Customer Engagement
Insights and Best Practice
Learn how Key Account Managers are making positive impacts, solving real problems for their customers, and building best practices inside their organizations.
Customer Engagement
What IS a Key Account?
Key account management—focusing on the development of a company’s…
October 26, 2020/by Alex RaymondAccount Managers: Close out the Year Strong
It’s the final quarter of the year—time to assess where you…
October 19, 2020/by Alex Raymond5 Ways to Weather a Recession with Key Account Management
Here’s a radical thought: Recessions don’t change anything.
Okay,…
October 12, 2020/by Alex RaymondOkay,…
How to Keep Up with Customers and Colleagues This Year
It’s been a long, weird year (and it’s not over yet). We’ve…
October 5, 2020/by Alex RaymondIs Your Customer at Risk of Churn? 5 Ways to Find Out.
It’s a key account manager’s worst nightmare: One day, out…
September 28, 2020/by Alex RaymondHow to Train Your Clients: Three Strategies for Client Education
It’s easy to think of clients like we think of the weather:…
September 21, 2020/by Kelly SharpCustomer Insights Workshop: Tools and Best Practices
You need to know your customers. But you can’t read their minds.…
September 14, 2020/by Alex RaymondAre You Managing Your Accounts? Or are THEY Managing YOU? Five Questions to Ask
If you’re an account manager, you should always be asking yourself:…
September 7, 2020/by Alex Raymond3 Reasons to Update Your Customer Org Charts
Be honest: When was the last time you took a long look at your…
August 31, 2020/by Kelly Sharp3 Ways to Calculate an Account Health Score
Whether it’s losing a key account or not meeting internal growth…
August 24, 2020/by Alex RaymondThe Seven Deadly Sins of Key Account Management
It’s easy to spot the biggest sin of all in client management:…
August 17, 2020/by Alex RaymondDefining the New Normal: Updating your Voice of Customer in the Time of COVID
The COVID crisis has forced many organizations to operate reactionally…
August 10, 2020/by Kelly SharpCategories
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What IS a Key Account?
/in Customer Engagement /by Alex RaymondKey account management—focusing on the development of a company’s most strategic accounts—is at the center of everything we at Kapta do. But the question often gets asked: what’s the difference between a “key” account and a “regular” account? One typical way of defining a key account is to look at the “80/20 rule”—the oft-true premise that 20% or less of your client base drives up to 80% of revenue. But what defines a key account in actuality can be a bit more nuanced, and based on more than just revenue.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the other factors that go into defining what is a key account.
Potential for Development and Growth
Of course it’s logical to prioritize high-value clients. But there can be big gains to be had by applying a proactive approach to small and mid-sized accounts, if you’re able to identify their ability to grow with you.
In order to determine a client’s growth potential, it’s imperative you get crystal-clear about two things: first, what your company’s ideal customers look like, and second, who your current customers are. This dual-lensed approach is the best way to ensure that the foundation of key account management is in place, and that the relationship can be built to fuel mutual goals. (This exercise of determining your ideal clients is circular, by the way; once you’ve identified your core customer, real profits should be continuously analyzed to determine if your ideal customer is actually who’s bringing you business.)
Your client research shouldn’t be purely speculative, though; there should be a clear understanding from the client of what their philosophy is in partnering with you. How does this client buy? Do relationships matter, or is the client’s business more transaction-based? Is the sales cycle reliable? If you can collect evidence to show how and why a currently small or medium account has the potential to grow into your ideal, then it may well be worth applying a key account management strategy. Read our tools and best practices for getting to better know the clients you serve.
Providing targeted, smaller accounts with specialized treatment can require a lighter short-term effort that may still reap future big rewards.
Your Vision Aligns Well With Their Challenges
This one seems obvious, but it’s worth careful consideration in evaluating your most important accounts: are your solutions highly valued by the client? Is the client work an ongoing, collaborative process that takes advantage of the full scope of your company’s capabilities? A strong customer connection and jointly working toward mutual success is the bedrock of key account management. Your value should be evident to the customer; in turn, the customer understands the full range of your offering and wants to utilize your services and hold them to their highest capabilities and standards, ensuring mutual success.
Another angle to explore in assessing the mutual beneficiality of a client relationship is: How does selling to this client affect other areas of the business? You know that your large customers want personalized service and tailored solutions—so how do the operational costs and margins involved in creating those solutions trickle down to affect more nascent accounts? The needs of and learnings from your largest accounts can often shape your offering in a way that will attract and grow new business in the future. The result of a key account’s success should have a far-reaching positive effect on the business.
Executive Fit and Relationships
We know that key account management is based, above all else, on strong customer relationships. So it’s a simple fact that in order to be a key account, the ingredients that foster a strong client relationship must be in place. Some of the relationships areas to consider are:
Conclusion
The goal of key account management is to be a strategic partner and trusted advisor. Once you have clarity on who your key accounts are, you should have systems in place to make sure they receive white glove service and feel special. To see how Kapta can help you transform your approach through the power of our KAM Process™, schedule a demo today.
