I need my key account to keep growing whether I'm in the seat or not.

I need my key account to keep growing whether I'm in the seat or not.

Key account leaders move up, move on or move over. When the account's growth depends on one person's memory, the company carries that risk every day. Accounts that keep growing for decades tend to run on a system the whole team can see and run.

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

1. Does your team treat each contract as one step in a long-term plan for the account?
2. Does your team have a repeatable way to expand and protect your key account that anyone on the team can run?
3. Can your team see the whole partnership, including where growth and risk sit today?
4. Does everyone on the account know what needs to happen next quarter?
5. Would your team keep executing the plan if you were out for a month?

Two or more no's, and your key account's growth may depend on one person.

Getting a contract signed with an industry leader for $30M was a major milestone in my sales career. The customer was one of the largest targets in the life sciences industry. They agreed to a three-year deal valued at over $30M in total revenue.

That contract would eventually be extended five times. In the 16 years since we signed the first one, the total value has reached well over $500M.

That happened because I was not treating this account as a one-time sales event. I had a repeatable system to win the account, expand the relationship, protect the business, and keep creating value long after the initial contract was signed.

So, we distilled that work into a system everyone can use. It was built from the same approach we used to create long-term growth inside complex accounts: understand the entire partnership, identify where growth and risk exist, know what needs to happen next, and keep the team executing regardless of who is managing the account.

A contract is 1% of the relationship. The other 99% is the system you run to keep creating value after the deal is signed.

Our system, the Vitality Index, gives your key account teams the strategy and the plan, and shows them what to execute across 21 growth drivers, including sales process, account team collaboration and account intel. It shows where they stand today, the work it takes to level up, and how to do it, until they reach a vital partnership that lasts.

If you moved up tomorrow, what would keep your key account growing?

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.