Simple Account Development Practices That Get Results

It’s funny how things happen in cycles. In the past several weeks, I’ve received no less than four inquiries from friends and connections about account development practices and had at least one detailed conversation about the topic, offline. With so much change and evolution in the world of sales and marketing, many seem uncertain about “what works” anymore, or at least about how they should be changing things up to stay ahead of the curve. (Which was the purpose behind this post as well.)

I plan to write a post soon about how to develop a “sales methodology evolution plan” that will help you (sales reps and sales managers) evolve (without missing quotas along the way), as the world around us continues to change. But for today, I want to readdress some of the simple and foundational account development practices that still produce great results and yield account growth.

Assessing Account Potential

Here’s a no-brainer: It’s hard to hit a target you can’t see.

It’s also easy to prioritize poorly, get caught up in minutia or the daily whirlwind, and not spend time in places that will get you the best payback or return on your investment of time and energy. Depending on the quality, amount, and type of data at your disposal, assessing account potential can be somewhat of a guessing game, but an educated guess is still better than random results or strategy by hope. I’ll share my system, and you can plug whatever level of data you have into the picture.

PCF + D + L = Where to Spend Your Time

I have often used PCF and created a numerical rating system around it to help clarify things.

• P = Past level of business (mix in revenue, profitability, the RFM model, or whatever other indicators are important to you)
• C = Current level of business
• F = Future Potential level of business (being as realistic as possible)

While I always capture the thinking behind my rating scale, I usually assign some numerical value to each, such as a 1-5 or 1-10 rating, as a quick visual indicator of an account. Examples (on scale of 1-5):

• A PCF of 125 would be an account that has grown a little since acquisition and has a lot of growth potential. Based on the desirability of growth and likelihood of achieving it, this could be an account you spend significant time and effort time trying to grow.
• A PCF of 424 would be an account that was at its peak of potential but has slid, and we believe there is potential to return to its previous levels. We likely want to reactivate this account.
• A PCF of 333 is an account that has no growth potential but is giving us everything they can, meaning we’d likely want to retain it (based on whether that business is profitable, of course)
• A PCF of 321 would tell us that business is decreasing and looks to continue, perhaps for some valid reason, but future potential is low. Based on the amount of effort vs. the revenue and profit of that “1,” this could be an account to retire.

This leads me to a few points:

• I’ve used a lot of tentative language above, on purpose. We “might want to” reactivate this account, or “Based on desirability and likelihood, this could be an account,” etc. That’s because without knowing the detail behind the ratings, you can’t make wise decisions. But the ratings (and the process to get to them) are very valuable at a high level, in determining where to spend your time, and on what.
• You can add a Desirability ranking (PCF + D) that considers the profitability of the account or some other important factor that wasn’t already included in your F ranking.
• You can add a Probability ranking to those (PCF + L), because an account with huge F but an extremely low probability of achieving it, is a massive time suck and is the reason so many pipelines are filled with unrealistically hopeful opportunities that will never close.
• Or you can add both (PCF + D + L). The plus signs aren’t really necessary, you can just use a straight series of numbers, if you prefer. Personally, I prefer the separation, mostly because I've seen it be helpful it keeping it all straight in people’s heads.

Setting Account Objectives

As you can probably see from the above PCF descriptions, there are only a few things you can do with an account.

• Acquire it (already done if you’re doing account development)
• Grow it (it has the future potential, desirability, and some likelihood of achieving the potential)
• Retain it (there is little to no growth potential but you want to keep the current level of business)
• Reactivate it (giving you less business than it once did, or none, and you want to increase it)
• Retire it (it just doesn't make sense anymore, for a variety of reasons)

Once you see your PCF (and your D and L ratings, if you use them), it’s time to set an overall account objective and record it in your account plan. The PCL analysis should make the account objective fairly clear. Then, it’s time dig into account plans.

Completing Account Plans

The number of account plans you do and the detail to which you complete them, depends on the importance and potential for the account. Levels will vary, but approaching a quarter or year with key accounts without account plans, is like taking a business trip without your smartphone, tablet or laptop. It’s possible, but just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Account Plans aren't Action Plans, per se, they come later. This is more strategic… think “SWOT analysis” for the account… you’re thinking through what challenges and opportunities they face, implications, desired outcomes, and generally, how you hope to work with your key accounts to solve their problems and become a trusted and valuable business partner, to achieve their (professional and personal) objectives (and then, in turn, your account objectives, through serving them). The path to sales growth remains customer focus.

Assessing Contacts / Relationships

Accounts, companies, departments, functions… these things don’t really exist, do they? They are made up of people, organized for a purpose, who all bring their personalities, quirks, issues, smarts, emotional intelligence, flaws, desires, hopes, dreams, and professional and personal needs to work with them, every day. No company has ever made a decision. People do that. So, assessing the contact and relationships with in an account, is absolutely critical.

