Managing Strategic Accounts

I’ve had an experience lately that I expect a lot of us Strategic Account Managers have: a promising new idea has emerged from discussions with a customer about business needs and future plans. There is a high likelihood that we’ll work together to develop this idea, but the idea has some legs and could have some potential uses for other companies. Do we have the right to take the idea to other customers and when? Of course, all of this can and will be sorted out as discussions continue (with the help of legal teams, no doubt). 

A possible solution is to make the implementation of the new idea for each customer somehow unique, therefore there’s no (or less) infringement on initial intellectual property. This possibility reminded me of a session I attended recently at the Strategic Account Management Association’s University event where they offer extensive workshops and training for more effectively managing strategic accounts. The title of the session was How to Co-Create with Your Customers, and it was led by Francis Gouillart. Mr. Gouillart is a university professor and founder of Experience Co-Creation Partnership (http://eccpartnership.com). 

The session was fascinating, and the ultimate message (at least from my perspective) was that you can significantly advance your value to your customer by co-creating a new way of working with them which addresses a business issue or challenge they have. Co-creation is unique for each customer, so there may not be any idea ownership issues. Something to think about…what’s been your answer to who owns a new idea?

I watched famed baseball slugger Mark McGwire confess his use of steroids to Bob Costas. Not a huge surprise when McGwire admitted to using steroids and human growth hormone during his homerun record-setting baseball career. But what was surprising was the overwhelming belief McGwire had that his performance wasn’t enhanced by the substances. Following the interview, Bob Costas said he firmly believes McGwire was genuine in his remarks that the steroids only helped him overcome injury, not gain physical advantages. I think you only need to look at McGwire’s pre and post steroid use homerun to at-bat ratios to understand the impact steroids had on his performance.

Lucky for you I’m not going to share my opinions on Mark McGwire or my thoughts on what the steroid era means to baseball’s future. I will tell you that I believe performance enhancing drugs provide players with physical advantages. This got me thinking about the tools that provide Strategic Account Managers with a competitive edge – a SAM’s performance enhancing drug so-to-speak. Here are the top two tools that I believe provide SAM’s with an advantage over their competition.

1.       Developing Strategic Account Knowledge: there are numerous public sources of information available to us that provide insight into our clients and the challenges they face – 10K’s, analyst reports, press releases, etc. The problem is this information is available to everyone, so the unique advantage you receive from this information alone is zero. One unique advantage we have with our current clients is access to people and the unique insights they can provide about the business and their needs. As SAM’s we need to insure we have a systematic approach to tap into this information and a method for putting this strategic account knowledge to work.

2.       Strategic Account Planning: The account plans are where we put our strategic account knowledge to work. Here is an Alan Lakein (the famed time management author) quote about planning that I like, “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now”. If you’re not leveraging account plans currently you should be.

We’re all looking to build and maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The good news is that there are time tested and ethical ways for SAM’s to go about it.  

Noah Grayson
Senior Vice President

I had every intention of writing a blog that had to do with growth and profitability and the best ways to take advantage of the services that are available today to assist your organization in that very fine balance of risk vs. profitability.  I wanted to talk about how important it is to view the profitability you have with your customers alongside the loyalty that your customers have with you.  I wanted to discuss the importance of these two metrics and how they, when combined, become exponentially more powerful.  I will dive into more of that next week and again in the future.

Today my message is simple and unrelated to the topics we think about every day.  My message today is about Haiti and the massive destruction, loss of human life and sheer devastation that has taken place in this already troubled, once beautiful place in the world. 

Please find a way to do something, whether that is through your church, your employer, your local community or simply via texting simple keywords to certain organizations to make a financial donation. 

I am not going to promote any specific method or venue, just that you do something.  Go to Google and type in “ways to help Haiti” if you are in need of ideas.

Thank you,

Michael Good

Vice President

Having just spent quality time over the holiday weeks with my three kids, I was eager to check out this website about birth order and personality (www.birthorderandpersonality.com). I was curious to see if it nailed each of my kid’s personalities.  It offers each birth order’s traits as strengths and weaknesses and even suggests future career choices that might be typical fits.

• First-borns are typically confident, organized and seek approval, are perfectionists, feel like they’re not good enough (lots of stress), and don't like to be told what to do.  Good career fits are high-precision paths like medicine and law, or they tend to seek leadership/control positions like boss or business owner.

•  Middle children tend to be more difficult to define/read and raise. They can be mysterious, suspicious, and stubborn.  They are also independent, peacemakers/mediators.  They fit with creative careers like sales, advertising, or art and love to stand out from the crowd.

• Last-borns are outgoing, social, affectionate, and funny – but can be spoiled, self-centered, manipulative, and immature.  They like to do their own thing, have no boundaries, take risks; so they might be inventors or entrepreneurs.

