Best Practice # 7: Creates strategic plans for key accounts.
By Dave Kahle
The job of the salesperson is always a bit of a balancing act. On one hand, we continually cruise our territory to see what opportunities look the most promising. We’re constantly scanning the account base to identify that to which we should react. On the other hand, we also need to be proactive, determining which accounts hold the most long-term potential, and strategizing our approaches to those accounts.
It’s the second part of that equation that is the subject of this piece. The best salespeople regularly (annually, quarterly and monthly) think deeply about their highest potential accounts, and create a step-by-step plan for methodically penetrating them. That’s the definition of a strategic plan.
Note that the practice assumes some prior work: The salesperson has methodically identified the highest potential accounts. That’s a special process all by itself. In order to do that, he/she has collected meaningful information, analyzed it, and applied some thoughtful criteria to it in order to bubble up to the surface those accounts which offer the highest potential.
Those top 5 to 20 percent have so much potential that they warrant special attention. And that special attention means a well crafted, constantly reviewed strategic plan.
Typically, these plans involve:
- A clear understanding of the opportunities within the account.
- A specific plan for expanding and broadening relationships with key people within the account.
- A set of short term, as well as long term, objectives for penetration of the account.
- A specific, step-by-step sequence of actions to follow in order achieve those objectives.
- Benchmark measurements to which to compare your results.
- A written commitment.
The best salespeople spend time annually reviewing and refining their list of key accounts. They then spend time either quarterly or monthly defining, in writing, their strategic plans for those accounts. The resulting document helps them to effectively focus their investment of sales time in those actions which will get the best results.
It’s a matter of “thinking about it before you do it,†one of my ten secrets of time management for salespeople. And that means devoting the necessary time to the task, acquiring the important disciplines, and asking the right questions.
Alas, so few salespeople do that. That, of course, is why this is one of the best practices of the best salespeople.
To learn more about this practice,
- Buy the 10 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople book and tool kit. Review Chapter 2.
- Review Chapter 15 of How to Excel at Distributor Sales.
- Review Chapter 4 of Take Your Performance Up a Notch
*Read the free article “Strategic Planning for Salespeople” on the
www.davekahle.com website.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 9:41 am and is filed under Best Practices for Salespeople, Business to business sales, Sales Strategies & Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 24th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
I wonder how you’d rate using sales triggers as a way to penetrate new accounts. A number of companies I know rely on such triggers as management change, M&A, etc. as their entry attempts into new accounts. Do you have suggestions on how to best integrate this concept with tactics you mention? Further, do you know of companies that offer sales trigger alert services (there is inside view – but they are not accurate; and http://www.ctosonthemove.com – but they are only IT execs-focused)? Thank you for your input. JS
March 30th, 2010 at 12:49 am
I like the part about the strategic plan. Such strategies are required in today’s business world. For building new strategies, one needs to master new challenges. The IMD OWP 2010 addresses these challenges.