10 Steps to Implement a Strategic Account Playbook

Focus Your Sales and Marketing Organization on the Highest Value Accounts

Mark Haubert – President of Tiger Consulting, The Sales and Marketing Transformation Architect™

Whether you are an owner, investor or executive leader, you need to get the most out of your sales and marketing organization. As you evaluate your team's performance, you might ask yourself the following questions.

• Which accounts offer the best long-term growth potential?
• How should we engage our most important strategic accounts?
• What are the key roles and buyer personas that we should engage?
• What level of focus and attention should we devote to our strategic accounts?
• How can we maximize revenue growth and wallet share with strategic accounts?

If you need answers to these questions, then it would be valuable to create a strategic account playbook to identify your strategic accounts, to focus your organization on these accounts, to define who you will engage within these strategic accounts and to define the tools and processes you will use to create a uniform methodology.

With limited sales and marketing resources and virtually unlimited potential accounts to call on, it is critical to focus the efforts of your team on the best opportunities to ensure success versus deploying a shotgun approach. I recommend the following proven 10 steps to develop and implement a Strategic Account Playbook.

1.    Create a Customer Segmentation Model

This requires that you identify the customers that best align with your company values and your growth objectives out of all the potential customers that you can choose to do business with. First, you must define your Ideal Customer Profile including roughly five to eight demographic and psychographic criteria. Second, score each of your customers against these criteria to build a Customer Segmentation Model as outlined in “How to Create a Customer Segmentation Model.”

2.    Segment Accounts

The closer customers fit your Ideal Customer Profile, the more likely you are to enjoy a successful relationship. Also, customer purchasing preferences should align with your value proposition. Therefore, sort and rank your customers from best to worst alignment with your Ideal Customer Profile using a composite score. Then segment your customers into three groups: Tier 1/Platinum, Tier 2/Gold and Tier 3/Silver. Platinum and Gold customer groups have the best long-term growth potential or current revenue and the best fit with your Ideal Customer Profile. You should review and adjust your customer segmentation each quarter and move accounts up or down from one group to another based on dynamics in growth potential, Ideal Customer Profile fit, and strategic account growth success.

3.    Define Service Level Focus by Segment

Determine the level of focus and effort you will apply to each segment. Essentially, Platinum accounts should get the full court press. You should assign maximum resource focus and utilization of account management tools to grow these accounts. The level of focus on Gold accounts should be determined on a case by case basis. Finally, minimal resource focus, time and effort should be devoted to Silver accounts since they represent the weakest growth potential and fit with your Ideal Customer Profile.

4.    Build a Team of Account Managers

First, define the Account Manager job description based on the competencies, experience, sales process and tools that you require your Account Managers to possess and utilize. Second, assess the talent of your current team members against this job description and their performance using a nine-block grid to identify their current performance versus their potential. Third, quickly remove “C” players who are low performers with low potential. Simultaneously, develop an improvement plan for each “B” player who is moderate in performance and potential. Find a way to leverage your “A” players who are high performers with high potential to elevate “B” player performance. Fourth, identify coverage gaps, recruit new experienced Account Managers, provide onboarding training and coaching, and accelerate their ramp to maximum performance. Finally, assign an even balance of strategic Platinum and Gold accounts to each Account Manager.

5.    Deploy Methodology, Tools and Processes

Deploy your purchased or custom-developed sales methodology, tools and processes. Define an end-to-end sales process and sub-processes to fit your needs. Sales tools should include account strategies, account profiles, opportunity action plans, CRM, sales funnel reviews, call planning tool, social selling and Account Based Marketing.

6.    Establish Quotas, Metrics and Dashboards

Establish revenue or bookings quotas for each Account Manager that are aggressive, but realistic and based on the assigned strategic account growth projections. Establish dashboards in your CRM system to provide real-time visibility of your metrics to Account Managers and sales leaders. Then conduct monthly, quarterly and annual reviews of the following metrics: revenue growth, sales funnel health, sales cycle length from qualify date to close date, wallet share of account spend, lead-to-opportunity-to-sale conversion rates, and customer satisfaction measured via Net Promoter Score.

7.    Communicate the Strategic Account Playbook internally

First communicate to the sales team why you need to focus on the highest value customers, the benefits of customer segmentation, and all components of the Strategic Account Playbook. Then communicate to the rest of your company a shift towards strategic account focus and the Strategic Account Playbook to ensure understanding, buy-in and alignment across all functions. Finally, work to develop a supportive culture.

8.    Implement Account Management Teams

Initiate internal, cross-functional, account management teams including the account manager, technical and field sales, marketing, operations, safety, quality, accounting, legal and an executive sponsor. Start with a smaller core group and bring others in later as needed. Conduct a kickoff meeting with the core team to reiterate the account management process and to communicate team objectives and individual responsibilities. Then review the Account Profile and Account Strategy documents to communicate where you are today, where you are trying to go with the account, and the strategy and tactics to get there. Review the account sales funnel and key Opportunity Action Plans, updating all tools with feedback from the team. Finally, compile an action plan with specific actions, assignments and due dates. Account team meetings should then be conducted quarterly to review progress and to adjust the strategy and tactics to achieve the desired objectives.

9.    Initiate Business Performance Reviews

Sales leadership should propose that key members of Platinum accounts meet with key members of the supplier’s team on a periodic basis to discuss performance and to identify improvement opportunities to strengthen the relationship. If the customer is interested, Business Performance Reviews (BPRs) may be scheduled on a quarterly, semi-annual or annual basis. If the customer is not interested in a formal group meeting, the Account Manager should conduct informal BPRs with key influencers in periodic one-on-one meetings. The agenda for BPRs should include the following topics: safety performance and corrective actions, product and service quality, operational activity and performance, innovation, customer feedback and improvement opportunities.

10. Initiate Continuous Improvement

Once the Strategic Account Playbook has been implemented, a cadence of continuous improvement should be implemented. A good starting point is to conduct a comprehensive Sales Maturity Diagnostic survey according to my blog, “How to Build a High-Performing Sales and Marketing Team.” This will allow you to establish a baseline of performance against best practices, to identify your current strengths and to identify the most impactful improvement opportunities for your sales and marketing organization. You can then develop and implement a short, medium and long-term maturity transformation/continuous improvement plan to develop a high-performing sales and marketing team.

Please comment on your own Strategic Account Playbook best practices and share this blog with your colleagues.

Implementing a Strategic Account Playbook isn’t easy. Visit our website www.tiger-llc.com to request a strategic account evaluation for your team. Mark Haubert is President of Tiger Consulting, a management consulting firm that helps companies to build high-performing sales teams and to implement strategic marketing plans to maximize growth. His experience spans sales and marketing executive leadership across small, mid and enterprise companies in the energy industry. Contact Mark at 713-249-4604 or mhaubert@tiger-llc.com.