?
/in Key Account Management /by Lesley PoladskyFor some things in life, there is a clear-cut, right or wrong answer. You define an apple as one thing and anyone in the world will think the same thing. But for other things like “success” and key account management, the answer isn’t as simple. Believe it or not, not every organization has the same definition of key account management.
It means something different to every manager and executive and the answers might surprise you. From the basic principles and day-to-day duties of a key account manager to the overall goal of the account management system, how you subconsciously define it could be very different than what the experts think about it.
So, what’s your definition of key account management and should you shift your perspective for better success? Let’s take a look at how we define it, along with some core principles to keep in mind and include in your definition.
How We Define It
At Kapta, we eat, sleep, and breathe key account management. It’s our everything and we’ve had the privilege to work with some of the best key account management teams in the business over the years. From our experience and the way that we do things here, we define it like this:
Helping you deliver win-win outcomes and maximum value to the customers that are most strategic to your business.
That’s our mission statement and you’ll notice that results and win-win outcomes are front and center. The reality is we don’t see key account management as just a system for maintaining your current position but instead is about delivering results first. When you deliver results over simple management, your most strategic accounts see you as the partner in their success. They can’t do it without you.
Do you think of key account management as moving the ball down the field, or is it more about doing the bare minimum to keep them through renewal season? If you answered the latter, you need to adjust your strategy if you want to compete with the other players in the market.
It’s All About the Win-Win
Results speak louder than words in key account management. Your customers deserve more than just promises and excuses. They chose to work with you because you have a track record of delivering results for your clients and have presented yourself as an expert in their industry. If you lose focus of driving wins for your most strategic accounts, then your key account management program will suffer.
Some people have a hard time visualizing this joint success. They’re too caught up in their own organization and start to see their customers are revenue generators rather than outspoken supporters. When you make your strategic customers happy and keep them happy for years in a row, they can become your best lead generating tool. Don’t underestimate the power of Customer Success and creating win-win outcomes, no matter how big or small they are.
A good way to shift into this perspective is to put your customer’s goals before your own. Get more specific in your meetings with them to uncover their hidden needs and worries and find a way to incorporate them into the account plan. With this sharp focus on their ultimate outcome, you’ll notice that the wins for your organization happen almost automatically along the way. Now that is what we call the ultimate win-win scenario.
You Need to Deliver Maximum Value
Another component of defining what key account management means to you is determining the maximum value for your customers and then delivering it. We only want to spend on premium products and services that deliver value and your services and product should bring as much value as possible to your clients. Finding this maximum value isn’t some sort of magic and you shouldn’t just hope you get lucky and have a product that matches your client’s expectations.
In our definition of key account management, we must work to determine what our clients define as their maximum value. Basically, you want to know what is their be-all, end-all goal along with what they look for in you to help them reach that goal. If you can uncover the answer to this, you can find a way to position your services as the answer to their needs and you’ll be able to deliver maximum value to them.
Delivering this maximum value should be efficient and seamless. If you feel like you have to work to find a reason that your clients should choose you over the competition, you need to evaluate how you’re positioning yourself and potentially how you feel about your products or services.
Know the Client
So, how do you get the answers to some of these most important questions? In key account management, we strongly believe that nothing can get done and you can’t build a strong relationship with your clients unless you pick up the phone and talk to them. Emails, texts, and chats are convenient, but this digital barrier is keeping you from getting to really know your client like the business partner they are.
For us, when it comes to becoming our clients’ trusted partners, we do as many personal calls as possible to develop a nearly unbreakable relationship. It all starts with the Voice of Customer (VOC) interview. This is essentially like a QBR except a lot more frequent, a whole lot more effective, and gets to the deep-rooted questions and answers that your competitors wouldn’t even think to ask about.
To be a Trusted Advisor and someone that your client considers as the partner in their success, you need to do more than just learn the basics of their business. To be the best, you need to know your client and their organization better than they know themselves. You need to have a solid understanding of their needs, goals, wants, fears, risks, and the 3 a.m. questions that keep them up at night. If you have a firm understanding of these things, then getting results for your customers will become almost automatic.
Follow the 80/20 Rule
In our view, the Pareto Principle, stating that 80% of results can be equated to 20% of inputs, is a core component of the definition of key account management. The entire management philosophy is based on the fact that your strategic accounts matter more than the rest of your clients. While you should care about every organization that chooses to use your services, your priorities need to be in order.
