A Key or a Strategic Account in B2B sales is that strategically valuable customer of yours’ whose loss would impact your organization’s profits significantly. Owing to the same these accounts are your organization’s “precious gems”. Hence, managing those “gems” is crucial. It is noteworthy that Strategic/Key Account Management (S/KAM) isn’t just about winning new business from your customers but changing the very complexion of how you do business with those customers. This calls for a robust S/KAM framework with a strong focus of winning and retaining those strategically significant “gems”

Let’s look at 3 ways in which those precious gems can be managed

Estimating the future value: all customers do not become large from day one. What is big today started off small at some point of time in the past which is why it’s important to look at growth potential in your key account selection criteria. The business value that the customer offers is co-related with time. Therefore, while trying the estimate the value opportunity, some of the areas where account managers would need to do research pertaining to the above are: potential volume of future sales, their expansion into new markets, their profitability from operations, the uniqueness of their product offerings, focus on innovation etc.

Analyzing the attractiveness value: over and above the value opportunity, there are several pointers to determine your interest and investment of resources in a particular account. For example, you may like to consider the ease of doing business with a particular account before investing your resources in them for the longer term. Some of the other factors that you may like to evaluate are: how much of industry’s work do they represent, their budgets for your products/services, customer’s potential volume you can realistically capture, their willingness to collaborate with you, your access to their decision-makers and influencers, the mutual alignment of values and culture and the like.

Understanding the positioning value: what is your positioning in the customer’s mind space as against your competitors, will determine, whether both teams will be able to work well together for the longer term or not. For example, a good current position in their mind would mean that you have a good relationship with the customer but more growth of the account is possible, perhaps through cross-selling products/services or by penetrating other divisions. A strong current position would mean that you are well entrenched with the customer and are maximizing the value from and to them. Limited current position would mean that you have been selling to them for some time but have only limited penetration of the account and future growth is unlikely unless conditions change.  

Account managers shoulder the responsibility of deepening the existing accounts via development of new opportunities. Towards the same, they do not have an infinite bandwidth of time to grow and protect their existing accounts. Therefore, they must ensure that they are applying uniform guidelines in assessing the new opportunities when they arise. Those guidelines are determined by these factors: 1. The current and future reality of the value opportunity. 2. The competitive ability. 3. Winnability in the account 4. Financial and non-financial worthiness of the win.   

The Strategic Account Development framework of Growthsqapes empowers you to train and develop both the skillset and mindset that is vital for Key Account Management.

This blog is written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at Growthsqapes