Strategic Account Planning is a powerful tool for achieving business growth and customer loyalty. It helps you achieve your goals by ensuring that you are focusing on the right things in the right way at the right time.
Strategic account planning differs from traditional sales planning because it is based on a deeper understanding of the relationship between the client, their needs and desires, and your organization’s capabilities.
As per stats from Zippia, companies achieve 65% of their business from existing customers. On the contrary, getting new customers is 6-7 times more costly than retaining existing customers. The above facts reflect why businesses should focus more on existing customers and key accounts that give more business.
Strategic account planning is a systematic process that helps companies identify and develop key customer relationships. It is a long-term approach to managing relationships with customers, and it does not just involve sales but also other functions such as marketing, operations, and finance.
Strategic account planning aims to improve profitability and efficiency by focusing on key accounts that promise the most growth opportunities.
Why is Strategic Account Planning Important?
Strategic account planning is a process that helps you to develop a strategy for your business. This article will discuss the significance of strategic account planning and why your business needs a strategic plan.
The first step is identifying what accounts are important to your business. The next step is developing resources, like people and money, to be spent on these key accounts. Finally, you need to develop plans of action for each account to know how exactly you will work with them.
Researching the Customer
The first step in a strategic account planning process is researching your customer. That’s because you need to know as much about them as possible before developing a strategy that will work for them.
It’s important to understand their business, their industry, and even the competitors they face in their market. In addition, it’s helpful if you can discover their goals for their business or organization and any challenges they may face trying to achieve those goals. Finally, you should also understand their needs and how you can help them meet them with your products or services.
In an article published in AccountManager, Garry Mansfield, founder of OISM, says that a key account generates 15-30% of your business, hence defined as key, and more emphasis should be given to managing and retaining them. High dependency reciprocates higher business opportunities but can also result in big losses if these key accounts are not managed properly.
Assessing Strengths and Weaknesses of Competitors
You must first identify their strengths and weaknesses to gain a deeper understanding of your competitors.
Consider:
- What are the top three things that make your competitor better than you?
- How do you know this to be true? Is it because of their advertising campaigns or because they offer more products or services than you do?
- If your competitor offers a wide array of products and services, does this mean that the company is diversified enough to survive tough times? Or could it be over-diversified and therefore vulnerable in tough times?
Setting New Goals in Line with the Strategic Account Plan
Once you’ve completed your strategic account plan, it’s time to set new goals for your sales team. These goals must be SMART, that is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. To make sure they’re SMART:
- They should be specific. For example, “Increase sales by 10%” is better than “Increase sales.”
- They should be measurable. For example, “Get an average of 3 new clients per month within 24 months.”
- They should be achievable, given the resources available. For example, don’t set a goal of 100 new clients per year if you have only two staff members and no budget for advertising.
- They should be relevant. What will this achieve? Can you see the milestone? If so, when? If not, why not?
Monitoring Progress and Changing Your Plans, If Necessary
Monitoring progress is important. You may have a great plan, but it will never be effective if you don’t monitor it and make adjustments. It can be true even if you are monitoring your progress diligently.
Be willing and ready to make any necessary changes in your plans. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from your customers or competitors if they offer advice that makes sense. If they’re willing to share their best practices with you, consider using them to improve upon your team’s accomplishments.
Get the Right Resources Working on Accounts
A study by Sales Insights Lab states that only 24.3% of the sales executives met or exceeded their sales quota in 2021. At the same time, only 66.7% of salespeople reached out to 250 or fewer leads in 2021, while only 15% met over 1,000 leads during the same time. Thus, you must determine your best performers and who should handle your key accounts.
To ensure that your best resources are working on accounts, it’s important to have the right people working on them. You can get the right people by ensuring they are working on strategic accounts in the first place.
The first step is establishing a clear definition of a strategic account in your organization. For example, a strategic account is one that has at least 25% of our revenue. Then, based on this definition, you should set up criteria for which customers fall into each category and identify key indicators of their status as either ‘strategic’ or ‘non-strategic.’
Once these definitions have been established and agreed upon across your organization, it’s time to implement them into your CRM system or other sales system so that everyone in your team knows what type of customer they’re dealing with when they make a sale.
A Well-Implemented Strategic Account Plan can be the Difference Between Your Business’s Success and Failure
Strategic account planning is vital to any business’s growth strategy, providing clear direction for managing key accounts and winning new business. It is important to have a plan for your business that includes all the key accounts, so you know exactly what they are, what they need from you, and how they will help you grow as a company.
Strategic planning can help you improve your business performance. It helps you determine what is working or not working in your company. It helps you make the right decisions about how much time and energy should be spent on different aspects of your operation.
Strategic account planning goes beyond sales. It encourages companies to look at their entire organization by setting and monitoring progress toward those goals over time.