Key account management can be an overwhelming idea. Oftentimes, it sounds like a great option for organizations, but they don’t know where to begin with implementing this new process.
Kapta offers a process roadmap to help organizations implement a KAM approach. This process is a proven methodology for transforming customer relationships by knowing more, so you can plan better, act strategically and effectively to drive meaningful change, and measure changes across multiple endpoints. Kapta offers you not only the roadmap but also the tools to help you get there.
When you implement this process, you’ll build engagement, reduce risk, standardize processes and drive growth.
Know More, Plan Better
Knowing your client is the first and most important step to your account management process roadmap. This means going beyond names and titles and understanding their personal and professional goals, their motivations, and their expectations. This is how you should break this down:
1. Understand the Dynamic
The first step of this process is to create an org chart to show you the full structure of your client's organization. This will help you keep track of who the key contacts are, who you need to get in touch with for specific questions, and who you’ll be working with most often.
2. Understand the Objective
To develop a strong process roadmap for your clients, you need to understand their objectives. Start by running a SWOT analysis to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Use what you learn here to figure out specific and attainable goals. With this information, you can begin to build a strong roadmap to help your clients reach these goals.
3. Moving Forward
Now that you have an org chart and have done a SWOT analysis, you can start utilizing your clients' expertise to help guide the roadmap creation. Use your org chart to determine who you can do a voice of customer interview with. Kapta’s Voice of Customer tool helps you create a repeatable process and lets you store all of their answers so you can use them to create a perfect action plan.
Check out the in-depth guide on how the key account management process feeds into the KAM software.
Action Plans that Make a Difference
Now that you know what your customer wants to accomplish, you can help them get there. To do this, you have to implement strategic thinking, problem-solving, and a plan that puts your customer first. Here is how you should approach the action plan:
1. Think Strategically
Account planning is the process of breaking down large goals into small manageable action items for your team. This requires a specific strategy. Kapta’s action planning tools support you as you move through this process by helping you determine these action items and tracking their progress.
2. Stay Organized
Kapta provides detailed dashboards to help you keep track of budgets, timelines, and status updates for individual projects as well as the client account as a whole. These dashboards keep you organized and help you easily visualize what’s working well and what details need attention.
3. Work Together
It takes collaboration not only between your internal team but also the client team to make their goals a reality. Kapta makes it easy for multiple collaborators to contribute to a project and has the ability to integrate with other programs to give you a full, comprehensive tech stack.
Measure What Matters
It’s important to not only do the work but to also show the work. Kapta provides real-time data tracking and dynamic reporting tools to help you visualize results for your clients. They allow you to see what is working and what isn’t so you can adapt and refine your process roadmap for the future.
1. Measure Specific KPIs
Kapta keeps track of your predetermined metrics of success to ensure your action plan is working as planned. If it isn’t, our software will help you course-correct quickly and strategically.
2. Keep Track of Account Health
Understanding your customers' satisfaction, engagement, and overall health is essential to understand if the plan you have in place is working. With Kapta’s account health score, you can gauge the strength of any account relationship with just a glance. Use this score to see what is and isn’t working and utilize it to find new growth opportunities.
3. Measure Success
The beauty of putting your customers first is that their success is your success. When you help your customers reach their goals, you make it easier for them to renew contracts with you and increase their scope of work. Kapta helps you keep track of organic growth that stems from your efforts and gives you an excellent benchmark for performance reviews internally and quarterly business reviews for your clients. Our platform helps you track what works and what can be improved upon not only for your clients but also for your internal team’s process roadmap.
A Repeatable Process Roadmap
Kapta’s KAM process roadmap is intentionally cyclical. When you put the customer first, implement strong action plans, and help your customers hit their goals, they will keep coming back. This process also helps you continue to improve for the next client, what you’ve measured from one plan becomes part of what you know for the next one.
Get Started
This KAM process was developed to give key account managers a clear process roadmap for their journey. Whether you’re establishing, expanding, or improving your internal process, this roadmap can be implemented no matter what stage you and your team are in. To learn more about this process and how you can start implementing it in your organization, reach out to us today.
