Your business almost certainly relies on certain key accounts, whose business you can’t afford to lose – and those accounts know it. Key accounts expect white glove treatment, and they aren’t afraid to throw their weight around if they aren’t getting the level of service they expect. This makes Key Account Management (KAM) a critical part of any business strategies. In this article, we offer our key insights on better account management.
While the larger businesses which tend to become key accounts are less prone to change than smaller operations, we’re seeing changes in buyer behavior at virtually every level. If you aren’t keeping up with the wants and needs of your key accounts, you could be at real risk of losing them in years to come.
Key Accounts Want Online Options Too
We’ve mentioned before that buyers are increasingly demanding “Amazon like” buying experiences, or at least more options for doing basic transactions and research online. A recent study by McKinsey & Company reaffirms that this is also true for large businesses who consider themselves to be key accounts for their vendors. Of buyers surveyed, roughly 1/3 described themselves as “digitally savvy,” meaning they tended to prefer online interactions when possible.
However, even substantial numbers of respondents who didn’t call themselves “digitally savvy” still wanted online options. For example, 67% savvy buyers and 32% of traditional buyers all wanted to be able to see prices online. They also expressed strong interest in being able to compare features online, or even obtaining specific quotes without having to call a salesperson.
This is a trend which is simply not going away. If your sales model still requires phone calls, or face-to-face meetings, for basic information you are probably going to drive customers away.
Account Based Marketing Continues To Be Effective
Account Based Marketing (ABM) first rose to prominence a 2-3 years ago, a marketing plan which takes the principles of content marketing and re-targets them towards individual buyers. In effect, each key account is treated as its own market. Are you selling product A to a particular key account? You should be trying to sell them on products B, C, and D as well.
ABM requires intensively personalized efforts, identifying key players within a key account, and targeting them directly with marketing materials intended ONLY for them, and their immediate circle. Being able to do this effectively requires significant data gathering and analytical tools, because there is a strong risk/reward element to ABM. If your efforts are misaligned, they’ll fail, or potentially even anger buyers.
However, when performed properly, ABM can take your key accounts and make them far more valuable, while also making your company more valuable to them.
Data-Sharing and Collaboration Ranks High
One thing these trends point towards is that companies need better data-sharing and collaboration within their pipelines, if they are to keep up with the needs of their key accounts. Your website cannot be divorced from your sales information. Your customer data needs to be available to marketing, and to R&D. Key account data cannot be compartmentalized, because multiple departments will need access to that data, and for different reasons.
One of the most effective solutions here is the creation of digital ecosystems, powered by shared cloud systems, which centralize data collection and analytics. When properly implemented. These ecosystems allow data to be effectively shared across your organization, with individual departments being able to analyze or contribute to the data as needed.
FUSE helps to radically streamline the process of creating shared data clouds, and integrating them into your overall ecosystem. Contact us to learn more!
