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Strategic Account Planning: All You Need to Know

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What is Strategic Account Planning?

Strategic account planning is more than just a buzzword in the business world. It is a structured approach that allows companies to align their goals and objectives with the needs and expectations of their key accounts. By understanding and implementing strategic account planning, businesses can drive long-term success, foster strong customer relationships, and stay ahead of the competition.

At its core, strategic account planning involves a deep understanding of the customer’s business, industry, and challenges. It goes beyond transactional interactions and focuses on building strategic partnerships that are mutually beneficial for both parties involved. By investing time and effort into understanding the customer’s needs, businesses can develop tailored solutions, provide exceptional value, and become trusted advisors to their key accounts.

One of the key benefits of strategic account planning is the ability to retain and grow existing customer relationships. By understanding the customer’s unique challenges and objectives, businesses can proactively identify new opportunities for collaboration and growth. This not only helps in retaining the customer but also enables businesses to increase their share of wallet and drive revenue growth.

Benefits of Strategic Account Planning:

• Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Increased revenue and profitability
• Enhanced cross-selling and upselling opportunities
• Stronger alignment of business goals and objectives
• Greater visibility into customer needs and expectations

However, it is important to note that strategic account planning is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Each customer and industry will have unique requirements and dynamics. Therefore, businesses must invest in the time and resources required to truly understand their key accounts and develop customized account plans.

Key Elements of Strategic Account Planning

By understanding strategic account planning and its implications, businesses can unlock the full potential of their key accounts and establish themselves as trusted partners in their industry.

Processes of Strategic Account Planning

Strategic account planning involves several key processes aimed at building value-driven relationships with key customers. Implementing these processes effectively can significantly contribute to long-term development and revenue maximization. Let’s delve into these essential processes:

Current Position

Understanding the current position of the account is crucial. This includes analyzing account information such as revenue, profitability, product/service usage, geographic spread, and strategic initiatives. By leveraging publicly available data and asking relevant questions, such as the client’s future goals and potential obstacles, account managers can gain valuable insights into the client’s financial standing and organizational structure.

Voice of Customer (VOC)

Listening to the voice of the customer is paramount in strategic account planning. Engaging in meaningful discussions with clients helps uncover their challenges, concerns, and pain points. This insight is invaluable for tailoring products/services to meet client needs, driving customer loyalty, and increasing sales. Unlike publicly available data, VOC requires proactive communication and relationship-building efforts.

Relationship Management

Effective relationship management is essential for success in strategic account planning. This involves understanding the different types of relationships with clients and creating organization charts to identify key contacts, their roles, and their level of influence within the client organization. By mapping relationships and understanding the dynamics within the client’s organization, account managers can tailor their strategies and efforts accordingly.

ARPEDIO’s Relationship Mapping & Org Chart Software, natively in Salesforce

Key Components of Strategic Account Planning

When it comes to strategic account planning, certain key components are crucial for achieving success. These components form the foundation of an effective account planning process. Let’s explore the essential elements that businesses should consider:

1. Understanding Customer Needs

One of the key components of strategic account planning is gaining a deep understanding of customer needs. By conducting thorough research and analysis , businesses can identify their customers’ pain points, challenges, and goals. This knowledge enables them to tailor their strategies and solutions to meet those specific needs.

2. Setting Clear Objectives

To drive success in account planning , it’s important for businesses to set clear objectives. These objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By defining clear goals, businesses can align their efforts and track progress effectively.

3. Developing Effective Strategies

An effective account plan requires the development of well-thought-out strategies. These strategies should outline how businesses will address customer needs and achieve their objectives. It’s essential to consider factors such as value proposition, competitive advantage, and differentiation when developing these strategies.

Conducting Account Research and Analysis

In order to develop an effective strategic account plan, businesses need to conduct thorough account research and analysis. This crucial step provides valuable insights into the customers’ business environment, challenges, and goals, allowing businesses to tailor their strategies and offerings accordingly.

Account research involves gathering data and information about the customer’s industry, market trends, competition, and customer preferences. This can be done through market research reports, industry publications, customer interviews, and online surveys. By leveraging these sources, businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s unique needs and pain points.

Once the account research is complete, businesses can perform a detailed analysis of the gathered information. This analysis helps identify patterns, trends, and areas of opportunity that can shape the strategic account plan. It provides a solid foundation for making data-driven decisions and developing tailored strategies for customer engagement and growth.

Techniques and Tools for Account Research and Analysis

There are several techniques and tools available to aid businesses in conducting account research and analysis. These include:

• SWOT analysis : A strategic tool that helps identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the customer’s business.
• Competitor analysis: Evaluating the customer’s direct and indirect competitors to understand their positioning, offerings, and market share.
• Customer segmentation: Dividing the customer base into distinct segments based on demographic, geographic, psychographic, or behavioral factors to better understand their unique needs.
• Financial analysis: Assessing the customer’s financial health, including revenue, profitability, and liquidity ratios, to gauge their stability and growth potential.
• Technology platforms: Utilizing customer relationship management (CRM) systems, data analytics tools, and social listening platforms to gather and analyze customer data effectively.

By employing these techniques and tools, businesses can uncover valuable insights and trends that drive informed decision-making and allow for the development of targeted strategies. With a well-rounded understanding of their customers and the market, businesses can position themselves as trusted advisors and add significant value to their strategic account relationships.

Developing a Strategic Account Plan

Developing a comprehensive strategic account plan is essential for businesses looking to drive long-term success and build strong customer relationships. In this section, we will guide you through the process of creating an effective account plan that aligns with your business objectives and meets the needs of your key stakeholders.

Identifying Key Stakeholders

One of the first steps in developing a strategic account plan is identifying the key stakeholders involved in the account. These stakeholders may include decision-makers, influencers, and end-users within the customer organization. By understanding their roles and responsibilities, you can tailor your account plan to address their specific needs and objectives.

Defining Value Propositions

To create a successful account plan, it’s crucial to define compelling value propositions that differentiate your offerings from competitors and address the unique challenges faced by the customer. By clearly articulating the value your products or services bring to the table, you can effectively communicate the benefits and outcomes that customers can expect.

Creating Actionable Goals and Initiatives

A strategic account plan should outline actionable goals and initiatives that align with both your business objectives and the customer’s goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By breaking these goals down into initiatives, you can map out the steps required to achieve them and assign responsibilities to team members.

By following these steps and incorporating them into your strategic account plan, you can create a roadmap for success and establish a strong foundation for long-term growth. In the next section, we will explore strategies for effective communication and relationship building in strategic account planning.

Effective Communication and Relationship Building

Effective communication and relationship building are crucial components of successful strategic account planning. Building strong relationships with key accounts helps businesses establish trust, foster loyalty, and drive long-term growth. In this section, we will explore strategies for fostering strong relationships with key accounts and ensuring effective communication throughout the account planning process.

Fostering Strong Relationships

Building strong relationships with key accounts is about creating a connection based on trust, mutual understanding, and shared goals. Here are some strategies to foster strong relationships:

• Invest time in getting to know your key accounts. Listen actively to their needs, challenges, and objectives. This will help you tailor your approach and provide personalized solutions.
• Communicate regularly with your key accounts and be proactive in addressing their concerns. Show genuine interest in their success and offer support wherever needed.
• Deliver on your promises and exceed expectations. Consistently deliver value and demonstrate your commitment to the success of your key accounts.
• Collaborate with key accounts on joint initiatives and projects. This not only strengthens the relationship but also creates opportunities for mutual growth.

Ensuring Effective Communication

Effective communication is the foundation of successful account planning. It ensures that all stakeholders are aligned, goals are clear, and expectations are managed. Here are some strategies for effective communication:

• Establish clear channels of communication with your key accounts. Regularly check in, provide updates, and be responsive to any inquiries or requests.
• Listen actively to understand your key accounts’ needs and objectives fully. Ask relevant questions and seek clarification to ensure clear communication.
• Communicate strategically, tailoring your messages to resonate with each key account’s unique needs and preferences.
• Utilize a combination of communication methods, including face-to-face meetings, phone calls, emails, and video conferencing, to maintain a strong connection with your key accounts.

By prioritizing effective communication and relationship building, businesses can establish strong partnerships with key accounts, lay the foundation for long-term success, and unlock collaborative opportunities.

Aligning Sales and Marketing Efforts

Effective strategic account planning requires a seamless collaboration between the sales and marketing departments. Aligning sales and marketing efforts ensures a coordinated approach that maximizes customer relationships and drives business growth.

By integrating sales and marketing strategies, companies can create a unified front that delivers consistent messaging and a personalized customer experience. Sales teams can provide valuable insights to the marketing department, enabling them to develop targeted campaigns that resonate with key accounts. Likewise, marketing teams can equip sales teams with the necessary tools and resources to effectively communicate the value proposition to customers.

This alignment also helps to eliminate any disconnect between sales and marketing, fostering a stronger partnership and reducing internal conflicts. Sales and marketing teams are united in their shared goals and objectives, leading to improved communication, streamlined processes, and better overall outcomes.

Furthermore, aligning sales and marketing efforts allows businesses to leverage customer data and insights across both departments. This integrated approach enables a deeper understanding of customer needs, preferences, and behaviors, empowering sales and marketing teams to create more targeted and personalized strategies that drive results.

Ultimately, aligning sales and marketing efforts in strategic account planning enhances customer engagement, accelerates the sales cycle, and improves overall business performance.

Benefits of Aligning Sales and Marketing Efforts

The alignment of sales and marketing efforts offers numerous benefits for businesses:

• Improved lead generation: By working together, sales and marketing teams can generate high-quality leads through targeted campaigns and strategies.
• Enhanced customer experience: Consistent messaging and personalized interactions contribute to a positive customer experience, fostering loyalty and long-term relationships.
• Higher conversion rates: The synergy between sales and marketing ensures a smoother sales process, leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue.
• Maximized ROI: Integrated sales and marketing efforts optimize resource allocation and minimize wasteful spending, resulting in a higher return on investment.

Proactive Account Management and Growth

Proactive account management is an integral part of achieving long-term success in business. By actively engaging with accounts and continuously delivering value, companies can foster strong relationships, drive customer satisfaction, and identify growth opportunities. In this section, we will explore key insights and strategies for effective account management and achieving sustainable growth.

Delivering Exceptional Customer Service

One of the foundations of proactive account management is delivering exceptional customer service. By going above and beyond to meet customer needs, companies can solidify their position as trusted partners. This involves:

• Anticipating customer needs: Understanding the unique requirements of each account and proactively identifying opportunities to provide value.
• Ensuring clear communication: Maintaining open lines of communication with accounts, actively listening to their feedback, and addressing any concerns in a timely manner.
• Providing personalized support: Tailoring solutions and support to meet the specific goals and challenges faced by each account.

Identifying Growth Opportunities

Proactive account management also involves identifying and capitalizing on growth opportunities. By analyzing account data and market trends, businesses can uncover potential areas for expansion. This includes:

• Understanding customer goals: Gaining a deep understanding of each account’s strategic objectives and aligning efforts to support their growth initiatives.
• Monitoring industry trends: Keeping a pulse on market developments, emerging technologies, and evolving customer needs to identify new opportunities for value creation.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams: Engaging with sales, marketing, and product teams to leverage synergies and develop innovative solutions that drive customer satisfaction and business growth.

Utilizing Account Management Tools

Effective proactive account management often involves leveraging technology and tools to streamline processes and enhance productivity. By implementing the right account management software , businesses can:

• Track and manage account activities: Gain visibility into account interactions, progress, and potential risks, enabling better decision-making and proactive problem-solving.
• Automate tasks: Reduce manual administrative work, allowing account managers to focus on building relationships and delivering value.
• Generate actionable insights: Analyze data and generate reports to identify trends, measure account performance, and uncover opportunities for improvement.

To effectively implement proactive account management strategies, it’s crucial to leverage data-driven insights, nurture strong customer relationships, and continuously adapt and innovate. By prioritizing proactive account management and embracing a growth mindset, businesses can drive sustainable success for themselves and their valued customers.

Key Performance Metrics and Measurement

Measuring and tracking the success of strategic account planning is crucial. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of their account plans and make data-driven decisions, businesses need to monitor key performance metrics. These metrics provide valuable insights into the outcomes of their strategic initiatives and help identify areas for improvement.

Key Performance Metrics for Strategic Account Planning

When measuring the performance of strategic account plans, businesses should focus on several key metrics:

By regularly monitoring these performance metrics, businesses can assess the impact of their strategic account plans and make informed decisions to optimize their efforts. It is important to establish baseline measurements, set realistic targets, and consistently track progress to ensure continuous improvement and success.

With the right data and insights, businesses can identify areas for improvement, make informed adjustments to their strategies, and drive meaningful results through strategic account planning.

Overcoming Challenges in Strategic Account Planning

Strategic account planning is a crucial process for businesses to ensure long-term success and maintain strong customer relationships. However, it is not without its challenges. In this section, we will explore some common obstacles that businesses may encounter during strategic account planning and provide strategies and solutions for overcoming them.

Lack of Alignment and Communication

One of the key challenges in strategic account planning is the lack of alignment and communication between different departments within an organization. Sales, marketing, and customer service teams need to work cohesively to develop and execute account plans effectively. By fostering open lines of communication and implementing cross-functional collaboration, businesses can overcome this challenge and ensure everyone is working towards a common goal.

Changing Customer Needs

As customer preferences and requirements evolve, businesses must adapt their account plans to meet these changing needs. This can be a challenge, especially when organizations are not proactive in gathering customer feedback and monitoring market trends. By staying abreast of industry changes and regularly engaging with customers, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and continuously update their account plans to align with shifting customer needs.

In strategic account planning, identifying and building relationships with key stakeholders is crucial. However, it can be challenging to determine who the key decision-makers are within a customer organization. Conducting thorough research and leveraging existing relationships can help businesses overcome this hurdle and ensure they are engaging with the right individuals who have the authority to make purchasing decisions.

Managing Multiple Accounts

For businesses managing multiple key accounts, prioritization and resource allocation can become a challenge. It is essential to allocate resources effectively to ensure each account receives the necessary attention and support. By leveraging account management tools and establishing clear guidelines for prioritization, businesses can overcome this challenge and effectively manage multiple accounts.

Measuring Success

Measuring the success of strategic account planning can be difficult without defined metrics and performance indicators. Businesses need to establish clear goals and track relevant metrics to assess the effectiveness of their account plans. By leveraging data analytics and setting measurable objectives, businesses can overcome this challenge and make informed decisions to continuously improve their account planning process.

Overcoming challenges in strategic account planning is essential for businesses to achieve their goals and maintain successful customer relationships. By addressing the common obstacles discussed in this section and implementing the provided strategies, businesses can navigate the complexities of strategic account planning and drive long-term success.

In conclusion, this article has highlighted the essential elements and strategies required for successful strategic account planning. By adopting these practices and continuously refining the account plan, businesses can unlock their full potential, drive long-term success, and foster strong customer relationships.

Strategic account planning is a critical approach that enables businesses to understand and meet the unique needs of their most important customers. By taking the time to research and analyze each account, organizations can develop tailored strategies that address specific challenges and opportunities.

Furthermore, by focusing on effective communication and relationship building, businesses can strengthen collaborations with key accounts, enhance customer loyalty, and drive mutually beneficial growth. Regularly reviewing and evaluating key performance metrics can provide insights into the effectiveness of account plans and guide future decision-making.

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Account Management: Build powerful account plans in Salesforce

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8 best practices for successful strategic account management

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For most organizations, the old business adage rings true: 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. It would make sense, then, to treat these valuable assets with greater care. Yet, too often, companies don’t have a dedicated process to nurture those key business relationships.

The work isn’t done when the sale closes. Customers big and small can churn for many reasons. The best way to avoid a costly breakup with your most valuable customers is to implement a strategic account management program.

Read on to learn strategic account management best practices and how you can nurture key relationships for long-term success.

What is strategic account management?

Strategic account management (SAM) or key account management focuses on building long-term mutually beneficial partnerships with key customers.

Through in-depth research and assessment, strategic account managers find opportunities to drive value for their partners by identifying problems, offering creative solutions, and leveraging partnerships to move both organizations toward their strategic goals.  

A formal strategic account management program can:

• Foster customer loyalty.
• Stimulate growth.
• Increase profitability.
• Drive innovative and scalable service solutions.

Sales vs. strategic management

Unlike a sales program, which focuses on short-term selling cycles and customer acquisition, strategic management goes a step further to develop deeper relationships with a small number of core customers over time.

In short, sales is about the present. Strategic management is about the future.

While the gains may not be immediate, strategic accounts are a vital part of an organization’s long-term success and profitability.

Strategic account management best practices

An effective SAM program isn’t something you stumble upon. The most successful organizations rely on formal, measurable, repeatable processes to develop and maintain their most valuable customer relationships.

Whether you already have a process in place or plan to implement a new strategic account program, use these account management best practices to put your organization ahead of the curve.

1. Assign dedicated strategic account managers

The first step to a successful program is to assign dedicated account managers who are separate from sales. The best programs don’t have managers that must split their priorities or switch focus between making sales and developing strategic accounts.

Instead, create a team (or teams) with dedicated accounts and team leads focused solely on strategic management.

When filling these roles, keep in mind that sales and strategic management have different objectives and require a different skill set and approach to customer relationships.

Strategic account managers should be both analytical and personable. They need to build rapport with customers, think strategically about partnership opportunities and solutions, collaborate and communicate with high-level stakeholders and decision-makers, and lead a cross-functional team.    

2. Develop selection criteria for key accounts

While all customers are valuable, not all customers can be elevated to a key account. Be selective. Strategic accounts are reserved for customers whose partnerships can propel your organization toward its goals.

How can you determine which accounts are worthy?

You’ll need to develop a shortlist of selection criteria that hone in on alignments between your two organizations. Focus on three to eight objective criteria, weighted in relative importance to your organization.

These criteria could include:

• Product fit
• Revenue potential
• Growth potential
• Cultural fit
• Geographic alignment
• Existing relationships
• Potential channel partnership

Senior management should take the lead on this stage rather than the sales managers. Selection criteria are based on the organization’s high-level strategic goals and vision, so senior managers are the best fit for this role.  

3. Polish the handoff from sales

An oft-overlooked step in the SAM process is the transition from sales to account management. How well you handle account transitions is an important part of building a trusted relationship with your customers.

For best results, follow a formal, scripted handoff from the sales team to the account management team. Each customer (whether they become a key account or not) should be methodically organized and tracked in your account system.

Make sure to communicate clearly with the customer, so they understand who their points of contact are and what to expect going forward. For example, how often will you touch base with them via phone or email? Who can they talk to if they have questions or concerns? Setting clear expectations (and following through!) will foster a trusting relationship with your customer.

Learn how our sales and customer success teams at Lucidchart have perfected this handoff in this article .

4. Create a comprehensive customer profile

Once you have a selection process in place and you have identified and assigned your key accounts, you’ll need to develop in-depth customer portfolios.

The strategic account manager has to know their customer inside and out. To do this, they need to conduct research on the client company to build out a comprehensive profile.

Investigate and assess the company’s:

• Business and markets
• Goals and initiatives
• Stakeholder roles and responsibilities
• Key decision makers
• Analyst reports
• Competition

The aim is to understand your customer’s pain points and goals in order to identify opportunities for added value and collaboration. Our thorough customer model overview template can help.

5. Conduct a needs assessment

With your portfolio of customer research, the next step is to conduct a needs assessment.

• What are the organization’s pain points?
• Where do your needs or goals overlap and how can you help each other progress?
• Are there any problems looming that you can anticipate and address for them?

Use your data to find ways you can help them, and assess opportunities for collaboration and partnership. Strategic accounts are long-term investments. Instead of a typical 3-12 month transactional lifecycle, you are creating a strategy for the next 1-3 years. Keep that in mind as you assess strategic needs and opportunities.  

Remember: The ultimate goal of strategic account management is to grow with your customer.

6. Draft a strategic plan and proposal

Based on your needs assessment, drill down to the best strategic opportunities and draft an account plan. This plan is your strategic roadmap for the next 1-3 years. Once you polish the plan, approach your customer with your proposal.

