Meet the VUCA Challenge through Strategic Account Management in 6 Steps

2021 - welcome to the VUCA world. In this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, FOCUS is the key to success. Focusing on strategic accounts is key, both in new logo sales and customer success.

But WHO is a strategic account for you?

This article will explore this question for new logo sales in the account acquisition or business development phase.
Part 2 will focus on the context of customer success account management in the growth & retention phase.

VUCA as thought of by Nothing Ahead from Pexels

Whether you are a Business Development Representative at the beginning of your career or an experienced Sales Director, deciding where to spend your time is at the essence of hitting your quota.

Mike Wineberg in his bestseller “New Sales Simplified” argues that nowadays 80% of the buying process happens without a seller involved. It is thus essential for sales to get involved proactively at an early stage. The way to do this is through the smart identification of strategic target accounts and the focused work on these.

1 Total Addressable Market

To start with, have a look at your total addressable market (TAM) - maybe you have a territory assigned, maybe your company serves a specific niche or you are a country manager. This will give you the first circle you draw to narrow down your list of strategic targets (If you have not looked into TAM for your territory, here is an extensive read)

2 Ideal Customer Profile

Secondly, define the criteria for your long list based on your ideal customer profile (ICP). If you don’t have an ICP defined, it’s a good time to catch up with your product management or product marketing on this topic. Possible criteria to define your ICP can be:

• Headcount
  Maybe your solution requires a minimum of users or there are certain limitations why you do not want to make business with large corporations.

• Revenue
  Generally, more revenue means a bigger business potential, but you may also use revenue as a demarcation line for deal complexity.

• Industry
  Often B2B solutions are specifically addressing the need of a certain vertical or industry.

• Business Model
  At vizrm for example we only sell to B2B companies who themselves work with large, strategic accounts.

• Operational Characteristics
  Maybe you require a potential user to have a certain process in place or to work with certain tools - like we at vizrm target CRM users with our extensions

3 Data, Data, Data

Once you have set the criteria for your long list, it is time to get your hands on some tangible data. There are many sources to get account lists from, some could be:

• Trade or industry associations
  If you are selling to a specific market or industry vertical, often you can find lists of members of the respective industry associations online. For example, if you want to sell to German Software & IT companies you might want to check BITKom

• Business Information Platforms
  Like Bloomberg or Dun & Bradstreet provide dedicated offerings around company intelligence - which might come at a price

• Prospecting Platforms
  ZoomInfo & Lusha allow you to filter for accounts in a very granular way, you have tons of options and can even break down by the growth of companies or the tools they are using. Later you can directly have a look for contacts and potential leads

• Social Media
  LinkedIn is probably THE place to go nowadays if you look for prospects. With LinkedIn sales navigator, you can filter accounts by a whole bunch of criteria and you can dive into contacts directly

4 Get Actionable

Now that you have your longlist, it is time for decision making: who goes on the shortlist first?

There are a couple of ways to take that decision:

• Existing relationships
  Starting with a foot in the door is great. Maybe you have existing relationships to accounts on your long list - leverage them!

• Narrowed selection criteria
  Maybe you have additional criteria for filtering your list further like recent company growth, acquisitions, spin-offs, etc

• Buying intent
  Some very smart tools like 6sense or Demandbase help you to identify prospect accounts that show interest in your solutions, e.g. by googling for them or by visiting certain pages on your website

5 Manage it!

Once you are down to a manageable list of accounts - depending on your type of business somewhat between 20 and 300, it is time to get cracking.

However, over the course of time (think the velocity in VUCA) things change, new companies appear on the map, growth rates change and old dinosaurs disappear from the marketplace altogether. So, be sure to establish a management process that allows you to come back to your selection criteria, longlist, and shortlist criteria on a regular basis.