LinkedIn Posts
Has anyone who controls my key account's budget seen our results this year?
Budget decisions are often made by people who never read your reports.
Has anyone who controls my key account's budget seen our results this year?
Budget decisions are often made by people who never read your reports. A business review built around the customer's goals, with their decision-makers in the room, puts your results in front of the people who set next year's spend.
Five questions to see if your team can do this job today:
- Does your team run business reviews on the cadence and format the customer asked for?
- Does your KAM review the data with your champion before each review?
- Have decision-makers from both sides attended a review in the last 12 months?
- Does each review end with a 90-day action plan?
- Is each review built around the customer's business objectives and priorities?
Two or more no's, and your results may not be reaching the people who set the budget.
The leader who taught me how to run client-centric business reviews once asked me to take on two of our largest customers and start by running a business review to transition the accounts. The reviews before mine had been data dumps about us, and attendance was poor. We rebuilt them around the customer's business objectives: a few conversational questions, the priorities the client told us mattered, and a forward-looking discussion of opportunities for both sides. The first review drew no key leaders from either side. By the third, customer executives were in the room, including our champions' bosses. Revenue from both accounts doubled within 12 months. The business review was the catalyst.
The right people showed up once the reviews were about their goals. Your team can build its next review around the customer's priorities and invite the leaders who decide the budget.
Our system, the Vitality Index, shows your key account teams where they stand today, the work it takes to level up, and how to do it, until they reach a vital partnership that lasts.
Who attended your last business review with your largest customer?
We built a free, 4-minute Key Account Risk Assessment. It gives you a risk score for your key accounts across team alignment, account planning, account transitions, and visibility. Link in the comments.
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The same frameworks that power this post power Vitality Index - the platform strategic account teams use to measure, plan, and grow their most vital partnerships.