Why Should CRM Systems be Tuned for Strategic Account Managers?

In the sales function of many companies, a CRM system is typically used as a tool to bring in operational rigor to the sales process. More specifically, it is used to capture opportunities in the system and monitor them as they go through the sales pipeline. This is a good use case for new business acquisition or “hunting”. The primary beneficiary of these systems are usually the sales managers and sales operations personnel. 

Existing Customers

But what about your existing customers? Every organization has an existing customer base. These existing or returning customers usually make up a large part of your revenue. Some of these existing customers may be identified as strategic for a variety of reasons like revenue potential, technology access, nature of work, quality of revenue and new market penetration. 

Strategic Account Managers

In most companies there will either be a separate team of Strategic or Key Account Managers. Even if there is no separate team, each sales representative will have some named existing accounts to grow. There are a lot of differences in selling to a brand new customer Vs an existing customer. Both pose different challenges and need different toolkits and frameworks for success. The most basic aspect of selling to an existing customer is that there is a history of your performance against the promises you made at that account. There is also an expectation from the customer that you know their business at a deeper level and add value as part of your engagement with them. Is a simple opportunity tracking optimized CRM enough for your account managers to succeed?

CRM for Strategic Account Managers

Most CRM implementations under-serve the account managers that play such a strategic role. This role involves: 

• Thoughtful account planning
• Account research and really learning about the customer’s business
• Relationship building by solving problems and innovation
• Regular cadence with key stakeholders
• Monitoring account health and performance
• Looking for early warnings about issues
• White space analysis to understand the customer problems you can solve
• Account based marketing to reach out to new stakeholders
• Collaboration between the customer engagement team and the back end operations team. 

The Strategic account managers end up using the CRM for opportunity tracking and their own methodology and tools outside the CRM for the rest of their needs. 

The Salesforce platform has all the tools you need to tune it for account managers. You have three choices:

• Use Salesforce as an opportunity management tool (Maintain status quo with a suboptimal system)
• Leverage an AppExchange Solution like Varasi Account Management. (Buy)
• Build a custom solution for Strategic Account Managers (Build)

In summary, it is not enough to guide the account managers on what to do. A well designed Account Management Solution allows you to make account management best practices available to your entire team and coach them on how to do it as well.