Help Your Customer Collaboration With A Key Account Planning Process
The success of every business is directly dependent on the revenue it generates and because of this, understanding your clients and customers is crucial to revenue generation. Irrespective of its size, every organization deals with multiple customers at the same time.Business planning strategists refer to high revenue generating clients as key accounts and they believe that it is important to focus specifically on such clients before taking crucial decisions.
Key account planning is an important subset of strategic marketing, and it is so relevant because managers may spend several hours analyzing about key accounts each day. They may also rely on a key account planning tool to simplify the process. The key accounting tool is made up of important components such as client description, hierarchy, existing deals, present revenue, future possibilities, and an action plan that is customized according to the client. This will save their key account team several hours of formatting and documentation time. The tools are reasonably priced. The best part is that you do not require any additional equipment, and all you have to do is simply install the software on your computer and you are ready to go.
Before you begin the account planning process, identify the key account clients for your organization. The criteria should include business volume, profitability margin, and the attitude of the client towards your business. Many companies have specific key account teams that spend significant amount of time and money to gather this information. Your next step would involve interviewing some of your employees who directly deal with the client. You should also conduct interviews with a few important members of the client company to gain their perspective about your organization. This is a time-taking process, and most experts believe that average interviews can last for up to two hours.
Many companies also follow the interviews with self-completion questionnaires that deal with various aspects of the business including business cycle and supply chain. The questionnaires and surveys are distributed to some important managers in both the organizations.
After gathering all the information, the key account team will spend several hours analyzing it. Your key account planning process should the viewpoints of both the companies into account. It is important to think about your organization from the client's perspective. You should also consider sampling limitations before creating the final plan. The key account planning process can be tedious and complicated but it is absolutely essential for the future of your organization.
