The time of year has arrived when enterprise sales teams begin the process of building account strategies.
A recent poll conducted by my firm, FinListics, asked 65 corporate sales and enablement leaders and field salespeople about the degree to which they believed their own accounts to be customer-focused.
According to the findings we obtained, around one-quarter of respondents said that their accounts were “extremely” customer-focused, more than half claimed that “progress was being made,” and the remaining minority reported that their accounts need “severe help” in this respect.
Planning for accounts with a focus on the customer is an iterative process.
This is not a one-and-done deal at all.The customer’s environment is always changing, so account plans have to change as well.
In this post, I’ll go through three measures that may be taken to make account plans more focused on the needs of the client.
I will also discuss some of the most significant advantages of accounts that are centred on the customer in order to demonstrate to leaders the reasons why they should commit the necessary effort, time, and money to improving their accounts in this respect.
An example of how to break down my three-step approach is presented here.
Let’s imagine a customer generates $1 billion in sales and produces machinery that assists other businesses in producing things in areas such as consumer products.
Through the provision of automation, sensors, and analytics, the sales organisation offers solutions that contribute to the reduction of operational expenditures.
Step 1: Gain a deeper understanding of your target audience.
Coming to an understanding of these three aspects of a customer is necessary in order to develop stronger consumer insights.
These include their objectives and plans, as well as the remuneration for their leaders and the results of their financial performance.
Knowledge about a client’s objectives and strategies might be especially important, given that an investment in new solutions is frequently made with the intention of assisting the customer in accomplishing their key goals and successfully implementing plans.
Let’s imagine the objective of our example client is to increase their level of profitability.
Building a manufacturing footprint that is more efficient and cost-effective on a global scale and generating efficiencies throughout supply chains are two potential solutions that they may explore.
One of my close friends formerly managed a substantial sales group.
At the beginning of each QBR, he would inquire about a client’s goals and plans, as well as the progress they had made and how his organisation might assist them in accomplishing their goals in a more periodical manner.
Compensation for executives is another factor that drives decision-making.
If you are aware of how CEOs are paid, you will be able to have more pertinent conversations and provide more individualised offers.
Let’s suppose the case example demonstrates the following:
• The profit rate is sixty percent.
• The margin of profit is 20%.
• The free cash flow is 20% of the total.
The language of business is finance, and executive buyers anticipate that sellers will be aware of their company’s financial performance.
Having an understanding of a client’s financial performance can shed light on the areas in which your solutions have the potential to add the most value.
You don’t need a Master of Business Administration in Finance to achieve this.
In the scenario that we have shown, the solution offered by the sales organisation is to assist in better managing COGS, which comprises components such as materials, labour, distribution, and logistics.
When evaluated as a percentage of the client’s total income, the client’s cost of goods has been on an upward trend, which is normally not a positive sign.
One of the points that management brought up in relation to this trend was the poor performance of manufacturing.
Ask yourself these questions in order to gain valuable information from these consumers.
• In what ways have we been able to assist other businesses that have goals and executive compensation that are comparable to our own?
• What are the primary aspects of the client’s industry’s financial performance that our solutions help enhance, and how can we help them?
• What information can we provide to executives that they most likely do not already know?
Step 2: Consider the client from the perspective of the outsider looking in.
• Confirming the conclusions from your study of consumer insights An outside-in view of the customer entails doing both of these things.
Keep in mind that everything is always shifting.
• Investigative questioning with a focus on the business
In the context of our discussion, examples of possible questions pertaining to production may include the following: “How does your capacity utilisation compare to both your intended utilisation and that of your competitors?”
• Explaining “how” your ideas have helped others working in the sector in language that non-specialists can understand.
As an illustration, consider the following statement: “Automation allows speedier change by minimising idle labor, improving productivity, and lowering the cost of products sold.”
Step 3: Establish new relationships with existing and potential customers.
The number of buying groups is growing.
While as a result of this, sales cycles will become more complex, there will also be a greater possibility of increasing the size of deals by cultivating new partnerships.
Identifying the following is a necessary step in the process of building new relationships:
• Lines of business (LOBs) that contribute to the accomplishment of goals, plans, and initiatives
• Scorecards for LOBs (operational KPIs).
• The worth of your proposed solutions
LOBs that encompass manufacturing, distribution, and logistics, information technology, human resources, and finance and accounting are there to support the client’s overall goal and strategy.
Let’s put our attention on the production.
When supporting LOBs have been identified, the next step is to compile a list of the initiatives they are working on.
Using data to detect and avoid quality issues and decrease warranty costs are two examples of production efforts that might be implemented.
• Reducing the amount of work that is repetitive by standardising processes and implementing digital automation
When identifying various LOBs and the initiatives they are working on, this may appear to be a lot of effort.
The good news is that the majority of the initiatives within an industry are comparable to one another since LOBs face the same kinds of business opportunities and obstacles.
The next thing that has to be done is to determine the operational KPIs that are related to each LOB’s efforts.
Material, labour, and administrative costs are all included as key performance indicators (KPIs) for manufacturing projects.
You will be better able to personalise your sales pitch and be more relevant if you are aware of the initiatives and KPIs of the LOBs.
Purchasing groups in today’s market are often much further along in the purchasing process before connecting with a vendor.
Because of this, it is imperative that a solution’s potential commercial and financial benefits be highlighted as early as possible in the sales cycle.
The fact that the financial advantages of the solution are often unknown early on in the sales cycle is a significant obstacle for this endeavour.
In situations like this, demonstrating the power of one person might be helpful.
The importance of a 1% increase to an operational KPI that is being focused on by the LOB is referred to as “the power of one.”
Early on in the sales cycle, the true value of a LOB’s key performance indicators (KPIs) is frequently unknown.
In this particular scenario, it is strongly suggested that the client’s revenue be compared to the industry average.
The client that we are utilising in this example has revenue of $1 billion, and the typical in this industry for materials, as an example, is somewhere around 40% of revenue.
This indicates that the power of one, for the purpose of this illustration, is somewhere around $4 million ($1 billion multiplied by 40% and 1%).
Keep in mind that the Power of One is meant to initiate a dialogue.
This is not a promise of any kind.
How much of a focus do your accounts have on the customer?
I have high hopes that other leaders will find this approach helpful.
It is highly recommended that you use this as a checklist in order to evaluate how customer-focused your account strategies are.
Good luck.
