Milind Katti is the Co-Founder and COO of DemandFarm. A company that build digital tools for strategic account management.
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As organizations try to stay ahead of the market and build future revenue streams—whether acquiring new customers or introducing new features or products—the rocks supporting this ambition are key accounts. As times change and accounts become more strategic, account planning only becomes more crucial. But existing practices by vendor account managers have largely stayed the same, slowly alienating digitally savvy customers.
The time to modernize account management is now. Adopting digital key account management (KAM) and resulting account-based activities can make a big difference to an organization, but maximizing the returns requires certain cultural changes first.
1. Organizations must adopt digital as their primary means of client communication.
Customers all over—be it in B2B or B2C—have evolved their habits and prefer digital channels, which translates to online researching of benchmarks, comparing attributes of various suppliers, sifting user reviews of said suppliers before shortlisting and a lot more.
While today’s B2B clients are active online researchers, B2B sales reps are struggling to land facetime. Solution providers have to be smart about optimizing their support functions.
Combining and formatting the tribal knowledge of a key account allows account managers to pick up from where their colleagues or predecessors left off. Not only does this greatly reduce the resolution time for clients, but it helps the solutions provider too. With up-to-date KAM data and the tools to interpret it, even small accounts teams can punch well above their weight by communicating important client information and responsibilities.
2. A "SaaS-ified" economy means account managers must be more data-savvy.
In times past, account management was all about execution. Client organizations asked for a solution to the issue they were facing, and account managers from the supplier organization would turn to vendors for an answer. Contracts would renew so long as suppliers provided what was asked of them.
With constant changes in buyer needs, among other forces, this vendor-buyer dynamic is no longer the case. Account managers are expected to perform from the get-go. Even data from six months ago isn't valid anymore, and frequent churn of employees on both sides makes it difficult to keep track of the data.
Capturing this knowledge into an enterprise memory renders the entire team capable of taking care of the client’s needs at the drop of a hat. The culture of the organization needs to shift toward a customer-centric model for this to happen. Leaders must do so by simplifying the need to capture key account data in the right way.
3. Account-based marketing must tailor messages to decision makers.
According to a 2019 study by SiriusDecisions, the average account-based marketing (ABM) budget was around $350,000, and 70% of organizations expected that number to rise. Organizations are waking up to the advantages of targeting and personalized marketing for their B2B prospects. This sharper, personalized focus on both content and timing results in greater conversion.
Account managers are expected to deliver not just insights but also educate clients about those insights and the industry landscape. While the task sounds difficult—the uptick more than makes up for it: B2B clients reporting higher confidence levels while buying solutions are 157% likelier to complete a high-quality, low-regret deal, according to Gartner.
Apart from the institutional knowledge about the client’s position, using info from customer relationship management (CRM) systems, social media, the press and third parties can help create an ad hoc behavioral model that can train new account managers to evaluate and prioritize accounts.
4. Account managers must create human solutions to digital problems.
Having the right data, algorithms and KAM tools doesn’t necessarily translate to successful account management, as digital can only enhance what was working before—and speed up (or replace) legacy processes. It’s the account managers and leaders who must prove to be the difference. The most successful ones demonstrate the following traits:
• Understand what is needed for your organization, clients and job. Ensuring transparency in all dealings is the best way to go about it so clients clearly understand how their work is handled. Clearly defining key performance indicators (KPIs) and revisiting them for relevance can also help you understand the market flow and guide your clients accordingly.
• Use key account data from support and marketing teams with clearly defined functions. This increases collaboration across teams and can provide vital information that would otherwise not present itself. For example, marketing can create personas based on key account data, which can help new account executives understand what they’re up against, and sales teams can provide up-to-date records, which can be used in important communications. With key account data properly sorted into enterprise memory, its uses can be multi-pronged.
• Pick tools that work for you. Accounts teams all over the world usually have their hands full, and adding another tool to learn and update can result in minimal compliance. Organizational leaders should identify the pain points, then try to find tools that can be customized accordingly.
Laying The Foundation For An "Account-able" Future
Those who decide the future course of action based on data rather than looking for data that suits them will succeed in retaining their key accounts and even grow the association over time. By streamlining the information necessary and addressing the above cultural changes, account managers can take care of the biggest priorities in being ready to handle their clients’ challenges in the future.
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