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
Our KAM Process: Your Roadmap for Building Customer Engagement
We’ve talked to a lot of companies about Key Account Management,…
November 11, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyKAMCon 2019: Highlights and Takeaways from Attendees
It’s been about a month since KAMCon 2019, and we’re still…
November 4, 2019/by Alex RaymondChange Management Best Practices for Key Account Managers
Change is a part of life and while some organizations might hope…
October 28, 2019/by Alex RaymondHow to Communicate with Your Customers to Maximum Effect
During our KAMCon event last week, there was lots of talk about…
October 21, 2019/by Alex RaymondInvesting in Key Account Management PROCESS Before TOOLS
At Kapta, we’re all about technology and we’re proud of the…
October 14, 2019/by Alex RaymondQ4 Planning for Key Account Managers
Where did the year go? It seems like just a few weeks ago we…
October 7, 2019/by Alex RaymondTop Tools for Key Account Managers
Every profession requires the right tools. Without them, we’d…
September 30, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyHow to Spot a Great Key Account Manager
In any field, when we’re hiring a new person to fill a role,…
September 23, 2019/by Alex RaymondHow Key Account Managers Can Use LinkedIn to Maximum Effect
Social media has rapidly changed society over the last decade…
September 16, 2019/by Alex RaymondWhat’s Your Definition of Key Account Management?
For some things in life, there is a clear-cut, right or wrong…
September 9, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyGet Ready for KAMCon 2019!
It’s that time of year again. Summer is wrapping up and we’re…
September 2, 2019/by Alex Raymond6 Steps to Getting the Most out of Kapta
When you invest in a new software tool, you want to know for…
August 26, 2019/by Alex RaymondCategories
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Our KAM Process: Your Roadmap for Building Customer Engagement
/in Customer Engagement /by Lesley PoladskyWe’ve talked to a lot of companies about Key Account Management, and we often hear some version of the same objection: “This would be great for our organization. But where do we even begin?”
Change is hard, and it can feel daunting to establish, expand, or improve your Key Account Management function. We understand, which is why we offer more than an app—we also offer a roadmap. Our KAM ProcessTM is a proven methodology for transforming customer relationships through Key Account Management: Know more, so you can plan better. Act strategically and effectively to drive meaningful change. Measure that change across multiple endpoints.
When you implement this process, you’ll build engagement, reduce risk, standardize processes and drive growth.
Know More, Plan Better
The better you know your customers, the more strategic and effective you can be for them. That means going beyond names and titles to understand your their personal and professional goals, as well as their motivations and expectations. Here’s how we break this down in Kapta:
Make Action Plans that Make a Difference
Now that you know what your customer is trying to accomplish, you can help them get there. This requires strategic thinking, creative problem solving, and an approach that puts customers first. Here’s how we approach account planning:
Measure What Matters
It’s not enough to do the work—you have to show your work. Our real-time data tracking and dynamic reporting tools help visualize results for your clients and your C-suite. They also help you learn from your efforts, creating even more refined and effective action plans the next time around.
Rinse. Repeat.
Our KAM Process is intentionally cyclical. When a client is truly engaged, they’re going to keep sending you work, and that means you need to use what you’ve learned to keep making the work better. What you’ve measured from one action plan becomes part of what you know for the next one, so you can act even more effectively. Keep working through the full KAM Process, and you’ll keep making yourself indispensable to your clients.
Get Started
We developed Our KAM Process to give our clients a clear path forward on their journey in Key Account Management, whether you’re establishing, expanding, or improving your internal process. In the spirit of clear paths, here’s what you can do now to learn more about Our KAM Process, or even start implementing it in your organization:
KAMCon 2019: Highlights and Takeaways from Attendees
/in KAMCon /by Alex RaymondIt’s been about a month since KAMCon 2019, and we’re still feeling energized and inspired. We’re grateful to the speakers and attendees who brought the whole thing to life, and we’re already looking forward to next year.
If you couldn’t make it, Warwick Brown wrote an excellent article filled with key takeaways from this year’s stellar presenters. In fact, he did such a great job, we won’t repeat him here—instead, we’d like to share key takeaways from this year’s equally stellar attendees.
