5 Steps to a Successful Key Account Management Process

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Leadership. Sales leaders provide clear direction for which accounts to target and how many the team should aim to close. This leadership also sets the tone for the overall KAM strategy, from how often the team should touch base with key accounts to how these accounts are targeted and measured.
Organization. Who will research and find key accounts? What will the process look like to target and close them? Organization is the bread and butter of any KAM process. A sales team will have clearly defined roles and ideally carve out individual relationships with important customers to build trust.
Technology. Your tech stack will become the command center of your KAM strategy. The CRM, analytics tools, and communication platforms you equip your team with will make a huge difference in how they nurture key accounts.
Learning. This is arguably the most important pillar of Dr Stankosky's theory—is your team willing to learn and change up its strategy? Your key accounts won't be static. Customer needs and goals will change over time. This requires your team to listen, learn, and change up their approach to suit individual accounts.
Any KAM strategy worth its salt will use these pillars as armenia telegram data a solid foundation. But you should also use your secret sauce—customer data—to create a competitive advantage. Let's take a look at what that means

Throwing money and effort at a high-paying customer might work in the short term, but it’s not the same as developing a successful sales strategy around key accounts. Let’s dive into the ways you can build better customer retention and loyalty with your most valuable customers.

1. Identify Key Accounts and Potential for Growth
A huge mistake salespeople make is to assume key accounts = highest revenue.

Wrong

A report by Gartner found sales organizations that pick key accounts based on current spending and size don't improve the chances of the account spending more in the future. In fact, they found that prioritizing current customer spend as a key account selection criterion actually reduced the likelihood of increased spend.

On the flip side, if key accounts are chosen based on their predicted future spending along with their openness to working together, we see an average spending increase of around 8 percent.