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
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July 15, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyHere’s Why Using NPS (Net Promoter Score) is LAZY and is Putting Your Company at RISK
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June 24, 2019/by Alex RaymondHow To Enhance Your Individual Workflow for Key Account Manager
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June 17, 2019/by Alex RaymondHow to Use Purpose and Vision Messaging to Grow Your Key Account Management Program
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June 10, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyBuilding a Value-Based Account Plan
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June 3, 2019/by Alex RaymondThe Basic Formula for Creating a Metric for Customer Success
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May 27, 2019/by Lesley PoladskyWhat Sets the Good Account Managers Apart from the Great Account Managers
There’s nothing wrong with being good – let’s get that…
May 20, 2019/by Alex RaymondCategories
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CRM and Kapta: Making the Most of Both Platforms
/in Customer Engagement /by Lesley PoladskyMany of our customers use Salesforce and/or other CRM tools for generating new leads. As a result, we often hear the question: “Why Kapta? Why not just keep using my CRM?” We also see the corresponding Google search: “Kapta vs. CRM.”
But while it’s useful to compare CRM and Kapta platforms, we don’t actually in terms of “vs” here. We think in terms of “and.” Here’s why: Sales is one function in your organization; Key Account Management is another. They are complementary, but distinct. Therefore, they require complementary, but distinct tools.
In this blog post, we’ll explore:
KAM and Sales: Different Roles
Speaking generally, sales is about driving growth by generating new leads and getting new customers. Key Account Management is about driving organic growth by building lasting engagement with existing customers. Both are about driving growth, and on some level, both are about “selling” your products or services to clients. However, the process and tone for each are very different.
In sales, your goal is to get the business. You’ll be asking yourself: Have they heard of you? Do they understand what you offer, why it’s valuable, and why they need you? Do they already work with a competitor? This pitch requires a specific set of messages, skills, and technology.
In Key Account Management, your goal is to keep and grow the business. Your clients have already signed on with you, so they know who you are and why they should invest in your products or services. Now you need to build on the relationship, making yourself indispensable so that as time goes on, your customer not only renews their contract with you, but also increases their scope of work.
KAM and Sales: Different Customers
How do you know which accounts are key accounts? Key accounts are those with particular financial or strategic important to your organization.
The Pareto Principle states that 80% of outcomes are generated by 20% of inputs. Applied to your organization, this means that a significant portion of your revenue comes from a small subset of high-value clients. If that’s not true for you—if every customer is worth more or less the same dollar amount—then Key Account Management is not for you. Stick with sales, and keep working your CRM for more leads.
If you do have a small number of high-value accounts that stand out for not only their current revenue, but also their potential to grow, then you need to approach these accounts differently than you would your other accounts. It doesn’t mean you ignore anyone. You just recognize the importance of certain accounts and allocate internal resources accordingly.
One final note: As you’re identifying Key Accounts in your organization, keep in mind that revenue isn’t the only factor. Sometimes a client isn’t generating a ton of income in the moment, but maybe their mission/vision/offering is a perfect strategic fit for where your own organization wants to go. Or maybe you see some real potential and want to stay on board for the long-term. Either way, think big picture with Key Account Management—it’s about the long game!
KAM and Sales: Different Tech
Part of growing business through Key Account Management is cross- and upselling. So, yes: A Key Account Manager is in some respects a salesperson. However, as a Key Account Manager, you should know your customers inside and out: What they’re trying to accomplish, what stands in their way, what they struggle with, and how you can help. The sales tone shifts as a result: You are offering an effective solution to a problem your client is facing vs attempting to sell them something.
In order to earn that kind of trust, Key Account Managers need tools built purposefully to help them do their jobs. While most sales and marketing teams have purpose-built technology supporting and accelerating their efforts, even the most advanced Key Account Managers are often working with a hodge-podge of Excel sheets, emails, CRM data, project management tools, and powerpoint decks on the server somewhere.
KAM and Sales: Different Targets
Here’s a subtle but critical difference between KAM and sales: How you generate internal growth goals. In sales, you might examine the market, the competition, your target customer, your price point, your sales staff capacity—a host of factors that help you determine how much you can reasonably expect to grow in a given quarter or fiscal year.
In KAM, everything goes back to the customer. You start by understanding your customer’s growth goals, and projecting your organic growth goals accordingly. This relies on a couple of key truths: (1) Return customers are more likely than new customers to purchase premium products and services, and (2) If you help someone grow, you essentially help them have more money to spend on you.