Your proposal should include things like:

• Strategic recommendations (e.g., potential partnerships with other companies, creative solutions, etc.)
• Specific long-term goals with short-term benchmarks
• Resource requirements

This is your chance to demonstrate to the client that you’ve gone above and beyond to understand and address their needs and that your company is invested in their success.

7. Set a cadence for contacts, meetings, and follow-ups

Once you have a strategic plan in place, set a regular cadence for ongoing communication with your key accounts.

Outline a schedule for each touchpoint, meeting, and follow-up to ensure your customer is in the loop and has the opportunity to give feedback, communicate changes, or ask questions.

This schedule will help you stay updated on what your customer needs, how they are using your product or solution, and how you can help. Clear communication is vital to a strong working relationship with your customers. Our customer journey map template is a perfect way to start.

8. Monitor performance

Continually monitor and measure your performance on each account. What progress have you made on your short-term and long-term goals? How do your results measure against your KPIs?

Monitoring performance is not only important to ensure you deliver on your end but also to track how well the key account fulfills its obligations to you. While you want to drive value for the client, the goal is one of mutual long-term benefit. If the relationship no longer holds the same strategic value for your organization, it’s better to identify that sooner rather than later.

Measure your account performance continually so you can keep the plans on track and pivot or reassess as needed.

Lucid can help with your strategic account management

Strategic account management is complex. With so many moving parts, it is easy for data, insights, or people to fall through the cracks. Yet, key accounts represent the most valuable customers, so you can’t afford to drop the ball.

Lucidchart helps sales teams manage their processes seamlessly. From account maps to process flows , Lucidchart helps you visualize relationships and stay on track as you move through the account management process.

With our Salesforce integration , you can import your CRM data directly into Lucidchart to create account maps. Account maps help managers and teams:

• Identify key relationships in an organization.
• Track the progression of a sale or relationship.
• Transition accounts between reps and teams.
• Document a shareable account plan.

Key accounts are 60% to 70% more likely to close, and key accounts make up the lifeblood of many companies.

Don’t miss out on your best relationships. By implementing a formal strategic account management process, you can reap the benefits of long-term partnerships for many years to come.

 Lucidchart serves as a dynamic roadmap to help your team close bigger deals faster.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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Strategic account management: Definition, key skills and template

A big part of running any business is looking after your customers and ensuring they’re satisfied with your product or service. However, some clients are inevitably more valuable than others. With strategic account management, you can give these most important customers the tailored service they need.

In this article, you’ll learn what strategic account management is, how to use it in your sales organization and the skills needed to manage and upsell your biggest accounts.

What is strategic account management?

Strategic account management is a specialized approach to building and nurturing high-value customer relationships, with the goal of increasing both customer satisfaction and overall revenue.

By identifying the customers who have the biggest impact on growth, you can work alongside them to create mutually beneficial partnerships. By offering a best-in-class customer experience and support, your clients are more likely to reach their goals. In return, you’re more likely to hit your revenue targets or other key objectives.

Building these business relationships involves thoroughly understanding your client’s industry, identifying opportunities for collaboration and aligning your offer with the client’s goals.

A strategic account manager (SAM) serves as the primary point of contact between you and your clients. They ensure the business delivers a world-class service that meets (or exceeds) the customer needs and expectations. By working closely with internal teams such as sales, marketing and customer service, the SAM can develop tailored strategies for each account.

Implementing strategic account management takes up additional resources, but it has significant benefits (when done correctly). By actively building strong customer relations and delivering above expectations, SAMs improve customer retention and increase revenue.

While the account management definition can cover a broad range of clients, strategic account management specifically targets a small number of high-value clients who have the most growth potential.

In contrast to the one-size-fits-all approach of traditional sales, strategic account management develops customized plans for each key account, taking into consideration their unique needs and objectives.

Recommended reading

How to create a sales plan in 7 Steps

Strategic account management best practices

Strategic account management requires a significant investment of time and effort from both SAMs and other internal teams. Ensure you get a good return on your investment by following these best practices.

Selecting and categorizing the right accounts

If you categorize the majority of your accounts as strategic, you’ll spread your resources too thin. Without sufficient resources, you won’t be able to give any clients the extra attention or value they need. As a result, properly identifying and categorizing your accounts is an essential first step.

Assess your client base and determine which existing accounts have the greatest potential for growth and long-term value. The exact criteria will depend on your specific company goals but will typically include:

Revenue potential. Clients that represent a significant portion of your current or future revenue.

Market influence. Clients who are industry leaders or have the potential to become market disruptors.

Relationship strength. Clients with whom you have an existing strong relationship or have otherwise demonstrated a high level of trust and collaboration.

Strategic fit. Clients whose goals and objectives align well with your company's offerings and capabilities.

Once you have identified your strategic accounts, look for shared commonalities that you can use to segment them.

For example, your strategic accounts might share characteristics such as:

Industry sector

Company size

Geographic location

Growth stage

Organizational structure

Annual revenue

A SAM could then be dedicated to the top accounts in a category, so they can deepen their understanding of that specific market and increase their expertise.

Behavioral segmentation: What is it and how can it drive engagement and loyalty

Setting clear goals and objectives

The overall goal of strategic account management is simple: building relationships and increasing revenue. However, you’ll need more detailed objectives along the way.

In line with the SMART goal-setting methodology, your sales goals should be:

When it comes to relevancy in particular, any strategic account goals should be aligned with both your company’s and the account’s overall strategies.

Examples of smart goals for strategic accounts include:

Revenue growth targets. Within the next 12 months, increase account revenue by $25,000.

Market share expansion. Capture 5% of market share in the real estate segment by the end of the quarter.

Product adoption. Increase cross-sell rate by 20% over the next six months.

Customer satisfaction. Have a customer satisfaction score of over 85% for each strategic account by the end of the month.

By setting clear goals and objectives, you maintain focus and ensure your strategic account management efforts are driving tangible results.

How to set smarter sales goals for you and your sales team

Developing a tailored approach for each account

While you should classify and categorize your accounts, you are still dealing with individuals. You’ll likely end up talking to multiple contacts within each account, including end users, buyers, C-suite and other decision-makers.

Each one will have their own unique set of challenges, goals and requirements. As a SAM, you need to understand these nuances and develop customized solutions to address them.

Start by conducting a thorough account analysis. Learn everything you can about the client’s industry, competitors and relevant market trends. What specific challenges does your client face? What are their biggest pain points?

Next, look at your existing products and services. How could you adjust them to better meet your account’s needs?

For example, a software company specializing in healthcare solutions might discover that one of its strategic accounts needs to track patient wait times in their facilities. To address this need, the SAM might work with the internal product team to create a new software module that integrates with the client’s existing tech.

By taking a tailored approach, you can demonstrate a deep understanding of your client's business and provide greater value, leading to stronger, more enduring partnerships.

Building and maintaining strong relationships

Trust and credibility are the cornerstones of successful strategic account management, but they won’t appear overnight. Like any good relationship, you need to communicate regularly with your strategic accounts.

Keeping in contact means you’ll build rapport and be in a better position to offer guidance. Without regular communication, you’re more likely to miss out on opportunities, potentially damaging your reputation as a trusted advisor.

Don’t leave these conversations to chance. Establish a structured communication plan with regular follow-ups, progress updates and opportunities for feedback.

At the same time, you don’t have to wait for a scheduled check-in to talk to your clients. If one of your strategic accounts drops you a message, respond promptly. Better yet, anticipate potential issues and proactively reach out to address them.

For example, if you learn about a new set of regulations that will affect your accounts, drop them a message to confirm you’re aware of the situation and that you’re working on a plan on their behalf.

The key is to develop a genuine interest in your strategic customers and their business. If you’re purely motivated by self-interest, it will be obvious to your clients. Instead, take the time to understand your client’s business. If they face challenges, help them overcome them.

If they get a big win, celebrate with them. Show by your words and actions that you’re truly invested in the relationship and delivering a positive outcome.

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Tracking progress and adjusting strategies

Generating results from your strategic account management efforts won’t happen overnight. Without a way to track your progress, it’s easy to stall and miss out on the long-term benefits.

This ties back to the goals and objectives you’ve already established. If you’ve followed best practices and made them measurable, you’ll already know what sales metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) you need to track.

Examples of KPIs include:

Revenue growth

Customer satisfaction scores

Product adoption rates

Customer retention rates

Once you’ve identified your metrics, you need a way to track them. With customer relationship management (CRM) software , you can monitor KPIs and view account progress.

For example, Pipedrive offers real-time sales reporting with visual reports and custom sales dashboards , so you can see your account performance at a glance.

Schedule periodic reviews on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis (depending on the nature of your goals and the client’s preferences). Monthly reviews will help you keep your finger on the pulse, gauging the health of the relationship and highlighting any potential issues.

Quarterly reviews enable you to spot recurring obstacles and new opportunities. In your annual meetings, you can look back at the big picture, reviewing any long-term trends and patterns while collecting feedback from your clients.

By diligently tracking progress and adjusting your strategies based on data-driven insights, your strategic account management efforts will remain agile and responsive to your key clients’ changing needs.

Key skills for effective strategic account management

While knowing the practical steps and best practices for strategic account management is important, you’ll also need the right skills to execute your plan. By developing the following skills and competencies, you’ll be able to effectively manage your strategic accounts.

Communication and active listening

Sales communication may seem like a straightforward activity, but it’s still an important sales skill that you need to develop and practice to get the best results.

As a SAM, you must convey your message but also actively listen to your client’s needs and concerns. Active listening means being fully present in the conversation and giving your full attention to the client. One way to do this is by using open-ended questions that encourage deeper conversations.

For example, asking a client, “Is our service currently meeting your organization’s needs?” will get you a simple yes or no response. In contrast, an open-ended question such as “In what ways could we improve our service to better meet your organization’s needs?” requires a more thoughtful answer.

The client is more likely to share their thoughts and give specific examples of ways you provide a better service, revealing potential opportunities that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

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Problem-solving and adaptability

SAMs must be able to address challenges and find creative ways to meet their client’s unique needs. Coming up with a tailored solution will often require working with internal teams and using their different skill sets to find the right solution.

As you face more complex scenarios and requests, you’ll often need to employ critical thinking. By being open to new ideas and adjusting your strategies as needed, you’ll be more likely to find the solution that addresses the root cause of the problem.

Rather than jumping to conclusions, gather all the necessary information and make a carefully-considered decision that takes into account your client’s unique circumstances.

For example, if you are the SAM for an HR company and a client’s employees aren’t productive, developing an employee engagement program might seem like an obvious solution. However, by carefully analyzing the situation and reviewing the current management practices, you’re more likely to uncover the root cause and core issues, enabling you to provide a more effective solution.

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Time management and prioritization

Although SAMs will normally handle a small number of accounts, you’ll still need to choose how you spend your time carefully to give those clients the VIP treatment.

To balance competing demands and ensure that you’re focusing on the most critical tasks, have clear goals with realistic deadlines in place. Identify the exact steps you’ll need to take (and when) to reach those goals. Use this information to plan out your daily activities.

One popular time-management technique is time blocking , where you break down your day into smaller units of time. Planning out your work this way makes it easier to see what you should be doing at any given time, helping you focus on what’s important while avoiding multi-tasking or any other distractions.

Regularly review how you’re spending your time and assess whether you’re reaching your goals. If there never seems to be enough time in the day or you’re not making enough progress, you likely need to adjust your priorities and either delegate or reduce other activities.

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Negotiation and sales

While both customer success and account management roles look to build relationships with customers, SAMs are also responsible for increasing revenue (usually through contract renewal or cross-sell and upsell opportunities). To get the best possible outcome, SAMs need strong sales and negotiation skills.

Use what you’ve learned about your client to see where their needs align with your company’s solutions. Once you’ve spotted these possibilities, develop persuasive arguments that demonstrate the value of your proposals.

Remember, this isn’t about getting a sale at any cost. If the client doesn’t see the benefits or feels like you’ve pressured them into buying additional products, they won’t renew their contract. Rather, use your sales negotiation skills to ensure both parties come away feeling like they’ve benefited.

Analytical and strategic thinking

Knowing how to analyze your account’s metrics and other sources of sales data enables you to make smarter decisions. Taking a data-driven approach allows SAMs to identify positive patterns as well as potential issues.

For example, by looking at your client’s historical sales data , you can analyze the effectiveness of previous campaigns and identify opportunities for growth. Looking at the account’s operational data can uncover possibilities for improved efficiencies and optimized processes.

Account metrics also help you identify any accounts that may be in danger of churning so you can take appropriate action. On the other hand, being able to point out the positive results you’ve got for your clients with quantitative data will likely improve customer satisfaction and increase the chances of contract renewal.

Creating a strategic account management plan (template)

Strategic account planning gives you a comprehensive roadmap for nurturing key customers and growing your client relationships. While every account is unique and requires a tailored approach, this template will help you get started and ensure you address all the key components of an effective account management plan .

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Account overview, background information and key stakeholders

Begin your strategic account management plan by providing an overview of the account, including essential background information and a list of key stakeholders.

Company name: Industry: Company size: Location(s): Duration of partnership:

Key stakeholders

Name: Title/Role: Responsibilities:

(Repeat for additional stakeholders as needed)

SWOT analysis

Conduct a SWOT analysis to evaluate the account’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This analysis will help you understand the account’s unique challenges and identify areas for potential growth.

What are the account’s key assets and advantages? This could be current market share, brand reputation, product portfolio or anything else that gives them a competitive edge.

Strength 1: Strength 2: Strength 3:

What are the account’s primary challenges or limitations? For example, are they facing limited resources, a weak supply chain or increased competition?

Weakness 1: Weakness 2: Weakness 3:

Opportunities

What are the potential areas for growth or collaboration? Are they able to expand the range of products or services they offer, either directly or through a partnership?

Opportunity 1: Opportunity 2: Opportunity 3:

What external factors could negatively impact the account’s performance? Will economic conditions or regulatory changes lead to higher costs or reduced profits?

Threat 1: Threat 2: Threat 3:

Goals and objectives

Establish short-term and long-term goals and objectives for the account, using the SMART goal-setting methodology. Ideally, these will align with both the account’s objectives and your business’s overall goals.

Description: Metrics: Timeline:

(Repeat for additional goals/objectives as needed)

Action plan

Develop a detailed action plan outlining the specific actions you will employ to achieve the above goals and objectives. For each action, describe the specific tactics and strategies you intend to use, along with a clear deadline to complete the task and the responsible team member.

Action item 1

Description: Deadline: Responsible team member(s):

Action item 2

(Repeat for additional action items as needed)

Monitoring and evaluation

Decide how you’ll monitor and measure the success of your strategic account management plan. Include how you’ll track progress, how often you’ll review performance and how you’ll communicate that progress to your account.

Tracking system: Review frequency: Internal review participants: Client update frequency: Communication channel(s):

Additional resources for strategic account managers

The best SAMs are always looking for ways to improve. With the right account management resources , you’ll be able to develop your skills further, stay up-to-date on the latest trends and enhance your overall effectiveness. If you like to learn from the written word, there are plenty of account management books worth reading. For strategic account management, consider picking up one or more of the following:

The Seven Keys to Managing Strategic Accounts , by Sallie Sherman, Joseph Sperry and Samuel Reese

Major Account Sales Strategy , by Neil Rackham

The New Successful Large Account Management , by Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman and Tad Tuleja

For additional resources, the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) regularly hosts webinars, conferences and other events dedicated to strategic account management. Their website also includes additional training, with a Certified Strategic Account Manager (CSAM) program.

There are other training programs available. Queen’s University currently runs a free six-week course in strategic account management, available through the edX platform. The course covers different sales processes, frameworks and skill sets used by SAMs, as well as guidance on implementing the right sales strategy.

RAIN sales training also offers an in-depth strategic account management course. Modules include growing strategic accounts, account research and strengthening relationships. Each section serves as a self-contained topic, with classroom sessions, assignments and coaching.

Final thoughts

Strategic account management is a big investment, but with the right skills and proper planning, it’s a worthwhile one. Having a dedicated SAM who’s actively building strategic relationships with your most important clients and pursuing new initiatives within those accounts can transform your business and dramatically increase revenue.

Often, the biggest challenge is working out which accounts to focus on. While accounts are commonly picked for revenue potential, that’s not the only reason. Take the time to think carefully about your business’s long-term goals, then see which clients are most likely to help you reach those objectives.

By finding clients whose goals align with yours, you’ll naturally build stronger relationships and create a genuine win-win scenario for both parties.

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Table of contents

Key takeaways

• Strategic account management is especially crucial in industries or enterprises where a few clients contribute significantly to a company’s revenue (the 80/20 rule).

By managing key accounts properly, an enterprise can drive revenue growth, increase customer loyalty, and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

What is strategic account management? 

Strategic account management (SAM) refers to a specialized approach used by businesses to manage their most important and valuable customer accounts strategically and proactively. Also known as strategic customer management, or SAM, this strategy focuses on building and maintaining long-term relationships with key, profitable clients or accounts to maximize their value to the organization.

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Strategic account management best practices.

There are a variety of core concepts and principles in the realm of strategic account strategy and management. Understanding each type can help you leverage what techniques might best suit your business needs.

Customer-centric approach 

SAM involves understanding key accounts’ unique needs, goals, and challenges. It consists of aligning the enterprise’s products, services, and solutions to manage, meet, and exceed customer requirements.

Building long-term relationships

SAM emphasizes cultivating strong, mutually beneficial relationships with key accounts over the long term. This involves continuous engagement, effective communication, and providing ongoing value to the customer.

Strategic planning

SAM requires developing strategic account plans tailored to each core account. These plans outline objectives, strategies, and actions to maximize the account’s potential and align with the customer’s business objectives.

Cross-functional collaboration

Successful SAM involves collaboration among various departments within the organization, such as sales, marketing, customer support, tech support, product development, and senior management. This collaboration ensures a unified approach to serving the strategic accounts.

Value creation and delivery

SAM delivers exceptional value to strategic accounts by offering customized solutions, addressing specific pain points, and providing high-quality service and support.

Continuous review and adaptation

SAM involves regularly reviewing the account strategy, assessing performance, and adapting plans based on changing market conditions, customer needs, or internal factors.

Measurement and metrics

Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to evaluate the success of strategic account management efforts. Metrics should include revenue growth, customer satisfaction, retention rates, and profitability of the accounts.

Executive-level engagement

SAM often involves engagement at the executive level, where senior leaders from both the supplier and customer organizations collaborate to align strategies and foster a strong partnership.

Strategic account management is especially crucial in industries or enterprises where a few clients contribute significantly to a company’s revenue (the 80/20 rule). Additionally, it’s a practice that’s essential for all sales managers and executives. By focusing resources and efforts on managing these key accounts strategically, businesses aim to increase customer loyalty, drive revenue growth, and gain a competitive advantage in the market. They can also gain new accounts by maintaining and strengthening the current strategy account management structure.

Read more : How to Build a Sales Pipeline

How does an account management strategy work?

SAM involves systematically managing customer relationships, mainly focusing on important accounts or clients to achieve specific business goals. 

Here’s how it typically works:

Identify key accounts: The first step is determining which accounts are crucial for the organization’s success. The 80/20 rule is a popular and proven rule that 20% of a company’s key accounts produce the most revenue. These accounts may contribute significantly to revenue, have growth potential, or hold strategic importance for other reasons.

Understand customer needs: Account managers work closely with key clients to understand their needs, pain points, objectives, and challenges. This involves building relationships and gaining insights into the client’s business operations. Listening, asking the right questions, and seeking the right solutions to meet and exceed a customer’s spoken and unspoken needs are crucial.

Develop account plans: Create customized plans for each key account. These plans outline strategies, objectives, actions, and timelines tailored to meet the specific needs and goals of the client while aligning with the company’s objectives.

Cross-functional collaboration: Collaboration among different departments, such as sales, marketing, customer support, and product development, is essential. This ensures a unified approach to effectively serving the strategic accounts.

