account management – Deep-Insight

Forget elephants; hunt whales instead

Posted on August 16, 2021 at 2:14 pm.

‘Hunting elephants’ is a term used by sales people to describe the targeting of very large clients. Elephant hunting is difficult to do, but very profitable if you’re successful. The message from this blog? Forget elephants; hunt whales instead.

Whale Hunting with Global Accounts

It’s not often that I write book reviews but if there’s one book on sales management you should plan to read before the end of the summer holidays, it’s Whale Hunting with Global Accounts.

The author is Barbara Weaver Smith, but the book itself has contributions from 14 different experts in global sales. The result is a wonderfully rich, practical – and sometimes quirky – handbook for global sales management and leadership.

The quirkiness of the book comes from the title and inspiration for the book – the Inuit people.

The Inuit People

Here’s how Barbara Weaver Smith introduces the book:

For thousands of years, the Inuit people of the frozen North have risked life and limb to hunt the biggest game on earth: the mighty whale. They endure treacherous seas, frigid temperatures, and deadly ice floes for days at a time in order to catch these elusive and massive mammals. Why risk so much when they could have fish and caribou so much more easily? Because a single whale can provide a village with food and oil to last an entire year.

Would you hunt small game day-in and day-out, when you could hunt the biggest prize of them all every year?

It’s the same in the sales business; small fish will keep you fed but landing each whale-size account can fill your corporate belly for years. Hunting the biggest, most profitable deals is no easy task, and if your target escapes, you’ll lose time and resources. But the payoff is almost always worth your risk and effort.

Leave aside the quirkiness of the title and the references to the Inuit people. This book has contributions from a range of people who have ‘been there and done that’ in the sales world. Barbara Weaver Smith has assembled their views and her own thoughts on global account management into a structured approach for going after and hanging onto large complex accounts.

Key Takeaways

I always find it difficult to summarise a 240-page book in a few sentences but for me the four key takeaways are:

Knowledge. Global account teams need a massive store of knowledge about their target company and its market, as well as about industry and business challenges. Many sales reps go into a meeting with executives at a global company, armed only with their own product materials.

Structure. You can’t sell to and service large complex organisations unless you are well organised on your own side. The way you structure your own sales organisation must arise from a deep understanding of your client’s needs and preferences.

Process. This one is more interesting as it’s counter-intuitive. The more complex the sale and the longer the sales cycle, the more likely that sales people need to follow their own intuition rather than stick with the standard structured company sales approach.

Vision. Your company’s vision needs enough power to lead your customers through the challenges of consensus-building, the pain of change, and the inertia of bureaucracies.

Where KAM and GAM are Currently Failing

‘Whale Hunting with Global Accounts’ resonated strongly with me because it examines many of the challenges that I see within our own B2B clients. There’s no getting away from it: Key Account Management (KAM) and its big brother Global Account Management (GAM) are challenging activities.

Using the same four headings:

Knowledge. Many key (and global) account teams simply don’t understand their clients as well as they need to. It’s not easy if you have a client that operates in 20 different countries and people in all 20 have a view on your products and services. But you need to find out exactly what they think. Key account managers should not just be order-takers. They need to be information-gatherers, orchestrators and coaches. Yet many of our clients at Deep-Insight have excellent order-takers performing key account management roles. Square pegs and round holes.

Structure. I’m always surprised to discover just how product-centric many of our clients still are. Key accounts often have different product-based sales teams approaching them in a completely uncoordinated fashion. When key accounts are international – in other words, global – many of our clients are further stymied by their own national organisation structures. National structures do not support or encourage cross-border collaboration.

Process. Here’s one good example: Companies put processes and KPIs in place for key account managers. We have already seen that key account teams need a wealth of feedback from multiple individuals in each account. However, they are often given Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) targets that incentivise them to REDUCE the number of contacts they get feedback from. Why? New ‘Decision Makers’ and ‘Influencers’ are likely to give poorer scores than existing ‘Operational’ contacts.

Vision. Many companies think they have a vision that key and global account teams buy into. The reality is that every three months, that vision gets completely blurred by the requirement to hit quarterly sales targets. Cooperation and collaboration are pushed into second place. Long-term planning is abandoned as long-term account strategies struggle to survive the relentless demands of a quarterly sales culture.

All these things need to change.

