cadenceblog

Marketing's Role with Strategic Accounts

In a previous post I mentioned my Top 6 List of B2B Sales & Marketing Resources.

One of them was Miller Heiman - a sales performance consulting company, they publish a well known sales best practices report, and also have a free newsletter.

My boss forwarded me another terrific Miller Heiman article called Choosing and Working with Strategic Accounts. I think a lot of B2B companies struggle with understanding their strategic accounts. How to choose them, how to keep them, and how to measure their success -- this article provides insight and answers into those questions.

Also in a previous post called Developing long-term trusted relationships with B2B customers, I mentioned an article, Becoming a Trusted Advisor. In the post I only talked about the first point - Customer Executive Briefings. The 2^nd point was Account-Management Teams and the article stated:

2. Account-Management Teams
When a customer knows that you have a dedicated account team just for them, it goes a long way toward establishing partnership and trust. Each account team typically consists of four functional roles:

· "A business contact from the solution-provider side (typically the account salesperson).

· A technical contact from the solution-provider side (lead senior engineer).

· An executive manager from the solution-provider side (typically the president/CEO).

· A representative from the customer side (a senior IT exec).

Keep in mind that one person can fill more than one role, and more than one person can fill a single role. The key to this approach is that it shows a deep commitment on the part of the solution provider toward the customer." 

 The Miller  Heiman article Choosing and Working with Strategic Accounts brings about this point as well:

“It’s a business initiative versus a sales initiative,” Johnson remarks. “You need organizational alignment, executive endorsement and metrics to assess your success.”

When you’re working with a non-strategic account, a strong account manager relationship can be enough, but when you’re working with a strategic account, a cross-functional team should be set up for communication at all levels. And, every person at every level—particularly those at the executive level—should be on the same page: The relationship should be perceived as a partnership. “If both organizations aren’t committed to the partnership, you shouldn’t move forward,” Johnson says.

So here you can see again the executive partnership theme.

However, how do you see yourself as a Marketer in terms of Strategic Accounts?

I view myself as an additional resource to those customers. One advantage that I have as an IT B2B Marketing is my technical background. I am comfortable to engage in some degree of technical discussions.  However, technical understanding is not enough. You also have to be aware of the business issues your customers face, especially the business issues that your offerings solve.

One year I was organizing a holiday event and we had low registration.  Sales didn’t have anymore time to promote the event and it was decided that I try to call customers myself. Prior to that, I did very little outbound calling. I actually did get through to some customers and because it was more of a relationship event, where I was inviting and encouraging them to come out (rather than a sales call), I had some pleasant conversations.

After that event, customers commented that they were very happy to hear from another person in the company.  This is when I first learned directly that it was important to customers to have other levels of contact, outside their direct sales rep.

I try to engage with customers at events as much as possible. Marketers try to get the right people to an event, but also try to create a professional and enjoyable experience for them. Sometimes, I feel that marketing people at events think that means being friendly, courteous, and professional. That is all very important…however I try to also remember faces and companies, and speak with them about their issues in a non-sales way. Also, since it is not always possible for sales to cover each person in the room, I look for gaps and try to fill them.

Over the years I have developed rapport with customers. Now when Imeet and greet them at events, it is beyond a trivial professionally friendliness. My role (beyond event organizer) is to understand their needs, make them aware of relevant solutions, and point them to resources that will hopefully advance their buying cycle. I believe some of this has contributed to the success of sustaining and growing strategic accounts.

My role is shifting from executing events to overall marketing strategy and planning. However I still look forward to face-to-face genuine interactions with customers and prospects. Not only to understand who I am marketing to, but also to help our company sustain and growth our valuable relationships.

In summary, here are the articles that relate to strategic account development:

Choosing and Working with Strategic Accounts – Miller Heiman

Becoming a Trusted Advisor – CRN and Var Business

Developing long-term trusted relationships with B2B customers – a previous cadenceblog post.

Developing long-term trusted relationships with B2B customers

How many of your customers consider you a "Trusted Advisor"? I recently came across a brief article in VarBusiness Magazine called "Becoming a Trusted Advisor". It listed three methods, one of which is Executive Customer Briefings. As the article states, in order for these to be successful, there are three key elements:

• Understanding the customer's business and goals
• Approaching the customer’s problem from a long-term strategy
• Suggesting specific solutions to achieve their business goals and long-term strategies

Looking closer at these  elements, I realized that they go beyond the context of Customer Briefings or a “sales only” initiative. What if marketers could think in terms of the business value that their company could provide customers or potential customers? Then, help convey these benefits throughout the marketing and sales cycle. How would this affect the development of valued “Trusted Advisor” relationships?

On a related thought, I recommend reading What B2B customers really expect, from the Harvard Business Review (HBR), as I found some of the revelations quite interesting. (If you are not a customer of HBR, just watch a short ad, to see the article, it is worth it). There is chart in the article called Customer Expectations Revealed, which shows the relationship between what customers expect, what vendors think customers expect, and what vendors recruit for.

As a third article of reference on the subject, that discusses how marketing can actively play a part in developing these relationships, read Get Strategic with Account-Based Marketing from Marketing2IT (a TechWeb newsletter with trends and tips for the IT Marketers that I also recommend).