Provide value: Account managers aim to provide value to key accounts by offering tailored solutions, addressing pain points, delivering high-quality service, and demonstrating a deep understanding of the client’s business.

Regular communication and engagement: Maintain regular communication and engagement with key accounts. This involves ongoing discussions, updates on new offerings, sharing industry insights, and promptly addressing concerns or issues. Lapses in communication can lead to a problem with or loss of a strategic account.

Reviewing and adapting strategies: Regularly review account strategies, assess performance against set objectives, and adjust plans based on changing market conditions, customer needs, or internal factors. Flexibility and agility are crucial in adjusting strategies.

Measurement and evaluation: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to evaluate the success of the account management strategy. Metrics should include revenue growth, customer satisfaction, retention rates, and profitability of the accounts.

Executive-level engagement: For more extensive or strategic accounts, engagement at the executive level is often necessary. Senior leaders from supplier and customer organizations collaborate to align strategies and foster a strong partnership.

Continuous improvement: Use feedback and insights from account management activities to improve services, products, and strategies for better account management.

The success of an account management strategy relies on understanding the specific needs of key strategic accounts, providing value, fostering strong relationships, and aligning strategies to meet both the client’s and the company’s objectives.

By following these tips and consistently executing your SAM strategy, you can effectively manage key client relationships, drive value, maximize revenue potential, and achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for any organization and its key accounts.

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Why is strategic account management (SAM) effective?

SAM strategies work for several reasons, mainly due to their focused approach to managing and nurturing key client relationships. Here are some effective SAM strategies:

Focused resource allocation

SAM allows companies to concentrate their resources, efforts, and expertise on managing a select group of key accounts. This focused approach ensures that resources are used efficiently to drive value and revenue from these crucial clients.

Understanding client needs

SAM involves gaining in-depth knowledge of the client’s business, objectives, challenges, and preferences. This understanding enables account managers to tailor solutions, products, and services to meet client needs.

Long-term relationship building

SAM emphasizes building and maintaining long-term relationships with key accounts. Companies can increase customer loyalty and retention by investing time and effort in fostering these relationships.

Customization and personalization

SAM enables companies to offer personalized solutions and services to key accounts. By customizing offerings to meet specific client needs, companies enhance the value they provide to those clients.

Strategic alignment

An effective SAM ensures that the company’s strategies align with the objectives and goals of key clients. This alignment strengthens the partnerships, fostering mutual growth and success.

Maximizing revenue potential

SAM helps identify opportunities for upselling, cross-selling, and offering additional services to key accounts. This approach maximizes revenue potential from existing, valuable, profitable clients.

Reduced churn and increased profitability

SAM reduces churn (loss of customers) and improves client retention by focusing on customer satisfaction and building relationships. Satisfied, loyal clients are likelier to continue doing business and generate higher profits.

Differentiation and competitive advantage

Companies implementing SAM strategies differentiate themselves from competitors. Offering superior client service, value, and tailored solutions can create barriers for competitors entering those accounts.

Risk reduction

Diversifying efforts across multiple key accounts reduces the risk of dependency on a few customers. If one account faces challenges, the impact on the overall business is lessened.

Continuous improvement

SAM involves ongoing feedback loops and performance evaluations. This allows companies to optimize their services continuously, adapt to changing client needs, and refine their strategies for better account management.

In summary, strategic account management strategies work because they focus on understanding client needs, building strong relationships, providing tailored solutions, and aligning processes to achieve mutual success. This approach enables companies to manage, measure, and implement various account functions effectively.

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What are the pros and cons of Strategic Account Management?

• Resource intensive: SAM can require significant resources, including time, effort, skilled personnel, and financial investment, to manage key accounts effectively. An enterprise must determine if it has the bandwidth to tackle this process.
• Complexity: Managing multiple key accounts with diverse needs and demands can require a sophisticated approach, frictionless coordination, and efficient, timely communications among various departments.
• Dependency risk: Over-reliance on a few key accounts may pose risks if one or more funds face challenges or discontinue the relationship.
• Costs vs. returns: The cost of servicing and managing key accounts might sometimes outweigh the returns, especially if the relationship yields a different result. An accurate analysis must be rendered.
• Changing dynamics: Market shifts, changes in customer needs, or turnover within the client’s organization can impact the effectiveness of SAM strategies.
• Strategic misalignment: Misalignment between the company’s objectives and those of key accounts may lead to difficulties in meeting mutual goals.

While strategic account management brings numerous benefits, businesses must consider these challenges and trade-offs when implementing and maintaining a successful SAM strategy. Adapting strategies, continuous improvement, and efficient resource allocation are essential to maximize the benefits while mitigating potential drawbacks.

Strategic account manager’s next steps & key takeaways

The good news for sales managers, executives, and other personnel who need great SAM tools and options is that multiple popular, scaleable, user-friendly, and effective strategic account management CRM solutions exist, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive. 

Explore your options, and choose a CRM and SAM software solution that helps the enterprise surpass its goals and succeed beyond expectations. Reading our helpful articles and buyers’ guides can help in the quest to improve strategic account management efforts and tasks and find the optimal solution.

Featured partners Featured Partners: CRM

There’s no easy answer, but most experts agree that using the best CRM/SAM solution for the enterprise’s unique needs and approach works best. There are multiple solutions on the market, each with its unique approach, features, integration properties, pros and cons, and costs.

Among the most essential building blocks of effective SAM are building trust, maintaining transparency, meeting goals, retaining, developing a repeatable process, and managing growth.

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Free Account Planning and Management Templates

By Joe Weller | May 9, 2023

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This article includes the top free account planning and management templates for account managers, client-facing project managers, salespeople, and account executives. Use these templates to improve client relationships and build partnerships.

On this page, you'll find a strategic account plan presentation template and a sales account plan template with space for capturing key account details. Download an account mapping template featuring an org chart, and a key account management action plan template with sample copy. You’ll also learn about key account planning elements and how to do it , along with tips on using an account planning and management template .

Simple Account Plan Template

Download a Sample Simple Account Plan Template for  Excel | PowerPoint | Microsoft Word

Download a Blank Simple Account Plan Template for  Excel | PowerPoint | Microsoft Word  

This customizable, one-page simple account plan template can help everyone on your team understand their needs, so you can establish and strengthen a long-term relationship with them. The sample template comes with text already filled in to help you proactively create a customer account plan. Start by entering the client’s primary goal and the key team members (e.g., management, decision makers). You can then create a plan of action for managing the account, including identifying any blockers, next steps, and the owner for each component of your account plan.

Strategic Account Plan Presentation Template

Download a Strategic Account Presentation Plan Template for  PowerPoint | Google Slides  

Solidify your client-account planning and management with this dynamic strategic account plan template. Enter details of your client’s key priorities, initiatives, and people so that any team member can become apprised of the client’s goals and active players at a glance. The template also includes space to specify the client’s annual account targets and revenue streams, as well as your action plan (specific actions, assignees, and due dates) — all to ensure that you strengthen your client relationship and have a solid account plan and client-management strategy in place.

Sales Account Plan Template

Download a Sales Account Plan Template for  Excel | PowerPoint | Microsoft Word  

Ensure that you proactively meet — and even exceed — your sales-account management and planning goals with this comprehensive sales account plan template. Use the template to document prospective and existing clients’ decision-making processes and other important details. Enter account-overview details (e.g., account revenue, industry, relationship strength), account objectives, account solutions, and your account action plan. This template is the perfect solution for capturing important details about prospective or existing customers and for creating a dynamic strategy to help them succeed, so you can develop and retain a strong partnership with them.

Account Mapping Template

Download a Sample Account Mapping Template for  Excel | Microsoft Word | PowerPoint  

Download a Blank Account Mapping Template for  Excel | Microsoft Word | PowerPoint   

Use this account mapping template to identify a client’s key players, so that you and your team are readily aware of the client’s hierarchy, who makes purchasing decisions, and more. Download the customizable sample account mapping template with example content to get an idea of what to include for each role. Once complete, the template provides insight for account managers, salespeople, and account executives for the roles of each individual within the client’s organization. By understanding the roles in your client’s organization, you can make more informed decisions and facilitate a more effective strategy and long-term relationship.

Key Account Management Action Plan Template

Download a Sample Key Account Management Action Plan Template for  Excel | Microsoft Word | PowerPoint

Download a Blank Key Account Management Action Plan Template for  Excel | Microsoft Word | PowerPoint  

A successful key account management action plan serves as an easy-to-follow map that accurately charts a customer’s current state, their goals, and how to help them achieve a mutually beneficial association. This template is available in two versions: blank and with sample text to guide you through the key account management action plan process. Easily capture your key clients’ details, individuals’ roles on the project, management objectives, clients’ preferred communication styles, and actionable steps to foster and strengthen the partnership.

What Is a Key Account Plan? 

A key account plan is a strategic document that outlines your objectives and strategies for your most important customers. Sales and account management teams use a key account plan to provide a coordinated approach to growing client partnerships. 

A key account plan typically includes details of your client's business, such as challenges they face, their value proposition, services they provide, and the actions and resources needed to achieve their goals. The primary aim of a key account plan is to ensure that your organization provides a coordinated, consistent, and focused approach to your most valuable clients.  It also helps you effectively allocate resources, and track client-relationship progress over time.

Elements of Key Account Plan

The elements of a key account plan might vary, depending on your business. A key account plan typically includes information about the client, their needs, their buying behavior, and the steps you’ll take to increase sales and improve customer satisfaction. 

The goal of a key account plan is to maximize the value of the relationship for both your company and your most vital customers for optimal key account management (KAM). Typically, a project manager will complete the key account plan document.

The seven main elements of a key account plan typically include: 

• Client Profile: Detailed information on the key account, including company background, main decision makers, and relevant client information. 
• Situation Analysis: An assessment of the current state of the relationship with the key account, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) and competitive analyses. You can use a SWOT analysis template to determine these details.
• Goals and Objectives: Clear, measurable, and time-bound goals and objectives for the key account relationship. These are both important to cover, but goals and objectives are different and require distinct approaches.
• Strategies and Tactics: Determine how you’ll achieve the goals and objectives, including specific strategies and tactics for improving the relationship and growing the business. 
• Action Plan: A detailed plan of action, including specific activities, milestones, and deadlines for implementing these strategies. 
• Resource Allocation: A plan for allocating resources, including personnel and budget, to support the implementation of your key account plan. 
• Performance Monitoring and Evaluation: A plan for monitoring and evaluating the progress of the key account relationship regularly and adjusting  as needed.

Steps in the Process of Key Account Planning

A well-designed key account plan includes information about your client's current and future needs, their strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities available to you. It provides a clear plan for how you will meet their needs and grow the relationship. 

The following are the fundamental steps in the key-account-planning process: 

• Identify Key Accounts Identify the key accounts that are critical to the success of the business. This might include customers who generate the most revenue or have the most potential for growth. 
• Gather Information About Key Accounts Gather as much information as possible about each key account, including their needs, pain points, buying habits, decision-making processes, and main stakeholders. 
• Analyze Key Account Data Once you’ve gathered information about each key account, analyze the data to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of each relationship.
• Develop an Account Plan Develop a comprehensive account plan for each key account. This plan should include specific strategies and tactics for growing the relationship, meeting customer needs, and maximizing value.
• Implement the Account Plan Work closely with the key account to execute on specific tactics, such as building stronger relationships with key stakeholders and tracking progress to ensure the plan is achieving its goals.
• Review and Adjust the Plan Regularly review your key account plan and make adjustments as needed based on changes in the customer's needs, market conditions, or other factors that may impact the relationship.

For more help with client planning and management, check out our collection of free client management and tracking templates , and our tips and best practices for mastering client management .

How to Use an Account Planning Template 

Use an account planning template to develop a detailed analysis of your account's current challenges and to identify revenue opportunities. Gather information about your goals for the key account, main stakeholders, and steps to execute.

1. Download and Name the Simple Account Plan Template for Microsoft

Download and open the Simple Account Plan Template in Microsoft Word. Save and rename the document locally.

2. Enter Basic Details About the Plan

• Click the Date box and enter the date you’re creating the plan.
• Click the Created By box and enter the name of the person responsible for the plan. 
• Click the Version box and enter the plan’s version.
• Click the Goal box and enter the goals for the account.

3. Complete the Account Plan Team Section

• For each account planning team member, double-click the team member’s NAME section. 
• When the NAME field opens, enter a name for that team member. 
• In the Title field, enter a title for the particular team member. 

• Click the corresponding image icon. Right-click and highlight Change Picture , and click the location ( From a File, From Stock Images, From Online Sources, or From Icons )  of the person’s image. 

• Select the image and click the Insert button.

4. Enter the Details for Each Action Step in the Project Account Action Plan

• Fill in the Action Step field. 
• In the Responsible field, enter the name(s) of the internal stakeholder(s) responsible for the step. 
• In the Description field, provide a brief description for each action step in your account plan. 
• In the Status field, provide the current status (e.g., Accepted, Declined ) for each step. 
• In the Outside Shareholders field, enter the names of the customer’s or client’s personnel who are responsible for that step. 
• In the Notes / Constraints field, enter any relevant notes. 

Streamline Your Account Planning and Management with Smartsheet

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

10-Step Guide: Creating a Strategic Account Management Plan

Strategic Account Management, or SAM, is all about the relationships you build with company customers or partners. But even with that idea in mind, building strong relationships worth the time and effort isn’t always an easy process. If you don’t have a clear pathway to strengthening and maintaining those connections, your company relationships could be suffering. Finely tuned communication and negotiations skills, trusting relationships forged over time, and regular reassessments all contribute to an effective plan. You may want to learn more about our negotiations skills training program .

A proper strategic account management plan can help you and your team stay on track and ensure you’re giving each customer and partner the proper amount of attention. This step-by-step guide can help you create a plan that fits your needs and moves your company forward.

The Importance of a Strategic Account Management Plan

As with just about everything in business and sales, when you have a plan in place, you can stay organized more easily while ensuring that no projects, customers, or clients are neglected. SAM planning works largely the same way.

Without a strategic account management plan, you approach your customer relationships without a checklist of bases to cover or things to address. This means that projects and tasks can easily become forgotten and get pushed to the side, while customers and partners are left feeling like they’ve been ignored. But when you have a plan in place, you can ensure you’re nurturing key relationships, giving each customer, client, or partner the appropriate amount of attention.

If you’re ready to get started on creating your own strategic account management plan, these steps can help you out. These ten steps, broken down into three main portions, can get you on track to building stronger relationships.

Phase 1 – Developing a Portfolio

Before you can begin working with a client, you need to do the research to understand who they are, what they value and what their goals are. Within this phase, there are four key steps.

1. Create a Profile

The profile of your customer, client, or partner will share a brief overview of who that person is. Much of the information that appears in a customer profile will not be extremely detailed, but it will serve as the foundation of your work. The customer profile should be referred back to whenever you need a refresher about the personal or business details about this individual.

2. Develop Trust

Because trust is the foundation of all relationships, both personal and business, your second step will be to show your client or customer that you are serious about helping them fulfill their needs and desires. Throughout this step, your main goal will be to develop an effective working relationship with the customer and identify areas that may need strengthening.

3. Identify Targets

Once you have been able to develop who the customer or client is, you can start working towards figuring out their wants and needs. These needs will be the items or ideals that drive you and the client forward through the next steps of your account plan.

4. Find the Opportunity

Everyone brings their own value to the table, and now that you and your client have gotten a clear understanding of who you each are and what you are intending to accomplish, you can determine what opportunities are available to you. Analyze what the competition is doing and what distinguishes you and the skills you bring from what is already out there.

Phase 2 – Creating a Strategy

The next phase of your strategic account management plan should be to lay out an angle of attack based on the information outlined in your portfolio. In some cases, you may be able to create multiple pathways for the second phase of your account.

5. Determine the Value

Understand what value can be provided by the client. When you understand what customers can hope to get out of a purchase, you can better understand how to push that idea forward.

6. Create Objectives

It isn’t enough to say you want to “sell a product” or “get things done.” Instead, you need to set out clear long and short-term objectives that can be reached and measured. Outline a few of these growth objectives beforehand as part of your account plan and you’ll have an easier time developing your strategy in the next step.

7. Take Action

Using all the information you previously gathered, develop an action plan for accomplishing your goals and objectives. Look at the value you hope to provide, the opportunity you have created, and consider what customer needs will need to be addressed. All these pieces of info should influence the decisions you make.

Phase 3 – Growing

The final phase puts all the information into motion and continues to measure what has been developed. Throughout this phase, you and your customer should continue to implement the strategies and ideas created in the first two phases. Once a change needs to be made, you can return to Phase 1 and readdress the ideas and issues.

Recognize that this relationship is important and that it will consistently need to be maintained. Both you and the client should commit to moving forward.

9. Follow New Leads

Once you have prepared yourself to continue forward, look for new leads that may allow you to grow. These opportunities are what pushes your business to the next level.

10. Always Reassess

Very rarely will a strategic account management plan work for years and years without needing to be readdressed. Whether you accomplish your goals or you’re struggling to see any developments, you may need to restart the process earlier than you thought. Always be ready to begin again when the time is right.

The art of strategic account management planning is becoming increasingly important for businesses. If you understand how to approach building each relationship and move forward as a team looking for mutually beneficial rewards, you can increase your position, develop the company to see more profits and returns, and have an overall better sense of what you are able to accomplish.  If you’d like to accelerate the learning of your team, don’t hesitate to contact SNI so we can assist you in your specific goals.

To learn more about our sales, negotiation, or influence training for your organization please click here . Contact

1 thought on “10-Step Guide: Creating a Strategic Account Management Plan”

You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something that I think I would never understand. It seems too complex and very broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!

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Guide to Strategic Account Planning

Strategic account planning is essential for maximizing revenue from your largest accounts. By understanding and addressing each customer’s unique needs and opportunities, sales teams can drive growth and retention. This guide consolidates expert insights and best practices to help you optimize your strategic account planning.

What is Strategic Account Planning?

Strategic sales account planning is a structured, repeatable methodology for analyzing an account or set of accounts, developing a deeper understanding of them, and identifying opportunities. According to Robert Muñoz, Forrester’s Vice President and Principal Analyst of Sales Operations Strategies, it is:

• A success plan for sales reps that aligns their assigned accounts, quota, and commission plan.
• A process by which plans are regularly developed, reviewed, and updated.

Account planning encourages salespeople to delve into each customer’s unique needs, motivations, and business circumstances. This deeper understanding allows sales managers to identify new ways to increase revenue from existing accounts by presenting proposals that align with clients’ current challenges and opportunities.

Expert’s Insight First and foremost, you need to thoroughly understand the products you offer, the target personas, the features and benefits, and the problems they solve. This means gaining a deep and comprehensive understanding. Write everything down in full sentences, not just bullet points. Why is this important? You’ll use these value propositions in your cold emails, demos, discovery calls, and talk tracks. Take the time to articulate them thoughtfully. Commit them to memory until you know them inside and out. A LinkedIn study found that 70% of buyers are more likely to engage with representatives who can clearly articulate the value proposition. That’s how crucial it is. Kyle Coleman , CMO at copy.io

The Key Issues with Strategic Account Planning

Despite significant investments in account planning strategies, many sales organizations fail to operationalize their plans effectively. This failure often results from a lack of coordination between sales, marketing, and other relevant channels, focusing instead on short-term objectives. Successful account planning requires long-term coordination and collaboration.

8 Elements to Elevate Your Strategic Account Planning

1. organizational alignment.

Organization alignment is one of the critical ingredients of a successful strategic account plan. You must have a commitment to an account planning ecosystem with executive engagement and collaboration, cooperation, and communication with marketing, channels, partners, and other functional groups. Consistent, measurable business goals must be shared between functions to drive account acquisition, growth, and retention.

2. Planning Methodology

It’s critical to have a repeatable set of role-based methodologies, with multiple learning modalities and a change management process.

Methodologies can be internally developed or leverage 3rd party resources. There are multiple plan types based on sales roles, and they should be tailored to suit your business model. A few of the multiple learning modalities can include written guides, workbooks, eLearning, workshops or coaching.

