Account plans, strategy or noise?

I sometimes meet people who tell me they are strategic account managers. This always makes me wonder why I have never met someone who called him or herself a tactical account manager?

By use of the word strategic, do this mean they operate in a strategic fashion, as per (the original Greek meaning of the word) the art of the Generals? Does it mean that they only deal with accounts that are of strategic importance; does it mean both of these things? Or is the term “strategic” a vanity prefix to a job title?

In “The art of war”, Sun Tzu stated, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.

There is a way to find out if you have a real strategic account manager in your midst or someone who just likes to make a bit of noise, ask to see one of their account plans and check for these five key things.

Is it a working document?

Strategic account plans are living, breathing working plans of action. Or if we choose to carry Sun Tzu’s military terminology forward, they are battle plans. They are not an administrative exercise that entails populating a document with a raft of static corporate information. Action plans of who does what, where, when and why they do it, are key components of the plan. Also, account plans with profiles “cut and pasted” from a customer’s website are a particular personal annoyance of mine, but I will resist the temptation to rant about it, suffice to say if that’s in the account plan, it’s not good enough!

Objective

I’ve mentioned in previous articles that strategy cannot operate in isolation; it requires tactics to support it and an objective to pursue. Is the objective of the plan clearly defined? Does the organisation have the capability to implement the tactical activity required to successfully execute the strategy. Also, does the plan have engagement from those required to support its execution? There is (and never will be) any supportable rationale for holding a prospect or customer to be of strategic importance just because they are “big”. If you are really putting a strategic effort in to the opportunity, there has to be a worthwhile return on the investment.

People

All organisations have two structures and both are as equally as important as the other. There is the corporate organisation you see in structure charts and there is the political organisation that exist within the influencing, recommending and decision making process. If the plan cannot identify the relevant people in both these structures and if there is no alignment to the people within the political structure, then it has little chance of it being successful. Account managers who lose deals that they expect to win, but don’t know why they lose them, are nearly always the victim of a lack of alignment to a customer’s political structure.

Competition

Does the plan accurately identify the competition? Does it highlight their strengths and weakness and is this assessment well informed, robust and honest? Can the owner of the plan clearly articulate the strategy in terms of the type of engagement, direct, indirect or containment? If a plan can’t determine the competitor’s strategy, it is likely that the sales campaign will never be proactive and therefore a winning plan will never be established. In these cases the activity in the plan is more likely to be represented by an ongoing series of tactical reactions driven by the competitors.

In or Out

Perhaps the most important aspect of any strategic account plan is a clear indication of whether you should be in or out of the sales campaign. One of the smartest pieces of sales advice I’ve ever heard is, “if you’re going to lose, lose early and make it your decision”. Knowing when and when not to engage the enemy is the true art of the generals

There are some opportunities that will nearly always be won, no matter how poorly a sales campaign is run. More often than not this is due to an incumbent relationship or a product or price superiority that just can’t be overcome. There are some that will nearly always be lost, no matter how good a campaign is run, for the same reasons. The real value of a good strategic account plan is in those middle ground opportunities, where what you do and how you do it make the real difference.

If these five things are in the plan, you might be talking to a real strategic account manager. If they are not, then listen carefully for the noise; it comes just before the defeat!