There’s been talk of a recession for a while and it’s been a real rollercoaster ride. We’re still unsettled from COVID, a bank crisis, and massive layoffs. So, despite early optimism in 2023, it’s not surprising that economists now project a 64 percent chance of recession by the end of 2023.
With all this disruption, it’s become more difficult to proceed with business as usual. Businesses are tightening their belts and watching their pennies while looking for ways to cut costs. This is when your accounts are at the greatest risk to churn. But the last thing you need right now is to lose your top clients, those who make up the lion’s share of your company’s revenue. You should retain and grow these accounts.
That’s why it’s essential to align with your top clients, protect your revenue base, and preserve and grow relationships with these VIP accounts. So, now is the time to make the most of each engagement. Instead of wasting valuable time, account managers must have a plan and a purpose for each time they connect with their accounts to secure the relationship. This builds on the trust and bond they have already established with these clients.
So, what steps should your account managers be taking at this pivotal time? Read on to get some tips on how to proceed.
Follow Your Established Account Management Process
An account management process, like Kapta’s KAM process, boosts the effectiveness of your account managers (AMs) by giving them a roadmap for everything they need to do to be successful. This prevents AMs from wasting time figuring out what they need to do next for optimum productivity.
For example, our KAM process is cyclical and repeatable. It includes three main phases:
Know: Where you gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of your key accounts. This step entails building an org chart and client profiles, conducting Voice of Customer (VOC) interviews, and completing a SWOT analysis.
Act: Take everything you learned during the Know stage to develop account plans to help clients achieve their goals and overcome their challenges.
Measure: Track your progress toward internal and client-facing goals.
That’s a brief overview for perspective. You can learn more about our KAM process here.
Become Reacquainted with Your Key Accounts
If you’ve already established a KAM process, it’s time to restart the cycle with all your VIP clients. Just as your goals have likely shifted due to the current economic climate, your clients’ goals have as well.
If you’re going to retain and grow them through this rocky time, it’s important to become reacquainted with your accounts. The best way to do this is to revisit and revise the steps of the Know phase.
Update Org Charts and Contact Profiles
When key contacts within your top accounts leave their department or company for a new role, account churn risk increases. And, thanks to tech layoffs, a more transient workforce, and the Great Resignation, the chances of your main contact moving on is even greater.
So, it’s essential to broaden your reach within each account and to keep Org Charts and Contact Profiles for key accounts current. This helps minimize the potential impact when the time comes that you’re suddenly working with a new main contact.
Part of developing useful Org Charts is understanding reporting structures, company cultures, and the internal workings of each organization. The more you know about your clients’ internal operations, the better off you’ll be.
Conduct Voice of Customer Interviews
Now is the time to re-discover your customers. You’ve already completed your initial VOC interviews with these accounts, so you’re looking to find out what has changed in their world. So, dig deeper to see how their goals, needs, challenges, and priorities have evolved.
A great way to do this is by dusting off our COVID-era VOC questions and incorporating one or two disruptive radically authentic discovery questions that we covered in our recent webinar with Bob London. These are questions that will likely surprise your executive client contacts and make them pause before responding. This is a sign that you are about to gain some very useful, deep, and revealing insights.
A few examples of these types of questions that Bob London recommends include:
- What’s on your whiteboard now that wasn’t there 60-90 days ago?
- What’s the one thing that absolutely needs to be OFF your whiteboard in 90 days?
- If your finance team asked you to cut one asset or resource, which one would you give up first, and why?
Your clients’ responses to these disruptive questions enable you to:
Know how to position the value of your solution in terms of the goals they are striving to achieve.
Identify issues so you can prevent unexpected churn
Provide new insights that reveal potential revenue expansion opportunities
Practice active listening during these VOC interviews and ask follow-up questions so you can more deeply understand what’s happening within each account and how you can best help them.
Complete a SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis is a proactive step that gives you a broader picture of what’s happening with you, your client, and the marketplace. This process examines Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats where Strengths and Weaknesses are internal, and Opportunities and Threats are external. Information that surfaces during a SWOT analysis helps you get ahead of any issues or challenges you can control before they develop into problems.
A great way to complete a SWOT Analysis is during an internal account review. This is an internal meeting where all stakeholders involved in the success of the client meet to discuss the current state of the account. Although these gatherings often occur prior to quarterly business reviews (QBRs), turbulent times are also a great time to review the state of your accounts.
Revise and Follow Through
Now that you’ve updated what you Know about your VIP clients, it’s time to adjust account plans accordingly. Share them internally and with your clients. Then start acting on them.
Remember that it’s essential to establish metrics that are meaningful to your clients to gauge progress toward goal achievement. Then keep clients abreast of the status of each objective.
This is an excellent way to collaborate with VIP customers while reminding them of the value they are receiving.
Leverage Teamwork
It’s more important now than ever, to remember that account management is a team sport. So, don’t try to accomplish everything in your account plans alone. It’s a losing proposition. It takes the collaboration of the entire account management team to retain and grow existing accounts.
This includes sharing account plans with the team, documenting all client communications and updates, and conducting routine internal account reviews. Taking these steps ensures a consistently positive customer experience, a shorter time to value, and greater account retention.
Boost Account Retention by Rediscovering Your Accounts
During economically uncertain times your clients are looking for ways to cut costs and their goals and priorities have shifted. Now is the time to follow your structured account management process.
Start by updating your Org Charts and Client Profiles. Then complete a fresh round of VOC interviews to understand what’s happening in your clients’ worlds. Finish gathering information by completing SWOT analyses for your portfolio of accounts.
Take all the information you have collected through the Know portion of your process to adjust account plans. Share these plans internally and with clients and start acting on them. Track progress toward goal achievement, share updates with clients, rinse, and repeat.
When you take these steps on a consistent basis, you’ll keep your finger on the pulse of your clients, continue providing value, and boost account retention.
Looking for additional ways to boost key account retention during an economic downturn? Register your account managers for KAMGenius.