Forget Elephants; Hunt Whales Instead

‘Whale Hunting with Global Accounts’ may not answer every question a Global Account Manager has. No individual book can but this one does provide an excellent framework for thinking about how to do GAM and KAM effectively. More important, it’s grounded in the real world and provides the CEO and Sales Director with a clear overview of the pitfalls of implementing GAM structures, processes and organisations.

It’s a worthwhile addition to any salesperson’s bookshelf.

So buy it. And remember: Forget elephants; hunt whales instead.

Key Account Management – First Principles

Posted on August 10, 2020 at 3:44 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

When we wrote Customer at the Heart, my co-author Peter Whitelaw and I interviewed several senior executives in large international B2B companies. Some were CEOs. Others were Sales Directors. Many were CX Directors or Chief Customer Officers. To be honest, the really fun part of writing the book was the interview process. Assembling all those interviews into a coherent book was a chore.

All interviews were excellent and insightful but some went off in directions that we had not planned at the outset.

This blog is about the fundamentals of Key Account Management (KAM) but that was not the topic I had in mind when I interviewed Joe Edwards.

I wanted him to talk about his time as Sales Director at Atos (which we did cover eventually). Before we got to that point, Joe talked about his first job as a sales manager at HP. This led us to a really interesting discussion on account management, key account management and account planning.

I hope you enjoy this short excerpt from Customer at the Heart.

John O’Connor
CEO, Deep-Insight

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Key Account Management

Account managers are called different things in different companies. And in different countries. Sometimes they are referred to as sales managers although less so in Europe than in America. In Europe, ‘selling’ is still regarded as a second-class profession. The ‘salesman’ is a person who deals in used cars or snake oil.

Across the pond in North America, sales is a true profession. Most of today’s sales techniques and approaches have been developed in the USA. In Europe, the term account manager (or some variation thereof) is more frequently used than salesperson. Business development manager (BDM) is a commonly used term in Australia. The titles may be different but the roles are generally similar and involve client management as well as increasing the level of sales within a particular account or portfolio of clients.

For very large clients, there may be a single account manager dedicated to the account. In most cases, the account manager will have a portfolio that might range from 5 to 50 accounts. The decision as to whether an account manager should have a portfolio of one, five or 50 accounts is an important strategic one.

Joe – We’re Doubling Your Quota

To illustrate this point, consider Joe Edwards, the sales director for Atos UK & Ireland whom we interviewed for this book. Edwards started his sales career with Hewlett-Packard (HP) where one of his clients was Boots, the pharmaceutical and retailing company. Senior management at HP then made a strategic decision to reclassify Boots as a key account as they believed it had significant sales potential.

Joe Edwards: After about a year as a sales executive at HP and having a dozen or so accounts, the company turned around and said, ‘Actually, Joe, we just want you to focus on Boots Pharmaceuticals, and we’re going to double your quota.’

I learned that I was skimming the surface with Boots for a year and it was nice and comfortable because I had lots of other accounts I could fall back on if I wasn’t getting the numbers out of Boots. Then the company said: you don’t have a choice; you either make your numbers out of Boots, or you don’t.

That drives a very different set of behaviours, and I thought to myself: “how am I going to do this?”

Key Account Management

One of the most fundamental strategic decisions a company can make in its journey towards customer-centricity is the segmentation of its clients. The reason that it’s important to have a clear agreed approach to segmentation is that it drives much of the account management strategy and often the operational strategy needed to service those customers. It also requires a fundamental change in mindset for the account manager.

Joe Edwards: I had to understand what Boots was all about as a business. That meant spending a lot of time on-site to the point where I spent about three days a week with them.

I used to hold clinics in the canteen and anyone who was about who had an IT problem would come and see me. Bit by bit, I built up a set of relationships and trust that convinced them that I wasn’t just in it for taking the order, but I was in it for the long term.

I was trying to improve service and the relationship between the two companies for mutual benefit. As a result, I learned a lot about account planning from the perspective of getting further penetration into the client company. I didn’t know enough about the supply chain or stock room in Boots which we had some opportunity in. I needed to understand the customer from a business perspective, not just from an IT point of view.

“If you don’t have a ‘Plan’ you’re going nowhere”

Joe Edwards: The lesson I took from it was ‘The Plan’.

