Every business strives to achieve stability in a dynamic business environment and grow sustainably for the long term. While this may look like an impossible task, it can be achieved through smart account planning. A business is built on the concept of facilitating and fulfilling needs or providing solutions to a problem. Pick any business from manufacturing to food, accounting, medicine, or content writing. They all aim to provide a solution or fulfill a need, and a smart account planning strategy helps you do so in a structured manner.
Understanding Strategic Account Planning
Smart account planning goes beyond traditional sales interactions and aims to build a mutually beneficial strategic partnership wherein the goals of both companies are aligned, and they grow together. It doesn’t mean you go around forcing interaction and cross-selling other solutions.
As the name suggests, smart account planning promotes working smartly with clients whose goals and requirements align with your business goals and offerings. You adopt a structured approach of profiling your clients using their revenue, profits, market share, direction of growth, and challenges and matching them with your business. Remember, the very reason for a company is to offer solutions or meet demands.
When businesses understand each other’s needs and wants, they can collaborate better. You only offer solutions clients need and even tailor them according to their needs. You could consider having a dedicated person handling the client for seamless communication across various departments. The approach also involves periodic reviews to check the status and health of the accounts and identify gaps and opportunities early. You could be proactive in your approach and resolve issues for your clients.
Why Adopt Strategic Account Planning?
To put smart account planning in layman’s terms, it is a process of converting your business relationship from a vendor to a business partner. It can go a long way in sustaining and growing your business even in tough times.
Business Stability: Most businesses are vulnerable to concentration risk. Relying on a single client for a major portion of your revenue could jeopardize business sustainability. Any economic downturns or financial crunches at one client could delay your payments and push you into negative working capital. You can avoid this by building several key accounts and reducing reliance on one client. Having a strong business relationship with a diverse client base can help you mitigate one’s downturn with another’s upturn.
Businesses can create a more stable foundation for growth by strategically building, planning, and nurturing key accounts.
Client Retention: By running a business, one knows the cost involved in client acquisition. While aggressive sales strategies can give quick results, they may not be lasting sales. Identifying strategic clients and retaining them is something smart account planning can achieve.
When clients get proactive solutions, effective communication, ease of doing business, and a strong understanding of business needs, they tend to stay. This not only helps you earn steady revenue but also reduces the cost and effort of acquiring new customers. That doesn’t mean you should stop acquiring new customers. However, when your budget is tight, loyal clientele can keep the business moving and bring stability in revenue.
Cross-selling Opportunities: A strong client relationship not only provides your business with a steady revenue stream, but also reduces the cost and effort of acquiring new customers. Your business grows alongside clients’ business. A proactive approach to problem-solving also presents cross-selling opportunities, giving your business scope for sustainable growth.
Improved Profitability: Smart account planning may not give significant results in the short term, but the efforts will substantially pay off in the long term. A structured approach to handling client accounts optimizes financial and human resources and saves time. You focus your efforts on clients with business ethics, objectives, and growth direction similar to yours. This reduces wastage and makes every penny count. Optimal resource utilization and reduction of client acquisition costs help improve profitability in the long term.
Better Understanding of Customer Needs and Expectations: Many businesses spend a lot of money on consumer research. A stronger understanding of your client’s business, their evolving needs, and expectations can help you identify business offerings. You can introduce different services and offer them to other clients as well and generate new revenue streams.
Some key accounts may not generate desired returns, but some may.
Smart account planning is time-consuming, but its returns are long-lasting.
Contact Glenn Graydon Wright LLP in Oakville for Your Account Planning Needs
A skilled business advisor can help you identify strategic client accounts, map the performance of each key account, and help you make data-driven decisions. At Glenn Graydon Wright LLP, our business consultants can provide services to support your account planning and business growth, whether you need partial or complete support. To learn more about how Glenn Graydon Wright LLP can provide you with business planning expertise, contact us a call today at 905-845-6633, or connect with us online, to schedule an online consultation.