|
"I have a plan", you say, "I have it right here in my
head." It is this scenario that brings to mind the old wisdom: "If you
can't write it down, you can't claim to understand it." Account planning
and account plans need to be dealt with in a very formal and structured way.
Here are the critical
success factors for an effective account plan.
EXECUTIVE SPONSORSHIP - The strategic
account planning process will only be successful if it has solid sponsorship
from senior sales management. It is far too easy for sales teams and first line
management to get caught up in the day-to-day chaos of selling and, as a result,
neglect the strategic plan. Executive sponsorship means issuing an
"iron-clad" mandate for the planning program, implementing MBO
measurements for all levels of sales management and insisting on regular, formal
reviews of key account plans. Senior sales management must audit the execution
of key account plans periodically so that all parties are clear that this is a
serious undertaking.
CUSTOMER INVOLVEMENT - Many sales
people are reluctant to include their customer in the planning process. The
benefits of doing so, however, are huge! Customer involvement takes two forms.
First, we ask a customer executive to spend a couple of hours addressing the
planning group. We ask the customer to give a high-level business overview,
top-down organization chart, business goals, upcoming projects, budget
information and a discussion of what's working and not working in the business
relationship. Customer executives are more than willing to participate in your
planning process because they recognize that the better you understand their
business, the better job you can do of bringing solutions to them.
The second form of customer involvement is to present the
account plan to your customer executive(s). This is also a scary thought for
some. We've found, however, that customer executives are most interested in
understanding your plan and quite willing to provide reasoned feedback on its
viability. Actually, the best thing that can happen to you is for your customer
to change your plan - which creates a level of ownership by the customer.
INTEGRATION OF SALES TRAINING - The
account planning process should reinforce whatever sales training curriculum
your firm uses. The account planning facilitator should be able to use the
language of your sales training process, employ its models and support its
selling concepts. A consistent sales training curriculum, coupled with strategic
account planning, has the greatest potential for influencing the kind of selling
behavior your firms needs.
FULL PREPARATION BY ALL PARTICIPANTS
- I believe that we should strive to develop the account plan in the minimum
amount of time possible. The key to making the planning process as efficient as
possible is advance preparation by the participants. The nature of preparation
will vary with the focus of the planning session, but in general we ask each
participant to prepare a list of the known and potential opportunities in the
account, along with a list of her top ten problems or barriers to success. With
this advance preparation in hand, the discovery phase of planning goes very
quickly, reserving the majority of time for the critical phase of action
planning.
ACTION PLANS - with agreement by all
parties to execute. The essence of account planning is the development of action
plans. Here is where we make specific decisions about what we are going to do,
who will be responsible and in what time frame. Most planning processes fail
because they never get to the phase of action planning. The action plan contains
strategy and milestone-level tactics for each key objective or initiative. The
tactics must be eminently measurable and will be assigned to one individual for
project management
COMPLETE, CONCISE DOCUMENTATION - I
am not a believer in voluminous documentation. The account plan should be easily
housed in a one-inch binder. I recommend setting up a binder for each account
that contains three tabs:
I. Account Overview:
Annual report, key executive backgrounders, organization charts, etc.
II. The Account Plan:
This is the documentation from the planning session
III. Contracts:
This section contains copies or summaries of all contracts in force.
A FORMAL REVIEW
PROCESS - The key to making account planning work in the long run is a
formal review process. The process should include these steps:
Acceptance Review:
This is a presentation of the account plan to senior sales management. Its
purpose is to gain management's support for the plan and, specifically, their
agreement to provide the resources needed to execute the plan.
Customer Review:
I strongly recommend presenting your account plan to your customer executives.
Some of the greatest successes we've experienced with account planning have
resulted from presenting the account plan to the customer
"unvarnished".
Account Team Reviews:
Periodically, every 45 to 60 days, the full account team needs to conduct a
formal review of progress against the action plans. A major reason for these
reviews is to reinforce accountability. In the absence of regular sales team
reviews, the account plan is likely to remain in someone's credenza gathering
dust.
|
