Key Account Management risks

Key accounts usually represent a revenue stream to the business that is seen as important enough that you spend time pondering the what if scenarios?

The key accounts have linked to your business and this may be that they have

·         A genuine need for what you do,

·         A genuine like for a connection in your business,

·         A genuine faith in what you supply,

·         Performance standards that are ideal for what they need,

As you look at what you have that connects, it is difficult to define what the real differentiator is. In my experience the differentiators can be quite simple and seen as critical by the buyer, but underrated by the supplier. It can be as simple as being able to be reliable, accountable and trustworthy; to use a phrase I have heard to often A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS.

If you aspire to be a SAFE PAIR OF HANDS you may be providing a risk to you expansion of services to your key account. The connotation of being a safe pair of hands is that you can be trusted to be reliable, but somewhat dull, an organisation that can be entrusted to not to make a mistake with a key supply issue.

On the flip side you be seen as so safe that they purchaser does not want you to lose focus on the one thing that they have entrusted you with. Letting you become restricted in their eyes. Yes, it is a differentiator, but a limiter to growth and account management.

This is one risk in supply chain. Many others are also place strong brakes to growth.

·         How strong is the relationship

·         Do you provide value in price and commercial risk

·         Alignment in cultures

·         External risks

·         Community and ESG risk

·         Delivery and operational risk

These are some but certainly not a full range of risks that can impact the key account management and sales delivery process. Analysing these risks certainly go a long way to ensuring that the business can better work with the buyer ensuring that you can maintain a long-term collaborative relationship with them.

Extending your reputation with them beyond being the dull dependable SAFE PAIR OF HANDS to being

·         Trusted advisor

·         Thought leader

·         Innovator

·         Mentor

I don’t think we can be all things to all people, but we can be something really good to the right people. This comes about through taking time to understand your best fit to your buyers needs.

In my experience, meticulous planning and execution are crucial. Organizations often become so focused on delivering results and maximizing financial gains that they neglect to understand why their relationships remain mediocre and untested for their full potential.

Key to this is development of sound account management process, defined and strong measurement against strategy, understanding the accounts views on risk for their performance, accepting and understanding feedback. Then using the feedback and knowledge to be meticulous in planning and execution

Account Management

At the heart of the business transaction is account management. It is interesting in talking to many organisations that they lack a process for this area. There is well defined and clear operational, safety, ESG and financial process. But often loose structure and a lack of understanding of the real Account understanding. Or an overly complex account management plan that runs into complexity that numbs the mind with boredom.

I have talked to purchasers about their views and understanding of what they buy from whom. Often, they are struggling to define what their suppliers are delivering to them beyond the base services. They struggle with the suppliers being clear to them in the business relationship and where the services connect to their business problems.

As supply companies we often feel that it is not our place to be clear about what the values, strengths and desires for the relationship is. So, we feel we cannot ask the buyer very intrusive, and very constructive, questions about the services they value, and how we can improve the standards and progress the expansion of account into adjacent growth.

Lack of defined process and uniformity in understanding the account plan ensures that we struggle with truly understanding how we work well with our customers. Key to this is

·         Define the process for sales

·         Be clear and concise with your account plan

·         Talk to your customer openly about your plan and aspirations

·         Build measurement tools to test against the business strategy

Measurement against strategy

Part of the challenge of the strategy is to ensure the relationship with you customer is not only understood by the buyer, but is understood by your team to ensure misalignment in delivery does not occur.

To borrow a quote from Peter Bregman article “Execution is a people problem, not a Strategy problem”

“your organization’s biggest strategic challenge isn’t strategic thinking – it strategic acting”

Each of the account team has a contribution to the development of the plan, how they fit in the plan and what they need to do to engage the customer with the activities to drive the outcome of the plan.

With your team members having a different focus on their contribution to the account plan it is easy to be misaligned and disconnect from your strategy.

Picking the team to deliver, leading and monitoring the plan over your strategic horizons is critical.

If you have several key account plans in progress at any point, they are bound to have a diverse focus in activity and complexity in your business. They can conflict a team in the business by misalignment of the goals and measurement of a uniform measure.

Using dash boards along with key data points to connect CRM pipeline, revenue data from finance, safety data, market data, qualitative data points can help ensure the alignment of understanding and measure success of the activities for the account plan.

Summary

Account planning is an internal communications plan to ensure that your team considers what they have jointly set out to do with the customer. With select input from people who know the customer at various levels, you define a stronger view of who the customers strategic players are, what the key needs of their team is, what their key risks are and why you can work with them to maximise the benefit to your business.

 Defining, installing and adhering to the process allows clarity of vision and alignment to the output of the Account plan.

For better or worse trends in customer activity, at an account level can be monitored for the health of the relationship, allowing for decisions to grow, maintain or withdraw to be made articulately and with decisiveness.

Simplicity in the tools used to drive the process are challenging and need consideration of what fits well for the size and complexity of your business.