BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

3 Steps To Customer-First Enterprise Account Planning

Forbes Business Development Council

Founder and President of FinListics Solutions. Author of Amazon Best Seller, "Insight-Led Selling."

It’s that time of year when enterprise sales organizations start creating account plans. My own company FinListics recently surveyed 65 enterprise sales and enablement leaders and field sellers, asking how customer-focused they considered their own accounts. Our results showed that about a quarter indicated theirs were “very” customer-focused, over half said that “progress was being made” and a minority remainder reported their accounts were in need of “serious help” in this regard.

Customer-focused account planning is dynamic. It is not a one-and-done. The client’s world changes continuously—so too must account plans.

In this article, I’ll outline three steps to making account plans more customer-focused. I’ll also explore some of the major benefits of customer-focused accoutnts to illustrate for leaders the reasons they should invest the time and resources into enhancing their accounts in this regard.

Here’s a case example of breaking down my 3-step framework.

Let’s say a client has $1 billion in revenue and manufactures equipment that helps other companies produce goods in industries like consumer products. The sales organization provides solutions that help lower operating expenses by providing automation, sensors and analytics.

Step 1: Develop greater customer insights.

Developing greater customer insights involves coming to understand three things about a customer. These are their goals and strategies, their executives’ compensation and their financial performance. A customer’s goals and strategies can be particularly critical information, as an investment in new solutions is often directed around helping them achieve their primary goals and implement effective strategies.

Let’s say the case example client’s goal is to expand profitability. Two strategies they might pursue are building a more cost-effective global manufacturing footprint and delivering efficiencies across supply chains.

I have a friend who ran a large sales organization. He would start each QBR by asking about a client’s goals and strategies, what progress they were making and how his company could help them achieve them more quickly.

Executive compensation also motivates decision making. Knowing how executives are compensated allows for more relevant conversations and personalized proposals. Let’s say the case example shows:

• Profits: 60%.

• Profit margin: 20%.

• Free cash flow: 20%.

Finance is the language of business, and executive buyers expect sellers to know their financial performance. Knowing a client’s financial performance provides insights into where your solutions potentially add the greatest value. You don’t need an MBA in Finance to do this.

The sales organization’s solution in our example is to help better manage COGS, which includes items like materials, labor, distribution and logistics. Assessment of the client’s cost of goods as a percent of revenue shows it has trended upwards—typically not a good thing. Poor manufacturing performance is one of the items management discussed regarding this trend.

Leveraging these customers’ insights, ask yourself these questions.

• How have we helped other companies with similar goals and executive compensation?

• Within the client’s industry, what are the key areas of financial performance our solutions help improve?

• What can we tell executives something they may not know?

Step 2: Take an outside-in view of the customer.

An outside-in View of the customer involves:

• Confirming findings from your customer insights analysis. Remember, things change continuously.

• Asking probing business-focused questions. In our example, questions for production might include: “How does your capacity utilization compare to your desired utilization and those of your competitors?

• Sharing “how” your solutions in non-technical terms have helped others in the industry. For example: “Automation provides quicker change over reducing idle labor and increasing productivity and lowering the cost of goods sold.”

Step 3: Build new customer relationships.

Buying groups continue to expand. While this makes sales cycles more complex, it also affords the opportunity to expand the deal size by building new relationships. Building new relationships includes identifying the following.

• Lines of businesses (LOBs) supporting goals, strategies and their initiatives.

• LOBs scorecards (operational KPIs).

• Value of your solutions.

LOBs supporting the client’s goal and strategies include production, distribution & logistics, IT, HR and finance & accounting. Let’s focus on production.

Once supporting LOBs have been identified, create a list of their initiatives. Some examples of production initiatives might include:

• Leveraging data to predict and prevent quality issues and minimize warranty costs.

• Reducing repetitive work via digital automation and process standardization.

This may seem like a lot of work when identifying multiple LOBs and their initiatives. The good news is within an industry, many of the initiatives are similar because LOBs have the same business opportunities and challenges.

The next step is to identify the LOBs’ operational KPIs associated with their initiatives. KPIs for production initiatives include those like material, labor and overhead.

Knowing LOBs’ initiatives and KPIs can help you tailor your sales message and be more relevant.

Buying groups today are much further along the buying journey before engaging with a seller. That is why a solution’s potential business and financial benefits need to be demonstrated early in the sales cycle. A major challenge to this is that early in the sales cycle, the solution’s financial benefits typically aren’t known. This is where showing the Power of One is useful.

The Power of One is the value of a 1% improvement to an operational KPI focused on by the LOB. The actual value of a LOB’s KPIs often is not known early in the sales cycle. In this case, it is recommended that industry averages be applied to the customer’s revenue size.

For example, the customer we are using in this example has $1 billion in revenue, and the industry average for materials, as an example, is around 40% of revenue. This means the Power of One, for this example, is around $4 million ($1 billion x 40% x 1%).

Remember, the Power of One is a conversation starter. It is not a promise.

How customer-focused are your accounts?

I hope fellow leaders find this framework useful. I recommend using this as a checklist to assess how customer-focused are your account plans.

Good luck.


Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?


Follow me on LinkedInCheck out my website