Let’s say you brought in $200K in revenue last month—$160K or 80% of that quite possibly came from only two of ten clients. With numbers like that, it’s crucial that you prioritize and put all of your time and energy into the clients that matter. This isn’t to say that you should neglect other accounts and avoid trying to grow them but rather understand who keeps your company rolling and who is merely providing a little boost.
How Do You Implement It?
If you don’t have a key account management culture or platform in place already, you’ll need to have a plan to implement it. Planning not only helps you and your team become adjusted to the new system, but it will ensure that the transition is smooth for your clients as well. Pulling off a smooth implementation of a key account management program is crucial to your success as you’ll need to deliver solutions and results smoothly as well.
We are firm believers in detailed account plans that account for a variety of things that could possibly happen. Although it might take more effort on your end, when you can plan things out fully for your accounts and for your organization, the results are astounding. Take the time to consider how you’re going to implement your KAM program at the start and how you’re going to implement your account plans so your customers can see the results you’ve promised.
Follow a Repeatable Methodology
We believe that there is an art and a science to being a good key account manager. The art component is in how you build relationships with your customers and weave results seemingly out of thin air. The science part, however, is where the results really come from, and determines how successful you really are in the long run. The secret is to follow a simple, repeatable methodology that practically guarantees that you’ll get to the goal post in the end.
Developing that methodology can take some time if you’re starting from scratch, but chances are you’ve already created one throughout your career. You know the things to say and things not to say. You have personal best practices that you live by. Consider all of them and any adjustments you can make. You must also be open to adjustments based on external information and other account management best practices and incorporate them into your own.
Create a Joint Success Plan
A key piece of our KAM definition is the idea of joint success. We aren’t focused on winning only for ourselves, but see ourselves as teammates striving to reach the same goal. When we win, our customers win, and when our customers win, we win. Joint success is a mindset that you need to maintain in all you do if you want to be the best strategic account manager.
Along with developing a mindset, you’ll want to create a joint success plan that highlights all of the duties and responsibilities of your role and how it will affect your client. Every client will be different and have different goals, but in the end, they likely all want the same thing, whether it’s revenue growth, new customer growth, or something else.
Build Trust
As our definition of key account management is primarily based on building a relationship, building trust with your clients goes right along with it. Without trust in a relationship, you have nothing, and you want your clients to trust you so you can have more deciding power and wiggle room with their account, and they’ll also be more forgiving if you ever make a mistake in the future.
To build that trust, we find that giving them a peek into your mindset and ideas for the future. Some account managers think that they have to protect their client’s account plans to surprise them, but the reality is, the more you can share the better. Let them know how much thought has gone into your process and how much you want to see their account succeed. Show off your results and let them know that you’re winning for them. By being transparent about your process and practices, you’ll be able to build trust with all of your accounts and claim the coveted title of Trusted Advisor.
About Kapta
Kapta is an all-in-one enterprise account management platform that enables account managers to drive more results with less technical effort. Instead of having to jump from program to program just to accomplish a simple task, Kapta puts it all in one place. This means that you’ll spend less time bogged down with your office technology and instead dedicating more time to your clients and their goals. Kapta is the ultimate relationship management platform with tools like Voice of Customer (VOC) Insights, account planning templates, health scores, and more right there for you to manage your accounts and see where you stand at a glance. If your goal is the strengthen your relationships and achieve even more win-win solutions, you need Kapta.
Get Ready for KAMCon 2019!
/in KAMCon /by Alex RaymondIt’s that time of year again. Summer is wrapping up and we’re swapping our shorts for flannels and putting the boats and wakeboards away in favor for boots and snowboards. Do you know what else rolls around this time of the year? Our annual KAM conference, affectionately known as KAMCon.
Every year here in Boulder, Colorado, we invite some of the biggest names in the account management world to come and learn, network, and grow together. There isn’t any other dedicated account management conference like this out there and every year, Kapta aims to make it bigger and better than the last.
The date is quickly approaching, so if you want to get in on this (you really should), here’s all of the info you need to know.
Take Your Key Account Management Game to the Next Level
KAMCon is all about bringing executives, account managers, leaders, innovators, and customer experience experts together to share and spread the best tips, tricks, practices, and tools in the business. Nowhere else are you going to find the biggest names in the business all in one place and every year, we work hard to make this year’s KAMCon bigger and better than the last.
At KAMCon, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from the most trusted names in customer success and strategic account management. By attending KAMCon, you’ll be able to learn actionable tips, knowledge, and skills that you can bring home and put to use almost immediately.