The website even includes profiles of only children and twins – and includes parenting tips with advice on effectively raising each child.

It got me thinking - is managing a portfolio of different accounts (and their "varying personalities") at all like raising different children, with varying traits, strengths, weaknesses, and inclinations?  You might have an account that could be characterized as a perfectionist, a mystery, or a risk-taker.  First, being aware of and in tune with, and then adapting strategies to your customers’ unique traits and personalities can lead to effective account management.  It can be a lot like raising a family.  What do you think?

Brad Linville
Principal, Sr. VP, Strategic Accounts
Walker

I’m personally not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, but this year seems like a good one for trying to get started with a solid plan. Might as well be ready to capture the positive momentum that seems to be rising.

Did you know that people who make resolutions are 10 times more likely to achieve their goals than those who don’t (see resolution statistics)? I didn’t, so now I’m motivated – aren’t you?

While I could stand to make a few personal resolutions (the usual ones – lose some weight, save more money, etc), let’s focus here on timely and effective resolutions for those of us involved in Strategic Account Management. 

Here are a few ideas I’m thinking about – and I’m thinking about prioritizing my accounts for these efforts such that I get the most payoff for my time:

1.       Be an insider. Know what’s going on in your customer's business as well as (or maybe even better) than they do. Read their annual reports and other financial statements, listen to earnings calls, read analyst reports. Use this information to find your hook – the challenges in their business where you can help. And – spend as much time as possible at your customer site.

2.       Meet 2 new executive level contacts per quarter. Leverage the information and time invested from item 1 above to demonstrate to these new contacts your grasp of what their priorities are and how you could help.

3.       Grow revenue by 20%. Steps 1 and 2 should help here, but we’ll also need to leverage our account plans, the voice of the customer, and other insights to develop the customer strategy most likely to succeed.


How about you? What are your resolutions? Share some ideas or let us know if we can help.

Sonya McAllister

Senior Vice President/Principal

Ever take a minute to reflect on the best and worst experiences you’ve had as a customer? I did this recently as part of an exercise with a client and noticed all the stories (about 30) shared some common characteristics.

1.      Both the best and worst experience stories started with a problem.

2.      Somewhere in the attempt at resolving the problem a person got involved.

3.      In the “best experience” examples the person getting involved came into the situation completely focused on helping the customer. Just the opposite occurred in the “worst experience” stories.

Lowe’s, the home improvement store, came up on more than one occasion as delivering one of the best customer experiences. The Lowe’s stories were similar. A major home repair project is underway and the customer is not exactly sure how to complete it. A Lowe’s representative walks the customer around the store selecting all the necessary parts and tools and then delivers step-by-step instructions on how to complete the repair.  A few things jumped out at me regarding the consistency of the Lowe’s stories.

1.      The business has decided what they want the customer experience to be and they’re investing to make this a competitive advantage.

2.      Lowe’s recognizes its people are key to delivering a great customer experience and they’re either really good at hiring customer-focused people or at developing them. It’s likely both.

3.      Lowe’s has enabled its people to deliver an exceptional level of service by empowering them and developing processes and policies that support their customer experience objectives.

So, as you’re out doing your last minute holiday shopping take a look at the experiences those businesses are delivering to you. Ask yourself, what kind of experience is my company delivering to its customers? Have you clearly defined what you want that experience to be? Do your policies and processes enable you to deliver the kind of customer experience you envision?

Feel free to share your customer experience stories with us.

Noah Grayson
Senior Vice President

Recently I was reading a local news source and it had a headline that read Powerball jackpot near $250M sparks sales. Not being a purchaser of lottery tickets, I was intrigued by the headline, specifically the part about “sparking sales”.  It stated the following: “Hoosiers are joining the rush to buy Powerball tickets ahead of tonight's big drawing. The jackpot is expected to reach $250 million - not a record, but enough to spur sales during the recession. Experts say they usually see a bump in ticket sales whenever the jackpot rises above $100 million. Tonight's Powerball game will be played in Indiana and 29 other states.”

The key to this blurb is the sentence “Experts say they usually see a bump in ticket sales whenever the jackpot rises above $100 million.” This got me thinking, do we live in such a greed-driven society that normal lottery ticket consumers are not as enticed to win an amount of money that is LESS than $100 million?

I would like to think that $60 million, $20 million, or even a measly $1 million dollars would dramatically change the lives of the average lottery consumer.  Not to mention, the Return on Investment for the purchase of that lottery ticket would still be staggering! I also understand that the higher the jackpot, the greater the dream and as the industry puts it, “the most important element in lotto is the Dream” and the focus should be directed to the dream and the fun instead of the money and the probability of winning (Saetershagen, 2003).  So maybe the increase in ticket sales after the $100 million threshold is because that is where we finally reach the “beyond my wildest dreams” stage.