There are a variety of ways to do this. Many approaches center on creating relationship maps or influence maps for managing current sales opportunities within an account. These maps help you determine the players, decision makers, influencers, and their sentiment toward your solution. The same principles apply to further penetrating or growing an account. You can consider things such as:

• Who do you know?
• What are their roles?
• Where do they fit in the organization? (in org charts / politically)
• Are they contacts decision-makers, influencers, coaches?
• What is their sentiment toward your company, your products/services and you (supporter, neutral or detractor and to what degree?)
• Are you meeting (or do you have the potential to meet) their business needs and personal motivators?
• What other company departments, divisions, or business units might you be able to serve?
• Who don’t you know that you need to, and who knows them, both inside and outside the company (such as mutual connections on LinkedIn)?

This isn’t meant to be inclusive, just a sampling of the thought process. You can see some other viewpoint at this post about personalizing messaging, and in this post on insight selling (starting at Customer Acumen). Where you don’t have answers, you have knowledge gaps. These are just as important to document, because you will want to create a plan to close those gaps.

Other Related Reading:

• https://www.revegy.com/feature-focus-relationship-maps/
• https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_83.htm
• https://www.savogroup.com/assets/2013/12/SalesOppPro_stage1_CEB_atlas.jpg

Determining Gaps

This is as simple as who or what you don’t know, that you need to, to make better decisions or make progress toward your account objective. It’s not much different than documenting your assumptions with data analysis or forecasting, except that you won’t always be able to close those gaps or prove assumptions. You might not always be able to close these knowledge gaps, either, but in this case, it is the goal. By capturing who and what you don’t know, and your assumptions, it will put you on the path to closing these gaps later in the Action Plan.

Using Force Field Analysis

This is a technique that was created in the 1940s by Kurt Lewin and is well-documented on the internet. It wasn't designed for this purpose, specifically (meaning account planning), but it’s brilliant and works wonderfully for creating almost any sort of change plan (and when you come right down to it – that’s what we’re really doing here).

Here are some good explanations, the last one from me, on SlideShare.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_field_analysis
• https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_06.htm
• https://www.slideshare.net/MikeKunkle/force-fieldanalysisappliedtoaccountdevelopment

As you can see, this is a great method for turning account planning or factor analysis into something actionable. Considering all the factors from your work up to this point, you plan to minimize or eliminate restraining forces that are holding you back, and add or strengthen driving forces, which are propelling you forward toward your future account potential (F) and toward achieving your Account Objectives and goals. Sweet, eh? Good ‘ol Kurt Lewin.

Creating Action Plans

Action plans are a natural outgrowth from Force Field Analysis. You’ve determined what you know, what you don’t, what you need to minimize or eliminate and what you could do or strengthen to achieve your account objective (move from Point A to Point B), you already have a series of actions to take. This is just about documenting those actions, creating an accountability plan, and getting started. You may be able to do this in your CRM (even better) or another system at work, or if necessary, create something yourself. But either way, get it down.

Measuring Progress

Other than Acquire, all of the Account Objectives can apply to your current accounts, but it's likely that for KEY accounts, that the objective is Grow, or if they're a big client but don't have much Growth potential beyond the current business, it's Retain. With that in mind:

• Do you have an account objective for each key account? That's leading indicator metric #1.
• Do you have a completed account plan for each key account? That's leading indicator metric #2.
• Does this plan include a completed relationship map and have a realistic forecast of account potential (matching the objective)? That's leading indicator metric #3.

In my experience, the above is like Herzberg's hygiene factors of motivation. The lack of those plans is a recipe for disaster with Key Accounts and generally forecasts poor account development success. Having them in place doesn't guarantee success, though – it’s the ticket to entry.

Next, tracking progress is trickier, but I assume you have a sales process that supports account management, with exit criteria for each process stage... so consider measurements like:

• The number of new account contacts within a key account (better if it's a targeted contact - such as "form a relationship with the CFO or target buyer persona of a sister division")
• Scheduled meeting/conversations with them
• Follow-up actions or meetings from those initial conversations
• Pipeline opportunities created from those conversations
• The passage of opportunities through remaining process stages, conversion ratios for each stage, win rates, and pipeline velocity.... all have merit as metrics, as well as lag indicators like revenue results compared to account penetration forecast (compared to the account objectives and plan).

Just remember… what gets measured, gets done.

So, just as you documented your Account Objective Account Plan and the Action Plan that resulted from your Force Field Analysis, plan how you will measure and report your progress and your eventual success. In the beginning, it might be as simple as seeing your data/information gaps close. Later, it will involve managing opportunities through a pipeline, which has its own measurement built in (assuming you use some sort of CRM or pipeline management system).

Updating Plans

And lastly, because you are closing knowledge gaps and checking off action plan accomplishments, at some point, you need to re-evaluate your plan. At a minimum, this should happen annually, but I’ve seen some accounts require quarterly or bi-monthly updates (in one case, monthly), based on the information gathered, which can change the F (Future potential) in PCF or the D (Desirability of the business) or L (Likelihood) for the account. Timing is variable based on so many factors, so suffice it to say, updated as needed, to keep the plan realistic and keep you on track.

Well, that’s what I think, on this topic of account development. More importantly, what do YOU think?

I look forward to your thoughts, opinions and experiences.

As always, thanks for reading, be safe out there, and by all means, let's continue to elevate our sales profession.

Mike

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Mike Kunkle

:: transforming sales results ::

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