When to Dive Into the World of Account Planning, or When to Create a Key Account Strategy

Attracting new customers in business is key, but do you know how to manage or hold onto those accounts once you’ve got them? Statistics reveal that growing customer revenue across accounts is key to substantial returns. Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products, and will typically spend 31% more than new customers. 

Considering that you’ll also spend almost five times more trying to attract new audiences via marketing drives and acquisition efforts, the financial benefits of focusing on existing accounts speak for themselves.

Account planning is the best way to enhance customer lifetime value (CLV) and enjoy those retention benefits. Key account management (KAM) is especially essential for enhancing profits on your most important, and potentially lucrative accounts.

At Simplified Revenue Operations, we help you to get your accounts in order. We’ll use your data to highlight your key accounts, perfect your retargeting efforts, and even nurture stagnant accounts back to full health. 

What is Account Planning?

Account planning, or ‘account mapping’, is simply the process of mapping important details about your existing or prospective client accounts to enhance ROI and identify additional sales points. Effective account planning should include processes such as :

• Account research: Customer-centric research including know-your-customer checks (KYC), and research into specific areas like revenue and growth or current challenges, can all help you understand client needs, and tailor sales towards that purpose.

• Relationship mapping: Identifying key stakeholders and decision-makers allows relationship mapping that ensures account growth by identifying and targeting figures with the most influence and buying power. An effective relationship mapping strategy also provides you with a web of contacts, ensuring ongoing communications even if points of contact change. 

• Identifying potential opportunities: A client has contacted your company about a challenge they’re facing now, but white space mapping makes it possible to identify long-term needs. This kind of land and expand sales strategy is key to finding ways to drive revenue within existing customer base and can lead to long-term, lucrative relationships. 

What is Key Account Management (KAM)?

Some level of account planning is crucial in every client interaction, but not every account requires the same level of attention at any given time. With KAM, it’s possible to prioritise your most lucrative large-scale accounts at any moment. This dedicated, account-centric focus ensures better momentary and long-term returns for your clients, as well as ongoing sales for you. Key account strategies will typically involve increasing the number of people working on an account, developing more strategic relationships within that account, or even increasing account budgets to include things like CRM tools and dedicated growth plans during high sales periods.

Despite its benefits, KAM can sometimes feel like choosing between your favourite children. After all, every account you work on matters, so how do you choose where to place key account strategies? Some considerations include :

• Revenue volume/potential: How much do you earn from that account, and how much do you stand to earn by increasing your account focus? Do ROIs justify KAM spending?

• Lifetime value: Account sustainability is every bit as important as growth. Is there potential for a high lifetime value within this account?

• Ideal customer profiles: Does this client fit your ideal customer profile? Are they likely to suit all of your products in some way for cross-selling/up-selling opportunities?

• Strategic value: Is there a multi-purpose strategic value to this account? As well as profits, key accounts might open doors for collaborations and reputational benefits. 

The Risks of Poor Account Planning 

Account planning should be an intrinsic part of your processes, but it isn’t always an easy thing to manage. In some cases, limited capabilities may even see you neglecting so-called ‘unimportant’ accounts altogether. A lack of access to vital planning technologies like CRMs and data analysis could also set you back, altogether preventing your ability to hone in on your most important accounts. Instead, you’ll be stuck creating account plans in tools like PowerPoint, where information is static and outdated from the moment it’s created.

When you compromise account planning in this way, you’ll soon start to experience setbacks that could include :

• Inefficient handling of key accounts, resulting in account closures or refunds

• Inadequate research, leading to missed opportunities and a limited understanding of key influences within an account

• Inconsistent account updates, leading to frustration and potentially outdated approaches to client problems

• Inability to effectively plan or target key account strategies, resulting in wasted money and time for both parties

How Can Simplified Revenue Operations Help?

You understand the importance of account planning and KAM for company growth, but you might not know the best ways to handle it. That’s where Simplified Revenue Operations comes in. We have the time, tools, and know-how to help you perfect even key account strategies with an ease that’s been unheard of in your company until now.

Using your account data and our expert insight, we’ll help you to understand your clients better, and will point you towards the best practices for account planning that works, and the right technology to implement them. Our services include :

A Data-Centric Approach

You’ve got the data, and we know what to do with it. We’ll assess your key data stores to help you narrow down on the account figures that matter most, such as existing revenue spend and up-to-date returns. This will make it far easier to understand not only the value of account planning company-wide but also where key account strategies could best serve your account dynamics. 

Pointing Your Teams in the Right Direction

We’ll work across sales and marketing teams to develop key focuses like territory planning. This can help every member of your team to work in alignment and will make it far easier to ensure that each team member is working on specific accounts, instead of operating across the board or reapproaching irritated clients. This makes it far easier to implement account plans with the help of dedicated account managers who know that client in-depth. 

A focus on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

We help you to ensure CLV through improved performance, and a recognition of up-selling/cross-selling opportunities as they arise. We’ll also use data to help you recognise your most lucrative accounts, as well as those with the potential to provide the highest long-term returns for key account strategies that always land well.