3. Planning Components

The minimum set of plan components to result in an executable plan. Plan components will vary by plan type but most all would include relationship and strategy maps, action plans, and scorecards.

4. Planning Process

This is the process of creating, reviewing, and approving the account plan. It is important to have a defined purpose, key participants, and a known outcome for each step.

5. Sales Management Process

It’s important to integrate the planning process into quarterly reviews and updates. First-line managers must be enabled to review and coach on the quality of account plans and the execution of the action plan.

6. Metrics and Reporting

Clearly defined measures and reporting cadence are a must. You need to be able to track results in terms of short-term activity, mid-term pipeline growth, and long-term revenue growth by adapting core sales metrics to the program.

7. Infrastructure

Account plans should be integrated into a CRM. This allows sales teams to minimize double data entry and have a single instance for all global account activity. Account team members are then able to view and update common account information across regional or organizational boundaries. Further, executive and management dashboards and reports include global account metrics, providing a holistic view of the account. This allows sales teams to reinforce the methodology.

8. Implement and Sustain

Sales teams should leverage technology to enable the program to be part of the daily workflow of the rep and manager with highlighted metrics (i.e. value drivers, health indicators, and risk markers).

The Pros and Cons of Strategic Account Planning

Strategic account planning is considered one of the most effective strategies for businesses to increase revenue and maintain current sales. See what benefits and challenges this approach brings.

Benefits of Strategic Account Planning

Opportunity and cross-selling.

Account planning presents opportunities for cross-selling and upselling of additional products and services to existing customers. With the help of account planning, sales representatives can easily identify the product lines or service offerings that are most relevant and suitable to pitch to their clients.

Customer Retention

Strategic account management helps to preserve customer relationships by prioritizing personalized offers, reinforcing value delivered, and proposing mutually beneficial solutions, which can significantly reduce churn rates. 

Challenges of Strategic Account Planning

Intensive process.

It requires additional resources to gather a comprehensive understanding of buyer needs, competitive pressures, and other information. This involves ongoing research and regular relationship building, which may limit the team’s ability to focus on prospecting and pitching to new customers.

The overall costs of account planning could outweigh the revenue generated or preserved. This is because companies may end up spending more resources on targeting existing buyers than they would on acquiring new clients. Therefore, it is crucial for business owners to streamline the execution of the process and prioritize accounts based on their potential for generating the most significant revenue with the highest chances of success.

Undoubtedly, businesses may face some risks when implementing strategic account planning. However, they can mitigate these risks by directing their sales team to focus on accounts that have the highest potential to close new deals through personalized cross-selling and upselling, which can help offset the investment of resources and time.

Expert’s Insight The most common mistake I see companies make with Strategic Account Planning is failing to find the ideal amount of research. Over-research costs you not just time and money but stresses sellers out and can cause “analysis paralysis”. Under researching means poorly done interactions which diminishes results. It takes time to find the right balance – but when you nail it the ROI is instant and impossible to ignore. Ashleigh Early , CEO at Other Side of Sales Consulting

Technology to Operationalize Strategic Account Plans

Utilizing purpose-built technology is essential for efficient, integrated, and strategic account planning execution. Platforms like Revegy enable dynamic account plans that adapt to changing customer needs and facilitate cross-team collaboration.

The Revegy Strategic Account Planning Solution

To successfully execute and collaborate on strategic account planning, it is essential to utilize purpose-built technology that facilitates efficient and integrated processes. With Revegy, users can create dynamic account plans that adapt to changing customer needs, evolving relationships, and unexpected events. The platform facilitates collaboration across teams and ensures that everyone is on the same page, aligning the company’s efforts to achieve common goals.

Revegy provides a centralized view of all key accounts, helping sales representatives understand the current status and identify growth opportunities. Key features include:

• Account Potential : Uncover unmet needs and determine where to add value.
• Identify Key Stakeholders : Visualize critical relationships and mitigate risk.
• Account Health Visibility : Coach teams to mitigate churn risks and identify expansion opportunities.
• Achieve Consistency : Use playbooks to build effective strategies and ensure collaboration.
• Improve Forecast Accuracy : Use a scalable, repeatable process for better revenue prediction.

Unlocking Account Growth with Strategic Account Management

Strategic Account Management (SAM) manages and grows relationships with an organization’s most critical and high-value customers. It involves deploying specialized resources, processes, and technologies to identify, develop, and execute account-specific growth strategies.

SAM is vital for organizations looking to drive sustainable revenue growth and maximize customer lifetime value. However, many companies struggle to implement effective SAM practices, leading to missed growth opportunities and stagnant revenue streams.

The Necessity of Smarter Account Management

According to research presented at the Gartner (formerly CEB) Sales and Marketing Summit, only 28% of sales leaders reported that their “account management channels regularly meet cross-selling and account growth targets.” By implementing best practices in account management, sales leaders can address this challenge.

One key finding revealed that servicing accounts alone doesn’t drive more value from existing customers. Instead, account managers must have access to more advanced customer intelligence to understand how they can help customers achieve their unique business objectives.

Strategic Account Management Relies on Customer Intelligence

The importance of customer intelligence cannot be underestimated. The success of any enterprise sales team , whether expanding key accounts, increasing win rates, or improving forecast accuracy, is directly correlated to how well the team knows their buyers and how effectively they can translate that knowledge into a plan and execute it effectively.

However, most traditional enterprise sales organizations lack a common framework to document, organize, and analyze their customer’s business. Companies miss opportunities to deliver value at every life cycle stage without an intuitive, consistent way to consume and leverage customer intelligence.

To succeed in today’s modern sales enterprise, sales teams need strategies that empower them to articulate the value of their products and/or services to the customer more accurately.

Revegy Enables Challenger® Selling

Revegy offers a purpose-built, enterprise-class platform that integrates with any CRM to deliver a deeper understanding of the customer’s business, a roadmap to coordinate the sales approach, and an executable plan for maximizing account revenue in key account landscapes.

Revegy puts the power of visualization to work in account planning to expose what matters to your most strategic customers. Put simply; we translate customer intelligence into value for your client and revenue for you.

CRMs weren’t designed to address the complexity and depth of analysis, planning, or governance required from large, global, matrixed accounts. Revegy’s sales enablement platform is a game-changer for sales organizations looking to unlock account growth and drive customer value.

Identify Customer Improvement Opportunities with Relationship Maps

Revegy’s relationship maps clearly illustrate the customer’s organizational and political structure, showing connections between influencers and decision-makers, the status of your relationship, and their preference level for your solutions.

The map also reveals stakeholders’ unique goals and priorities, enabling you to focus your strategy and solutions on what matters most to build value and trust with the people driving the business.

White space maps enable you to uncover new revenue and expansion opportunities by charting the product landscape and highlighting where it intersects with opportunities to meet your customers’ near-term and long-term needs.

By visualizing the footprint of your solutions, including where your competitors’ products are in place, you can identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. These tools help sales reps identify customer improvement opportunities and drive growth.

Expert’s Insight The most crucial part of account planning is identifying the “CEO of the Problem.” As Jim Holden loved to say, a situational power base forms around a challenge or opportunity, where various stakeholders can temporarily change the power structure. Understanding the existing hierarchy and overlaying the situational hierarchy, as well as doing the detective work to uncover hidden relationships, is how you discover hidden influences that can make or break getting high six- and seven-figure deals done. Scenario: A front-line stakeholder plays tennis with a division head, or they attended college together. I’ll never forget a 400K deal that we did in a mobile startup because the CMO of a major cable company had played rugby with our Head of Channel Partnerships. Their parents still lived on the same street in Cambridge. You discover these hidden interrelationships by doing effective account planning with the right tools and gathering intel from Sales Navigator. Justin Michael , Bestselling Author, Co-Founder & CRO at Hard Skill Exchange

If you want to hear more from Justin, make sure to check his bestselling books: Sales Superpowers: A New Outbound Operating System To Drive Explosive Pipeline Growth and Justin Michael Method 2.0: An Advanced Outbound System To Drive Explosive Pipeline Growth With New Sales Superpowers .

Build Growth-Oriented Account Teams with Strategy Maps

Revegy’s strategy map lets you document the company’s overarching goals, challenges, and priorities across the corporate landscape so you can align your solutions and help the client achieve their business objectives.

By understanding and mapping your client’s issues, challenges, and departmental initiatives, you can easily identify and position potential expansion opportunities based on what is top of mind for key decision-makers.

Best Practices for Strategic Account Management

• Analyze the account’s revenue potential, strategic fit, and relationship strength.
• Align solutions with the customer’s business objectives by understanding their industry trends and pain points.
• Use dedicated account managers and cross-functional teams to provide personalized solutions.
• Use relationship, white space, and strategy maps to gain a comprehensive view of the customer’s business.
• Continuously monitor account performance against growth targets and optimize strategies as needed.

The Sales Maturity Model: Maximize Your Sales Potential

Sales planning, whether it’s at a company, department, or team level, is a documented strategy for hitting key targets. There’s no way to consistently execute the sales strategy without a sales plan. 

A sales plan should show you where you’re at, where you want to be, and the path for getting there. The best sales plans make it possible for everyone on the revenue-generating team (sales, executive sponsors, marketing, and customer success) to understand the big picture, align on objectives, and collaborate on the same plan to achieve them.  In other words, it makes sales execution possible. 

It’s no secret that sales planning processes can vary from organization to organization. Sometimes they even differ inside of organizations, across teams. Sales plans can range from being relatively simple to more complex than your tax return. It may be a tactical sales management tool, or it may be a strategic approach that executive leadership leverages for corporate planning. 

There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all.’ What is important is that it fits your organization’s needs. As you learn and grow as a company, you will want to advance along the sales planning maturity curve to increase your success and alignment with others. Mature organizations will have a strategic approach to sales planning to ensure accurate forecasting, dynamic and agile workflow, and cross-functional collaboration to achieve top-level corporate goals. 

Stages of the Sales Execution Maturity Model

Sales planning is a documented strategy for hitting key targets. The Sales Execution Maturity Model helps organizations progress from an ad hoc process to a strategic, data-driven approach. The stages of the model are:

Ad Hoc : No formal sales processes; high independence for sales reps. Unpredictable and lacking clarity. This is the first and least mature stage of the model. At this stage, an organization has no formal sales processes or methodologies in place, and sales representatives operate with a high degree of independence. Sales tools and technologies are used on an ad hoc basis, and training and enablement efforts are minimal. Performance metrics are largely anecdotal, and there is little data-driven decision-making. The sales process is unpredictable and unclear, creating serious forecasting and revenue growth issues. 

Tactical : Basic sales processes and tools; individual performance focus. Plans are created but probably not finessed and tailored to your team. At this stage, the organization has started to develop basic sales processes and may have adopted a few tools or technologies to support them. Sales training and enablement efforts are starting to take shape but are not yet formalized, and reporting is still largely ad hoc. Plans are created but probably not yet finessed and tailored to the team. This stage is characterized by focusing on individual rather than team performance. 

Integrated : Standardized sales processes; team performance focus. Plans are more consistent; technology is in place to help the team be more successful. This is the stage sales and marketing work more closely together, and customer data is being used to inform decision-making. The sales process is becoming more standardized, with a clear focus on team performance rather than individual performance. Performance metrics are becoming more data-driven and objective, allowing for better forecasting and revenue growth. 

Intelligently Managed : Continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making. Plans inform revenue management and improve revenue predictability. At this stage, there is a focus on continuous improvement, with a culture of learning and development. Sales processes are becoming more sophisticated, with a strong emphasis on collaboration and alignment across teams. Data-driven decision making is a key focus, with advanced analytics being used to drive performance improvements. 

Strategic : Cross-functional collaboration and long-term strategic planning. This is the most mature stage of the Sales Execution Maturity Model. At this stage, cross-functional teams use sales plans to inform marketing, customer success, and other key functions. There is a strong focus on long-term strategic planning, with a clear vision for growth and a commitment to innovation. The sales process is highly sophisticated and data-driven, focusing on continuous improvement and team collaboration. Performance metrics are highly objective, allowing for accurate forecasting and revenue growth. 

Strategic account planning is a proven approach to drive growth and increase revenue. By leveraging best practices, purpose-built technology, and a structured methodology, sales teams can unlock the full potential of their accounts. Assess your organization’s current stage in the Sales Execution Maturity Model and take steps to advance to a strategic approach for maximum success. Schedule a demo with Revegy to see how our platform can transform your account planning process.

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Strategic Account Managers, Here's How to Amplify Your Efforts

Updated: May 08, 2020

Published: January 27, 2020

After a deal closes, the customer relationship is still in its infancy. Beyond renewals, existing accounts present a great deal of new revenue and partnership opportunities for sales pros who understand their continued role managing customer accounts strategically.

What is strategic account management?

Strategic account management is a framework that focuses on building engaged, mutually beneficial relationships between a company and its key accounts or customers to drive sales growth. Typically managed at the organizational level, strategic account management encompasses teams across departments within a company.

In this space, Strategic Account Managers identify and create opportunities by positioning solutions aligned with customer goals, challenges, and initiatives. By focusing on strategic account management, sales professionals can grow accounts and enjoy other benefits, including:

Once the deal has been closed, the company needs to be able to dedicate efforts on maintaining and growing these relationships. In doing so, existing accounts can grow, offering many benefits, including:

• Shorter sales cycles
• Reduced acquisition costs
• Priority relationships
• Greater access to decision-makers

It is important to note, that in an ideal state strengthening relationships with valuable accounts should come from dedicated support in the form of Strategic Account Managers so sales reps can focus on closing new deals.

Strategic Account Manager

Strategic Account Managers are responsible for facilitating the development and growth of key customer relationships. They often serve as a point person for the stakeholders of the strategic account.

In this post, we’ll ways your company can leverage strategic account management in your pursuit of opportunities with existing customers.

Strategic Account Manager Job Description

Ready to add a Strategic Account Manager to your team? Here’s a job description to help you find a qualified candidate.

[Your Company Name] is hiring a Strategic Account Manager.

This role is responsible for managing relationships with our most valued customers. As a Strategic Account Manager, you will oversee customer retention, satisfaction, and revenue growth strategy.

In this position, you will:

• Serve as the main point of contact for your assigned accounts.
• Get to know your assigned accounts to understand their opportunities and challenges.
• Identify how our company can support the customer’s opportunities and challenges.
• Monitor the satisfaction level of your customer accounts and report progress to internal stakeholders.
• Be on point as the internal company contact regarding your customer accounts.

Skills and qualifications:

• Must have hands-on experience and demonstrated success managing multiple key customer accounts.
• Strong relationship-building skills to build trust and rapport with customer account stakeholders.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills.
• Excellent customer service skills.
• Data reporting and analytical skills; must be able to pull and analyze key metrics to measure the results of customer retention and satisfaction.
• Creative problem-solver.
• Sales experience — meeting quota should be the norm.

Strategic Account Management Process

To ensure success implementing the strategic account management process, consider these best practices.

1. Focus on the right customers.

Growing a current relationship starts with smart customer selection. Salespeople must take the time to determine which of their accounts represent the most significant opportunities. How? By finding the overlap between the customer’s strategic initiatives and your solutions.

In this early stage, examine "hard" factors — including revenue generated and product mix — and "soft" factors, such as level of access, relationships, and buying behavior.

Consider the divisions, departments, and locations within a target account. The best opportunities aren’t necessarily found in the accounts that have spent the most. In fact, these accounts often represent fewer sales opportunities because they’ve spent so much. Look for the accounts with the most significant potential for future purchases.

2. Analyze customer needs.

Targeting an existing account requires as much foresight as targeting a new one. Though salespeople already have access to some stakeholders, it’s still crucial to build a plan. This process begins by understanding the buyer’s journey, which helps sales professionals align their activities to the customer’s place in the buying process.

Of course, the buyer’s journey begins when they encounter a challenge in their pursuit of long-term goals and short-term objectives. The value of expanding existing accounts is it places the sales professional on this path early. You’re there to greet your customer when they arrive, so to speak.

In these initial stages, sales professionals can shape the customer’s thinking and properly frame their needs. This level of influence comes from salespeople who become trusted advisors. Reaching this point means you’ve provided insight to the customer and have taken the time to understand their business.

A trusted advisor can even be the person who triggers the buyer’s journey. This position is powerful and influential because, as McKinsey says, "research has found that journey performance is significantly more strongly linked to economic outcomes than are touchpoints alone."

3. Align with the customer.

A compelling solution is not enough. Salespeople need to be better than the competition. They must find alignment with the customer, so the value of the solution resonates with their business need. This step is critical, because it differentiates their solution from competitors.

Creating alignment involves stakeholder analysis. Sales professionals need to understand who will make the buying decision. Some of these stakeholders will have an existing relationship with the sales professional. Others will be new.

Taking a strategic approach means engaging established relationships to expand to new ones. The process is ongoing because stakeholders enter and exit the picture.

4. Engage customer needs

Business drivers change — and that’s a good thing. These changes are exactly why the business needs solutions in the first place. To track these changes in real-time, however, salespeople must keep the customer engaged. Without a high level of communication, they risk presenting solutions and insights that don’t resonate with their customer.

Regular dialogue clarifies evolving needs and boosts profitability, because fully engaged customers are more profitable than average customers. According to findings from Gallup , 40% of customers who are highly satisfied with their account manager are deeply engaged.

5. Measure success.

Strategic account managers must be able to demonstrate success to both their customers and stakeholders within their company. Customers who engage in a long-term partnership with an account manager expect a personalized experience that will help them achieve their goals and keep their business running smoothly.

Using a CRM to track customer communications can help Strategic Account Managers stay on top of their valuable partnerships.

When you are able to measure and document successful conversations and support initiatives for your customer, you gain valuable insight on how to continue having a fruitful partnership.

Additionally, those who manage strategic accounts must be able to measure and report success to their company’s stakeholders. If a company is allocating resources to strategic account management, there is an expectation that the account will be able to generate significant revenue to justify the investment. Strategic account managers must be able to demonstrate success for their company.

Strategic Account Management Planning Tools

With so many inputs to consider in the strategic account planning process, it’s important sales professionals have the right tools to manage and track their research and relationships.

There are many options for account planning tools and templates. Selecting the right tool is important, because your team needs a tool that’s robust enough to capture all critical customer information and lean enough to be put to practical use.

As you evaluate strategic account management tools and templates look for these key components:

• Industry Analysis Tool — Include a component that supports examination and documentation of external industry issues that may impact the customer.
• Customer Relationship Analysis Tool — Include a component that documents history with the customer and avenues for expansion -- like untapped business units and new divisions.
• Customer Strategy Map — Include a component that captures the customer’s strategy to determine which of their objectives and initiatives connect with the solution’s capabilities. List the customer’s goals, challenges, and culture.
• Stakeholder Assessment Tool — Include a component that helps your sales professionals categorize identified stakeholders by their role, level of influence, and alignment with the solution.
• Competitive Assessment Tool — Include a component where your team can review your competitive position from the customer’s perspective to identify ways to articulate your unique value.

To begin the strategic account planning process, check out HubSpot’s sales tools to facilitate mutually beneficial customer relationships and grow your business.

Ready to learn more about how account management can benefit your business? Check out this post to learn the difference between account management and sales.

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Thank you for your submission., a complete guide to strategic account management.

Christine Dzou

Written by Christine Dzou

Not all accounts are created equal. Chances are a small proportion of your buyer accounts make up the bulk of your company’s revenue.

Based on the value of these accounts, it makes sense to treat them with a high degree of care and even allocate dedicated resources to maintain them.

So how can you identify what these key accounts are? How can you add value and generate more revenue from these existing accounts?

This is where strategic account management comes in.

In this article, we’ll explain what strategic account management is and how it can grow your bottom line. We’ll also cover how you can implement a strategy and best practices to follow.

JUMP TO EACH SECTION TO LEARN MORE:

What is strategic account management?

• Why is strategic account management important?