So for example, say your customer wants to increase revenue by 30% in the next fiscal year. Your job as a Key Account Manager is to help them achieve that growth so you can reasonably expect them to increase their spending with you to some proportional degree. Your organic growth goal as a Key Account Manager is current revenue + the value of premium add-ons or additional work you think they’ll sign on for once they’re satisfied with your work and enjoying more cash flow as a direct result of your partnership with them.
There’s a second layer of Key Account Management and its role in your organization’s overall financial health. Namely, the cost of losing an important client. Losing a client not only costs your organization the direct revenue from the account, but also the indirect costs of replacing that revenue. The intense pressure not to lose accounts, plus the pressure to grow them incrementally year over year, is something that distinguishes the role of Key Account Managers.
Kapta and CRM: Purpose-Built Tech for Different Teams
CRM is specifically designed to support sales teams as they generate new leads and win new business—and it’s a really effective tool. However, most CRMs lack the focus to “zoom in” on a particular customer or account, effectively tracking strategic goals throughout the entire engagement. That’s where Kapta comes in.
Just as CRM is purpose-built for sales teams, Kapta is purpose-built for Key Account Managers. Kapta supports KAMs as they get to know their clients, develop tailored action plans to help them reach their goals, and measure their success—both with respect to their client’s goals and their own. Kapta tracks what matters most to Key Account Managers: The health, engagement, and activity on a small set of accounts—or even, in some instances, a single account.
Working Together: KAM and Sales, Kapta and CRM
For some organizations, KAM is everything. Advertising agencies, for example, often have a short list of extremely high-dollar clients. In that case, every single account is a key account, and account management function is a well-established, high-functioning role. CRM often isn’t even in the tech stack.
In other organizations, KAM and sales work together. Sales generates new leads, and KAM takes over when one of those leads grows into a Key Account (one with particular strategic or financial importance within the organization). If that’s the case, there is space for both CRM and Kapta; in fact, Kapta syncs seamlessly with CRM to import account history and contact info, as well as automatically share updates between both platforms. This avoids double-entry and creates even more partnership between the sales and Key Account Management teams, maximizing both the new and organic growth approaches in your organization.
Conclusion: You Can Have Both
In general, there’s no need for sales to compete with KAM within an organization; both roles are important. Similarly, there’s no need for Kapta to “compete” with CRM—both tech platforms can serve an organization well.
Here’s a high-level summary of how each platform excels:
For more on optimizing Key Account Management through smart technology, click here. And to learn more about how Kapta supports KAM while integrating fully with your CRM, schedule a personal demo.
Our KAM Process: Deep Dive into MEASURE
/in Customer Engagement /by Alex RaymondOur KAM ProcessTM is a proven methodology for building customer engagement and transforming customer relationships. Here’s what it looks like:
We’ve already taken a closer look at the Know and the Act phase. In short, they’re about understanding your client’s goals and expectations so you can build an action plan that helps them achieve those goals and exceed those expectations. So how do you know if you were successful? This is where the Measure piece comes in.
It’s important to note that while Measure comes last in our Know, Act, Measure process, it’s actually embedded throughout. In order to measure the success of your action plan, you need to have established specific goals and success metrics up front. You can’t just look up 6 months into a project and say, “Wait! Shoot! We need to be tracking!” Measurement is most effective when you establish good baseline data in the “Know” phase and specific numerical goals in the “Act” phase. Then, 6 months in, you’ll know exactly what you’re tracking against and why.
It’s also important, as always, to emphasize the cyclical nature of Our KAM Process. Satisfied, engaged clients are going to want to start additional work right away. The results you’ve measured from your latest initiative become part of what you know heading into your next initiative.
There are 3 ways the Kapta platform helps you Measure:
We’ll look at specific examples of metrics below, but first we’ll review the importance of tracking data, and why many organizations still don’t do it.
Why We Don’t Always Keep Score
If you feel like your organization falls short of methodically and consistently tracking success metrics, don’t worry—you’re not alone. Quantifying results can be challenging for many reasons, including:
Why Metrics Matter
Metrics are an invaluable resource to you and your customers. Because while numbers don’t always tell the whole story, they always tell an important story—and good or bad, they can help strengthen your relationship with a customer.
Let’s look at the good first. In a perfect world, your action plan is a smashing success, and you help your clients achieve increased product usage, sales growth, and revenue goals. The numbers will show that, and if you did a good job of highlighting metrics before and after your engagement with the client, you’ll be able to demonstrate the direct results of your efforts. Good metrics help you take reasonable credit for the work you’ve done. Whereas, if you didn’t pause to gather good data, you and your day-to-day contacts might think you did a good job, but you won’t have concrete evidence to support that claim. So how will you convince the CFO, who’s never worked with you and doesn’t know how awesome you are, that they should keep paying for your products or services? There’s nothing like a positive ROI to make your case.
