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Keith-at-CA

35 years. That’s how long I’ve worked both for and with Professional Services and B2B firms. And during that 35 years, I don’t think I’ve come across a single firm that hasn’t had or tried to have in place some form of Key Account/Key Client Program (and by this I mean a formal approach to managing and building relationships with these clients, not a client database tool).

I’ve seen firms spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, primarily in staff time, trying to get these programs right. I’ve seen marketing and BD staff tearing their hair out trying to get programs up and running. I’ve seen the amazing results when firms happen to get it right. And this is why firms continue to try to implement them – because when they work, they can be incredibly powerful in driving firm growth.

But this last scenario is sadly few and far between. Most firms largely fail at establishing successful key account programs. Why is this?

A couple of weeks ago I ran a session with the Queensland division of Consult Australia on this exact topic. As well as sharing my 35 years of insights into the subject, I also surveyed the audience in advance of the event to find out exactly what was going on in the Key Account Programs of a number of Brisbane firms*. I thought I’d share a few interesting findings, and highlight what’s working, what’s not, and my tips for how to make your program succeed.

 What’s working? 

It’s not all doom and gloom, there are a few good things happening out there. Here’s a few:

  1. When firms do have the right person in place as the head of an individual key client account – someone who is motivated, dedicated and truly cares about the client – we are seeing some examples of very fast growth on that particular account.
  2. A few firms have increased the influence of their marketing/BD team by appointing an extremely impactful and influential head of the function, and giving them a seat at the top table. This helps to improve the focus and drive of their KAM program.
  3. As demonstrated by the table below, most of the survey respondents at the Consult Australia seminar indicated that their program is either moderately or strongly linked to their long-term business strategy. This is a great step in the right direction, as a clear connection to the long-term business strategy is critical.

Figure 1

Figure 1: How strong is the connection between the Program and the long-term business strategy? (by % of respondents)

 What’s not working?

From my own observations, and the feedback we had from the seminar participants, there are a lot of things that aren’t working that well. From being too focused on reporting/systems/tools, being far too complicated with way too many clients selected, to being too focused on the short term. But if I were to pick three things that aren’t working which I think are a key reason for program failure, they would be:

  1. Lack of total leadership support for the program, with some leaders openly deriding and derailing the program. As we can see from our seminar respondents in Figure 2, many firms are reporting only poor or moderate support from leadership.All leaders need to actively (not passively) support the program. If you don’t address this issue, the message to the whole firm is that you’re   not serious about your vision and strategy, and it’s everyone for themselves.
Figure 2 Figure 2: How strong is leadership support for your program? (by % of respondents)
  1. Not having the right people leading the account team, and/or having the wrong people on the team. In figure 3 we can see that many of our seminar respondents are not overly confident that they either have the right people on the team, or that the team are committed to the success of the client.

How do you check this? Ask the client team to rate the importance of this client’s success to them personally on a scale of 1-10. If they   answer less than 10, they shouldn’t be on the team. Once you’ve got the right team in place, make sure they have clearly aligned KPIs and expectations. Too often these people are appointed to client teams as an ‘extra’ task to their day job, with no KPIs, and no reward mechanism. This is a recipe for disengagement, no prioritisation and failure.

 Figure 3

Figure 3: How confident are you that: (based on % of respondents)
  1. Too short a focus. Many firms have an account program that is purely a short-term pipeline driven approach. While you do need to manage short-term pipeline, if there is no long term strategy then several things can and probably will happen:

– People will focus all their effort on ‘easy’ targets, regardless of their alignment to strategy or profitability.

– Relationships will be focused on technical buyers of the immediate opportunities. Meanwhile a competitor is working on a partner  relationship with the economic buyer.

The good news is that many firms already know where they’re going wrong. It’s fixing it that’s the challenge.

What should you focus on to help your program succeed?

So where will you get most ‘bang for your buck’ in focusing your efforts to make your program succeed? In my view, if you get the following five things right, you will be setting up a very solid foundation:

  1. Ensure you have a long-term firm strategy that everyone understands and leadership actively drives.
  2. Make sure that the account strategy is absolutely linked to the firm strategy and everyone understands the link.
  3. Have the right people leading the accounts and on the account teams. People who are measured and rewarded appropriately for their time and efforts.
  4. Focus on what actions you will take to grow/build relationships with your client’s economic buyers in your account planning process.
  5. Measure the right things – not how many meetings you have per month, but relationship progression and profitability.

From your experiences, what would you say makes Key Account Programs fail and succeed?

* Note that we had 17 responses from 30 attendees. Not statistically significant but a good representation of those in attendance. Attendees were a mix of BD and marketing leaders, technical managers and practice owners/managers.