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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

When I was at IBM, Sam Palmisano was CEO. Way back in 2004. Sam succeeded Lou Vincent Gerstner Jr. who retired. Sam shook IBM by his famous book titled “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance” (Sam Palmisano, 2003). However, what wondered the IBM mindscape was that Virginia Rometty succeeded Sam as IBM’s first women CEO. Sam had retired.

Sounds so normal like a rotating chair behind a revolving door. Is it so?

The expression ‘Chair’ usually brings to the mind the two images – of a simple piece of four-legged furniture and a person who could be the authority amongst a group of people. Perceptually a man, if not in reality. Implies power and authority. It’s this aspect that draws one’s attention to the interplay of power and authority and the never-ending chase to win this race. Though this chase for ‘the chair’ exists across different spheres of life, a very interesting one to consider is the corporate sector.

Things are very structured and organised in the corporate sector in terms of roles, responsibilities, authorities, boundaries, hierarchies, etc. This structuring is also visible in context of the growth path for its employees and shows itself at the senior level in the form of succession planning. Succession planning in simple terms is the process of identifying the right talent and preparing them to take up leadership roles in the future when the vacancy arises by virtue of the existing leaders retiring, moving to newer roles or passing away. In other words, it is the process by which contenders for ‘the chair’ are identified and prepared so that the better one may take up the role in the future. 

The purpose of succession planning is to create a talent pool within the organisation from which the deserving candidate ready for the role can be moved to a leadership role as required while maintaining business continuity.
This can be done in two ways –
1) Contingency Succession Planning, wherein an emergency or unforeseen leadership vacancy is aimed to be filled, and
2) Proactive Succession Planning, wherein a long-term approach is taken to fill leadership position vacancies. Another benefit of succession planning is that recruitment cost is minimised with the creation of a sizeable succession pipeline. When Steve Jobs wanted a successor, he started the Apple University. Yes, a university to create a succession planning pipeline at Apple, that gave Tim Cook after Steve Jobs.

If we look at it a little closely, it is easily identifiable that succession planning is a structured process which helps establish an organisation’s identity and facilitates the process of organisational identification within the contenders (Albert & Whetton, 1985). The future incumbents need to understand the organization, what it stands for, create ways of co-relating and identifying with it to be considered as the rightful contenders for whichever chair of office they are currently contending for.

Though seemingly simple, succession planning is a highly evolved and complex process by which the race to ‘the chair’ is facilitated and finally won. However, it is not as simple to achieve as it sounds. There are various challenges encountered along the way. The three most common and crucial challenges include – 

1. Identifying the right candidate – a crucial point to consider here is that while a candidate may be excellent at his/her current role, does s/he have what it takes to perform at the higher levels. Moreover, the selection should agree with everyone.
2. Avoid the bias trap – It is quite natural for the selectors/recruiter to end up being biased in the favour of a familiar candidate despite another one being a more deserving choice for the role under consideration. This is where succession planning can fail terribly and should be avoided. The selection should be made based on the best suited skills as opposed to any other criteria. 
3. Maintain high morale– This is a crucial challenge faced during succession planning as talking about retirement or redundancy can end up being very daunting for some people thereby impacting their morale.  An environment of openness in discussing the growth path and transparency around the possible candidates for growth could help keep the morale high.

It is with such challenges in consideration that one realises the importance of a careful and well-planned succession planning approach. One that steers clear of these challenges and delivers a succession planning strategy that is aligned with the organisational strategy. It is then that in real terms ‘the chair’ will be able to find its rightful heir. 

That’s a bit about how it happens inside the organization. How does it happen at the industry level? Industry level succession planning can be understood from the fact that most CXO of Unilever who cannot make it to the highest executive chair within, becomes CEOs in other companies. Unilever thus is known as the CEO factory that produces well-groomed ready-to-hire CEOs who can hit the road running in any industry.

Think! How does your organization prepare its future leaders? Do you have a plan? The first step is to have a kindergarten of leadership in-house, that builds the first-time managers in their formative years with a success rate of 70 to 80%. As said – If we do not prepare your leaders for future now, you are beginning to make your organization obsolete.