Account Managers: Close out the Year Strong
/in Account Management /by Alex RaymondIt’s the final quarter of the year—time to assess where you stand, identify gaps, and make adjustments to ensure you hit your goals. Doing so allows you to proactively realign yourself with your customers and get back on track for a successful year end. Plus, you’ll set yourself up for an excellent start in the new year. But what steps must you take now, internally and with your key customers, to set yourself up to close out the year strong?
TALK to your clients
Customer communication is essential —it strengthens relationships, and builds engagement, while keeping you up to date on their challenges and goals. This enables you to provide proactive, productive client service. But be sure to prepare for each call to ensure efficient and effective communication so you’re providing value with each interaction.
Ask questions and update your Voice of Customer profile
Voice of Customer interviews help you determine where you stand with your accounts. These conversations elicit your customers’ feedback about their experiences with and expectations for your products or services. They focus on customer needs, expectations, understandings, and product improvement.
It’s common for account managers not to contact clients until a problem arises or it’s time for a Quarterly Business Review. But it is critical to the health of client relationships that you conduct VOC interviews with them routinely. This keeps you up to date on the account’s problems, pain points, and the overall health of the working relationship.
Your VOC help you check in with customers and learn how their goals and expectations have changed since your last interview while keeping current with client needs, expectations, and satisfaction.
You also need to supplement your client VOC conversations with customer insights from people in your organization who know the customers best so you get a more complete picture of what the client may not be saying. All this VOC information prepares you to make an action plan to grow the business in a truly customer-centric way.
Find out what’s coming up for THEM in 2021 and beyond
Be sure to ask your customer about current challenges they are experiencing as well as short-range and long-range projects they are planning. This enables you to get ahead of the curve by:
Dust off your SWOT
A SWOT analysis examines Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal; Opportunities and Threats are external. It gives you a clear sense of internal and external forces working for and against you, so you can adjust your plan accordingly.
You can jump on a call with your customers to update their SWOT analysis. It’s a worthwhile means of engaging your client contacts while showing your commitment to consistently updating your shared strategic action plan.
Conduct a SWOT internally with input from stakeholders across your organization to gain insights from various perspectives. The ultimate goal of a SWOT analysis is to develop an action plan that leverages your strengths and opportunities to address key weaknesses and threats. Once you have an accurate internal assessment you can decide as a team what to prioritize in the coming year.
Then, you need to complete an updated SWOT analysis with each of your key accounts. Your SWOT analysis and strategic priorities have changed. Your customers have as well, so now is the time to complete an updated SWOT with them. Having this updated feedback enables you to proactively address their weaknesses and threats. This builds your customer engagement and provides you with a strategic advantage during turbulent economic times.
Make sure your org charts are up to date
Org charts need to be kept current, reflecting changes as they occur. This aids in building customer engagement and prevents unexpected surprises when account contacts are promoted or leave to work for another organization. Mapping stakeholders facilitates influence, intelligence, and resilience within your key accounts, making it easier to support them in pursuing their goals.
What contracts are expiring or renewing? Do you know the risk of churn?
Knowing when contracts are expiring or renewing and who’s at greatest risk of churn can guide where to focus your efforts first. Of course, it’s best to maintain relationships with all your key accounts so there aren’t any unexpected surprises at renewal time, but sometimes it feels like it’s completely outside your control. When there is a surprise, it often means you weren’t watching closely enough for the right indicators.
Customers are now more difficult to engage and easier to lose, especially with the current business climate. So, review the health of all your major accounts—identify those at greatest risk and prioritize them. Make sure you’ve updated your SWOT, VOC, Org Chart, and strategic plan for these accounts so you can start working on improving the situation right away.
Are you correctly forecasting any new opportunities?
If you’re taking all these actions, chances are that you know your customer so well, are delivering value to them during every interaction, and are aware of opportunities within each account. This enables you to forecast more accurately because you’re armed with deeper insights and relationships within each key account.
If this isn’t the case, you need to go back and figure out which ingredient you’re missing so you can improve your forecasting ability and accuracy. Then you’ll more easily meet or exceed your goals at year end and start the new year ahead of the competition.
Looking for more ways to close out the year strong? Kapta can help – schedule a demo today.
5 Ways to Weather a Recession with Key Account Management
/in Key Account Management /by Alex RaymondHere’s a radical thought: Recessions don’t change anything.
Okay, okay. Here’s a more nuanced take: Recessions don’t fundamentally change best practices for customer engagement—they just raise the stakes. Whereas before, you might be able to get away with lackluster customer engagement, a recession puts you at even greater risk of churn.
Key accounts have always been your strongest asset; now, they’re indispensable. Existing customers have always accounted for 70% of revenue on average; now, they’re closer to 90%. Investing in customer engagement has always been important; now, it’s do or die.
