LinkedIn Posts
Is strategic thinking showing up in your Key Account plans?
Four things every Key Account Team should think about when doing their key account plans: objectives, growth strategy, actions and timelines.
Watch: Strategic thinking in Key Account plans
Is strategic thinking showing up in your Key Account plans?
Most account plan templates have boxes for objectives, strategy, actions and timelines. What your team puts in those boxes decides whether the plan holds.
Here are the 4 things every Key Account Team should think about when doing their key account plans:
-
Near-Term Objectives (the why) This is your working theory on why you believe the partnership can succeed in the near term if certain objectives are met. A good list of objectives is built on patterns from careful observation, organized into categories, and explains cause and effect. It's what you expect to happen, backed by what you've seen.
-
Growth Strategy (the what) These are the growth drivers you'll advance to prove your working theory is right. They guide every step of the journey toward completing your objectives.
-
Power Plays and Next Moves (the how) These are the specific actions you can take to advance each growth driver.
-
Timelines (the when) This is when you plan to advance the next set of growth drivers, power plays and next moves over the next 6 months. It's based on where the partnership stands in each area and what your team can realistically get done this quarter or next.
Here's what that looks like in one area, executive relationships.
Say you don't have access to the top executive in your key account, and your champion is struggling to open the door. The longer that gap sits, the more exposed the account becomes.
• Objective: Gain consistent access to the top executive to expand and protect the partnership. • Growth Strategy: Strengthen your champion and build proof points the executive cares about, so you earn access. • Power Plays and Next Moves: Identify 1-2 problems your solution can solve that matter to the executive. Create proof points that show impact on the executive's business objectives. Share them through your champion and the business reviews they attend. Send an executive summary as a follow-up to every review meeting. • Timeline: Hold an executive business review within the next 6 months, then annually.
Pick one gap in your largest account. Can your team fill in all four? Would they benefit from a system that guides the strategic thinking and teaches this skill inside live accounts?
We built the Vitality Index to help Key Account Teams do this across 7 domains and 21 growth drivers, with the power plays and next moves already mapped. If you want help building your 2027 account plans, schedule a free 30-minute consultation and ask for a demo.
More in LinkedIn Posts
LinkedIn Posts
Account risk stays hidden when Key Account Teams assume the customer trusts them.
You get a confident team and an uncertain customer, and the gap stays invisible until something tests it.
LinkedIn Posts
Competitive advantage erodes when Key Account Teams are disconnected from an overarching growth strategy.
The design of the system the team runs is now the advantage, and the key account role is being rewritten around it.
LinkedIn Posts
If I dropped you somewhere in any one of the 50 states and handed you a map of that state, could you pinpoint where you are without GPS?
A good plan starts from your true position. Can your team say where it stands across every dimension of a key account relationship?
LinkedIn Posts
If you don’t have these 2 things in your key accounts, you could lose millions in revenue.
To become a Vital Partner who can expand and protect your most critical accounts, you need access to the top executive and a champion willing to help you build that relationship.
LinkedIn Posts
One misaligned team member can crash a multimillion-dollar Key Account.
How well are your KAMs leading cross-functional teams they don’t manage?
LinkedIn Posts
When someone leaves your Key Account Team, how much of the account walks out the door with them?
If the knowledge of how your team solves problems lives in one or two people’s heads, the account is one resignation away from starting over.
Related across the blog
Strategy & Planning
Your customer account plans are missing some vital pieces
Account plans go stale because they are snapshots, written in a planning event while the account keeps moving. Reps stop using them because nothing in the daily work ever touches the plan again. Both problems have the same cause: the plan is missing vital pieces. Here are the pieces, and how to put them in.
Strategy & Planning
CRM vs. Account Planning Tools vs. a Key Account Growth System: What Each One Does
A CRM keeps the records. Account planning tools structure the plan your team fills in. A key account growth system generates the strategy itself. Here is the difference, side by side.
Key Account Systems
The structure behind growing key accounts in B2B needs changing
Growing key accounts takes more than records and tools. Explore the strategic layer account teams need and the nine standards behind the Vitality Index.
Lead with better systems.
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.