This blog is written by Namita Singh; Consultant & Project Manager at Growthsqapes.

References: 

• Peter Burrows. “Why Apple University Matters More Than Ever”. Bloomberg.com.
• Global Leadership Forecast 2021 by DDI

Let’s begin with self-indulgent posture. When two leaders from different organizations meet, – “How’s business” is the cliched start and then one thing leads to another in hurried hops. A long halt is usually at the topic of ‘people challenges’. Cut to varied covid times when they are talking, a long halt now is at ‘Great Resignation’. Thanks to Dr.Anthony Klotz, professor of business administration at A&M University, Texas who studied resignations for half of his young life now.

Dr. Klotz has contextually calibrated attrition for us and offered it to us as a phenomenon. What is not sure is, if organizational leaders especially human resources managers have taken to the phenomenology behind the phenomena and explained the same to the business managers.

‘Great Resignation’ i.e., unusual numbers of people leaving the organization and creating upheaval within the organization is nothing new, particularly in the Indian context. Many sectors in India have already learned to outgrow attrition levels that are unimaginable even now by other industries. The Business Process Outsourcing Industry in India in the late 90s and early 2000 dealt with attritions as high as fifty percent or more and monthly dashboards moved on to the next slides when it came down to the forties. Around the same time, when Indian Media & Entertainment sector was emerging and began with its humble contribution of one percent to the GDP, what was happening was not attrition but ‘coups’. One media leader would leave as the pied piper of Hamlin followed by many en masse.

What is common across industries is that human resources professionals suffer from a phenomenological miss when it comes to attrition, the aggravation of which is called great resignation. The usual approach to managing attrition is retention, using the compensation and benefits handle. It does not work as it merely is a superficial bandage applied with little or no deep-seated long-term meaningful cure. Here is what happens! Once there is resignation, a reactive financial bandage is attempted and whether it works or not is anybody’s guess. Human resource professionals miss the phenomenological process that the act of resignation is a final act. Before this action, the employee has undergone a series of rational and emotional processes and failing to find a solution – has thus ‘decided to put her papers’. A costly miss by HR professionals. Indeed, for this miss, ignorance cannot be a blissful plea if claims of being professional people managers are to be sustained.

Here’s where leadership at all levels of the organization plays a role. When retaining people exclusively becomes HR’s performance metric, the beginning of the ‘Great Resignation’ starts. Instead, HR professionals must be mindful of the entire phenomenological process behind ‘great resignations’, preempt topples and tumbles by observing human processes patterns around them, describing, interpreting, validating and acting upon on them on priority. Everything else is an act of ‘taking for granted’ and alas one day the decision is taken by the employee.

If ‘Great Resignation’ is to be arrested, leaders across organizational levels need to start thinking, believing, and acting of the following:

Socio-psychological Involvement: Leaders must go beyond the numerical levels of the typified ‘Engagement Scores’ and endeavor to involve themselves at emotional level with the thinking process, feeling process and actions of their people at several situations. Leaders must truly ‘engage in spirit’ and the HR pros must help other leaders understand that engagement is beyond a mathematical score and pomp & show of festivals.

Psychology of Appreciation: Like trust begets trust, appreciation begets drive and motivation. The machinist metaphor is today not only restricted to organizational forms. There are managers who are machines and are detested covertly, if not overtly. An organization with more of these kinds of managers are at the brink of the collapse due to ‘Great Resignation’. HR pros must endeavor to develop the human skills and emotional intelligence of these business managers.

Lead: Lead for heaven’s sake. Either by thought or by action. People look up to leaders. If they cannot look up to their boss, they are discouraged. They have a sense of loss of grace that they ‘have to work’ for someone they cannot get anything from.

Help to learn, more than to earn: Enough data shows that employees remember those bosses from whom they learnt a lot. They say that those bosses made the foundation on which their careers stand today. They imitate those bosses and carry their legacy forward with pride.