So how do you double down on your existing accounts to weather this storm and lay the foundation for ongoing growth and stability?
1) Do Your Homework
2020 has impacted different industries in different ways. As you start to evolve your own strategy and/or offerings, do a quick 4Cs update: Category, Competition, Customer, Company.
Category: Avoid sweeping generalizations and do the deep dive to understand how the pandemic and recession have changed the specific market(s) in which you—and your customers—operate. Consider regulatory changes, the election cycle, emerging trends, disruptive tech, and more.
Competition: Keep an eye on your competitors. How have they adapted their messaging and service offerings to the current climate? How are they anticipating customer needs (or not)? It’s always important to understand what your customers are hearing before you join the conversation.
Customer: More on this below, but make sure you’re checking in regularly to see how their challenges and strategies are evolving as time goes on.
Company: Do a self-evaluation. How are your people? How are your systems? Don’t underestimate the toll this year has taken on everyone. And if you’ve had to do layoffs, be honest about how this affects your ability to deliver for clients. Where can you prioritize and deprioritize to focus more limited resources?
2) Update Your Strategy
Take your 4Cs homework and apply it to your strategy. How do things change—or not?
For example, you may have started the year gung-ho about new business development. Your current accounts were running smoothly, pockets were full, and you were ready to expand into a new market. Now what? Does your expansion plan still hold water?
Many companies are finding it harder than ever to sign new business—especially profitable new business. So before you get tunnel vision about chasing new logos, look closely at your current customers to see how you can stabilize and grow the business you already have. Remember: Change is expensive. It’s expensive for you to earn new business with new customers and it’s expensive for your customers to switch providers. Make it worth everyone’s while to invest in the current relationship.
Strategy updates should be internal and external. While you’re re-evaluating your internal strategy, help your key accounts do the same. Apply the 4Cs analysis to their business. Do everything you can to help them feel like they’re ahead of the curve and you’ll make yourself indispensable throughout the crisis—and beyond.
3) Check in with Customers
Just because we’re socially distancing doesn’t mean you need to be distant. It’s important to maintain contact with your key customers—but it’s even more important to add value when you do. With Zoom fatigue settling in, and many people feeling overwhelmed by life in general, it’s not okay to ask your customers to join a video call just so you can check the box and say you’ve contacted them. You have to give them something valuable to dig into.
There are plenty of ways to do that. You could help them update their SWOT. You could engage them in a meaningful voice of customer (VOC) dialogue. You can present ongoing category and competitive analysis, along with proactive ideas for ensuring their own success in a difficult time. You’ve already done the homework; now show your customers what you’ve learned, and how it applies to them.
As you engage with customers, make sure you know who you need to talk to, and why. Take this moment also to update your customer org charts. Things may have shifted for your clients in the crisis, and you want to make sure you know who’s doing what in the new normal.
C-suite relationships are more important now than ever. This is another example of how recessions don’t fundamentally change best practices—they just raise the stakes. C-suite relationships are always important to key account management; but now, if leadership doesn’t understand your value, they may be asking their staff to cut costs—and you could be the first to go.
4) Gut-check Your Tech Stack
As you gear up to double down on key account management, ask yourself: Is your tech stack designed to help you do that? If you’re heavily reliant on CRMs, you won’t have the support you need to dig deep into existing client relationships. CRMs are optimized for transactions, not engagement. And it takes engagement to stay relevant to your customers in a recession.
Crisis is an opportunity for change. If your current tech stack feels too transactional, now is the time to look for purpose-built solutions for key account management, so you can maximize the value of the relationships you already have, and set yourself up for ongoing organic growth after the crisis has settled.
5) Keep Calm and Deliver On
You’ve done your homework. You’ve pressure tested your strategy—and helped your customers do the same. You’ve aligned your tech stack to your needs. You’ve made necessary adjustments to the account plan. In short, you’ve done the thinking and the re-thinking. Now it’s time to do.
Delivery is always important, even when times are good. But now, if you’re not delivering, you’re putting yourself at high risk of churn. The good news is that the nature of strong account planning and delivery hasn’t changed: You still begin with strategic objectives; you still break them down into meaningful milestones, tactics, and action items. You still track progress. You still demonstrate impact. And you still make space to celebrate wins along the way.
Don’t forget that last part: It’s never been more important to celebrate success—for your team and for your customers. It’s been a tough year, and we can all use some good news right now. When your team accomplishes something, pause and give credit where it’s due. When your customers accomplish something, do the same.
Conclusion
Recessions don’t fundamentally change the way we do business. Everything we’ve outlined above is important for customer engagement, all the time, full stop. But recessions do raise the stakes, and they erase your room for error.
Key account management is the solution. KAM helps you double down on the relationships you already have, stabilizing and growing those accounts even in the face of an economic downturn. To learn more about how Kapta can support you in a recession and beyond, schedule your demo today.