ACCOUNT PLANNING & MANAGEMENT

Ability helps businesses build their key account planning and management methodology, and then coach their sales teams through the process of defining, developing and managing key accounts.

In true 80/20 fashion, 80% of your business will typically come from the top 20% of your accounts. These top accounts need to be managed in a way that will maximise ongoing business. Where the account is large, where you have a complex, high value product and service portfolio, where you have many staff dealing with the same account, where you need to protect maintenance or support business from marauding competitors, even where it’s not a major account yet but it is strategic in a key segment, then the customer needs special treatment.

Some of the important steps include:

• Defining what makes an account a key account to your business.

• Qualifying and choosing key accounts and matching them with appropriate sales resources – different accounts need to be managed in different ways with different staff profiles involved.

• Building the right level of knowledge about the account and documenting it in such a way that everyone can work on it effectively. You may be using a CRM system to help you do this.

• Identifying and qualifying actual and potential business within the account and building deal plans to help manage tactical activity.