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
Welcome to the Customer Engagement Economy
The Customer Engagement Economy is here—and it’s here to…
November 30, 2020/by Alex RaymondHow to build Executive Buy-In for your KAM Software Initiative
Let’s face it--no one woke up this morning wanting to buy more…
November 23, 2020/by Margot HowardBuilt to Last: How Strong Account Plans Reduce Customer Churn
In a recession, every customer is at higher risk of churn. So…
November 16, 2020/by Alex RaymondWinners and Losers in the Customer Engagement Economy
As we’ve written before, the Customer Engagement Economy is…
November 9, 2020/by Alex RaymondFive Questions To Ask When Rolling Out KAM Software
At Kapta, we want you to be more than just a vendor; our key…
November 2, 2020/by Alex RaymondWhat 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 RaymondCategories
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Creating Personalized Touchpoints With Strategic Accounts When Meeting in Person Isn’t an Option
/in Customer Engagement /by Jennifer PinterThe last year has forced most of us to get very comfortable conducting business in ways outside of our norm. In fact, many experts agree that certain workplace trends will be changed forever: things like travel and flexibility in where we work from, for example, are likely to be reshaped permanently. And while there’s plenty to miss about the days of interacting in-person, the new normal of virtual meetings and gathering remotely may actually allow us to connect face-to-face more, which, if approached with the right strategy, could be a boon to customer relationship building.
With people more willing than ever to meet via video conference, there’s a lot you can do to keep customer relationships strong despite the distance. So while in-person meetings remain on hold (and “Zoom fatigue” is certainly real), it’s nevertheless possible to create personalized touchpoints among your high-value accounts. Here are some ideas to keep virtual meetings fresh and keep engagement high among your strategic accounts, even as we continue to work remotely.
Relationships Are King
Let us take a step back to say what can’t be said enough: B2B relationships are fragile. It was true pre-pandemic, and it will remain true as long as customers continue to have more choices and more power (which it seems they do, by the day). The greatest tool at an account manager’s disposal is their own human ability to connect with their customer—and not just names and titles. A successful account manager will actively work to understand the customer’s needs, and to ultimately build a relationship that’s unique to them.
Know Your Customer
When building customer relationships, the goal is to create a partnership that puts YOU at the top of the client’s call list. Take an honest account of your existing client relationships: has your work together been on autopilot? Do you understand your client’s unique objectives and do you actively work with those objectives in mind? If you can’t definitively say that those are the kinds of customer relationships you have now, there are things you can do to start moving in that direction—today.
It’s easy to put off big conversations for a future date, but “back to normal”, whatever that will mean, is still far away; now is the time to schedule a face-to-face video call to dive deeper into your customer’s needs, expectations and goals. Better yet, use
Kapta’s Voice of Customer tools to help you jump start the process, and learn to exceed your customer’s expectations and become a trusted advisor.
Keep It Consistent
Relationship building and Voice of Customer exercises are not a one-time act. Continuous relationship management involves staying in regular contact, perpetually anticipating a customer’s needs, and devising ongoing strategies to solve the customer’s problems. To say it’s a lot of work is an understatement. But it’s critical that key account managers not let this be a time that communication drops. Video calls and virtual conferencing have become the norm; it’s time to think about creative ways that these now mainstream channels of communication can work for you.
Go Beyond “Checking in” and Add Value
Ok, ok, I get it—despite the optimistic picture I’ve painted, at the end of the day, all of what’s being suggested here requires yet…another…video…call. But if relationships are king, then communication is queen, and for important or longer conversations, as well as general getting-to-know-you chit-chat, a video call is still better than an email or phone call. In addition to the practices listed above, here are some ways to keep customer interactions engaging, and to add value every time you meet.
1) “Coffee Chats”
Try to remember the last time a “coffee” meeting turned up on your calendar…now imagine seeing that invitation showing up today! At the very least, your attention would be piqued, right? A reimagined, virtual take on the coffee chat is a creative way to surprise and delight your clients.
Have your account representatives electronically send $10 Starbucks gift cards (or Dunkin, or whatever the locally convenient java option is) to customers before a sync-up or account review. This is also an impactful way to introduce yourself to a new contact or business team. And hey, maybe you’ll all get a laugh out of the not-so-distant throwback to the coffee chats of yore.
2) Celebratory Donuts
Donuts are cake, and cake means celebration. So what better way to mark the completion of a major project or a successful quarterly review than with donuts? Send your client contacts an electronic gift card or QR code to order donuts for themselves, or take it a step further and have donuts delivered.
3) $20 Charity Donations
Up the ante by incentivising your clients through charity. Create a promotion around a desired touchpoint—for example, a top-of-the-quarter kickoff call to discuss the year’s successes so far and areas of focus for the coming months—and offer to make a donation to the charity of choice for any clients who agree to join. This gives you the opportunity to engage in a key conversation, and provides an added feel-good factor for your client, too.
Conclusion
Working remote and keeping distanced has taken customer relationship building from what was already a heavy lift, and made it, at times, seem impossible. But it’s well worth exploring how our “new normal”—and the necessity of over-communicating, to compensate for distance—can be used creatively. To see how Kapta can help support, accelerate and mentor your efforts, schedule a personal demo today.
The Best Way to Gauge Key Account Manager Performance
/in Key Account Management /by Alex RaymondKey Account Managers are tasked with ongoing, dynamic business and relationship management, 365 days a year. It’s not enough to evaluate KAM performance only at annual or mid-year review time; ultimately, the health of your accounts depends on the performance of your account teams, and both should be checked on regularly. Even quarterly business reviews (QBRs), which tend to zero in on deals booked and progress-to-goal, oversimplify the state of an account. After all, key account management isn’t just sales, so it’s not enough to just look at quota.