How to implement a calculated account management strategy

• Take your account management strategy to the next level with Gong

Strategic account management is the process of identifying and building mutually beneficial relationships with your most important accounts. It allows you to foster customer loyalty, increase profitability, and deepen existing relationships.

Why is a strategic account management process important?

A deal doesn’t end once a buyer signs on the dotted line. You need to take a more proactive approach to maintain and grow existing accounts.

Here’s why dedicating resources to strategic account management is worth the investment:

Increases customer retention rates

Buyers today have more choices than ever. If your solution fails to address their  pain points , they won’t hesitate to switch to an alternative.

You can increase customer satisfaction and improve retention rates by understanding your buyers’ needs  and  providing the resources they need to achieve their goals.

Every buyer has different reasons for choosing your solution, so you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. You’ll need to uncover your buyers’ pain points and present personalized solutions that align with their objectives. We’ll look at how you can conduct a needs assessment later.

Leads to more growth opportunities

Most businesses are obsessed with  acquiring new buyers , and for good reason — sales to bring in revenue.

But if you’re neglecting existing accounts, you could be missing out on huge opportunities to generate revenue for your company. An account with high growth potential could turn into one of your biggest buyers (or even valued partners).

For example, let’s say a buyer signs up for a starter plan. However, as their business grows, they discover the plan no longer fits their needs. By working closely with this account, you can identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities — generating more revenue.

Delivers valuable insights

As you nurture relationships with strategic accounts, you’ll also understand how they’re using your solution to accomplish certain objectives. These insights can help your sales manager improve the company’s  sales strategy .

In short, a successful strategic account management strategy can help you build mutually beneficial business relationships and grow your bottom line.

Now let’s break down the exact steps to make this strategy work for your sales organization.

A successful account management strategy isn’t something you can slap together in an afternoon. It’s an undertaking that requires careful planning.

Follow these steps to implement an account management strategy that works: 

1. Identify your strategic accounts

Strategic accounts spend the most, right?

Not exactly.

Part of strategic account management involves identifying accounts that have the  potential  to grow into bigger ones — something that’s harder to achieve for more established accounts.

In fact, organizations that focus on customer spend when selecting key accounts are  51%  less likely to see increased revenue.

( Image Source )

So which accounts should you designate as strategic accounts?

Start by creating a list of criteria to help you narrow down the accounts to include in your strategic management strategy. Examples could include the following:

• Product fit
• Revenue potential
• Growth potential
• Financial health
• Potential partnership

Identify three to five criteria to prioritize. For example, if you want to expand into other markets, you might prioritize “potential partnership” over “product fit.”

Next, assign each account a score from 1 to 10 in each category. The accounts with the highest scores should be your strategic accounts. Work with senior management to ensure the accounts you’ve selected align with the organization’s strategic goals.

2. Assign dedicated account managers

Once you’ve identified the accounts with the most growth potential, the next step is to assign dedicated strategic account managers to them.

But proceed with caution here.

Some companies make the mistake of assigning salespeople to key accounts. However, selling and managing an account are different roles with distinct skill sets.

You’ll need an account management team whose sole purpose is not to close deals but to manage strategic accounts. These individuals will operate separately from your sales professionals.

A strategic account manager’s responsibilities include the following:

• Providing ongoing support to assigned key accounts
• Conducting an in-depth needs assessment for each account
• Identifying how the company can support their objectives
• Handling inquiries and finding solutions for complex issues 
• Monitoring performance metrics and reporting progress to stakeholders

The ideal strategic account manager is someone with strong relationship-building skills. They’re also creative problem solvers with great organizational skills. 

Excellent interpersonal skills are another must. Strategic account managers need to collaborate with customer success and product teams to develop custom solutions and facilitate the  onboarding process .

How many accounts should a strategic account manager have?

It depends.

For accounts with the most potential to help your company achieve a key objective (e.g., gaining referrals in new markets), you might dedicate one manager to that account. Alternatively, you may also assign multiple accounts with moderate growth potential to one account manager.

There’s no hard and fast rule here. Of course, you don’t want to overextend your managers either by assigning them too many accounts.

3. Build a comprehensive profile for each account

The next step is to develop an  in-depth profile  for each strategic account. This will enable your strategic account managers to find ways to deliver value.

Answer the following questions for each account:

• What are their target markets?
• What products or services do they offer? 
• Who are their main competitors?
• Who are the key decision-makers? 
• What are their short- and long-term goals?

The aim here is to create a comprehensive profile for each account. But don’t stop at these questions. Conducting a SWOT analysis will help you gain a deeper understanding of these accounts and their business.

SWOT stands for:

• Strengths:  What are the company’s strengths? What areas in their industry do they excel in?
• Weaknesses:  In what areas is the company lacking? Maybe a competitor is beating them in certain markets or has features they don’t offer.
• Opportunities:  What are some opportunities for the company? Maybe there are untapped markets that they could serve.
• Threats:  What are some threats that could affect the account’s growth? Examples include emerging competitors or changing regulations.

A SWOT analysis will help the account manager determine which initiatives to prioritize. Use resources like LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and the company’s website to research your key accounts.

4. Conduct a needs assessment for each account

Now that you’ve identified your key accounts and created profiles for each, the next step is to identify the “gaps” between their current states and desired outcomes. This will enable you to create an account management plan to help close those gaps.

For example, let’s say an account is struggling with inaccurate data. Conducting a needs assessment can help you understand where gaps in that account’s data collection process exist.

Maybe they’re still relying on manual data entry for certain processes, which leads to more mistakes and errors in their data. With this information in hand, you can formulate a plan to fix these issues and even identify potential upsell opportunities.

5. Draft an account management plan

Once you conduct a needs assessment, you can start drafting a strategic plan. This provides strategic account managers with a “roadmap” for how they’ll help certain accounts grow.

An account management plan should include the following:

• Account snapshot:  Gather basic information about the account. What is their mission statement? What are your revenue goals for the account? Are there any cross-sell or upsell opportunities?
• Internal decision-makers:  For your efforts to be successful, you’ll need buy-in from the right people. Identify the internal stakeholders for each strategic account and determine their decision-making criteria.
• Personalized recommendations:  How will you help an account grow? Look through your needs assessment to determine which initiatives to propose. Examples include suggesting partnerships or developing a personalized training program for their team.
• Resource requirements:  How much time and how many resources will you dedicate to the account? Who will be responsible for managing the account?
• Challenges:  Are there any challenges or considerations for growing the account? Note them so you can address them if and when they arise.

This is a lot to keep track of.

Here’s a  template  to help you put together an account management plan:

Enlist your salespeople to help you with the account planning process.

Then, review and share the strategic plan with the target account. This will help you set expectations from the start and avoid unwanted surprises. It will also send a clear signal that your company is invested in the account’s success.

6. Create a communication schedule

Set a schedule for ongoing communication with your strategic accounts. You may decide on weekly or monthly check-ins, but consider more frequent touch points if the plan calls for it.

Create a brief outline of what you’ll cover each time, and review the account’s progress. Have they implemented any of your personalized recommendations? Did they encounter any setbacks? Be sure to allow time for your buyers to share their thoughts and provide feedback.

Finally, make sure your buyers know what resources are available to them and how you can help. While this may sound obvious,  16%  of strategic account managers say they are fully utilizing dedicated resources for their key account management. If an account isn’t using certain resources, you can allocate those resources elsewhere.

7. Track and measure success

Implementing a strategic account management strategy is a huge investment. It’s important to measure the right  KPIs  to determine your efforts’ impact on key business objectives.

Some metrics to help you measure success include the following:

• Cross-sells and upsells
• Client referrals
• Account testimonials
• Satisfaction rates

Tracking relevant metrics can help you determine whether a customer relationship is mutually beneficial. If it isn’t, you can either scale back your investment or reconsider certain client relationships entirely.

8. Create executive alignment

You have lofty goals for your strategic accounts. But unless you get buy-in at the executive level, your initiatives will likely fail to gain any traction.

Set up account executives on both sides to agree on the next steps. Establish a business case for your initiatives and describe your strategy in detail. Outline how you’ll measure success and demonstrate ROI to get key decision-makers on board.

Take your strategic account management strategy to the next level with Gong

Strategic account management is a highly involved process. Keeping track of all the moving parts and following account management best practices makes it easy for key insights to slip through the cracks.

That’s where Gong comes in.

Gong’s  customer success software  records and transcribes all buyer interactions across phone calls, emails, and web conferencing. Strategic account managers can gain full visibility into a key account to ensure a smooth handoff from your sales team.

Request a demo today  to see how Gong can help you implement a successful strategic account management strategy for your key customer accounts.

READY TO MAKE RENEWALS AND GROWTH THE NORM?

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Strategic Account Planning: How to Plan for Maximum Sales

Strategic account planning is incredibly powerful!

Effective account planning not only helps close bigger deals faster but most importantly, helps establish amazing relationships with customers that will carry on for years. Strategic account planning should be recognized as a differentiator and value creator, not an administrative chore completed once a year. Make it be part of the rhythm of your business.

Investing time in building relationships and developing account strategies is time well spent, especially when you’re doing it with the right accounts, the right mindset, the right process and the right team. Account planning isn’t something you need to do with every account you’re selling to or in every segment; for example, it’s unlikely that you’ll drive a strategic account-planning program in your small business segments. On the bigger accounts, though, this is a mandatory practice.

We’ve worked with the best sales professionals and the best sales teams on the planet and through these tens of thousands of hours of working together we perfected a proven account planning template framework (see below).

What is Strategic Account Planning?

Account planning in sales helps prioritize your most important prospects and ensures they’re getting the best of what your company has to offer — and it’s as easy as following our template (listed below).

Whether it’s this year or five years down the line, account planners layout which accounts they want to win over and when. Then keep tabs on them all with monthly follow-ups, quarterly reviews , etc.

Account planning is not just about identifying which companies to target for potential business expansion – but also figuring out how each prospect will use your products or services, and the lifecycle of potential deals over time, which accounts they want to win over, and when.

Why is Account Planning Important?

Successful account plans have a clear strategy, goals, steps to reach the goal, tactics that are tailored to fit specific clients.

Account planning provides clarity and direction for growth-account planners to prioritize accounts to ensure that each one is being served properly.

Identifying who needs your product or service and mapping out when they may be ready to make a purchase, all the way through to keeping tabs on these client accounts with monthly follow-ups.

A Proven The Account Planning Process

Account planning is very focused on getting to the essence of what we’re trying to do with an account: plan, build relationships , identify strategic initiatives that we can solve, and build an action plan to sell. Here’s an Account Planning coaching video that maps out the proven account planning process.

Sales Account Planning Template

See our account planning template below. It’s a battle-tested and proven blueprint for closing millions of dollars in revenue, continually refined over years, designed for success using best practices across multiple industries so that all businesses can benefit from this account planning process framework.

1) Build An Account Planning Snapshot

It’s scary how many salespeople don’t even know where to begin when it comes to account planning and frequently ask “What is the first step in the account planning process?”

First – it’s incredibly important that we build out the Account Plan Snapshot:

• What do we know about the account?
• Who are the key executives?
• What’s their current revenue?
• Who is their Existing Customer?

An account planning snapshot is so important. Complete a snapshot first so you can get a clear executive overview of the account. This is the ground floor of our account planning process.

2) SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats

The second step of the account planning process is a SWOT analysis which helps to formulaically analyze the accounts strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats together as a team.

Remember this is still in the foundational stage. You may not have all the answers, and that’s OK, that’s why you’re bringing your team together. See potential strengths below:

• What are the company’s strengths?
• What are they good at?
• Are they making money?
• How are they performing?
• Are they dominating in their market?
• What are people saying about them?
• What products are great?
• How are their products?

Then, research weaknesses. See potential company weaknesses below:

• What are the areas of weakness for the company?
• Maybe a competitor of theirs is beating them in certain markets?
• Maybe they’ve got huge attrition right now and you’ve read that on Glassdoor or wherever?

These are some potential weaknesses you can look for.

• Opportunities

Researching the opportunities can be downright magical for you and your team. This research will help you learn everything there is to know about your market and its competitors, which are crucial components for success.

Hopefully by this time you’ve had conversations with:

• Decision-makers
• Your champion
• Some influencers
• Even maybe some of their customers

You want to list out any potential opportunities you see:

• What are some opportunities for the company?
• What people are saying about them in the press?

Research is critical in the Opportunities stage of SWOT analysis. It’ll align you around what you’re trying to accomplish, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and lastly – it will allow you to provide a huge amount of VALUE to your customer.

• What are some industry threats?
• What are some competitive threats to the company?

Overall the SWOT analysis is an incredibly powerful account planning tool in your account planning process.

I love building out a SWOT analysis for accounts that I’m trying to partner with. When I sit down with an executive, I like popping up that SWOT analysis, saying, and sharing:

• Here’s a SWOT analysis: strengths weaknesses threats opportunities, etc
• Here’s the research we’ve done
• Does this look accurate?
• How could this improve? Let’s work on it together?

Frequently what happens on calls and in rooms with executives when sharing this information we go through and we start tweaking the strengths weaknesses and threats and opportunities together – it’s an absolute home run!

We are now embedded within their company and proposing laser-focused solutions.

3) Map Out Top Initiatives

After your SWOT is complete – it’s time to list out top initiatives derived from the SWOT and decide what to prioritize as your top initiatives, as well as brainstorm initiatives for short, middle, and long term sales goals .

So list out the top initiatives and fill in the template list:

• Who are these initiatives for?
• Why are they important?
• What are some dates we can attach to tasks?

Here we can start aligning with compelling events and other trigger events – this is a hugely strategic step.

At this point we haven’t done a deal review, we’re not really at a forecast stage yet – we’re focused on research, we’re building an account strategy and account plan ( see this article for territory planning ).

4) Conduct a Business Unit Analysis

After you’ve completed the top initiatives, you can now begin building your Business Unit Initiatives Analysis.

List out all the business units or departments of the company – just start listing them out and then start filling in information around each business unit:

• How many employees do they have?
• What are company goals?
• Who’s the executive that owns it?
• When’s the last time we’ve made contact with that executive?

When building out this business unit analysis it gets you to a point where you can:

• Prioritize your time
• Prioritize your team’s time
• Focus goals that make bottom-line sense

This step is where you prioritize where you’re going to invest the resources to go execute the account strategy and the account plan that you’ve created based on all your great research and collaboration you’ve done with your team – you are now aligning ACTION to your great research.

5) Build An Organizational Chart & Political Map

Building an organizational chart is so incredibly important – it’s a critical aspect of the sales process too. For many sales leaders and sales teams, the political landscape of a company and a buying decision is where we found out if and when a deal will really happen. Spending time to map out who you know and who you’re connected with, will pay dividends down the line.

Always make sure there’s an org chart in your account plan. The chart should include:

• All decision markers, influencers, champions, and executive sponsors, both direct and indirect
• For each person list our their “buying roles” (decision maker, evaluator, user, approver)
• For each person market their “relationship status” (supporter, mentor, neutral, non-supporter & enemy)

There are a ton of templates out there but keep it simple – build out your chart to get a sense of the political map:

• Who has power?
• Who reports to whom?
• How do decisions get done?

Org charts are done in a bunch of different ways you can use a tool if you have one or you can just draw it on a whiteboard, do it in a document – however you want to do it – go crazy! But a solid org chart is a must-have.

6) Develop a Connect the Dots Strategy

The next step is to develop a connect the dots strategy .

Let me explain what that means:

• We’ve done the SWOT analysis
• We’ve identified top initiatives
• We have a sense of the executives
• We have a sense of which executives own which initiatives
• We’ve also built an org chart

Now we want to figure out who in our company is connected, or who in our network is connected with people of the account that we’re targeting.

From here start mapping executives to executives so we can build a connected dots strategy:

• Ask for referrals
• What’s our best approach to go after these people?

Be mindful about who you should be going after. Remember these are strategic accounts building relationships through outreach should be thoughtful and strategic – we’re doing it with research, with intent, with purpose – and we need to remain mindful of that.

7) Build out an Opportunity Planning Map

We’re almost done! The next thing you need to do is build out your opportunity map. So far in the account planning process, we’ve done a ton of work and we’ve identified:

• A good sense of their top initiatives
• We know the org chart
• We know where power lives
• We’ve even got to connect the dots strategy

Think about how much work you’ve done already to set yourself up for success – now you just have to list out opportunities and start projecting deals:

“Here are some deals that we can go after, based on what we’ve learned from the account.”

And then we do an opportunity map where we start listing out, you know ballpark some deals that we’re going to you know kind of start thinking about, so directionally we know what this can look like in terms of a bigger deal.

List them out and talk it over with the team – which leads us to our next point:

8) Manage an Action Plan

We have now made it to the last step of the account planning process. This is the step where you take all of the info you have gathered and turn it into an actionable plan with personnel and dates attached to it:

• Who’s connecting with who
• Who’s doing what
• What’s the timeline

It’s important to remember that although the salesperson is who’s running point on the account, it’s a team effort .

You win as a team, you lose as a team, so everyone on the team must have a role in this process to keep it moving along.

By assigning roles to everyone on the team ownership is distributed across the entire team and most importantly – multiple people are responsible for follow-through – so we can see the results that we expect.

Being very specific in your action plan is the difference between an account plan that’s developed, and not in action, and an account plan that has action, and turns into bigger deals.

As the strategies are put into action, nurture a culture that holds people accountable. Ask the tough questions when the sales team comes together. Once the executive interactions and conversations happen and pain is identified and validated, shift the focus to managing an opportunity. There is a point, once an opportunity is identified and qualified, when the actions created from your account-strategy work shift to sales process work. These kinds of accomplishments are great motivators for the team to create their own qualified opportunities by being strategic with their accounts.

Sales Account Planning Recap

Just to recap quickly – see the 8 step sales account planning template process below:

• Executive Overview
• SWOT analysis – Strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities
• Top Initiatives Chart – Identify the company’s top initiatives that we’ve validated hopefully with some key executives
• Business Unit Analysis
• Build an Organizational Chart
• Connect The Dots Strategy
• Opportunity Map
• Action Plan – Critical: the plan needs owners, timeline and dates outlined

Embracing account planning, collaborating with your champion to fill in blanks, and working with your team to execute will supercharge your sales efforts.

The account planning strategy above is not going to get filled in in one sit-down – effective account planning takes time. It may take weeks to build with your team.

It really all depends on the size of the account, the size of the opportunity, the size of your team – but the steps and process are important.

Above is a battle-tested framework that has evolved over time with some of the best salespeople and sales teams in the industry and resulted in important deals with astronomical sales revenue.

Account Planning Mindset

The Zen Buddhist concept of the “beginner’s mind” is something everyone should pick up before they begin diving into the creative side of sales strategy and account planning. The saying goes, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” This is such a great concept for taking a fresh look at a familiar situation. Suggest to each new salesperson you hire and anyone wanting to kick-start their creative juices that he or she read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. The notion of a “beginner’s mind” also helps a team get out of a rut on an account that may have had zero revenue growth. Account teams sometimes continue to focus on the same strategies, the same executives, and the same value propositions with their accounts. You can use the “beginner’s mind” philosophy to shake the proverbial tree with some of your accounts

Strategic Account Management

Effective account planning in the beginning stages sets up a lifetime of high performance, strategic account management, and a clear road map to success. By focusing on the information and roadmap laid out in the account planning, strategic account management builds trust, and leads to more deals in the future, as it proves you are a thoughtful, reliable partner that knows the customer’s business.

Final Thoughts on Account Planning

Account planning is critical at the beginning of a deal. It can help us determine who’s involved, what it will take to influence them, and how much our clients may be willing to pay for their products or services.

With this information, we have some guidance on which deals are worth pursuing further, and can help us create a roadmap so directionally we know what this can look like in terms of a bigger deal in the future, and help us allocate attention and personnel accordingly.

By starting with a solid account plan, demonstrating thorough process, insights, and strategic account planning throughout the course of the relationship, it will be far easier to find opportunities faster and be more informed than ever before, resulting in record-breaking revenue.

Sign up for your Free Demo of the #1 Sales Enablement Enablement Platform – SalesHood – today.