If you don’t have a plan, you’re going nowhere. And if you don’t create ‘customer intimacy’ in the sense of understanding what your client is, what market they’re playing in, and what new things you can bring to the client to excite them on a regular basis.

If you’re not bringing anything to the table, and therefore the relationship starts to decline.

Key Account Plans

Joe took these lessons with him to his subsequent sales roles. At Atos, account planning for key accounts became systematic and strategic for all key accounts. When Joe was Sales Director for Atos UK & Ireland, the company had almost 10,000 staff and Joe Edwards’ task was to deliver annual revenues of nearly £1 billion from its customer base. Account planning was critical, particularly for key accounts.

Joe Edwards: What that means is not just putting the plans in place and monitoring every quarter as usual. We would, in our top accounts, have account reviews with the executive board. It was making sure that the CEO and the CXO were all over our accounts on a regular basis.

On those top accounts, we’re going to spend time with them. We’re going to prioritise our time and make several calls a week where we get out there and start talking properly to this client base.

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Customer at the Heart

That interview with Joe Edwards – and many others – was taken from Customer at the Heart: How B2B Leaders Build Successful Customer-centric Organisations by John O’Connor and Peter Whitelaw and is available in hard cover or on Kindle.

Investing in the ‘Soft Side’

Posted on January 28, 2020 at 5:27 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

Customer at the Heart

Peter Whitelaw and I wrote a book last year called Customer at the Heart. It was a fun experience interviewing CEOs and sales directors from large B2B companies across Europe and Australia.

One of the consistent messages we heard in those interviews was the importance of investing in the ‘Soft Side’. In other words, focusing on people as much as on process.

This is a really important point: if you are responsible for running a customer experience (CX) programme in your organisation, don’t under-estimate the importance of investing in ‘Soft Side’ activities if you want to generate real long-lasting results.

This means spending significant amounts of time with both your leadership and client-facing teams planning for success.

The Importance of Investing in the ‘Soft Side’

A quick recap on the four quadrants in the Customer at the Heart model before we go any further:

1. LEADERSHIP. The most important quadrant. Good Customer Experience (CX) programmes are ALWAYS led from the top
2. STRATEGY. Good CX programmes link customer, product, operational and organisational strategy explicitly to customer needs
3. EXECUTION. Success requires properly resourced CX teams that are brilliant at executing the Strategy
4. CULTURE. Finally, Customer Excellence must become integral to the DNA of the organisation: “it’s how we do things around here”

All four quadrants are necessary for a successful CX programme. The ‘Hard Side’ quadrants of Strategy and Execution are all about metrics and processes. ‘Hard Side’ activities lend themselves to key performance indicators (KPIs) and while the activities in these two quadrants are important and easily measurable, the quadrants of Leadership and Culture are actually more critical.

In our experience, Leadership is the most important quadrant while Culture is the most challenging. And yet, here’s the strange thing: in most CX programmes the ‘Soft Side’ is often overlooked and almost always under-resourced.

Our Approach

We have a different approach at Deep-Insight. We spend a lot more time with leadership teams and sales or account teams BEFORE we think about asking our customer’s clients for their views. If you want to run a customer survey in a hurry – “I need to get the results back by the end of the month…” – we’re probably not the organisation for you.

At Deep-Insight, the first 14-16 weeks of our process are critical and must be done properly. If you don’t invest the time up-front, your CX programme will not deliver the results that Management and the Board expect from it. More than likely, it will end in failure. It’s as simple as that.

Planning & Onboarding

The first phase in our approach is ‘Onboarding’ the organisation; The very first step is to secure the buy-in from the senior leadership team to the journey that they are about to embark on. And it is a journey because cultural change takes time. The second step is to onboard the rest of the organisation, primarily the sales and account teams. They own the customer relationships and if they don’t embrace the programme with gusto, the entire programme is at risk of being seen as a box-ticking exercise.

We typically work with dispersed sales and service teams in online workshops, and always with senior leadership support and involvement. These onboarding workshops are critical to driving up response rates and completion rates, as well as delivering action and improvements.

Insights to Action

The final phase is where the rubber hits the road. The online survey is complete. We have gathered some key insights from the feedback. Now it’s time to assemble the sales and account teams again. This time the focus is on their role in ‘Closing the Loop’ with the client. This is arguably the most critical part of the entire process. The account manager – sometimes with a member of the senior leadership team – must meet the client to discuss the feedback from all individuals in that client’s organisation.