By focusing on numbers only, important success factors are being missed entirely. Things like the strength of the customer relationship and the business value delivered to the customer, for example, are huge key indicators of client retention and growth. Customers with strong relationships who feel they’re getting consistent business value are less likely to fall into the arms of a competitor.
By the way, we do think QBRs are important. We just think there are things you can do to make them more effective.
So how to measure the performance of your account management team, and glean a full picture of total account health? We recommend taking a closer look at the following.
Customer Results
Your customers need to see and feel value over time. Read that again.
If your customers aren’t consistently getting value, or they’re not aware of the value that your company and account manager brings, you could lose them.
The best way to demonstrate value to the customer is to work toward a list of shared goals that have been created in collaboration with the client. In designing value that your customers can see, ask:
Working toward shared goals helps a key account manager demonstrate value and progress to the client, and also helps the KAM build a story of their own success within your organization. Combined with an effective action plan, shared goals will allow an account manager to have a clear idea of what needs to be done to help their clients get closer to their goal, each and every day.
Customer Feedback
If possible, make direct customer feedback part of your account managers’ performance reviews. Consider sending a five-minute survey to clients, with three to five questions about their experience with their account rep. Ask your client questions you don’t necessarily know the answer to; think of it as an opportunity to improve your own understanding of your company’s key accounts.
Direct customer feedback will give you the best understanding of your account manager’s performance; it will also help you understand how well your team is meeting the customer’s needs, and if the customer is satisfied with the level of value they are receiving from their key account manager. Soliciting this unfiltered feedback from the client will also demonstrate that you have their experience top-of-mind; it can also be a jumping off point for establishing new, more customer-centric goals.
Work Backwards
If you (or your account manager) get stuck, think about what success looks like and identify the steps that need to be taken to get there—specifically:
Know what the customer is trying to achieve.
Act to make it happen.
Measure client results.
It’s a simple ethos, but it can be an overwhelming process. We designed Kapta to, with one quick glance, show how often and how meaningfully your KAM is making client contact, how strategically and methodically they’re building action plans, how closely they’re tracking on time and budget, and how well they’ve performed for your customer.
Kapta also tracks additional leading indicators that build customer engagement, including:
If key account managers focus on the above upstream activities throughout the year, your accounts—and their associated KAM relationships—should be in good shape come time to review.
Conclusion
A key account manager’s job is to make and keep an account successful, and account’s success is about more than just sales and revenue goals; it’s about a strong relationship and delivering ongoing value. To see how Kapta can help key account managers drive engagement, retention and growth, schedule a personal demo today.
Do Your Key Account Managers Really Know Their Most Important Accounts?
/in Customer Engagement /by Alex RaymondI have sat in and reviewed hundreds of account plans from key account managers. Even when there is a lot of money on the line, I have found that many account managers know very little about their biggest accounts. If that doesn’t make you gulp, what’s even scarier is that account managers are too afraid to tell their executive team they are missing information, so instead they embellish the truth or worse – guess.
Our key account management process is based on the Know, Act, Measure strategy. When entire customer success teams act on faulty information, it’s no wonder account managers can get blind-sighted by churn or experience disengagement.
So how do you really know if your account managers have done their due diligence in their accounts? How do you know if they really understand what their customers want and need?
If your key account managers can answer these four questions, they have likely done their jobs well.
1. What are the customer’s goals?
Most executive teams ask their account managers to write out goals for their accounts, (i.e., I want to upsell this team by 10% this year). While understanding your own goals for the account is commendable, if your account management team is stopping here, I would not be surprised if they are not delivering the results they could.
Account manager’s goals should be created after they can clearly articulate their customer goals for the quarter and year. Account management is all about driving win/win scenarios. Therefore, account goals should be centered around creating win/win opportunities with the customer’s best interest at heart. That is how you derive value for the account and your customer.
Don’t Forget: Remind your account managers, customer goals can run the gamut from personal goals, I want to be promoted this year, to professional and business goals.
2. When was the last time you validated that your customer’s goals are still the same?
How are your account managers communicating value back to customers if they don’t have relevant key performance indicators and goals? If they aren’t up to date on the customer’s expectations, then they are also certainly not communicating value as effectively as they could. This opens up risk for churn and for competitors to come in and seize an account.
Customer goals should be validated frequently. A common mistake I see account managers make is recycling the same goals from last year or worse- from when the account first signed on as a customer. I see a lot of copy and paste of the same recycled outdated goals in Salesforce.
I recommend that customer goals be validated at least once a quarter. Without this information, you appear out of touch and unhelpful. That’s why tools like Kapta’s account management software can help account managers stay up-to-date on their account plans, customer goals, and customer engagement so that they can better align themselves within the account and expand the value they can provide.
3. Have you built your SWOT analysis around your customer goals?
If your Account Managers are building SWOT analysis around customer goals, they are taking a customer-centric and value-centric approach. SWOT tools help open our eyes to potential blind spots and unanswered questions we have within an account. This usually tells me that customers are engaged with the account, and most importantly, the account plans can be executed collaboratively with the customer because we have good information.
4. Have you shared your account plan with your customer?
Sharing account plans with customers for validation makes some executives gulp! But, if account plans are built with a value-oriented and customer-centric lens then it’s all that more important to validate at least pieces with them to make sure you are properly aligned. If an account manager can tell me definitively that they feel comfortable sharing their plan with the customer, then I feel more confident that the information we have about the account is up to date and accurate.
Too often, account plans are built on bad information. Account managers are in a rush to deliver their account plans to their executive team and fail to have those critical customer-centric customers. Understanding your customer goals is the foundation of a successful partnership.
Interested in learning more about our Know, Act, Measure philosophy? Read more about our account management software here.