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Strategic Account Planning: How to Increase Lifetime Value

Nathan Thompson

Nathan is a revenue-focused marketing leader. By day he manages Demand Gen right here at Copy.ai, by night he enjoys family time in the Rocky Mountains!

Account planning is a critical process for strengthening relationships, driving growth, and increasing customer lifetime value.

However, many companies fail to invest the time required to develop comprehensive account plans. In this post, we'll walk through a tactical framework for researching your accounts, constructing detailed plans, monitoring success, and leveraging AI to scale the process.

Follow this step-by-step account planning guide to set your team up for enduring account success.

What Is Account Planning?

Account Planning, particularly in sales, is a strategic approach to maximize sales effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

This process gives dedicated key account managers a robust strategy to handle, nurture, and cultivate customer accounts, particularly strategic accounts, offering a deeper understanding of the customers' needs and values.

Sales account planning implies creating an organized, in-depth, and customer-focused strategy by sales teams to manage existing customer relationships and potential business opportunities efficiently.

This integrating process strengthens the overall sales process by enabling the company to identify opportunities and challenges within the customer's business structure.

An account planning template is a valuable tool that provides structure to the account planning efforts.

This template helps to consolidate and evaluate critical information about the customers - their industry, competition, key decision-makers, and unique business needs. This systematic documentation enables the sales teams to develop customized and value-driven solutions, thus optimizing the sales account plan.

Sales account planning also employs strategic account management, an approach that specifically targets and manages existing customers of the business.

Under this concept, dedicated key account managers are tasked to ensure these strategic customers are prioritized, and their needs are met effectively.

Account planning tools play a significant role in effective account planning, aiding in the systematic collection, interpretation, and management of valuable customer data.

These digital solutions empower the sales teams to proactively monitor, analyze, and strategize their account planning efforts, leading to better relationship management and increased sales.

Finally, effective account planning isn't a one-time activity but a continuous process of learning, understanding, and executing. Utilizing a strategic account planning template facilitates this process, providing a blueprint for systematically managing customer accounts, identifying cross and up-selling opportunities, mapping competitive threats, and fostering long-term, fruitful relationships with customers.

Why Account Planning Matters

Taking a strategic approach to planning for each of your key accounts has a multitude of benefits:

Increases Customer Lifetime Value

By aligning your actions directly with customer goals and metrics, you ensure you are delivering maximum value. This leads to higher retention rates, share of wallet, and lifetime value from each account.

Some specific ways account planning increases lifetime value include:

• Identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities earlier in the customer journey
• Building loyalty through highly personalized service and support
• Gaining share of wallet by displacing competitors within accounts
• Securing contract renewals and expansions proactively

To quantify the increase in lifetime value, analyze metrics like average order value, purchase frequency, customer tenure, and customer referrals before and after implementing account plans.

Strengthens Customer Relationships

Getting deep visibility into account needs, challenges, and objectives allows you to provide tailored support. This level of personalization strengthens engagement across stakeholder relationships.

Specific relationship-building benefits of account planning include:

• Learning the goals and success metrics valued by each stakeholder
• Understanding past pains and friction points to avoid
• Mapping the decision-making hierarchy and processes
• Identifying which contacts influence initiatives

This intelligence allows you to segment stakeholders based on needs and priorities. You can then develop targeted messaging and value proposals for each segment to boost engagement.

Drives Account Growth Opportunities

Comprehensive planning exposes expansion areas you may have otherwise missed, leading to increased account growth through upsells and cross-sells.

Analyze current solution penetration, upcoming projects, and stated needs to uncover specific upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Quantify the expansion potential by estimating:

• Applicable deal size
• Likelihood to close
• Expected sales cycle length

Build these opportunities directly into the account plan and arm reps with value-based pitches to accelerate growth.

Researching the Account Landscape

Before constructing an account plan, you need to deeply understand the landscape. Key areas to research include:

Gather Background on Company and Industry

Get context on the account's history, financials, organizational structure, business model, products, and overall industry dynamics.

Leverage both internal resources (CRM, past sales materials) and external sources (news sites, company website, financial filings) to build a comprehensive profile covering:

• Founding story and key milestones
• Current leadership team and org structure
• Funding rounds, revenue, profitability
• Market position and share
• Strategic priorities and past initiatives

This background equips you to hold more strategic discussions anchored around their objectives.

Identify Goals and Success Metrics

Uncover the stated and implied goals across departments and roles through conversations and past interactions. This allows you to tie activities back to measurable outcomes.

Common goals to explore include:

• IT: Security, reliability, scalability, cost management
• Marketing: Pipeline growth, brand awareness, lower CAC
• Sales: Win rates, deal sizes, reduced cycle times
• Finance: IRR, margins, cash flow, cost savings

Identify both short-term and long-range objectives across functions to incorporate into planning.

Conduct Competitive Analysis

Analyze positioning and penetration of competitors across the account to expose potential displacement opportunities and win themes. Refer to our GTM AI post for AI-powered competitive intelligence ideas.

Gather intel during meetings and discovery calls on:

• Where competitors are embedded
• The value they currently provide
• Known pain points or gaps

Look for changes like leadership turnover, budget shifts, or growth goals as triggers for competitive displacements.

Map Relationships and Influencers

Visually map out the key contacts and decision makers, highlighting process influencers that can accelerate initiatives.

Identify who controls budget, defines requirements, evaluates options, and gives final approval.

Call out key attributes like tenure, risk tolerance, and past project history to inform messaging and actions.

Creating an Effective Account Plan

With research completed, it's time to construct your plan. Be sure to include:

Historical Overview of Account

Document factors like past deals, expansions, strategic projects, and account communications to preserve institutional knowledge.

Construct a visual timeline of key milestones including:

• Initial deal signed and subsequent renewals
• Follow-on sales with products and pricing
• Leadership changes or restructures
• Major initiatives you partnered on
• Expansions into new departments or geos

This historical view enables you to showcase expertise while identifying patterns and triggers to guide planning.

Outline Goals Aligned to Customer KPIs

Translate your understanding of account objectives into tangible goals tied back to their success metrics.

For each stakeholder, define:

• Applicable metrics they use to track success
• Current performance levels
• Target performance levels
• The impact your solution can drive

This allows you to quantify potential value and demonstrate clear ROI.

Detail Targeted Upsell/Cross-sell Opportunities

Call out specific expansion areas uncovered through your research along with estimated deal size potential.

For each opportunity specify:

• Product/Service being proposed
• Target buyer and decision makers
• Expected deal size or contract value
• Likely budget source
• Proof points and ROI analysis

Prioritize opportunities delivering maximum value backed by solid proof points.

Define Timeline and Tasks for Your Team

Break initiatives down into owner, due date, and status to coordinate cross-functional efforts and track progress.

Across sales, marketing, service and support, detail:

• Specific actions and tasks required
• Person responsible for each
• Target due dates
• Status indicators (not started, in progress, complete)

Add this directly into your CRM workflow or project management tool so progress automatically updates.

Monitoring and Updating the Plan

To keep account plans current, you need to continually review and refine them:

Schedule Regular Plan Reviews

Set calendar invitations for your account team to revisit the plan, covering changing dynamics, blockers, and next steps.

Cadence can be monthly or quarterly depending on account size. Include sales leadership when possible to secure buy-in.

Send prep materials like updated lifetime value metrics ahead of each review to enable productive working sessions.

Realign Based on Changing Account Needs

As new intel emerges from meetings and conversations, evolve the plan to align with shifting objectives.

Watch for triggers like new leadership, completed projects, mergers & acquisitions, or changes in growth that warrant plan realignment.

Update stakeholder profiles if new decision makers emerge. Refresh goals and timelines if priorities shift.

Leverage AI to Automatically Update Plans

AI solutions like Copy.ai Workflows can automatically analyze communications and activity to surface insights for updating account plans. This eliminates manual analysis while keeping plans current.

Configure rules to scan email, calendar invites, and call logs to detect:

• Emerging upsell opportunities
• Friction points needing resolution
• Leadership changes or reorgs

As insights are detected, automated alerts trigger recommended updates to the account plan.

Continually Refine Planning Process

Learn from each planning cycle to develop account intelligence faster and construct even more effective plans over time.

Look back at win/loss performance, sales cycle lengths, and expansion rates to identify what worked well and areas needing refinement.

Build best practices back into the research framework, planning templates, and account analysis tools to maximize performance over time.

Thorough account planning is invaluable for customers and companies alike, leading to enduring partnerships that drive mutual growth. Use this guide to implement a scalable framework tailored to your team and accounts. Consistently planning and evolving that strategy based on changing customer needs is critical to maximizing lifetime value.

To discuss how AI could accelerate your account planning process, schedule a demo of the Copy.ai Workflow platform. Our AI solution can automatically analyze historical account data and communications to surface strategic insights for planning. This eliminates the manual heavy lifting while keeping plans dynamic.

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An in-depth guide to strategic account management.

One buzzphrase swirling around the salesworld is Strategic Account Management or SAM. This is also called Key Account Management. Unlike a lot of trendy words or concepts, SAM is a legitimate, logical strategy. More importantly, it plays a major role in ensuring the long-term viability of your organization.

According to Gartner , 70 percent of CSOs say delivering higher returns from key accounts is a priority. However, current account management channels fall short. In fact, only 28 percent of sales leaders agree these regularly meet cross-selling and account growth targets.

What is Strategic Account Management?

SAM is a methodology that involves identifying important accounts and cultivating mutually beneficial relationships. Unlike sales, which often focuses on the short term, SAM takes a long-range view. Hence, the best strategic account manager is not necessarily your best sales rep. More on that later.

What is a Strategic Account Manager?

As a sales leader, if you have taken the time to identify your most strategic accounts, it’s time to identify who your strategic account manager will be. You may be tempted to place a sales rep in the role of your strategic account manager but that would be a mistake. Your strategic account manager should be more focused on long-term success, rather than an immediate sale. Where a salesperson may have a hunter mentality, the strategic account manager is a nurturer.

The strategic account manager will be a subject matter expert for your company. They will take the time to look for new opportunities (problems that can be solved) and create new solutions for the customer. For example, a client reveals their operation is spread out in a dozen regions, with each region having a department director. The directors are creating individual reports in Excel and your client is lacking real-time access to data or KPI dashboards. This is an instance where the strategic account manager can improve the business processes across the client’s organizations, improving their outcome and increasing value for both parties.

The strategic account manager will help clients solve both specific problems relating to your solution and business problems relating to the client’s operations. In the example above, the specific problem is dealing with data that does not share information across the organization. The business problem is inefficiency, because the client is forced to manually create and share reports costing them time and money every day. In general, salespeople are good at solving specific problems, while strategic account managers have the time and skillset to assess the larger picture and move to solving underlying business problems. This makes their skillset different than the ones salespeople possess. The core competencies you want to look for in a strategic account manager include:

• Account Management Skills
• Organization & Planning Skills
• Problem Solving
• Market Awareness
• Strategic Thinking
• Analytical Skills

As the primary contact with valuable clients, strategic account managers end up working alongside key decision-makers at the client’s organization, supporting them with their business outcomes. Therefore, they should possess a strong aptitude for analysis and problem-solving. Because strategic account managers will need to stay abreast of industry trends, they will need a continuous learning mindset.

Why should we use strategic account management?

Simply, it’s the best way to guarantee long-term profitability for your organization. The 80/20 ratio states 80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers or sellers. While that’s overly simplistic, the underlying concept is valid. Strategically, focusing on key accounts will generate the largest long-term ROI from your resources.

If you think you already focus on your biggest clients, you’re missing the big picture. In many cases, your largest accounts will also be strategic accounts. However, that’s not always the case.

Part of strategic account management is identifying buyers with the greatest potential. After recognizing them, you can develop your relationships, so they grow into larger clients.

How do we determine who should be our strategic accounts?

This is a multistep process. First, set criteria for evaluating current clients. Then, come up with a Strategic Score. You may use whatever term you want for your final quantifiable sum. However, use enough criteria to differentiate between accounts. Just don’t use so many that you risk designating the wrong accounts as strategic.

Some areas to consider:

• Likelihood of continued relationship
• Client’s ability to grow as a company
• Product/service fits to client needs
• Projected revenue potential
• Pre-existing personal relationships
• Client’s current financial health

Notice how many areas involve the client’s current position, state, and potential upside. That’s a good way to see beyond your current largest accounts. Now, you can identify up-and-comers that can grow with your organization. Remember, SAM isn’t just about right now. It’s about the long game and looking further down the road.

Strategic account management works on the philosophy that your best source of new revenues is your current customer base. Identifying which customers to invest in and providing dedicated resources for growth is critical. Strategic account management is less about upselling or cross-selling, and more about partnering and problem-solving. The long-term business benefits of strategic account management are indisputable; you will keep your best customers longer, increase their value over time, and lower your client acquisition costs. Allowing your best customers to manage themselves is not a strategy. Creating a strategic account management plan is the path to predictable revenue and organic growth.

Additionally, make sure you save this process. As you gain clients, input their details into the system. This gives you a sense of whether you should make them a strategic account. Do this as soon as possible after acquiring their business. This way, you can keep a strategic account pipeline operating parallel to the sales pipeline.

Who should be the strategic account managers?

Once you’ve ranked existing clients by strategic account suitability, you can plan your SAM structure. Naturally, your priority should be determining strategic account managers.

Gallup research shows the importance of account managers . They note 40 percent of B2B customers who are very satisfied with their account manager are fully engaged. If they are not very satisfied, this drops to 13 percent. Also, with only 29 percent fully engaged, 71 percent are at risk of leaving for a competitor.

Some organizations promote their top sales reps. Or else they turn a sales manager into an account manager. These are mistakes. The reality is, all three of those roles require distinct skill sets. You might think that sales managers and account managers are interchangeable. After all, both require management skills. But they aren’t the same.

Sales managers manage people. Strategic account managers manage relationships . It’s a subtle but important distinction.

A sales manager coaches their sales reps. They help their team members hit targets (whether KPIs, sales numbers, or both). They then develop reports so sellers can improve.

A strategic account manager cultivates relationships with the stakeholders of their portfolios. They monitor each client. As a client’s needs and objectives change, strategic account managers identify opportunities to expand the relationships. Some of the main skills needed include the following:

• Organization
• Relationship building
• Emotional intelligence

As account growth can be a lengthy process, strategic account managers must be patient. It’s rare that a rapid change in a client’s requirements presents an opportunity. But when it does, be prepared.

Account managers work with many clients. And each has multiple important players. This is not only true for clients, but your organization as well. These days, most buying decisions require a consensus of many diverse stakeholders.

When issues arise, relationship support and maintenance may require experts. Account managers typically coordinate service requests.

Within such a web of personalities, strategic account managers must maintain their composure. A big part of the job description is “managing” their own and other’ emotions.

How many accounts should each strategic account manager have?

There’s no rule for this. It depends on your unique situation. A key account may be a revenue generator, but it needs a lot of high touches and service. You’d then dedicate an account manager to just that account.

Conversely, you might have many moderate revenue accounts that don’t require as much contact. For these, you can assign numerous accounts to one manager. Of course, this requires monitoring. As the number and demands of key accounts change, distribute their maintenance to account managers as needed.

Your initial number of managers depends on the size, complexity, and contact requirements of your strategic accounts. There’s no formula for this. It’s something you’ll need to calculate during the process.

How many contacts/touches per client should strategic account managers strive for?

This depends on the account. Some want or need more frequent contact, whether emails, follow-ups, meetings, check-ins, etc. One way to find out what each account prefers is to ask the client.

Next, determine a cadence for that account and stick to it. Think of your cadence as a promise. It ensures regular contact, check-ins, and support. Failing to honor that promise harms the relationship.

How should account managers expand business with existing accounts?

This is a complex question. And like figuring out your strategic accounts, it’s a multistep process:

Step 1 – Build a thorough customer profile for each account.

• Who are the stakeholders involved in purchasing decisions?
• What are their target markets?
• What are their short- and long-term goals?
• What are the specifics of their industry and offerings?
• Who is their primary competition?

Step 2 – Draft a needs assessment for each account.

• Identify the intersections between current and future problems
• Determine the fitness of your offerings.

Step 3 – Create a contact cadence plan , including:

• Phone calls
• Videoconference

Use a range of contact types, and always tailor the type of contact to the need. Problems may require a more personal touch, such as video or in person. The same may be true of opportunities, like adding service. Also, account growth necessitates more frequent communication and contact.

Step 4 – Write up a Strategic Account Plan Typically, this is a one-to-three-year roadmap. It should show how the relationship will proceed and grow. Include the following:

• Customer profile
• Needs assessment
• Account cadence
• Clear direction for both the account manager and account
• Feedback/adjustments from the account

Sharing this with the client is essential. It ensures uniformity and clear expectations. It also avoids surprises and shows the client this isn’t a one-off transaction. You are invested in the relationship.

This is why selecting the right clients to be strategic accounts is so critical. Some might tick all the boxes. However, they may not yet be interested or able to form strategic relationships.

Step 5 – Track account progress. This should include:

• Update stakeholders/decision-makers

These should assess how relationships are progressing and when to create or execute an opportunity for growth. Account managers should keep tabs on these things.

But it’s also important to consider it from the client’s perspective. Perhaps the timeline for increasing business has changed. Maybe key stakeholders have shifted, or the decision-making process has evolved. There might be other indicators the agreed-upon strategic account plan needs adjusting.

Remember, this is a bilateral arrangement. It is a partnership where organizations and strategic accounts work together for mutual benefit.

Watch Out for These Errors That Can Doom Your Strategic Account Management

We’re revisiting the topic of Strategic Account Management (SAM) today. The last time we visited this subject, we provided you a comprehensive, in-depth guide into what SAM is and some of the best practices to ensure a successful SAM program. In this edition, we’ll be looking at the inverse – the mistakes that will cause your strategic account management efforts to fail.

On the one hand, SAM is about maintaining regular contact and developing relationships with your most important or highest potential accounts. On the other hand, too much contact can make you seem like a bothersome pest. Where the line falls is going to vary from account to account – some will welcome frequent touches and others will only want sporadic check-ins or meetings.

The converse is true as well – you can get caught up with juggling so many accounts that one accidentally falls by the wayside and is needing some love and care. If this is an account that wants more attention, that can potentially put you at risk of losing it to a more active, engaged competitor.

There are a couple things you can do to avoid falling into the too much/too little trap. First, as we mentioned in our previous SAM blog , come up with a strategic account plan that sets the guidelines and timelines for contact at the start of the relationship and get customer approval for that plan. That way, everyone is clear on the expectations and you know when and how you should be communicating with them.

Secondly, take advantage of your various calendar/reminder technology applications (including task reminders within your CRM) to set notices for yourself on when to reach out to each account. When you have a mutually agreed strategic plan, you can sometimes set these notices weeks or even months in advance. Enter the scheduled contact appointments and methods as soon as you know when and what they are. Then you’ll see the reminders as those dates come up and you won’t forget.

The ultimate endgame result of SAM is, of course, to expand the revenue from the account and increase the monetary value of the business relationship. But sometimes – perhaps feeling the pressure of meeting a goal or needing to get a win if in a slump – strategic account managers switch to pushing the sell when it’s not the right time to do so, or, if it is the right time, approach it from an aggressive pitch standpoint rather than the consultative, contemplative strategy that yields the highest win rate and account satisfaction.

A corollary to this is spamming the account(s) with marketing content and collateral . Some marketing content – if it’s relevant to the account’s business situation – is good. Too much and it gives off the stench of selling.

Here’s the thing: As your company’s sales reps can tell you, your accounts know you want to grow the financial relationship with them. But focus on developing the human relationship with them first and let the revenue-generating opportunities arise organically out of the discussions about how the buyer is doing and growing themselves. Let it happen naturally and let your conversations and contacts with your accounts be fruitful, relevant, and relationship-building.

The one constant in life is change. This is particularly true in the business world, as people change employers and roles. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption in many industries, accelerating the rate of change. All of this means that the key influencers and stakeholders who are critical to developing relationships with your accounts might well be different from the ones you began with.