So how does this align with Strategic Account Management?  Well, we strive to exceed our client’s wildest dreams. Actually, I’m just kidding, that is not where I am going with the correlation.  More importantly, as a Strategic Account Manager, you oversee a complex, value-driven relationship that has an obvious threshold to it.  Meaning there is a point at which the relationship will evolve and the dynamics will change.  There will be a greater level of trust established; a consultative relationship between you and the primary stakeholder on the client side will begin to develop.  The client will develop a higher threshold as your subject matter expertise becomes more of a known component.

Where is your baseline though, you need to understand where this threshold is for your client.  You need to consistently challenge your offering to ensure that it positioned for the greatest level of value and impact, continually drive towards a validated return on their investment.  In doing so, opportunities will automatically be created for the relationship to evolve, meaning, from a strategic account management perspective, that beyond the program evolving, introductions to other business units, opportunities for external referrals, feedback on additional internal growth opportunities, etcetera, will all be able to take place.

Are you aware of the threshold of your accounts?  Do you continually monitor the fluctuation of this? Start doing so today. It can take the accounts that you manage to places that are beyond your wildest dreams.

Michael Good
Vice President
 

1. What problem is the customer trying to solve?
2. Does your product or service help them solve this problem completely?
3. What does the customer have to do to make your product work for them the way they want it to work?

 R.I.P. Selling, you will be missed. Selling (date of birth – beginning of time / date of death – sometime between 1999 and 2009) sadly passed away at some point over the past 10 years. Selling had been with us as long as mankind existed. Selling impacted all of our lives and touched many of us through all of our sensory nodes. Selling also had a great sense of humor, like on the car lot, Selling would always play games with us and stir our emotions or during company workshops when Selling would come into our business as an outsider dressed in a sharp suit with all the right answers regardless of the questions. It was simply amazing how well articulated Selling was on his feet. Selling will be deeply missed by all mankind.

Now wouldn’t it be sad if that epitaph were true? That was purely fictional as it has been 100% confirmed that Selling is not dead, in fact, Selling was just spotted at a shoe store in Des Moines last Tuesday.

There’s this common misnomer that those of us that are in Business Development and Strategic Account Management should never “sell” our clients. There are several books on this concept and a wide variety of well publicized opinions at a library or internet connection near you. Well, is selling really dead or are we just packaging it differently? We have conversations, we build relationships, we show strategic value, we drive towards return on investments made in our product or services, the list goes on – but in essence, aren’t we really doing all of that with one end goal in mind – to sell something?

We dance around the idea of making sure that we are not making our clients or prospects feel as though we are actually trying to do just that. When did “selling” a product or service become a bad thing? Why is selling getting a bad rap? I mean, if you are successful at delivering value and positively impacting your target audience’s environment, wouldn’t it be a disservice NOT to sell them?

I think what we want to avoid is not the concept of selling, but the uncomfortable impact of “pressure”. You can sell me something without applying any pressure whatsoever and if successful in doing so, then we have just begun cultivating our relationship at another level. Pressure is replaced with Value and those that understand that Value just get it, they understand the impact that it can have on their life, their organization, their objectives, etc.

Selling is very much alive. Now what’s it going to take for you to drive this concept home today?

Michael Good

Vice President

1. Assess what you know about the business you have with each of your clients – think about degree of loyalty and share of spend relative to your competitors
2. Identify business that is at risk, and take steps to prevent that loss
3. Identify opportunities for growth, and put a strategy in place to capitalize on them

A new season of (American) football has kicked off here in the US, so millions of us have also started playing Fantasy Football. As I was reviewing Week 1 results (http://www.nfl.com/fantasy) and making a few changes to my fantasy team and lineup, I noticed several parallels between fantasy team management and strategic account management:

Know and leverage your strengths – Every fantasy prognosticator (yes, people do this for a living) maintains a list of studs, duds, and sleepers. Your customer/prospect list no doubt has the same. Spend your time and resources accordingly. Challenge yourself to spend as much time with your sleepers (currently low revenue but high potential) as you do your studs (largest revenue/most profitable customers).  

Continuously reassess your competition – In most fantasy leagues, your team plays a different opposing team each week. Successful players adjust their lineups accordingly. Strategic Account Managers should too. Our competitors are constantly releasing new products or services or trying to change their tactics in approaching our customers. Monitor this competitor activity as closely as possible – even talk with your customers about it. Ask them what they think of your competitor’s latest release – this will give you a chance to hear their opinion and also give you an opening to reiterate why your comparable product is superior.

Monitor the news – Just like fantasy footballers monitor injury reports and who is practicing well each week, we Strategic Account Managers need to stay abreast of what’s going on within our client companies. A few specific suggestions: attend public company earnings calls to know how their business is performing and what they’re expecting in the future, set up Google alerts to deliver news and press releases on your client to your inbox, subscribe to client company newsletters and newsfeeds.