In many cases, these discussions are straightforward because everything is fine and the relationship is on an even keel. In some instances, the client may be a ‘Stalker’ or an ‘Opponent’ and a much tougher and more honest conversation is needed.

The key outcome of these ‘Close the Loop’ meetings is agreement on the appropriate actions that are needed to improve and deepen the relationship. This gets built into the Account Planning process for that client.

Investing in the ‘Soft Side’

If your CX programme isn’t working the way you hoped it would, it’s probably because you’ve under-invested in the Leadership and Culture quadrants. The symptoms will be clear: disengaged account teams; limited insights; complete absence of action.

If you notice any of these symptoms in your CX programme, do get in touch.

Selling? Don’t. Become a Trusted Advisor Instead

Posted on April 24, 2015 at 2:33 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

Many of our B2B customers struggle with the challenge of turning their sales people from mere order takers into true relationship managers. Or better still: into a ‘Trusted Advisor’.

This is particularly true of companies who sell to large and complex clients. I’m talking here about situations where a large account generates annual revenues of €1m (or £ or $) or more, often as part of a long-term contract.

The same challenges apply to smaller accounts but the dynamics of large accounts and big deals are a little different. For starters, winning a 5-year or 7-year contract worth €5-10m a year is always an expensive and long-drawn out sales process. Bid teams are often assembled, and may spend months (or even years) working on a bid. Service buyers often start with a long-list of potential suppliers, whittle it down to a short-list and then have a ‘bake-off’ between the final two. The worst position of all for a bidder is to end up coming second, as they may end up with bid costs running into seven figures with nothing to show for it at the end.

Knowing the Decision Makers

It’s critically important to qualify any opportunity properly. A key question – probably THE key question – to answer during the qualification process is “How well do we know the decision-makers?”

If the answer is “Not very well” or even “Actually, we have no idea who the real decision-makers are” then the right answer is probably to decline to bid. If you do decide to continue, do so in the knowledge that you are unlikely to win. The winners are often insiders, people who already have the ear of the chief executive, or who are known to the Board. So if you do end up coming second, don’t complain about ‘the old boys network’ working against you. The reason you lost was because the people making the decision were asking different questions to the ones you answered in the Request For Proposal (RFP). Questions like “Do I trust this person?” and “Can I rely on the team to transform my business?” or even “If this all goes horribly pear-shaped, am I likely to lose my job?”

You may think that the evaluation criteria that the buyer has shared with you is what determines the decision. Don’t be fooled. Many buying decisions are made independently of the stated evaluation criteria, and quite often the scores are adjusted after the event to fit the decision.

The Importance of being a Trusted Advisors

Ultimately, decision-makers spend big money in the expectation that it will transform their business. And because there is a strong emotional component in the decision-making process (their reputations and jobs may be at stake) they base their decisions on an assessment of the individuals making the sales pitch – possibly more so than the product or solution on offer. That’s where it’s important to know the decision-makers and be seen as a trusted advisor by them – a true ‘relationship manager’ as opposed to a bidder or ‘order-taker’.

You won’t become a trusted advisor overnight. You first have to build credibility with the client, and be seen as a person who can add value outside of a pure technical or sales role. You have to spend time with them and be able to put yourself into the shoes of the CEO and understand the business issues that he or she is facing.

Trusted advisors are not meek. They are comfortable having robust conversations with senior executives and are not afraid to challenge them. Similarly, good senior executives are happy to be challenged, as long as they think you have a well-thought through point of view, and are acting in their best interests. That requires integrity, an intimate knowledge of the company, a business perspective rather than a technical perspective, and a genuine desire to help solve the problems faced by the business.

Reinvigorating your Sales Team

I’ll leave you with a final thought. If you are managing a sales team, be aware that not everybody in your team is capable of becoming a trusted advisor. For some, no amount of training or up-skilling will help them make the leap from ‘order-taker’ to true ‘relationship manager’. If you’re a CEO or Sales Director and you think this might be an issue in your organisation, you will need to bring in some new blood. Excellent sales directors are great at motivating their people but they are also ruthless when they feel a sales manager does not have the capacity to become a trusted advisor.

To find out more about turning your sales team members into Trusted Advisors, click on the image below. Better still, contact us here.