One of the most important duties as a strategic account manager is keeping updated on how the client organization has changed – whether new people in the roles you’re communicating with or a structural reorganization that results in a redistribution of job duties. If you don’t keep tabs on these fluctuations, you might find yourself talking to the wrong people or approaching the new people in the same way as the old.

The problems with the first are quite obvious – if you’re not cultivating relationships with the right influencers and decisionmakers, you won’t have the advocates necessary to successfully expand your business when the time comes. As for the second, remember that everyone has their own individual personality, communication style, and preferred touch cadence. So you might, for example, be used to Jan, who is an expressive communicator who enjoys frequent contacts. If Bob, who is a business-oriented person who prefers only the minimal necessary touches takes on Jan’s old role and you continue with the way you’ve engaged Jan, you run the risk of irritating Bob and damaging the relationship.

As a side note to this – make sure one of your relationships within the organization is someone at the C-Suite level, where there’s final approval/sign-off of decisions. Failure to have at least one crusader in the C-Suite can either slow down the sales process when an opportunity arises or even potentially kill the deal altogether.

The prior point is about ignorance at the human level – where relationships are forged and the groundwork is laid to move forward with expansion opportunities when they arise. But that’s not the only area where ignorance can result in lost opportunities and damaged relations. Being unaware of how a client’s industry, processes, target markets, or any other aspect of an account’s business situation can be equally harmful.

Here, the negative consequences can be missed opportunities, mistimed efforts at asking for more business, and providing information or advice that isn’t applicable to an account’s current reality. At the most extreme, this exposes you to potentially losing the account because you seem inattentive or oblivious. Remember what we said earlier – the one constant in life is change. That applies to situations as much as it does people.

To prevent this from occurring, become an expert in your accounts’ industries and stay current on the changes within them – both on an industry-wide level and on a geographic one – for example, monitoring how regulatory changes in a geographical region might impact a client there, even if those same changes in business environment aren’t occurring in other locations the client operates.

Also, as part of your outreach cadence, make sure to factor in asking about how the organization’s situation has changed – both positively and negatively. This is especially important if your touch rate is low and limited to essential communications only – you won’t have as many opportunities to find out what exactly is going on internally.

One of the most common mistakes made by strategic account managers – particularly those who may have been promoted or transferred from sales – is paying too close attention to short-term goals and scenarios. This can lead to the aforementioned problem of being in selling mode or not being able to distinguish between when to simply further develop the personal relationship and when a genuine expansion opportunity has arisen.

Remember, while strategic account management does involve a sales component, most of your time will be spent building relationships and servicing your accounts. This is a long-term process – one that can sometimes take literal years before an opportunity for growth arises. Patience is more than virtue when you’re an account manager – it’s a necessity. And if this isn’t a personality trait you’ve developed previously, it’s one you’ll need to acquire. This is about the long game. Be flexible enough to respond to the short-term when it’s required, but always keep in mind that you are planting seeds that will bear fruit later.

As a strategic account manager, you’re a rockstar at dealing with numerous accounts and people. You’re well-organized, know who to talk to and how to communicate with them, and are able to cultivate and capitalize on opportunities to grow the business. But you can still fail if your organization hasn’t provided you the support you need to carry out your mission.

The reality is, supporting strategic accounts isn’t a siloed, solo effort if you want to be successful. After all, your expertise is in relationship development. If a customer has an issue or request with your service or product, there’s a strong chance it’s something that you won’t be able to unilaterally fix. You’ll need the help of other departments in your organization. But if the processes aren’t in place for you to be able to quickly touch base, get a response, and just as swiftly follow up with resolving that issue or filling that request, your clients can feel left twisting in the wind due to the delays and lag in answering their needs.

In most organizations, it’s neither realistic nor feasible to expect, for example, dedicated service technicians to report directly to a strategic account manager. The usage rate simply isn’t high enough or frequent enough for that to make sense. But you do need the clear expectations and processes established and understood by everyone in the organization so that when you do need to call on, say, the service technicians, that they’re able to swiftly link up with you and get that key account serviced.

Remember you’ve spent weeks, months, even years cultivating the relationships and been patient. It’s natural by force of habit to switch to transactional thinking when it’s time to negotiate the deal, but keep in mind the bigger picture. This is a key account – the most important thing is extending the customer lifetime value and creating a win-win situation that benefits both parties. Years of work can be thrown away in a single moment of contentious debate.

So while you’re negotiating, remember this isn’t a one-off deal. This is the culmination and payoff of untold amounts of resource investment – one that will continue to be profitable and worthy ROI if you maintain the relationship and the account on the same cordial terms that led you to this moment.

Get Your Custom Sales Account Management Plan Now!

Strategic account management requires upfront planning and an investment in your people but it’s also the optimal way to increase revenue and build long-lasting partnerships. Could your team benefit from a detailed strategic account management plan? At Janek, we have the resources, experience, and expertise to help grow your key accounts organically. Learn more, contact us today .

Editor’s Note:  This article, first published in July 2021, underwent revisions to enhance its coherence. Updated 4/23/24

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A strategic account planning template for your business

January 14, 2021 by MindManager Blog

By: Nicholas Mistretta

It’s always easier to paint by numbers than it is to sit down in front of a blank canvas and create something new, and this approach can be adapted specifically for your account planning needs. What’s to follow in today’s article is a strategic account planning template that you can use to win new key accounts or grow existing ones.

You may recall from previous articles that you must first change your mindset when dealing with your strategic accounts. You’re a partner, not a vendor. A problem solver, not a salesman. And as such, you have to think differently and plan differently.

The strategic account planning template below, including some account planning tools, is meant to help you improve relationships with your key accounts by:

• Understanding your customers’ business goals and identifying opportunities
• Identifying and reducing risk
• Delivering value to your client
• Creating value for your organization
• Increasing revenue

You want to show your strategic accounts that you’re invested in their success, challenges, and goals. But you also want to create a strategy for mutual success, where both sides win. That’s the only way successful partnerships last.

Perhaps it will help to think of your strategic account planning template in simpler terms. It should help you figure out where you are now with a particular client, where you want to be, and how you’re going to get there.

Therefore, your account planning template will be more Rand McNally road atlas than Picasso’s painting of The Old Guitarist. But that doesn’t mean it still can’t be a masterpiece, and that will be determined by how well you fill in the blanks and connect the dots.

Your strategic account planning template for greater success

Will time and effort be required when filling in your template details and all the research and resources that go into it? You bet! Will it be worth it? If done the right way, the potential ROI from a great account planning template has no limits, or as Michael Jordan once famously said, “ The ceiling is the roof .” (That’s OK, we know what he meant.)

1. Your customer’s business overview

Your goal in step one is to gather as much information as you can on your key account’s business so you can better understand their wants and needs. In doing so, you can create that value we mentioned above. And what happens when you create value? You make your organization indispensable.

This should never be thought of as a one-time exercise. Change is always happening whether we see it or not. Goals and objectives change over time. Markets shift and businesses expand. And new technology comes along that turns everything upside down.

Write everything down about your strategic client – from names, main contacts, and year founded, to annual revenue, number of employees, and the date your relationship with them began. Everything that’s relevant, and in the beginning, it may be better to have too much information rather than too little. At least until you get a better sense of what data is necessary.

Take note of all the information you’ll need to help define your customer’s goals and strategies for reaching those goals.

2. Understanding your customer’s key objectives

In this step, you’ll want to ask your customer about their business. And listen strategically while they talk, rather than what most of us do in casual conversations, which is to passively listen and wait our turn to speak.

You want to get a better feel for:

• The challenges they currently have
• How they’ve tried to solve them, what’s working, and what isn’t
• How they measure success and the time frame for measuring
• Their short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals
• Key projects now and in the near future
• Their KPIs – key performance indicators

Keep in mind what your objective is during this step – to figure out what your strategic client values most, and this may sometimes require reading between the lines, which is why being a great listener is so crucial. By better understanding their expectations and goals, you’ll build more customer loyalty, and keep the wolves at bay (i.e., the competition).

Jeff Bezos once famously said, “Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.” There’s that win-win end game we keep harping on.

3. A better understanding of the client landscape

Large corporations are complex machines made up of flawed human beings all trying to get ahead. It’s important that you and your team understand the organizational chart, the important players, and the decision-makers. And this can change based on different product lines, different divisions, and geography.

The point of this exercise is in knowing the right person you should be dealing with. Think Godfather II. Would you go to Fredo Corleone to strike up a deal with the family or Michael?

Find information on what job titles you should be targeting for your products. Use past performance – which titles served you well in the past, allowing you to get your foot in the door or the information you needed to help move forward with that client.

Part of your strategic account planning template includes assessing the client landscape, and to do that, you should get information on the following:

• Your relationship history with the client
• The client’s organizational chart
• A whitespace map – opportunities for added value – upsells, cross-sells
• Project status reports
• Customer value scorecard – client satisfaction, objectives, performance/KPIs
• Net promoter score – percentage of customer rating recommendations likelihood

4. Delivering value across the client’s organization

This step gets to the heart of your client’s products and revenues. Identify where you’re currently adding value, what the ROI is for that value, and if any gaps exist in the value chain.

Specific things you’ll want to examine are:

• Their white space analysis
• Current sales performance
• Current margin performance
• Successes and failures over the last 12 months

Now it’s time to analyze your key account’s top competitors.

5. Analyze the competition

As a partner, the only true way to understand your clients’ needs is to better understand their competition. When dealing with simple accounts, your relationship was very transactional – how much can I sell them today. But with strategic accounts, your partnership must be more strategic.

Part of that challenge is in helping those customers differentiate themselves from their top competitors. For each strategic account who you’re creating an account planning template for, consider the following:

• Your client’s top competition
• The competition’s strengths
• The competition’s weaknesses

6. Identify value-based selling for key decision-makers

When is the last time you sold to a company versus an individual at that company? Understanding human nature will be helpful.

Take the organizational chart you created in a previous step in your account planning template and expand it to include motivations and criteria for each key decision-maker in your key account.

Then use value-based selling points to target those individuals to whom you’ll be selling. Salesmen sell based on an empty slot on a shelf. While trusted partners understand how their selling points match the goals for each decision-maker.

Identify each of the following for the key decision-makers within your strategic accounts:

• Evaluation criteria
• Key decision criteria
• Key selling points

You must understand how the people inside your key accounts make decisions and what criteria they use to do that. Those great listening skills we mentioned earlier will serve you well once again.

7. The customer relationship – goals and strategies

Use the motivations from the above step and the organizational chart from step three to find relationship targets (key players) with the greatest opportunities for engagement. Those that can provide the most productive outcomes for both the customer’s business and your own. Remember, mutual success is the goal; that’s what a true partnership is built upon.

Start by being honest about where your relationship status currently stands. Have you ever watched a movie where a guy proposes to a woman who obviously isn’t interested, while you cringe with embarrassment simply because he misread the relationship? Don’t be that guy.

You’ll want to determine the following:

• Your current relationship status – are you seen as a trusted partner or simply a vendor?
• Who are the core business partners?
• Answer the who, what, where, how, why for all relationship targets
• A progression strategy to strengthen those key relationships

8. Identifying opportunities, targets, and risk

To this point, you’ve gathered and analyzed a lot of data – customer objectives, motivations, and important relationships with key decision-makers. You’ve decided which products or services you can suggest to help your clients reach their goals.

This step is about making a list of relevant goals for your strategic accounts and identifying internal and external blockers. Then it’s time to face the final hurdle – operational restrictions.

You may find certain roadblocks in place for the delivery of products and services. You may find opportunities to automate certain aspects of the client’s business, or specific processes that can have a greater impact on their success.

At this stage, you’ll want to identify:

• Operational restrictions
• Barriers, limitations, and risks
• Cross-sell and upsell opportunities
• Methods to align your customer’s needs with your products or services
• Long-term revenue goals

9. Creating your action plan for success

Much of your strategic account planning template to this point has revolved around gathering data and becoming more familiar with your key accounts and the key decision-makers inside those accounts. So, by now you should know the problems and potential solutions, the steps required to get there, the necessary resources, who should perform each step and by when, and how you can measure accountability.

Identify all the tasks you’ll use to achieve positive results and assign them to the right people. This will include primary tasks, milestones, and sub-tasks if required.

Your action plan should contain the following:

• The customer’s top five objectives
• Critical resources for achieving those objectives
• The assignment of each task

How do you measure success? You quantify with data. Some specific areas you’ll want to assess are:

• How to improve results with fewer resources (cost-conscious)
• How to achieve the same results with fewer resources (cost reduction)
• How to improve quality or user experience (satisfaction)
• How to reduce time or unnecessary steps (efficiency)

10. Strategic account planning review

You should review the entries in your strategic account planning template as often as necessary. As we mentioned earlier, things tend to change and sometimes those changes happen quickly.

Consider using the following schedule for this last step:

• Bi-weekly – check-in by email to get status updates on the account plan
• Monthly – schedule a client call and go over their account plan updates or changes, if objectives have changed, and anything else
• Quarterly – Put together a one-hour progress report that outlines challenges, unexpected events, new opportunities, successes, failures, and decisions for moving forward

Review the process to date, the timeline involved, and the next steps. Ask yourself if you’ve prioritized value opportunities correctly. And ask the client for relevant resources to secure buy-in as you continue working together to achieve their long-term goals.

The emphasis should always be on collaboration and positioning yourself as a beneficial and mutual partner. Your strategic clients will value you much differently and begin to see you as an indispensable member of the team, rather than someone trying to make a quick buck with a quick sale.

Let’s conclude this article on strategic account planning templates with a quote from a gentleman who’s seen a bit of success in his life:

“The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them – preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.”

– Richard Branson

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What is strategic account planning and how does it drive growth?

What is strategic account planning? The question seems simple on the surface, but ask five salespeople, and you’ll get five different answers.

This points to a persistent problem in the sales industry, which is that most sales departments are not managing their strategic accounts optimally, and are leaving a lot of unrealized growth on the table.

I wanted to answer the question here by going straight to an expert, so I spoke with Steve Andersen , Founder and President of Performance Methods, Inc (PMI) board member at SAMA , and co-author of Beyond the Sales Process . Here’s his answer to “what is strategic account planning,” and what you need to know to do it right.

1. What is strategic account planning?

Strategic account planning is the process of developing an approach to grow more revenue from an existing account.

Strategic account planning is most often conducted between a salesperson and a sales manager, reviewing data and discussing how best to get the account to spend more money with their company.

“Our experience is that most of today’s sales leaders started their careers in the ‘hunting’ new business/business development side of sales,” says Andersen. “Many have never served in an authentic account management role. This means that their ‘sales mindset’ going into the deployment of account planning is oriented to driving current revenues rather than future growth.”

This mindset limits the effectiveness of account planning and sets up an adversarial relationship with the customer.

At Membrain, our account growth module is aimed at helping to shift this mindset. We want sales departments to be thinking about strategic account planning in an entirely new way.

“In the old mindset, sales managers find it challenging to embrace the total value of account planning because they tend to see its impact primarily in opportunity management,” says Andersen.

Instead, we and our partners encourage salespeople and their managers to think in terms of account growth. This change in mindset requires looking at each account as a relationship and treating the account growth cycle as a means of seeking growth both for and with the client.

For the client: How do we provide them with more value, so that they can grow and achieve more of their goals?

With the client: As they grow and our value grows, what additional products and services can we bring to them to help them continue to grow?

In this new mindset, strategic account planning becomes about analyzing how to maximize value in both directions.

2. What common mistakes do sales professionals make in account planning?

Andersen says that the mistakes made in strategic account planning don’t stop at the beginning, but continue throughout the process.

“Sales professionals struggle with the ‘tyranny of the urgent,’” he says, “and fail to balance short- and longer-term priorities effectively.”

He also cited these six common mistakes:

• They fail to achieve internal alignment with their cross-functional team members
• They struggle with external alignment with the key customer stakeholders and never effectively align their team with the customer’s team
• They focus too much on the account ‘plan’ (the noun) and not enough on the account ‘planning’ (the verb)
• Their account planning mindset is skewed: they ‘see the customer’ through the lens of their product, rather than through the lens of customer value.
• Their understanding of their customers is not nearly as complete as they think it is and ultimately becomes more about what the customer is doing with them today rather than what will matter most to the customer tomorrow
• They fail to engage the customer in the account planning process with them

Often, these mistakes can be traced to a lack of relevant information and process for approaching the customer with a growth mindset.

3. What do sales professionals need to know to get account planning right?

Effective account planning starts with the proper mindset, and it’s founded on good information.

According to Andersen, in order to get account planning right, salespeople need to have:

• A deep understanding of the customer’s business, including past, present, and future objectives
• Clarity regarding key customer stakeholders: Who they are, and what success looks like to each one
• Clarity regarding their internal stakeholders and account members, and what matters most to each of them
• A true understanding of the account’s history and the organization’s track record with the customer, as well as how the customer really feels about it
• Clearly defined growth goals and strategies that can be articulated and spread across their own organization

I agree with Andersen, and add that you also need to have an actionable, process-based plan that is easy to execute in the field. Without this last part, goals and strategies too often remain locked in heads and spreadsheets rather than becoming reality.

Membrain’s account growth module provides clear visuals that enable salespeople and their leaders to easily see the important information about each account, to build an action plan, and to embed it into each team member’s workflow so that the plan becomes action.

I highly recommend working with a professional to develop a strategic account planning model that is flexible and effective for your team in helping your customers to grow. Andersen’s organization helps customers develop solutions that fit their business, complete with integrated process, opportunity management, and equipping sales leaders and managers for collaborative planning with their key and strategic accounts.

By using best practices inside of Membrain’s account growth module (currently in early access mode), you can make it easy to take the planning you do with your sales development expert of choice and apply it in the field. 

Happy account planning and growth creation!

Curious about other sales tools by Membrain? Try out our Sales Process Builder or Realistic Goal Setting kit .

George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

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Strategic Account Management

Milind katti.

COO & Co-Founder, DemandFarm

What is Strategic Account Management?

Strategic account management for enterprises (also known as  Key Account Management ) is a process of building value-driven  strategic relationships with your key customers  that can help in long-term development and retention, thereby maximizing the revenue potential.

Research Report: Future of Strategic Account Management 

Who is a strategic account manager.

The strategic account manager’s role is to identify those key customers that generate maximum revenue and profitability as compared to other regular accounts. These managers act as a bridge between the company and stakeholders on the customer side. The idea is to increase customer lifecycle value by starting small like with a free trial or test project, adding value, and building trust. this will help your sales manager to come up with powerful sales strategy.

We believe the effectiveness of the strategic account management plan depends upon selecting the  account managers  with key skills and following the  best strategic account management process  discussed below.

KAM Glossary: 65 Crucial Account Management Terms Explained

Strategic account management best practices & strategies.

Here we list down some best practices that an account manager must adhere to through the process of  Strategic Account Planning

1. Know your Strategic Accounts

Identify accounts that contribute a significant amount of revenue to your company, and analyze the loss it would have on your overall revenue if you ever happen to lose the association with the account. If it is really impacting your revenue number and profitability, that account is likely to  qualify as a Key Account . Also quantify the relationship health of your key accounts with an account health score, so that you can focus your energies on growing the right accounts.

Mistakes that organizations often make are by focusing on big companies such as Fortune 500, or a cool new start-up. Working with these companies may boost your credibility and reputation, but unless these accounts are profitable enough, and you have a good relationship with the stakeholders, it would be wrong to classify them as Strategic Accounts.

Download Now:  Strategic Account Management Scorecard Template to Identify Strategic Accounts

2. white space analysis.

As a company, you might have different kinds of offerings and your customers have various buying centers spread across departments, locations, etc. As the next step, the strategic accounts identified in step one should be mapped out with their buying vs your offerings and you should ask these key questions:

1. Where are we engaged today?

2. Where are the opportunities?

3. Where are the white spaces of growth?

4. Whether we should focus on Farming or Mining growth?

3. Know the key stakeholders within your Strategic Accounts

Your Strategic Accounts are at a huge risk if your SAM is the single point of contact and owns all the relationships in the account. What if the SAM leaves, and you’ll be left with no choice. That is why you need to have an account plan, to help you identify the right people and strengthen the relationship where it matters the most.

