Are your key account managers (KAMs) being hampered by manual administrative tasks? It’s long been known that sales reps spend only a small percentage of their time selling because they are bogged down by routine clerical tasks. According to Salesforce’s State of Sales report, rep selling time is down to 28% from 34% of their week. That’s not a lot of time for your KAMs to engage in strategic planning and interact with customers.
With businesses impacted by the great resignation, layoffs due to the economy, or a growing account base, it’s likely you’d prefer to make the most of the KAM team you have. After all, KAMs can help you retain your top VIP customers, increase revenue, and help create loyal referral sources within these accounts.
Boosting KAM productivity also allows you to accomplish this without additional headcount through hiring until it is absolutely necessary. This added productivity also increases revenue and improves cash flow.
You can optimize KAM productivity by automating processes so they have more time for strategic planning and process. Plus, this enables them to rise to the coveted trusted advisor status, deliver greater value to key accounts, and boost revenue further. Here’s how.
A Key Account Management (KAM) Solution
A KAM platform like Kapta offers the automation needed to boost account manager productivity. This software gives KAMs more time for strategic endeavors and meaningful engagement with top customers.
Kapta not only automates the day-to-day minutia of key account management, it serves as a guide through our proven cyclical KAM process™, or Know-Act-Measure, process. This ensures no step is missed so account information and tasks are effortlessly kept current without thinking about what to do next.
Automation Throughout the KAM Process
Kapta includes automation to streamline each step of the KAM process so account managers can spend their time doing more thought-provoking strategic tasks to increase the value key accounts receive. Automation and tools to support the processes of each stage include:
Know is the step in the KAM process where account managers learn about and gain an understanding of VIP clients. This enables reps to better partner with customers to achieve their goals and help them gain value from using your product or service. Tools that help streamline the know step include:
- Org Charts help account managers see the overall structure and interrelationships within the client’s organization. It’s a visual representation for easy reference. Plus, there are profile pages for each contact within an account for added context.
- SWOT Analysis prompts the account manager to consider and document the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to the account prior to preparing a roadmap to attain client goals. This helps eliminate blind spots and increases the odds of success.
- Voice of Customer (VOC) Tool helps account managers ask the right questions to more deeply understand their client's objectives, challenges, and priorities. This is essential information for delivering value to VIP customers.
Act is the step in the process where account managers apply insights from the know phase to create a strategic account plan to help the client reach their objectives. Tools that support the Act step include:
- Action Plan documentation is captured in pre-configured templates in the software as living, breathing documents that include tasks, actions, and milestones to ensure steady progress toward goal attainment.
- Task reminders help keep everyone on the KAM team on schedule and prevent account plan details from falling through the cracks.
- Tracking helps gauge progress toward targets so adjustments can be made in a timely fashion as needed.
- Collaboration and communication across the KAM team are essential for success. Having everything documented in one place makes it easy for all KAM team members to remain up-to-date and abreast of evolving customer plans, priorities, and preferences. A KAM solution like Kapta makes it easy for the account manager to evangelize on behalf of their customer internally and it guides internal account review meetings as well.
Measure is the step where progress toward and attainment of goals is assessed. All key measurements are displayed on a dashboard for easy reference and routine monitoring. Key metrics include:
- Account Health Score is automatically calculated to easily identify at-risk accounts needing additional attention.
- Customer Metrics to gauge progress toward goal attainment in terms of how the client measures success.
- Internal Metrics to monitor progress toward internal company goals.
- An Account Management Dashboard provides easy access to essential account details and an overview of customer accounts at a glance.
QBR Tools help streamline the administrative tasks required for quarterly business review preparation. These time-saving tools include:
- Customizable QBR templates so account managers don’t have to start from scratch.
- Checklists so no detail is forgotten.
- Event reminders to ensure tasks are completed on schedule.
- QBR history for storage of past QBRs and notes for easy reference.
- Reporting for internal use or to share with the customer are as easy as a touch of a button and provides access to previously run reports as well.
- Data for each account is available in one convenient view for reference during strategic QBR preparation.
- Email templates and Integration includes a library of emails to use as invitations, input requests, and follow-ups to make it easy to complete these essential tasks.
- An Agenda template to be adapted to each customer helps streamline agenda preparation.
- Post-QBR task reminders to ensure commitments made during a review meeting are completed.
- An Internal evaluation tool gathers input from all internal stakeholders who attend a QBR.
Boost KAM Productivity
Isn’t it time you do more with less by adding a KAM solution to your tech stack? Reducing manual administrative tasks means your account managers can invest more time in strategic activities, deliver more value to key accounts, boost retention, and increase revenue. Plus your KAMs may each end up with enough bandwidth to accommodate another VIP client so you don’t need to do any hiring to expand your key account program.
Looking for additional ways to boost KAM performance? Register for KAMCon today.