Now, let’s look at the bad. (Which is really not so bad.) Say your efforts are not as fruitful as you’d like. You don’t get the sales or revenue your client hoped for. All is not lost! As long as you were aligned with your client going into the action plan, and both of you were making educated guesses about what might work, you’ve both learned something valuable in the process, namely: You need a new approach. As long as you internalize that knowledge and get to work brainstorming something new, a failed initiative can actually increase your value to a client in the context of a long-standing relationship. After all, a new vendor might come in and, without doing their research, suggest the exact thing you just tried—whereas you already know it won’t work, and you’re already working on a better idea.
Even in a worst-case scenario, where you track metrics, the initiative fails, and the client discontinues the relationship, you’ve still learned something from measuring results. When your next client wants to try something you already know won’t work, you’ll have real numbers to back up your point of view.
The point of all of this isn’t to scare you. It’s just to say, there’s never any reason not to try to quantify your impact. When the numbers are good, you’ll be able to show your customers exactly why it’s worth it for them to invest in your products or services. When the numbers aren’t good, you’re still learning. And if you’ve maintained strong client relationships throughout, you’ll be learning together, honing your approach for whatever comes next.
Examples of Metrics
Hopefully we’ve convinced you by now that you should be tracking metrics for every project.
(Sidenote: Here’s a perfect example of something that’s hard to track. How would we know if we’d convinced you? We can’t go into your brain and quantify conviction. We can’t count head nods. But we can use web traffic analytics to see how long the average reader stays on this page, which would give us a reasonable sense of how far down they read. And we can embed links below inviting you to get in touch—tracking those links can show us whether the post was generally compelling. And finally, we can track how much our customers are using the Measure tools within Kapta, and see if there’s any spike after this post. No single element is a perfect measure of whether we’ve convinced you to measure analytics, but we’re starting to gather factors to use in our decision-making moving forward.)
(Sidenote, continued: Now, does that mean we’ll stop posting content if there aren’t enough click-throughs? No. Numbers aren’t everything. It’s important to us at Kapta to provide good content to our audience simply because we believe in the value of ongoing conversation and education around Key Account Management. What we mean is, you don’t have to live and die by data. It just becomes a tool you can use to inform your decisions.)
Where were we? Oh, yes. Here are some general examples of KPIs it’s good to think through, although like everything in KAM, you’re going to want to tailor these to your client:
Like any strong technology tool, Kapta makes it easier to track data. After all, gathering and comparing data is what computers do best. Kapta can help you see how you’re moving the needle on your customer’s goals, as well as how your team is growing the relationship. And we can help you generate instantaneous, highly specific reports to visualize success for your clients and your C-suite.
Conclusion
Too many companies offer their clients products and services without making a concerted effort to track the results of their work. In part, that’s because the ability to track data the way we can now is relatively new in the world, and some legacy organization haven’t yet implemented a robust analytics program into their process. Kapta can help make metrics a standard part of everything you do, which can help you demonstrate your value to clients, so they continue to invest in you over the long term.
To see Kapta’s analytics capabilities in action, schedule a personal demo, and ask about our Advanced Metrics Module.
Our KAM Process: Deep Dive into ACT
/in Customer Engagement /by Lesley PoladskyOur KAM ProcessTM is a proven methodology for building customer engagement and transforming customer relationships. Here’s what it looks like:
We’ve already taken a closer look at the Know phase: Understanding your client, their organization, and their goals, as well as any strategic advantages or disadvantages they face in their marketplace. This is where you start to build the subject matter expertise (and client rapport) you’ll need to add more and more value moving forward.
What you learn about your client in the KNOW phase becomes the starting point for the ACT phase, which is what we’re going to cover in today’s post. There are 3 main components to the ACT phase:
Kapta makes the last 2 pieces of this puzzle pretty effortless—after all, that’s what technology is for. Kapta aggregates data from multiple sources to give you real-time status updates on timelines, budgets, contracts, and even client satisfaction. Kapta also syncs with various project management and CRM tools for seamless collaboration between multiple players. So for now, we’re going to set aside tracking and collaboration and focus on the hardest, but most important, piece of the puzzle: Building an action plan.
Don’t get us wrong: Kapta also has tools to help you build an action plan. But whereas our platform automates tracking and synching (essentially doing those things for you), building an action plan is a joint effort. Our technology prompts your thinking, support your process, and captures your planning—but it can’t (and shouldn’t) make an action plan for you. You still have to do the strategic thinking, creative problem solving, and client communication.
