Key Account Management Training

As customer-centricity remains a vital element of any sales approach in the B2B space, Global / Key / Strategic Account Management is still imposing itself as a pillar of any best-of-breed commercial practice. Yet, a large number of sales leaders are not fully convinced. Key account management is like anything else: it works and produces amazing revenue if done right.

When offering complex solutions to large (and complex) groups, there are many circumstances where cross-selling is, or should be, a significant part of your annual revenue. Hundreds of studies have shown that selling to an existing client is the simplest of all scenarios and there are plenty of cases where it makes sense:

• Many entities of a same group may operate similar businesses under different brands (the cosmetic industry is a perfect example of this)
• A unique customer may have different activities, different stakeholders and different decision makers (think of a bank)
• The portfolio of products you have is so large that you have no other choice but to have specialized sales executives (one of the largest Fintech has more than 800 products)
• …

So we agree: selling existing products to existing customers is the easiest scenario. You know them and they know you. But do they really? Do they look at you as a strategic partner or as a transactional vendor? Putting aside what they already purchased from your company, products, services or licenses, how much do they know about the other things you could do for them? How many people in their organization are aware of the breadth of your offering and of the benefits they could get from a wider engagement? And are those people at decision-making levels?

Key Account Management can be summarized in two words: INSIGHT, which comes in 3 different flavors, and SHARED.

Let’s look at insight first:

• The first kind of insight is the relation to your customer. Understanding what is their mission, the structure of their ownership, their ranking against competition, their strengths and weaknesses, their performance, their geographical presence and associated successes, their latest acquisition or disinvestment, the new offers they brought to the market, their sensitivity to innovation, to partnering, their organization and decision process, the influencers etc… Knowing this is already a lot of work
• Insight, flavor #2, is the expectation they have in terms of relationship with their providers. Not every organization is the same and therefore not everything weights the same thing. Some clients like to work with small companies, some with large ones: what is their purchasing approach, how do they look at prices, do they expect you to be innovative, reactive? Local? Global? Both?
• Insight, flavor #3: a solid account plan needs to be cognizant of every aspect of the way what you have already sold is being perceived. That comprehension goes beyond a binary statement. It is by far not limited to good or not and a whole range of things need to be looked at: delivery, quality, CSR, competitiveness, time to market, commitment, C-level relationship etc…

The sum of the collected information and the knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses is what will allow you to define your strategy.

The second word is sharing. There is no point making good account plans and revisiting them regularly if they are not shared with your client. And this is a key issue because most of the sales executives, including the very senior ones, don’t do it. Lack of self-confidence, afraid to look like an idiot, thinking that your customer has no interest in the plans you have for / with them, I don’t know. What I know is that 90% of the account executives do not share their strategy with their clients. But once they do, while facing a reality check, this is the moment where you collect more insight about your client’s plans and needs, about what they know about you, on what you can do to improve the relationship and … about what else they could effectively do with you over the next 2 to 3 years. Magic.

Salesmetry has created a very detailed and hands-on training program, typically running over 3 days, and combined with a coaching approach with each account executive involved.