For those that haven’t gotten into LinkedIn Groups…there are several that routinely produce some great threads on relevant topics for people who sell or market to other businesses. The Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) and the Business Marketing Association (BMA) are two that I’ve found active and helpful. As an added bonus, both are regulated pretty well to keep the spammers/promoters out.
Anyway, back to the point, a recent active one was “When does an Account become Strategic?”. There are about 20 responses with various responses/frameworks etc. Here is the link…
Of course, since all I do these days is think about how to provide sales professionals with tools to make their customers more ‘strategic’, I had to chime in…
Great thread. I’ll only add to what I’ve found to be the most powerful predictor of having success with strategic accounts: Can the account put down on a piece of paper what you can do to make them more money and how much that would be worth to them?
The accounts that can do that present the fastest and risk-free way to performing like strategic accounts should…making you more money. That is because those customers have defined a specific role for you and the hundreds/thousands/millions of dollars being invested behind you to create value for them. Putting your role down on a piece of paper creates accountability on them. The easiest negotiation/proposal/(fill in how you plan on capturing a fair share of the value you create) in the world is a conversation that goes “here is what you said”, ‘here is what we did (or plan on doing) about it”, “here is what we did for you”, and “here is what we’d like in return”. The account makes more money. You make more money.
This is different than asking “what can we do to help?”. Any account can answer that question. This is about understanding how those things that can help will impact their bottom line. Being economically rigorous goes a long way to distinguishing a wish list from a rigorous roadmap to make the customer more money.
Of course, if you listen to everything the account says, you might go broke. That’s why you evaluate the size of the opportunity, investment required, strategic fit, etc. It’s ok to go back to the account and say “we couldn’t do that because…”. They’ll at least appreciate the follow-up. But starting with an economically rigorous value creation roadmap from the account’s perspective is a great starting point and qualifier for being strategic.
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