“By Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” Thomas Edison, Inventor & businessman.

Even the creative genius Pablo Picasso knew that planning was key when he said:

Perhaps the answer is simple and it is because most account plans are just too complicated!

Do you ever feel frustrated at the lack of consistency in the way your teams create account plans? Perhaps some team members don’t even bother.

Would it make your life easier to have a straightforward system and process for planning so that you can keep your eye on what is going on and retain visibility of your most important customers?

In each episode we ask you, our listener, a killer question that is designed to get you reflecting on your business, your KAM Culture and where changes in thinking and behaviour could lead to increased customer success.

In this episode we ask the question earlier than usual in the podcast to kickstart our topic. The question is:

If one of your top account managers left the business today, what details would leave with them?

The answer will help us to start to nail down what a good Key Account Plan should look like.

Here are some of the key areas David talks about:

The vulnerability that all organisations have Which is that account managers hold the plans for your most important customers in the safest place for them, and the most dangerous place for you… in their heads.

What’s on your ideal customer handover list? David prompts to you take out a pen and paper and work on this. Make a list of all the things that YOU would expect to be shared with you in a handover meeting if the account was to be passed on to you to look after going forward.

The KAMGuru KAM Plan consists of three segments:

  • Intelligence: this section should give us the headlines, key facts, and the IMPORTANT details that will answer the fundamental question: What is the current situation on the account?
  • Intentions: How can you: (a) add more value to this Key Account; (b) improve and develop the business we do with this account; &/or (c) develop relationships between the two organisations?
  • Implementation: in short this is about who is going to do what and by when? (It’s the accountability section)

KAM Activities. David suggests a range of activities that you may like to think about that will take the idea of the KAMplan and help convert it into a sustainable, profitable reality:

  • Monthly Quality Thinking Time (QTT) Sessions

Make sure you listen to this episode to grab all of David’s insights into each of the 3 segments of the Front&Centre® KAM Plan structure as well as his tops for KAM activities.

THEN: kick start your implementation of a KAM Plan which is an easy win with a high impact value for the long term. Read below for a FREE template to get you going.