I need to grow my key account beyond the one department where we're strong.

I need to grow my key account beyond the one department where we're strong.

Growth inside a key account often stalls when the team stops expanding and the group it serves slows down. The next opportunity sits in the units, locations and service lines your team hasn't met yet.

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

1. Can your team list what it doesn't know about your key account?
2. Has your team mapped the divisions, service lines, regions, locations and people you haven't met yet?
3. Are those areas ranked by size, location and your capacity to serve them?
4. Does your team have a plan to gather account intel, with each meeting tied to the growth strategy?
5. Does your team track what it learns and update the plan as it goes?

Two or more no's, and your account may stay as big as the one department you know.

My national account director traveled to my local office to meet with me and my account team 20 years ago. He wanted to talk about our progress in one of my largest accounts. We had grown this account from $0 to $2M in two years.

He walked over to our white board, picked up a marker, looked me in the eyes with the entire account team sitting there and asked: "Taylor, tell me what you don't know about this customer?"

I looked down at the table at my sales report and knew I had nothing.

I reluctantly diverted my attention from my current business and started thinking about the divisions, service lines, regions, locations, functions and people we had not met with. I rattled off about 10 areas for him to add to the board. We ranked them by size, location and where we had immediate capacity and capability.

When we were done, I had a 180-day action plan and about 100+ account intel gathering meetings to schedule. Each meeting was chosen for its link to the strategy. Each Friday, I sent him an email with an updated tracker.

In the next two years, we captured 4 new groups, 4 new locations and 3 additional groups that started using our services for the first time. That turned into $20M, then $40M and eventually $50M per year for 10 straight years.

A leader once said to me, "The key to wisdom is knowing what you don't know."

Our system, the Vitality Index, gives your key account teams a growth strategy and the plan to run it across 21 growth drivers, including account intel, account diversification and pipeline management. 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.

What don't you know about your key account?

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.