3 Steps to Building A Successful Insights-Driven Account Planning Program

ABM: What Next?

You might be calling it ABM, Strategic Account Marketing, Account Enablement, or something else. In any case, once you’ve identified a group of accounts that your leadership wants to focus on, you need to figure out what to do next.

Internally, there may be re-organisation to align teams around accounts, or other precursory steps to lay the path. There may also be consideration of a cascade of ‘outside in’ account insights, providing fresh perspectives on clients and the specific issues that they face, to best position your firm to support. EI has experience to share here.

IT’S NOT AN AUDIT: When your client leaders get wind of a client insight program in the works internally, they may feel that their own processes and relationships are being audited and go on the defensive. It is key to clarify that this program is not an inspection or remedial. It’s about helping.
IT’S NOT A HIT AND RUN EXERCISE: Client teams are always focused on the next deal. If they feel they are about to receive a tonne more information they need to unpack and take on themselves, they are likely to disengage. Position your program as an ongoing cadence of support in execution.
IT IS ABOUT FILLING BLIND-SPOTS: A good client insights program should fill strategic blind-spots that the account teams themselves designate – and encourage action.

IT IS ABOUT BALANCING PLANNING & EXECUTION: A trailblazer account insights program must set out to achieve the right balance between planning and execution. An insights program is about building bridges between your organisation and your clients, from their closest natural proximity points, ultimately enabling closer strategic contact.
IT IS ABOUT EXCITING NEW AVENUES: If the program is doing its job, client teams will be energised by what’s possible, with confidence growing to stretch into new spaces, client-side.
IT IS IN PLACE FOR THE LONG TERM: With some exceptions, most B2B deal cycles north of $10m take 2-3 years to secure. Account insights programs need to work in these cycles.

STEP 1: Positioning your new ABM/ Client Insights program internally

2) Go where there’s an open minded, proactive sales team: This is just as critical. We need an account team that is ‘up to the challenge’ of engaging with this program: those with a genuine ‘Let’s do it’ mentality. Scepticism is fine if combined with an openness where if something exciting comes from the program, they will flag it. Equally, we want those with an appetite to come back and share ‘what we learnt in phase 1’.

STEP 2: Account selection for the pilot Insights program

Two factors stand out, based on our experience, to be considered to make the shortlist for the early stages of a client insights program:

1) Go where there’s headroom for growth inside the account: Major firms that everyone internally would be excited to win or grow within; where there is a lot going on in the account that you are not yet involved with.

An account insights program is first looking to be liked by account teams. To achieve that, it needs to help them, not hinder, or audit them. Once account teams can feel this help in action, and they want more, we can start to point to four things we need them to log.

The first is easier to spot, while the remaining 3 are slightly more subtle:

New deals in the pipeline. The holy grail. The insights program led to a new pipeline item.
Deal speed. The insights within the program helped us accelerate deals in the pipeline.
Deal growth. The program helped us grow deals to become bigger ones.
Deal probability. The program helped us increase the likelihood of a deal landing.

These all require trust and rapport with the account teams, in order for them to log for, and credit, those outside their circle. Or better still, they see you as ‘inner circle’.

STEP 3: Agreeing on what success looks like

Closing Thoughts

An Account Insights program can be the tool that helps account teams decide and deliver on ‘what to do next’, provided there is appetite and openness to receive such a program.

Perception is key, that is, of the Accounts Insights program being a helping hand, offering an ongoing cadence of support that will fill knowledge gaps and deliver rich insights to execution.

The program also helps to select the right accounts at the right time, with mutual agreement on success factors maximising the program’s value.