We invested heavily in building the foundation of a new account in order to win 100+ just like it

Several years ago, we signed a new 3-year contract with a cornerstone account from a market segmentation standpoint. It would be the first of many wins in this segment because it became the proof we needed to eventually expand into 100s of key accounts just like this one.

I had been targeting this account for years. The competition had owned this relationship for 12 straight years. Getting in seemed impossible. Every three years, the client would renew their contract while the rest of us just kept losing one RFP after another.

It was 11 years ago when something catastrophic occurred with the incumbent vendor. The door swung wide open and after a formal RFP process, we were awarded the exclusive contract.

Now we were the vendor at the table. But, we hadn't proven anything yet. The stakes were extremely high for us and the client alike. The client's top executives and the Board had approved this new deal. The political climate around this decision was intense as thousands of employees would touch this program in some way. We knew that we had to respect the past, but build a much better future for them if we were going to have any chance of pulling this off.

So, first things first, build the foundation. We invested in ourselves by investing in our ability to deliver on our promises for this client. We hired three times the headcount the previous vendor had deployed. We designed, built and implemented tools for automating manual processes. We developed a new delivery model that could scale across all of the client's locations and functions. We installed account leadership that was incentivized to deliver on the customer experience from a quality, speed, volume and service standpoint.

From day one, the client was already experiencing something brand new: a more robust system of accountability and a vendor that was making the right investments for the partnership, despite not being asked to by the customer.

While we ran a more expensive model than the previous supplier, in the end, our investments paid off for both them and us. We ended up capturing twice as much spend and the client became our best referral source and champion, willing to sell on our behalf across their industry. This led to new key account wins and $100M+ in new revenue for our company.

Building a solid foundation through Internal Account Investments is 1 of the 21 Growth Drivers covered in the Vitality Index, The Key Account Growth System. In the system, this key driver belongs to the domain we call: Foundations.

For Internal Account Investments, we handcrafted 48 plays just for this one driver at every level of partnership. Our system will diagnose and score you in this area, build the exact growth strategy the team needs now to improve, and help guide your execution until you become a Vital Partner.

Growing key accounts can be complex, so we distilled this type of work into a system everyone can use no matter what level of experience you bring to the table. It was built from the same approach we used to create some of the largest partnerships in our industry that have lasted decades and are still running.

Winning, growing, and protecting key accounts has been our life's work for the past 30 years. In the Vitality Index, we don't tell you what to do. We show you, because we lived it. This is the system we wished we had years ago. But now, it's here! If becoming a top-producing account team is important to you, then the Vitality Index can help.

We made a sample for you to try. This is not the actual system, but it will show you a practical plan for growing a live customer in your portfolio. This snapshot will give you a diagnostic, analysis, and an actual growth plan for where you currently sit across two of the seven Domains: Relationships and Competitiveness.