Luckily, Kapta is more than just an app. We’re also a roadmap. Below you’ll find best practices and a step-by-step guide for making an action plan that can really make a difference.
Put Customers First
Remember, Key Account Management is all about putting your customers’ needs first. If you do this right, you’ll achieve growth and success for your organization, too—but you have to stay oriented around your customer’s goals as you work out your action plan.
Work Big to Small
At its core, action planning is about translating big ideas into discrete action items. We do this by moving incrementally:
We’ll look at each of these in more detail now.
1) Identify Big Picture Goals
By now, you should already have a pretty clear idea of what your customer is trying to achieve. If you don’t, stop. Go back to the Know process. Spend the time there first, so you’re ready to build a relevant action plan.
Once you’ve uncovered your customer’s goals, assign specific numbers and dates to those goals. Here are some examples of strong, specific goals:
Of course, the exact numbers you assign to any goal are going to depend entirely on your client, their product(s) and service(s), and their market. Working out these numbers with them is another chance to strengthen your relationship, and to add value by listening closely, questioning assumptions, and adding your own expertise and perspective.
In addition to quantifying goals, you also need to prioritize them. This is where your SWOT analysis (from the Know phase) is very helpful. Look carefully at internal and external factors facing your client. This will help you decide what’s most pressing, and what’s most possible, so you can land on a few top priorities to work with.
2) Set Your Objectives
Goals are intentionally big: They can’t be accomplished overnight with a single action. So the next step is to break them down into smaller units, starting with objectives.
Another way to think of objectives is as milestones along the way. Many account managers break this down quarterly, and that makes sense in some cases. But setting objectives isn’t just about dividing 12-month goals into 3-month increments. It’s about thinking strategically: How are you going to achieve this goal? Is there “low-hanging fruit” you can capture early on, while you lay the groundwork for ongoing growth?
3) Think Tactically
Now that you’ve divided your client’s big growth goals into smaller objectives, you’ll determine the actions it takes to get there. Some people call this tactical planning. The best way to explain is by example, so let’s look at a hypothetical client. You’ve already established a quantifiable goal and a reasonable objective along the way:
So, how do you convert customers from a competitive product? You’ll need to understand what they love about their current product—and what they don’t love. You’ll need to communicate to them how your client’s product addresses their pain points better than the competition. You’ll need to create a mini-campaign and messaging, and you’ll need to target them.
Start by gathering your internal team to brainstorm ideas. Then, bring those ideas to the client to get their feedback and buy-in. (Remember: It’s easier for your client to react to something that exists than to come up with solutions out of thin air.)
Here are some Actions that might come out of this thinking:
These are tactical initiatives designed to achieve the objective of converting competitive customers. They are much more manageable than the goal or objective, but they are not quite yet a task. That comes next.
4) Assign Tasks
Tasks are the smallest unit of the action plan. They have an owner and a deadline. They can be assigned to a person and crossed off a to-do list.
Let’s follow the example above:
Here are some tangible, assignable tasks related to our Action above:
As you assign tasks, make sure you ask yourself: Is this something we have the capability to handle internally? Or do we need to get additional vendors on board? If so, what does that do for our timing and budget? Work closely with your PM and internal teams to help make sure you assign the right tasks to the right people, with the right deadlines.
Execute Your Plan
Action Planning moves from big to small: Goals, Objectives, Actions, Tasks. But executing your plan works in reverse: Completing tasks helps you complete actions, which meets objectives and, eventually, achieves goals.
Kapta helps you work in both directions. Our Action Planning templates support you as you break down your customer’s goals into manageable units. And our automated tracking tools make sure you’re getting where you need to go, one task at a time.
Get Engaged
A strong action plan has the power to build customer engagement as well as internal engagement. When people know what they need to do and understand why they’re doing it, they bring more energy and focus to their work.
If you’re still piecing together ad-hoc tech solutions, you might have your SWOT analysis in a powerpoint on the server, your customer goals in notes from a meeting, your timelines in a Gantt chart with a project manager, and a million email threads with client and internal feedback along the way.
Kapta puts this all in one place, so everyone can see who the customer is, what they’re trying to do, and why you’ve built the action plan the way you have. This creates clarity and unity as you move forward, and maintains a direct connection between even the tiniest task and the big, exciting thing you’re helping your customers achieve.
Conclusion
Action Planning isn’t easy—but it’s essential. Once you understand how it works, you’ll find yourself building meaningful action plans that engage and excite your customers and your internal team.
As always, Kapta can help. To see how we use our technology to support this process, schedule a personal demo.
Meantime, stay tuned. We’ll dive into the Measure part of Our KAM Process next week.