LinkedIn is a great tool to support this activity. If you are connected to your SAM and your SAM is connected to contacts in the account, you will have visibility into these contacts and the ability to link with them. Or, you can opt for the most viable solution by investing in a  Key Account Management software , that not only provides visibility into your account plan but also helps to manage and grow your strategic accounts with minimum effort and training. Here are some key questions that need to be answered at this stage:

1. What is the hierarchy in your key account organization?

2. Who are your Champions, Promotors, Distractors, and so on?

3. What is the influence people have on each other?

4. Who controls what budget?

4. Know the communication matrix / activity analytics of your Strategic Accounts

Firstly capture all the meetings between the client stakeholders and the account team. It will show you the communication and interaction patterns over the last 12 months. This meeting matrix gives you visibility on when to plan for a communication strategy for the account. Also, it gives you a year-wise verdict on whether you are in super touch or you need to work more on the volume of meetings. It’s an extremely important exercise to improve your communication strategy to maximize ROI.

5. Know your competition

It’s important to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Also, get the analysis of Customer Spend vs Wallet share. Based on the analysis you can better decide your action plan for your strategic account management.

Benefits Of Strategic Account Management

Improved customer retention.

One of the essential component of strategic account management is improved customer retention. By actively managing and nurturing key accounts, you’re more likely to keep them long-term. This approach emphasizes building strong relationships and understanding current level customers’ needs and goals, fostering trust and loyalty, which reduces the likelihood of them switching to competitors.

Additionally, by identifying potential issues early, you can address them before they escalate. This proactive strategy helps prevent your valuable customer dissatisfaction and ultimately boosts retention rates.

Increased Revenue Opportunities

A significant benefit of strategic account management is the potential for increased revenue opportunities. By actively managing key accounts and understanding their needs, you can uncover chances for cross-selling or upselling.

This boosts revenue from existing customers and strengthens relationships by providing valuable solutions tailored to their needs. Additionally, leveraging strong relationships with these customers may help secure new business through referrals or recommendations within their networks.

Cost Savings

Implementing a strategic account management program can lead to cost savings for your business. By focusing on building strong relationships with key customers, you reduce the risk of losing them due to poor service or dissatisfaction.

This helps you avoid the expenses of acquiring new customers, like marketing and sales costs. Retaining existing customers is generally cheaper than gaining new ones. Additionally, by proactively addressing potential issues, you can prevent costly problems from arising, saving your business time and money in the long run.

Competitive Advantage

Effective strategic account management provides a competitive edge in the marketplace. By understanding your key customers’ needs and goals, you can offer tailored solutions that meet their specific requirements, setting your business apart from competitors with generic offerings.

Additionally, building strong relationships and delivering exceptional customer service helps differentiate your business and create unique value. This advantage can help you stand out in a crowded market and attract new customers.

Key Elements of Successful SAM

Strategic Account Development Plan

One of the most important aspects of Strategic Account Management and leadership is to always look for new opportunities to help grow your client’s business.  Insight selling  for Strategic Account Management first requires you to leverage the relationships you have already built to understand the problems your client might be facing. You can then cross-sell or up-sell with your skills, or develop a completely new product that caters to your client’s needs.

No doubt, it is difficult to stick to the Strategic Account Management best practices, considering the complexities of these accounts. There are several initiatives in terms of processes, and technologies available to assist you, but not everything is as successful as having a Key Account Management software. Investing in  KAM  software will help your  Strategic Account Managers  save time by reducing repetitive tasks, and focus on generating consistent, and stable revenue that will help in long-term growth and success for your company.

Challenges of Enterprise Account Management

Once the managers start practicing the account plans, they realize the real-world problems or rather, challenges that they must conquer for  sales effectiveness  in strategic account management.

Let’s take a good look at the 7 Big  strategic account planning challenges  faced while creating.

Where did we get this top-secret information? Straight from the managers themselves and their organizations, of course!

• The eternal tug-of-war between short-term and long-term
• Having access to an effective strategic planning tool
• Having a good relationship with all key customers (other than that one key customer) within each Strategic Account
• Interacting with enterprise-level organizations and key buyers at the top level
• The actual implementation of the Strategic Account Plans
• Formulating a fair and comprehensive compensation policy for Strategic Account Managers
• Training and skills in strategic account management

Key Skills Required to be a successful Strategic Key Account Manager in 2024

1. leadership skills:.

A strategic account manager is a bridge between the sales team, a team of account managers, and the customer team. He has to lead from the front, take risks and create a win-win for both sides for  effective account management . A leader is required to set the right vision for the team and design the strategic plan for customer success. An account manager has to be a good listener, able to understand the needs and desires of the people across the team.

2. Communication Skills:

There are so many moving parts and people involved in a strategic account, that its success is impossible without clear communication. Maintaining transparency within the business ecosystem and coordinating with C-suite executives requires excellent communication skills. SAMs can use  org chart software  to determine the hierarchy of the account and communicate accordingly with different levels.

3. Long Term Strategy Skills:

It’s important for strategic account managers to subordinate a desire for a quick win for long term success. With SaaS technology companies on the rise the strategy of  land and expand  is on the rise. The idea is to start small like a free trial, have a foot in the door with the key accounts, and expand your network within the account across departments.

4. Technical Skills:

It’s critical to know about your product and services before you take up the position of strategic account management. It’s important to add value at the right time and the right place to win big deals. You can only value when you are technically equipped with skills pertaining to your offerings.

5. Analytical Skill s:

An account manager specializing in key accounts is required to work on various activities like  white space analysis  that is to understand the relationship health of the key accounts and avoid any setbacks. An analysis is required at every step to take key decisions for real B2B customer success.

Strategic Enterprise Account Managers vs Traditional Account Managers:

Most sales organizations have existing account managers who have skills and are either been trained or are naturally talented in the art of  Strategic Account Management platforms . However, there are some big differences between the principles of a Strategic Account Manager and a traditional account manager in many organizations.

Strategic Account Manager plays a key role in a company using SAM processes and techniques. They are the contact people for the Strategic Accounts and are responsible for developing and maintaining a long-term relationships with the key customer.

That is the reason, why managing Strategic Accounts is not every account manager’s cup of tea. An organization is supposed to have a clear-cut understanding of how it wants to manage its strategic accounts, in order to yield the best results.

Strategic Enterprise Account Managers focus on building deep, lasting beneficial relationships with key clients to drive long-term value, while Traditional Account Managers typically handle a wider range of accounts with a focus on meeting sales targets. Each role plays a crucial part in an organization’s overall sales strategy.

Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) Certification

The Strategic Account Management Association  (SAMA) exposes companies around the globe to tools, methods and processes that enable them to forge closer relationships with their most strategic customers and co-create new sources of sustainable, customer-driven growth. SAMA’s Certified Strategic Account Manager (CSAM) certification is the gold standard of account management. It is recognized and demanded by organizations worldwide.

Ready to discuss your Account Management Needs?

Talk to our product expert, about the author.

Milind is the COO & Co-Founder of DemandFarm. He co-founded DemandFarm to build smart software technology to bring Account Planning and Relationship Intelligence into your CRM, making Key Account Management data-driven, predictable and scalable.Milind has close to 25 years of experience in sales & marketing. He is an Electronics & Communication Engineer with MBA in Marketing. He enjoys long-distance running, loves reading history, and above all else, he is a humanist.

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Strategic Account Planning

What do you think of this template.

Product details

Arguably one of the most underrated elements of enterprise sales is account planning. It takes time, energy, and focus away from other mid-funnel opportunities that require significant resource investment. However, even though strategic account planning sessions are viewed by the sales organization as helpful and important, they simply do not happen often enough. Strategic account planning is all about developing new ideas on how to grow your account in terms of customer satisfaction, loyalty, revenue, and margin. The goal is to create a plan that will help the account team successfully implement the shared accounts strategy. Strategic planning allows you to build long-term client relationships. A customer will buy your product not only because of its physical properties, but also because of your attitude to the customer, and the services you provide with that product. Strategic Account Planning provides you with all the tools you need for strategic planning. This template will be useful for sales and planning professionals, team leaders, startups.

The Strategic Account Planning template is made up of great and varied infographics. The template is made in accordance with the trends in modern design. The first slide has a great infographic on the right side of the slide. This symbolizes success and immediately sets the audience up for a positive perception of your report. On the left side of the slide, you can display the four key stages of Strategic Account Planning – potential revenue, area of ​​dominance, primary competition, opportunity areas. The second slide gives you the opportunity to divide your proposals into two categories and describe them on the left side of the slide. For example, you might categorize your cost-cutting proposals in the first category, and your sales promotion activities in the second category. The slide will be useful for economists and specialists of the planning department of the company. The next slide, thanks to the stylish layout of the infographics, creates the illusion of a staircase that leads up – to success. This is where you describe your suggestions for achieving profit growth. The slide can be used by HR managers when presenting career opportunities in the company or when preparing the success story of the best employee. Coaches can also use the slide in their success training. The fourth slide of the template is a timeline with activities built on it. The slide can be used when preparing startups, investment projects, or projects with sequential execution of tasks.

Strategic Account Planning is a modern and professional template. Having a lot of infographics will allow you to create new slides for your presentation. You can change the sizes and colors of infographics and fonts yourself. You can use ready-made slides or some individual elements to give a modern look to your old presentations. By using the Strategic Account Planning template to build your report, your audience will immediately appreciate your work as a professional.

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Strategic Planning Steps: A Process to Be More Effective

Systematically examine past wins and losses to uncover underlying patterns that help or hinder your team.

By Ana Guerra  | August 09, 2024

Drive better performance for your function’s next strategic plan

Corporate strategy leaders, who create enterprisewide strategic plans for the organization’s CEO, make a habit of examining what did and didn’t work in the last strategic plan to inform the next iteration. Functional leaders across the business can take a cue from strategists to map the initiatives and investments required to achieve their long‑⁠term strategic objectives.

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Strategic planning steps: Look back to build forward momentum

Take the following four actions — and use the corresponding templates — to uncover underlying patterns and react to them as you build your function’s next strategic plan .

Unearth evidence of missed expectations, flawed assumptions or poor execution of previous strategic plans

Ask three types of questions:

1. Business performance

Sample question : How did the business unit perform against the goals and objectives established in the last strategic plan?

2. Reasons for not meeting the target

Sample question : What internal and/or external factors prevented you from achieving business goals?

3. Tactics to overcome challenges

Sample question : What tactics did you use to identify and mitigate risks?

List out what worked and what didn’t

Dissect the assumptions underlying the last strategic plan. Categorize them according to whether the results validated the approach:

Undetermined

Undertake a root cause analysis to understand the result of each initiative

Focus not just on failures but also why some projects overperformed. Distinguish between outcomes owing to factors within your team’s control and beyond it.

Compile your learnings into an overview document

Use the template below as a reference for this year’s strategic planning.

Editor Note:

For the FAQ section, please ensure that the Article Text component marked "LAST FAQ ITEM" remains at the end of the list, and if more than 4 components are required please copy/paste from the other above components and keep them above the last item to keep the correct spacing.

Please also take care not to delete the grey line below the copy in each Article Text while you are editing in your content, only the one marked "LAST FAQ ITEM" should remain without the grey line.

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More From Forbes

How to protect assets like a millionaire.

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Blake Harris is an Asset Protection Attorney and Founding Principle of Blake Harris Law .

As assets face increasing threats such as fraud, litigation, market crashes and cyberattacks, proactively protecting your wealth becomes crucial.

In the U.S., many families face wealth destruction due to frivolous lawsuits. Amid these challenges, risk mitigation is often overlooked in achieving financial independence.

This article explores the risks different asset types present along with strategic approaches millionaires use to safeguard their assets and achieve financial independence.

Asset Types And Risks

Real estate.

Real estate assets include properties such as homes and commercial spaces, as well as land. For many homeowners, their home represents their single most valuable asset, so it is worth managing homeownership risks.

Main Risks: Legal/domestic disputes, property value fluctuations and economic downturns.

Protections: Comprehensive property insurance, expert counsel for transactions and utilizing legal structures such as offshore trusts.

Bank And Taxable Investment Accounts

As the most liquid assets, bank accounts and taxable investment portfolios are often targeted and require robust protection.

Main Risks: Fraud and litigation exposure.

Protections: Strong cybersecurity measures, regular account monitoring and asset protection.

Retirement Accounts

Accounts earmarked for retirement savings, such as 401(k) plans or IRAs, enjoy some legal ownership protection, but nonetheless have risks.

Main Risks: Legislative changes impacting tax benefits and lack of beneficiary information.

Protections: Regular reviews of accounts and staying informed on tax laws.

Tradable Securities

Generally held within either retirement or taxable accounts, stocks, bonds and other market-traded financial instruments are inherently risky, but those risks can easily be managed.

Main Risks: Market volatility, concentration risks and securities fraud.

Protections: Diversification, market education and risk-aware trading strategies (such as utilizing limit orders).

Business Interests

Ownership in entrepreneurial ventures can create complex legal compliance and valuation risks.

Main Risks: Business-related legal issues, economic downturns impacting profits and liquidity risks.

Protections: Legal counsel, legal agreements, comprehensive insurance, risk management strategies and diversification of business interests.

Personal Property And Valuables

Since we maintain physical possession of these valuable items, the risks associated with possessions such as jewelry and collectibles are often underestimated.

Main Risks: Theft, damage and depreciation.

Protections: High-value item insurance, secure storage and periodic appraisals.

After reviewing the risks related to your assets, it should become clear that ensuring the security of your wealth demands a carefully crafted and proactive strategy. Here's a guide on adopting the strategies millionaires use, encompassing strategic planning, diversification and adaptability.

Strategic Asset Protection Approaches

Strategic planning.

Millionaires don't leave things to chance. They plan meticulously. According to a 2023 survey of 580 Americans by Ameriprise, 80% of respondents possessing a minimum of a million dollars in investable assets identified financial planning as a key factor in their wealth accumulation. When creating a comprehensive plan to protect your wealth, consider the following topics:

Liquidity: Maintaining liquidity in an emergency fund helps alleviate various risks. Per Vanguard , the average millionaire household typically holds a little over 10% of their investable assets in cash. If you haven't established an emergency fund yet, it is crucial to start building one to safeguard against economic uncertainties. A financial buffer can effectively minimize the impact of abrupt market downturns or unforeseen expenses, offering a safety net for your assets.

Insurance Coverage: Do not overlook the importance of proper insurance coverage for all significant assets. Life insurance, for example, is linked to enhanced financial security, as 78% of individuals holding both employer-based and individual life insurance policies report a sense of financial security . Whether it's property insurance for real estate, liability coverage for business interests or life insurance for financial dependents, adequate coverage serves as a protective shield against unforeseen circumstances.

Offshore Trusts: Protecting personal and business assets through trusts is a strategy to shield wealth from legal challenges. Offshore trusts can provide an additional layer of protection by diversifying legal jurisdictions, making it more challenging for potential litigants to access your assets.

Estate Planning: Creating a comprehensive estate plan can help protect assets for the next generation. Estate planning involves creating wills, trusts and power of attorney documents to ensure an orderly transition of assets in line with desired wishes, minimizing the potential for legal disputes.

Diversification

Millionaires diversify their assets by distributing them among various classes such as stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. In my experience, I've found that many also diversify assets across different jurisdictions such as the U.S., Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

This approach minimizes the risks associated with economic fluctuations and regulatory changes. Generally, affluent households allocate approximately 65% of their investable assets (excluding real estate) to stocks and 25% to bonds.

Spreading investments across diverse asset classes and geographical locations can reduce portfolio risk while simultaneously preserving or enhancing the potential for positive returns.

Adaptability

In my experience, millionaires take a proactive approach to modifying their plans in response to evolving legal and economic conditions. They recognize that refining and adapting plans to current circumstances entails acknowledging their limitations and actively seeking new perspectives or skills. In a 2023 survey by Northwestern Mutual , almost half of the millionaire respondents identified an opportunity to improve their financial plans. Achieving financial success often involves seeking professional advice and engaging in continuous learning.

Professional Advice: Always seek competent financial and legal advice when it comes to the transfer, ownership and taxation of assets. Building a team of experts can provide valuable insights and ensure that your strategies align with the latest regulations and market conditions.

Continuous Learning: Cultivate a mindset of ongoing learning about financial trends and investment opportunities. Staying informed allows you to adapt to changing economic landscapes, enabling you to make reliable decisions that protect and enhance your wealth.

By incorporating strategic planning, diversification and adaptability principles into your asset protection strategy, you can strengthen your financial position and facilitate the uninterrupted growth of your assets.

The information provided here is not investment, tax, legal or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.

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Enterprise Sales Associate

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What you can expect

The Upmarket Inside Sales Rep, supporting our Enterprise and Majors organization, will generate, manage and close business sales within our Upmarket Greenfield/Acquisition account base. This will be achieved through strategic account planning, utilizing business development techniques, partnering with cross functional teams and executing sales capabilities. Top Upmarket Inside Sales Reps showcase the ability to focus on understanding a prospect organization’s initiatives, challenges, pain points and how Zoom solutions provide outcomes that align to those business initiatives.

About the Team

This individual will be covering the New York Territory.

Responsibilities

Lead your own sales opportunities.

Run sales from start to finish where the average sales cycle is 1-2 months

Build business relationships to increase customer adoption and expansion

Work with a cross-functional team to achieve success, including business development representatives, product specialists, solution architects and field leadership

Travel occasionally for training and/or meetings may be required

A demonstrable track record of success within inside sales (prospecting, upselling, managing existing customers, closing new business) and/or outside sales

Experience driving complete sales cycles in highly complex accounts 

Experience in Business to Business sales (B2B)

What are we looking for

• 2 years experience in SaaS/Technology customer-facing sales.

Solid time management skills and organization

Strong relationship-building skills when working with customers, prospects and internal colleagues

A growth mindset, self-starter and a self-learner

A thorough understanding of the sales process and ability to progress and quarterback complex sales cycles

Communication and presentation skills

Ability to adapt to a rapid & constantly changing environment

The drive to contribute, grow and make an impact on a rapidly growing department and company

Salary Range or On Target Earnings:

In addition to the base salary and/or OTE listed Zoom has a Total Direct Compensation philosophy that takes into consideration; base salary, bonus and equity value.

Note: Starting pay will be based on a number of factors and commensurate with qualifications & experience.

We also have a location based compensation structure;  there may be a different range for candidates in this and other locations

At Zoom, we offer a window of at least 5 days for you to apply because we believe in giving you every opportunity. Below is the potential closing date, just in case you want to mark it on your calendar. We look forward to receiving your application!

Anticipated Position Close Date:

Ways of Working Our structured hybrid approach is centered around our offices and remote work environments. The work style of each role, Hybrid, Remote, or In-Person is indicated in the job description/posting.

Benefits As part of our award-winning workplace culture and commitment to delivering happiness, our benefits program offers a variety of perks, benefits, and options to help employees maintain their physical, mental, emotional, and financial health; support work-life balance; and contribute to their community in meaningful ways. Click Learn for more information.

About Us Zoomies help people stay connected so they can get more done together. We set out to build the best collaboration platform for the enterprise, and today help people communicate better with products like Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Phone, Zoom Events, Zoom Apps, Zoom Rooms, and Zoom Webinars. We’re problem-solvers, working at a fast pace to design solutions with our customers and users in mind. Here, you’ll work across teams to deliver impactful projects that are changing the way people communicate and enjoy opportunities to advance your career in a diverse, inclusive environment.

Our Commitment​ We believe that the unique contributions of all Zoomies is the driver of our success. To make sure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone's perspectives and experience we never discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. Zoom is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

We welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives including qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records and any qualified applicants requiring reasonable accommodations in accordance with the law. If you need assistance navigating the interview process due to a medical disability, please submit an Accommodations Request Form and someone from our team will reach out soon. This form is solely for applicants who require an accommodation due to a qualifying medical disability. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed.

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