In the month since the event, we’ve had time to sit down and process feedback from everyone who came. We were honored to hear that people were extremely satisfied with the event, and we were fascinated to hear more about what they took away from it. Below are some of our favorite quotes from attendees, as well as some thoughts of our own.
“My largest takeaway [from KAMCon] was a renewal of commitment to my customer. I’ve become so entrenched in the day-to-day operations of our business that my focus on customer advocacy has taken a back seat. This conference was a much needed reminder of my priorities.”
This quote really hit home for us. After all, we run a business, too. We understand how demanding it can be to operate your organization every day—and we know it can be easy to lose sight of why you’re doing it.
Here’s the thing about putting customers first. It’s not just that it’s the right thing to do. It’s not just that it builds loyalty and growth. It also makes operations easier. A customer-centric model helps clarify and streamline decision making; for example, if you’re wrestling with a complex strategy issue, and you remember to put your customer first, often you’ll find the answer staring you in the face.
Putting customers first also unites the team in a compelling and ultimately efficient way. When everyone knows why they do what they do, and who comes first, it’s easy for team members to make quick decisions.
We all get bogged down in our daily to-do list. But do whatever it takes to keep the customer present in everyone’s minds: A banner on the wall, a weekly pep talk, an internal e-blast, quarterly customer appreciation events, or some other idea (we’d love to hear yours). At the end of the day, everyone in your organization, right up to the CEO, works for your customers.
“There is no cookie-cutter answer. Every customer is different and the tools we use have to allow for that uniqueness. But there are best practices, and we learn them through collaboration.”
First things first: There are no cookie-cutter answers. This is true everywhere in life, but especially in Key Account Management. Putting customers first requires creativity and agility. You can’t just offer the same service, product, or combo package to everyone you meet and expect it to work. You have to be able to fine-tune your offering to help your customers reach their goals. Sometimes, that means training your team around a new skill set. Or it may mean making a new hire. You might need to partner with a group outside your organization to make a project successful. To the extent it’s possible, you may need to adjust your product slightly. All of these things take investment on your part, but remember: The long-term relationship is worth it.
Now let’s look at the bright side: There aren’t cookie cutter answers, but there are best practices, and we can learn them through collaboration. At Kapta, our whole goal is to help organizations succeed at Key Account Management by teaching them best practices and helping them standardize and accelerate their approach with our tech platform. It’s why we host KAMCon every year—we genuinely love to see people learning through collaboration.
“An Account Manager must add value to a client during every interaction.”
Even though they may not realize it, your client always has a voice in the back of their head ready to say: “I’m paying this person. Am I paying too much? Could someone else do this job better?”
We’re not trying to scare you. We’re just underscoring the importance of adding value. And that doesn’t mean talking about yourself, though that’s a mistake a lot of people make. It means listening to your clients, understanding their needs and expectations, and making their outcomes better (and their lives easier) every step of the way.
Of course, that’s a pretty high-level principle, so let’s look at one specific example, in the form of a Key Account Management rule we love: Never point out a problem without offering at least one solution. We love this rule because it captures 2 major ways Key Account Managers add value: They make outcomes better, and make their clients’ lives easier.
Making outcomes better. If you see a problem, you should absolutely say something. It’s your job to put your customer’s success first, and that means raising the flag when you see them doing something that might not ultimately be best for them. Anyone can make a client happy for the short term by agreeing with everything they say, but smart clients want people who push them to make even better decisions.
Make their lives easier. You can’t just point out a problem and walk away. (That’s like saying, “You missed a spot” to a friend who’s painting their house while you lounge on the couch with an ice cream sandwich.) Before you raise the flag, gather your team and come up with at least one (if not 2-3) potential strategic solutions. That way, by the time they realize there’s an issue, you’ve already helped them solve it.
“There is lots to learn.”
After all our years as Account Managers, we’re still learning: From our clients, our peers, and our team. A learning mindset is essential to success in Key Account Management, whether it’s understanding new technologies, responding quickly and effectively to feedback, or simply understanding the people you work with better.
