In our twenty-plus years of helping clients grow, we have run across too many companies and sales teams that confuse simple selling with managing strategic accounts.
Granted, much of the language is similar and both are in the overall business of increasing revenue, raising margins, building stronger relationships, and helping clients to succeed. But there are some major differences that should be understood by the sales executives in charge. Strategic account planning consists of building a collaborative and cooperative relationship with a select customer to drive revenue year after year while driving customer loyalty through entanglement.
Here are a few of the ways to “think different” if you want to create strategic account alliances:
- TimeframeIn general, sales teams focus on getting and closing deals in time to meet their quarterly sales targets. Strategic account planning teams look instead toward the long-term. They focus on building relationships that will continually grow and carry them into the future.
- GoalsSales teams rightly focus on the most-likely-to-close opportunities. Teams that work toward building strategic accounts are more interested in creating long-term partnerships with a client company. Rather than specific sales, they look with their client at how they can work together to accomplish strategic goals such as more efficient use of resources through sharing or reducing expenses through operational alignment or improving customer satisfaction. Their goals are broader and more inter-dependent than typical sales opportunities.
- Team MembersSmart sales teams recruit subject matter experts and support staff from their organization to help close the deal according to the needs of a specific opportunity. Then when the contract has been signed, those resources typically go back to their former jobs. For example, if you need a subject matter expert to help sell financial services software, you might as a salesperson request the help of someone from your finance department who understands the software more thoroughly than you.
Smart strategic account teams, however, select team members who have a big picture view of how what they know can contribute to the current and future health of the strategic account. These team members must commit to spending the time and effort needed to invest in the mutual success of the client and the strategic account plan.
You know your strategic account plan is working when you spend your time:
- Creating relevant and measurable client value that aligns with your account plan rather than just trying to close individual sales opportunities.
- Improving operations and alignment between your two companies.
- Understanding your client’s personal and professional goals, problems and needs.
- Building trust, sharing information and collaborating to solve pressing problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment