In sales, creating an Account Development Plan is how you deepen relationships and grow revenue with your best clients.
When is the last time your team paused to discuss your most important clients? Not just about more revenue and “what’s next”, but a deliberate, reflective look at the individual relationships, potential conflicts, their preferences and priorities, and their future needs? If you’ve never done so, now is a great time to start. If it’s been awhile, let’s blow the dust off those old relationships and conversations and create a few Account Development Plans.
“Accounts” are your clients. Many professional services firms only use the term “client”, but the rest of the world, for the most part, uses the term Account. It’s important to note that, with some types of professional services firms—accountants, lawyers, financial advisors— “clients” can be individuals and families. Nevertheless, these “Client Account” Plans are an excellent way to explore opportunities with important Centers of Influence and other partners. B2B… B2C… It’s all B2P (People) from what I’ve experienced.
“Development” plans are typically associated with sales and new business development, as they are designed spark conversations and activity about new opportunities. There are more comprehensive “strategic account plans” that address and incorporate service delivery and other aspects of the relationship, and they are also useful. For the sake of this post, we’ll focus on the sales and “development” end of things.
Interested in an Account Development Planning Guide? Go grab one at this link.
The goal of Account Development Plans
It seems obvious that consulting firms would invest the time to really understand what makes their most important clients tick. But all too often, important, existing client relationships are overlooked, underappreciated, and taken for granted. Firms don’t keep up-to-date on changing priorities, new staff and leadership, and the ebbs and flows of any relationship.
The goal of these plans is simple:
To preserve and grow revenue and trust with our most important client accounts.
Want more reasons why Account Development Plans are important?
- New business opportunities with your existing clients close faster with less effort and a lower cost of sale,
- They avoid the various start-up effort and costs with new accounts, like setting up billing processes and understanding new communication styles and preferences,
- Previous work done with an existing client can help the firm achieve greater productivity and profitability, directly impacting the bottom line, and
- Long-term client relationships allow us to create tighter, long- lasting human connections that we all yearn for.
For all of the reasons above, your firm should be creating and implementing Account Development Plans for your most important clients (and probably your important partners, if that applies more to your business). Here’s how you do that.
But first, let’s be clear…
Account Development Plans are a focused, team effort that must involve your client. Don’t think you can lock yourselves up in a conference room and emerge an hour later with a well-conceived plan. Engaging your clients, partners, and other external contacts is critical in both the formation and the execution of a quality Account Plan. Now, here are the details…
The “Ps” of the Plan
Account Development Plans should be a comprehensive, deep-dive effort. As such, there are many parts—and many of those parts start with the letter “P”. The alliteration might make it a bit easier to remember. And there is a sequence to the plan. The creation of the plan might jump around a bit, but the execution should follow a logical path. More on that later.
Purpose, Principles, and Vision
The Purpose of the Account Development Plan is your Why. Why is this client important to your organization? When you rank this client against others using whatever criteria you choose, why do they rise to the top? Revenue? Growth opportunities? Deep alignment with culture, values, and mission? Each time your team revisits this account plan, it’s important to use this Purpose as a touchstone, reminding all of you about why you are investing your valuable time in this effort.
Principles are guidelines, guardrails, and constraints for this effort. These guidelines let you judge the ongoing relationship. If an account seeks to change your working arrangement, asks you do to things you won’t do, starts moving in a direction that doesn’t align with your firm values, then these principles give you the ability to engage your important client to address the issues. And if the client’s path continues to deviate from yours, you can walk away.
The Vision (okay, not a P) is a shared picture of success that answers the question, “What does a successful relationship look like in the future?” It might be related to a new project together, or maybe some percentage of growth, or simply a mutually beneficial relationship with strong collaboration and open communication. If that picture of success is hard to define, or if your team members all come up with radically different images in their heads, you might need to question the rationale for the effort (the Purpose) and press the reset button.
… and yes, a little GTD
These initial “Purpose, Principles, and Vision” steps have their roots in David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, and are the initial steps in his Natural Planning Model. It’s a simple way to begin any type of planning process, and in this video, David talks through how it works. This planning framework is woven into the Account Development Plan approach.
Starting your Account Planning effort with the Purpose, Principles, and Vision section makes sense. If you have some difficulty at first, move onto other sections like People and Places. Sometimes it helps to provide an opportunity for your team members to to “empty their heads” right up front as they list their various client connections. You can circle back to Purpose, Principles, and Vision later.
People (and Places)
It all about the people. Your internal people. The client’s people. Even people you don’t know yet at the client account. If they are important to the relationship in any way, your plan should identify them.
Related contacts should also be included. Partners, sub-consultants, Centers of Influence, and any other people who are in some way connected to your relationship with the client should be in there. Maybe you were introduced to the client years ago by a mutual connection who you haven’t spoken to recently. Whoever that person is, include them.
I recommend that your team assign a “Relationship Score” to every external person in the plan. This simple scoring system identifies who your internal contact knows, and how well they know them. Consider scoring people you don’t know a “1” and those with whom you have long, trusting relationships with a “3”. Everyone in the middle somewhere gets a “2”. If you need a more detailed scoring system, create one.
You should also note the location of the contacts in your plan. Sometimes you are dealing with geographically dispersed client accounts or partners. If location is of importance to your organization and this plan, be sure to note it.
Previous Work and Performance
A brief narrative on the relationship tells the story of your time together. It helps newer team members understand the genesis of the relationship and the path it has taken to become what it is today.
This section should also include previous projects or engagements with related revenue and profitability data. If you are developing this firm around an important Partner or Center of Influence, this information should include shared clients.
The Relationship (Problems?)
The truth is, most relationships have their ups and downs. Whether they are personal or professional, maintaining good, long-term relationships is a challenge, particularly in a complex business arrangement.
The Account Planning process must uncover the status of the relationship and identify any and all supporting evidence. Complimentary emails, critical memos, and notes from tense business meetings can be included in the plan. This permits the team to revisit any outstanding issues and set a plan for resolution. Even problems that have seemingly faded can reappear, so it’s best to assume that anything that managed to go sideways, stayed sideways.
Anne Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox Corporation, is credited with making famous this little statement about big problems that she heard from a wise Texan:
You gotta do three things. First, get the cow out of the ditch. Second, find out how the cow got into the ditch. Third, make sure you do whatever it takes so the cow doesn’t go into the ditch again.
Albert C. Black, Jr.
Problems with clients and customers and partners are like cows in ditches. Or elephants in rooms. No matter how we try to ignore or downplay them, unaddressed issues are major barriers to improving and advancing important relationships. If problems exist, your team must address them before your plan has a chance to succeed. Losing an important, long-term relationship because of an unresolved issue is an unfortunate and all too common reality that you can prevent.
Priorities, Preferences, Positioning, and your Proposition
This section is not about your organization’s priorities and preferences… it’s all about your client. Uncovering and understanding your client’s most pressing priorities, challenges, opportunities, and needs will require research and many person-to-person conversations. This is getting to know what’s most important to them.
Your client’s preferences speak to why they choose you over your competitors, or even why they, on occasion, choose others over you. What characteristics and qualities do they seek when assessing their work with consultants like you? What things do firms like yours do that keep them up at night?
These conversations also let you understand how they see your organization in the world of competitors. Imagine your company as a star in orbit around your client’s world. What makes your star stand out? What makes your firm different and better for a particular need they have?
Once you understand your client’s biggest priorities, preferences (pet peeves?), and how you are positioned, you can develop a Unique Selling Proposition for this client account. A proper unique selling proposition combines the specific needs, priorities, and preferences of your client with your specific expertise and experience. This yields a truly unique offering for that one special client. Because Account Development Plans are so laser-focused on one client, your statement should be equally focused, even down to the individual needs of your respective client contacts and skills of your consultant team members.
Possibilities (aka New Business Opportunities)
Finally! Now we’re talking about it! New business! New projects, new revenue, new stuff!
There is a time for everything, and hopefully it has become clear that, with these Account Development Plans, many important things must come before the conversations about new business. Imagine trying to have a conversation with your important client with that big elephant sitting in the room…
Getting to know the people you don’t in your client’s organization should be a priority. Resolving outstanding issues before they turn into big problems should be a priority. Learning everything you can about your client’s priorities, challenges, and desires should be a priority. All of these things should happen prior to talking about new business.
When the time comes, though, your focus should be narrow, identifying the very best opportunities where your firm is an excellent fit. Your firm cannot be everything to everyone, and your very best clients will appreciate your focused expertise.
Don’t overlook related opportunities from those partners, sub-consultants, and other related contacts you listed early in the plan. If you’ve worked together with this client account, they’ve seen first-hand the excellent work your firm provides. Go talk to them to uncover opportunities to work together again.
Lastly, The Plan
As stated above, Account Development Plans have a specific objective: To preserve and grow revenue and trust with our most important client accounts. The various activities and tasks you create in your plan should all be pointing at that goal. Each team member involved in the planning process should create clear activities and deadlines to advance your firm towards that goal.
If you want to be able to measure your success, then your progress will need to be measurable. If you have revenue goals, what are they? Is one of your goals to get to know more people at the client account? How many? The metrics you choose don’t need to be complex or impossible to achieve, they just need to be clear.
Account Development Plans empower your team to be proactive. All too often, practitioners in professional services firms wait for leads to come to them or for the Request for Proposals to land on their desk. This proactive approach lets your firm determine its own future and become the firm it wants to be.
Implementation of your Account Development Plans
Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Completing a plan is meaningless without proper execution. Activities flow from your Account Development Plan, so everyone needs to manage their own activities and be accountable for getting things done. Regular team meetings will focus on new developments with your client account, new information learned from partners and others, and new business that emerges.
Many project-based teams use project management tools in their day-to-day work. As such, it makes sense to leverage these tools in your Account Development Plans. Running this process like any other project in your firm will increase the likelihood of success.
The logical flow of the Account Development Planning process is:
- Gather your team and start creating the plan.
- Engage your clients and/or partners to address outstanding issues.
- Through research and conversations, come to understand your client’s business more deeply.
- Develop your Unique Selling Proposition for the specific client.
- Engage your client and partners in conversations about What’s Next.
- Continue to meet and update the plan as you achieve your plan objectives and uncover new opportunities.
Final words…
The complexity of Account Development Plans can seem onerous. Proper creation and execution of these plans takes time, and many will wish to shortcut steps or not have the external conversations required to make this a truly client-centered effort. If getting started is challenging, reach out to your closest contacts at your most important client accounts with this question:
“You are one of our most important clients, so we’ve decided to take the time to create a plan to uncover ways to help you even more. When the time comes, would you be willing to answer our questions about your current challenges and priorities and discuss how our firm can best serve you?”
Beyond being flattered, your most important clients will respond with enthusiasm! This simple interaction will be enough to get your team focuses and motivated to invest their time in a well-conceived Account Development Plan.
Wainwright Insight provides fractional sales management and consulting to organizations who want to take control of their sales pipeline and build future sales leaders—but could use a little, part-time expertise. I work with professional services firms, and the experts in those firms, who need to get better at chasing and winning big deals when the stakes are high.