One important thing we learned from attendee feedback after this year’s KAMCon is that attendees are excited to share their own knowledge, and learn from each other. We hear you, and we’ll be adding even more networking events and small group/breakout sessions next year to make sure attendees have just as much chance to learn from each other as they do to learn from the speakers.
Learning is at the heart of every KAMCon, from our expert panelists and presenters to our attendees and the unique experience they bring. Subscribe to our newsletter to get early bird alerts for next year’s KAMCon.
Thank you again to everyone who made KAMCon 2019 a success. See you next year!
Change Management Best Practices for Key Account Managers
/in Key Account Management /by Alex RaymondChange is a part of life and while some organizations might hope that some things stay the same forever, embracing change is what enables growth and innovation. That’s why change management is such a crucial practice to learn and follow in your career. In fact, with the amount of change that key account managers oversee both internally and externally when working with their clients, understanding change management principles is a must.
Just as many things in life, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about implementing change management principles, with best practices to follow. Thinking about undertaking a change-inducing project or see one coming up on the horizon? These are the best practices that all key account managers should know.
You Must Believe in the Group
Want to know the number one predictor that the project will be a success? Belief. Change of any size is a group endeavor, don’t forget. If the entire group isn’t on board or motivated to make the change happen and see it through to the end, then the project is doomed from the start. The belief that the group will be successful is what will help push everyone at every level through until the end, even when it becomes challenging or uncomfortable.
Rallying the rest of the team around the change can be easier said than done, especially when working on a project with a client rather than your own organization. Even so, there are a few ways to make it easier. For starters, we’ve found that creating a benefit-driven story can help you get the buy-in. It doesn’t have to be a fairy tale, but rather a plan of action with a method to the madness that makes it all worth it in the end. Tell stakeholders and team members how their lives will be better at the end of this project.
Focus on what they want to get out of an organizational change. Will their job be more efficient? Are you going to reduce communication breakdowns across the board? Consider how your project is going to improve the roles of everyone else involved and craft a story that distinctly describes it.
Evaluate the Capabilities of the Team
Implementing change is a team effort, so you need to take your time when assembling your team. Everyone has different skillsets and capabilities and although it might be easy to dismiss someone for not having the specific skills you’re looking for at the time, starting with the skills first, then delegating around them is really the way to go.
Although you’re a team, you should drill down to the individual level and evaluate the competencies and skills of individual team members. Who has the best interpersonal skills? Who is the tech-driven person? Who is the most detailed? Meet people where they are skills-wise and if you feel they might need to improve, help close the gap and make this the project that elevates them. Whatever you do, don’t cut people out or dismiss them because they’re not there just yet. It’s your job to support their growth and assign tasks that will challenge them without overwhelming them and putting a strain on the rest of the project.
How you go about delegating tasks and assembling your team is up to you, but you should already have a basic understanding of where everyone is at. At the start of the project, you can have the team volunteer for different skill positions. Lay it all out for them and announce the positions that need to be filled. If you have a hard time getting volunteers or don’t see the team shaping up how you would like, you can start delegating and assigning instead.
Read the Energy Around the Change
Is everyone super excited about this new change or are there a few holdouts? While everyone might not jump up and down when you first announce the project, it’s a best practice to get a pulse and a reading before the work begins. While it won’t always stop the project from happening, you’ll know what to look out for and who might drag their feet.
Ideally, everyone will jump for joy after the announcement, but that’s almost never the case. Hold a meeting and let everyone provide their opinions and thoughts about the proposed change management project. What do they love about it? What do they hate about it? Is the change really necessary for their role? These are the kinds of questions that you need answered and can inform your decisions moving forward.
If you find that a significant part of the team is cold on the change, you must address it here and get down to the root of the problem. If you were to brush it under the rug and just move on, it could build resentment for the project and they’ll be less likely to do their part and help with the change. That’s not good. While you might not win them over to being the project’s biggest cheerleaders, getting them at least warm on the idea and addressing their concerns is huge.