Covid shall go away, but organizations will remain. What would remain is continued volatility, uncertainty, confusion, and ambiguity. Stability is a fatal illusion, and it is the leadership and its efficacy that will fetch business efficiency amidst all the dynamism. Amidst all this, it is socio-psychological involvement with people, a culture of appreciation, leaders who can inspire, leader who can truly lead individuals’ career growth and minds that would arrest ‘Great Resignation’.

This blog is written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at Growthsqapes Consulting.

Introduction

In the game of cricket middle-order batsmen are those who come out to bat 3-down to 6-down. They face a worn-out ball delivered by spinners, many of whom throw a ‘googly’ every now and then. A bit here and there with your footwork or timing, you are finished with a roar. They must stand like a strong wall of defense. Thus, by competencies the middle-order batsmen are very resilient. By skill, they are craftsmen. They know how to hang-on and keep the battle on. They forward-build what the openers have done, or not done…(sic) and pave way for the tailenders to display bravado.

The world of management is not far different. Here too. Middle is the core and core is strength. It is the core – whether in cricket or business – that stabilizes and controls any system of management order.

In the Middle

They are truly in the middle. Merriam-Webster defines in the middle as ‘in a difficult or unpleasant position’. In the world of management ‘Middle’ is defined as a layer within organizational hierarchies which is in ‘between the operating core and the apex’ (Mintzberg, 1989:98) and whose members are held responsible for a specific business delivery at intermediate level of the overall corporate management order. The order contains everyone from the ‘chairman to the line-man’.

Why the Middle?

Should the apex of the organization be its command center (read brain) for the order of management, the middle management then is the spinal cord. It constitutes the pathway for messages sent by the brain to the frontline organization below (the organs) and from the frontline to the apex-brain on top. The top is nothing without the middle.

Middle management is also the layer which balances the fundamentals of management – Control and Confrontation. Management is all about planning, organizing, implementation and control. Where there is control, there is confrontation – overt or covert. Middle managers are shock absorbers who absorb the tremors from top and bottom layers in their cushion of resilience, competence, and sense of role.

In the Middle: Expectations

Ever since the evolution of management thought, process, and function – the middle management perennially suffers from must and actual conflict. Those on the top think and write down prescriptions for what the middle management must do. In the middle manager’s daily managerial life what’s written down is rarely the reality.

The reality on-ground is that the middle manager is far beyond the docile coupling, transferring the force of the higher management directions obediently down frontline. They rather are critical fasteners who intelligently connect the operating frontline to the strategic apex in such a way that creates the critical success path for the organization. They are ‘fasteners’ as they understand and help interpret both ways – what the seniors say and how the frontline juniors would best understand. Not an easy walk-in-the-park for sure.

In the middle: Competencies

Most of effective ones in the middle are adept in social skills, great dreamweavers that they are – through informal discourses and arm-on-the-shoulder pep talks, they convert top-down interventions into bottom-up aspirations.

What they ‘have to face’ and take-in from the top are not what they shunt to the front liners down the line. They gulp anxieties, fear, ambiguities from top but exude confidence, positivity, and emotional intelligence. They express enthusiasm about a change which deep in their hearts is still at the level of uncertainty. They know that the way they feel is less important, than the way they make others feel viz., their top managers and their bottom layer. For, that’s the reason for their existence in the middle.

In the middle: Inevitable

Will any CEO have the courage to ask for replacing the entire middle-management layer with hundreds of direct reports?  Unthinkable indeed! Look into the list of the most successful and highly effective organizations and you shall see the value the stakeholders attach to the middle-management roles.

The value or importance given to the middle managers manifest in three principal strategic action points:

1. Investing in furthering the middle managers’ capability. Great organizations believe that middle is the core and core strength is real strength. Thus, capability building of the middle managers is non-negotiable come rain, heat & dust, or snow.

• Organizations that believe in core strength of the middle, are also very conscientious in doing their succession planning. They go above and beyond the mundane rituals of performance management and embark upon genuine identification process of future leaders on merit from the front lines.

• Being effective leaders themselves, the top-leaders believe that it is the middle management that is key to corporate sustainability for a future-ready vibrant and sustainable company.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.