There are also benefits that extend beyond the workshops and seminars. KAMCon provides attendees with the opportunity to meet fellow account managers, leaders, innovators, and customer service experts. Networking makes the business world go round and at KAMCon, you’ll have the chance to find your next management rock star or learn how you can become one. That opportunity is worth the price of admission alone.
A Stacked Lineup of Speakers
Kapta works tirelessly all year to maneuver around the endlessly-busy schedules of our world-class speakers to bring them all here for three days only. We pick the best of the best to speak at KAMCon and even as personal friends, we still learn so much from them every year that they speak. This year, you can expect to take your account plans to the next level, optimize your account management processes, better understand change management, and so much more.
Here are the speakers slated to present at KAMCon 2019:
Each of these speakers is an expert in the field and they all bring decades of experience collectively to KAMCon. Without our speakers, we’d just have a room full of people and it’s our distinguished guests that really make KAMCon what it has grown to be.
What We’re Going to Cover
To put it simply, you get your money’s worth when you attend KAMCon. It’s probably going to be some of the most jam-packed days of learning you’ve experienced since college (there won’t be a test, don’t worry). During the three days, you’ll learn more about the following through the presentations and workshops:
To make things a little bit easier for you to plan, here’s a schedule of events for the entire KAMCon:
Day 1:
Day 2:
Nowhere else are you going to find this kind of knowledge just thrown around in back-to-back-to-back presentations and workshops. What can you do with this new information? How will your new connections help you get a leg-up in the KAM world? Here are just a few thoughts from past KAMCon attendees:
What People Have Said About Previous KAMCons
“KAMCon is intimate, very interactive, very high quality speakers.” Ed Powers, Intellisecure
“A great experience for the latest and greatest in Account Management.” Matthew Pizzolato, Open Systems
“So much of KAMCon is applicable to what I do to better serve my clients.” Joe Gannon, Belief Agency
“Great opportunities for networking!” David Bronovicki, Construction Specialities
Why Your Competitors Don’t Want You to Go
To put it bluntly, going to KAMCon gives you a leg up on the competition. In this day and age, it’s not the product that drives revenue growth—it’s the relationship. The tools and skills that you’re going to gain and develop over the course of the three-day conference will help you deliver better results for your clients and could be the deciding factor between a renewal and a cancellation.
Your competitors that chose to stay home won’t be able to compete. Instead, they’ll be running around in circles wondering why they can’t stay on top of their accounts and why they are always so difficult to deal with. You, on the other hand, will know exactly what it takes to keep your customers more than happy, and they’ll be excited to work with you. It took decades worth of research and first-hand experience for our speakers to gather their tips and tricks to share and you’ll be able to absorb it all in just three days. Your competitors might hate you for it, but your customers will love the impact that this conference has on your work.
Exclusive Pre-Conference Workshop from Jermaine Edwards
Jermaine Edwards is a heavyweight in the account management game and we’re so fortunate to have him here at KAMCon 2019. During the event, we’ll be offering an exclusive pre-conference workshop that supplements a lot of the information from the other presenters. If you’re struggling to create account plans that your customers and you can trust will lead them into success, you do not want to miss this.
On Monday of the conference, you have the option to participate in Jermaine’s interactive half-day workshop. As an industry expert, Jermaine Edwards will share all of his insider knowledge and experience during the “How to Create Strong Account Plans You Can Trust” workshop. Creating and managing account plans is a common pain point for a lot of us, and he has the insider tips and secrets that will help make the process simple, and way, way more efficient and effective. How goes through the entire process he follows to create a strong account plan, walking you through the beginning stages of building the template all the way through the implementation process.
Among other things, during this workshop, you’ll have the chance to:
If even just one of those bullet points sounds interesting to you, we highly encourage you to attend this exclusive event!
And It’s in Boulder!
If all of this wasn’t enough to convince you that KAMCon is the must-go event for account managers, the beautiful natural surroundings, crisp mountain air, and bustling area of Boulder should be enough. Just about 45 minutes from Denver, Boulder is the mountain getaway most people go to for vacation if they’re lucky enough to take some time off, and you get to come for fun and knowledge too! We’re happy to have you here and know that you’ll love the area just as much as we do.
Summary
KAMCon only comes around once a year, and if you’ve been to a previous one, you know that it’s well worth it. Nowhere else in the world are you going to find industry knowledge this thorough, researched, and put to practice than right here during KAMCon. If you want to step up your key account management game and be the Trusted Advisor your customers rely on, you owe it to them to attend. Plus, you have tons of opportunities to make new friends in the field and enjoy the beautiful natural surroundings of Boulder while you’re at it! Get your tickets today.