Hold Judgement Back
As you begin to create solutions, it’s crucial that you curate an open environment where everyone can voice their concerns, opinions, and ideas. Give them the floor and let everyone have a chance to contribute. If you place any barriers on ideas, you’re surely going to let a few potentially game-changing ones slip through the cracks so gather all of your most talented people in a conference room and have a good old fashioned brainstorming session.
Try and understand what they want to see out of this initiative and how it could make their roles easier. As everyone is spitballing ideas, you’ll start to notice patterns in the ideas thrown around. As you notice the patterns, jot them down and start categorizing them to make it easier to sort through them in the end. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these ideas and find ways to mitigate risks in implementing them and strategize how you could achieve the best-case scenario with them and capitalize on the opportunity.
Once you’ve narrowed down your top 3 ideas, it’s time to hold a vote. Have the team decide which solution they think is the most viable while still moving the ball forward the furthest and worth all of the effort. Since they’re the ones that will be down in the trenches making it all happen, their input is invaluable to you. With a solution decided and picked by the team, create a time table.
Consider which people need to do which tasks and set clear expectations and deadlines. From deliverables to hard due dates, make sure that everyone is on the same page. Having this clear understanding across the entire team from the start can help you avoid too many surprises along the way and the entire project will move along a lot more smoothly.
Create a Win for Everyone at Every Level
We all want to win, and with a win acting as a carrot on the end of the stick, it can motivate every member of the team, including yourself, to push onward. This metaphor isn’t meant to be literal, as everyone ideally will get the carrot in the end, but having a collective and individual goal to shoot for can make a huge difference.
You want to create a win for every single person that’s involved in the process. From the lower levels to the executives you had to convince to sign off on the project, they want something out of it. We’re all driven by the “what’s in it for me?” factor, so it’s your duty to either clearly describe what’s in it for them, or to find a way to make the effort worth their while.
Whether it’s pay incentive or the promise of a more efficient workflow, make sure everyone is in the loop. Although it might seem like an obvious best practice, you’d be surprised how many managers will forget to add an incentive to their project. When your team members are investing their time, energy, creativity, and ingenuity, you owe it to them to give them a win.
Reward the Team’s Successes
Following up on the last point, your team deserves a reward for all of their hard work. If you see someone make a play and enjoy success in their role, reward them for it. It’s the least you can do with all that they do for you and have done for the entire project. The worst thing that can happen is for any member of the team to feel like all of the work they put into the project wasn’t for anything. After all, if their work isn’t valued, was the project as a whole even worth it?
Whatever your initiative is, it should be a game-changer for the immediate stakeholders with ripple effects throughout your entire organization. If you can’t think of how this initiative is going to change the organization for the better, then it might not be worth doing in the first place. In your position, you need to be making big moves and chasing whales, not small pet projects that do little to move the needle.
Whether you cut commissions or bonuses or take the team out to happy hour, make sure that you’re acknowledging the hard work and achievement of the team with this project. Otherwise, they might not be as willing to go above and beyond in the future.
Summary
Although change management isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of process, there are still best practices that you should follow to improve your odds of success. The most important thing is to value your team and the work that they’ll put in to make the project a possibility in the first place. If you’re investing in the right kind of change, then the process is going to feel a little risky, and that’s okay!
Change isn’t worth it if it isn’t actually changing anything, so your initiative should feel scary and risky at first. Establish a solid process that you can repeat over and over and ensure that you’re mitigating risks and maximizing the project’s potential. Finally, reward your team for their work and inspire them to come up with their own ideas in the future.
About Kapta
When managing your key accounts, the last thing you need is another tool that will bog you down, complicate your workflow, and not deliver. Kapta is the exact opposite, and key account managers in a variety of industries use it daily to help them stay up to date with their clients and handles all of the technical work you usually need multiple platforms to accomplish. Rather than living in one spreadsheet after another, Kapta lets you focus more on the personal relationship you’re building with your clients. Built into Kapta you’ll find a variety of powerful tools, including Voice of Customer (VOC) Insights, account planning templates, account health scores at a glance, and so much more.