I need a pipeline in my key account built on real customer problems.

I need a pipeline in my key account built on real customer problems.

A pipeline full of hopeful deals tells you little about where the account is headed. When every deal ties to a problem the client wants solved, the client helps move it forward.

Five questions to see if your team can do this job today:

1. Does your team have a written standard for what counts as a qualified deal?
2. Is every deal linked to a client objective, written from the client's point of view?
3. Does every deal include the metrics the client will use to measure the outcome?
4. Does your team remove deals that no longer meet the standard?
5. Does your team know how many deals it needs in the pipeline to keep the account growing?

Two or more no's, and your pipeline may be full of deals the client doesn't care about.

Several years ago, I took over a key account team. On my first day, I reviewed their pipeline management system, expecting to see at least 17 deals, one per rep. I found zero deals total.

We didn't have a customer order problem. Our problem was that we didn't have any deals linked to solving our customers' business problems.

We spent seven weeks training the team on how to create deals that reflected the customer's business problems and how to identify, qualify, and track them. The new standard was this: a deal enters the pipeline when it's linked to a customer's stated objective, written from the customer's point of view, and includes the metrics for measuring the customer's business outcomes. No customer objective or customer success metrics, no deal.

Within 90 days, that same 17-person team had uncovered 80 new opportunities. They were real customer problems that had been sitting in plain sight inside accounts the team already managed. The total new pipeline was north of $20M. Our close rate was 30%, and that produced roughly $6M in new revenue.

Stale deals disappeared, because if the customer stopped caring, the deal wasn't real.

We didn't hire anyone. We didn't change the accounts. We didn't bring in a new tool. We changed the system.

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.

How many deals in your key account pipeline tie to a goal the client has stated out loud?

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.