Maybe managing strategic accounts can be a little more fun (not that it isn’t already) if we liken it to fantasy football more often. Game on!

I read recently that the Customer Experience is what your customers deserve.

What are you giving them? You should really reach out to them and find out. You would like to, but it’s just not in the budget right now, right? Well, then, you should wait. I’m sure the customer won’t go anywhere while we wait for the economy to turn around. In fact, it has been so easy recently to bring in new customers that this whole concept of making sure that we are looking after our existing customers is probably just overrated hype. We can always replace them with new ones.

________            

OK, I’m sure you felt the sarcasm in the scenario above. It was not meant as a rant, but more as a simple translation of what some organizations are trying to say in a far more politically correct manor. Don’t you think it really sounds odd when translated?

The thought of cutting back on the one thing that can help your organization persevere through difficult times is baffling to me. Product development is not going to stop the bleeding – especially if they are not able to learn from their customers which problems need solved. Finance is not going to solve the problem by slashing budgets – that will just drag out the inevitable if left unaddressed. Business development is not going to solve the problem – how hard is it to maintain or grow, if for every new customer you have walking through the door, you have one or more existing customers walking out another door or decreasing the amount of business they are doing with you?

Therein lies the problem, and it is your responsibility to be part of the solution! Yes, YOU! You already know those companies that align the voice of their own customers with their key growth objectives have a far better track record, through good times and bad. Just look at your competition, it should be obvious to you which of your competitors are not using this proven business method within their own walls. While your business development team is sharing your value prop with the world of prospects and out trying to exploit your competitor’s weaknesses while refining their competitive differentiators, you should be making sure that the customer intelligence and actionable data is being compiled and there are strategies being developed to maintain and grow your EXISTING clients! The best way to do this is by continually challenging yourself and your program to be best-in-class. Not just best-in-class by definition, but best-in-class as in “getting results.” The rewards for this discipline will deliver a return on investment that far outweighs whatever risks would be involved.

There is an elephant in the room and he’s looking at you!

Prioritize and execute – it’s up to you.

Michael Good

Vice President

So many accounts so little time. You’re probably thinking…not a bad problem to have. And I agree. But this issue routinely presents companies with several important decisions. Which accounts do I assign to my best people? Which accounts are worth salvaging when issues arise? What kind of salesperson do I assign to my accounts that are strategically valuable, but troubled? Do I provide special training to these salespeople? The list of questions or decisions to be made goes on and on.

The impact of a company’s answer to these questions lands squarely on the bottom-line. An article titled “Working Knowledge” by Robert Kaplan suggests that approximately 40% of customers represent 120% of profit dollars. The remaining 60% add no profit dollars or actually detract from a company’s total profits. So, make the wrong decision about which accounts to invest in and you handicap your company’s ability to grow profitably.

Recognizing the importance of this decision, at Walker, we have developed a framework that enables companies to consistently (account-to-account) determine the total strategic value of each customer. The three keys are in the criteria we use to determine the strategic value of an account. We call the components the 3 P’s.

·         Profitability

·         Potential

·         Partnership

Understand where each of your accounts resides on these three dimensions and you’re well on your way to helping your company make its most important resource and investment decisions.

Noah Grayson
Senior Vice President

I’m getting ready to attend the PGA Championship this weekend. As opposed to other sporting events you may attend, I find that it pays to do some prep work before attending a major golf tournament.

Here’s the challenge: There are 156 players in the field all teeing off at different times and on both the front and back nine (see schedule) for the first two rounds on Thursday and Friday. How do I make sure I see the players I want to see?

Preferred Strategy: Pick 2-3 key holes or locations on the golf course to be at certain times of the day. Be at those long enough to watch a string of groups you want to see come through.

I like this plan better than following one group or player all day, though there are thousands of fans that take this approach. 

How does this apply to strategic account management? In lots of ways:

-It’s usually best to not give all of your time and attention to just one customer, even if they’re your best one. (It’s fun to watch Tiger, but you miss a lot of action and opportunity if that’s all you do.)

-Planning ahead for whom you want to spend time with and when will pay off. (There are some great strings of groups. The 12:55-1:45 tee times from the first tee have groups that are chockfull of favorites: Anthony Kim, Bubba Watson, Davis Love, Steve Stricker, recent British Open champ Stewart Cink, and hometown favorite, Phil Mickelson. Park it somewhere and watch the parade of amazing golfers come through.)

-Prioritization of targets is key. Always have a top ten list of people you want to be building or expanding a relationship with and use this to help you manage your time. (In addition to the golfers listed above, I’ll also be sure to catch Fred Couples, Camilo Villegas, John Daly, and of course, Tiger.)

Have a plan and work the plan – it can make your work life as well as your leisure activities as fun and productive as possible.

Sonya McAllister
Principal, Senior Vice President